Stumbling Through Adulthood

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia.

Writing this while I still have tears in my eyes.

What an incredible book. I picked it, tbh, for the cover. Not the one shown here, but the one on the BigBookSellers website. I don't know why it showed up in my library feed but it did, and I borrowed it and read it and loved it.

Delphine. OMG, that child. That wonderful child. She's three things at once. She's herself with her own personality and quirks. She's a child who -there is no doubt in my mind about this- will grow up to be one of those admirable and much admired Black Women who blend strength and compassion and practicality and who know what is needed to make this country, the world, and everyone's lives better. The ones who are vulnerable but lead anyway. And she's also the universal older sister, the one who -transcending color and culture- is made responsible for younger siblings and rises to the occasion because she has no choice.

I'll be reading the sequel. Be eleven, her mother told her. I hope she gets to

If I do it as three things, I don't have to worry that everything is internally coherent.

1. I'm so fucking sick of the Dems and trans issues debate. Enough already. Trans issues hurt us and will continue to do so. Acknowledge it and work to not need those votes. We don't want them anyhow. Stop even hinting about throwing people under the bus. My god. The Rs bad enough, we don't need to support their shit. And I say this as a person who still does have issues with trans women in high level competitive women's sports. But. You protect the vulnerable. If people don't vote for Dems based on trans rights, then we need to find better voters, not cater to these ones.

2. I can't even begin to think about the damage that fucker in the White House is doing. From cryptocurrency to putting a bunch of violent criminals back on the streets... It's just overwhelming. I can take it in in small nuggets of news, but when I sit down to write a coherent summary of how I see it all fitting together, I just want to cry. I fear, especially, for the environment.

3. Just finished the final book of the Bloodsworn Trilogy by John Gwynne. That was excellent. Left me in tears, but also satisfied, it was a tale well told.

Work tomorrow. Le sigh.

1. I am not going to make my goodreads reading challenge for the year! Usually I'm over and beyond, but with work, it's not happening. I just don't have time. Sigh.

2. Dh is at trains. I was supposed to go to the Post Office this morning to try to figure out what happened to my package (they claim it's on its way to its destination, but... no tracking so.). I forgot and read all morning instead. And then I made gingerbread that is still in the oven. I'll race down there as soon as that's done. Sigh. I'm an idiot. But it was nice to take some time to read. ETA. Sigh update. I just checked the gingerbread and it was inexplicably flat. And then I saw the little bowl of carefully measured out baking soda sitting on the counter. I got a series of texts while I was baking and I guess didn't quite get things right. Ah well, it's trash, I'll make more later.

3. Have to return a dress I bought at Land's End. I'm so tired of stuff not fitting and having to do returns! Bought a pair of leggings in a different color same size as a pair that fits, and it's too big as well, but unlike the dress, not unwearable. I have more underwear to toss as well, since once the package is open, you can't even donate it, even if 3/4 are still folded and wrapped. Sigh. I'm not complaining about the weight loss, but finding clothes is proving to be tricky, especially since I loathe shopping.

Sister dropped Mom off at the Memory Care place on Monday. Not going to well. She's safe and cared for but we had to tell them take away her phone, because she kept on calling and demanding to be picked up. Hopefully she will adjust so we can give it back! The good thing is that she figured out how to use it, unlike her cell, which she never really did (even pre-dementia she was very iffy with it.)

So.

BIL is out of surgery, it went well, fingers crossed that margins are clear and lymph nodes as well.

Dh is on call this week and it's been pretty much non-stop for 12+ hours a day. Sucks.

And in excellent news, I got my hands on some Zepbound. It's a back-to-the-starter-dose thing, but eh, I'll take anything. Weight is creeping back on and the hunger was something else. I'll start again tomorrow. I hope it works as well as last time!

Jasper Fforde has finally released the sequel to _Shades of Grey_ which was excellent. I'm looking forward to reading it! It's called _Red Side Story_ and I hope it's available soon! I'll probably have to re-read _Shades of Grey_, it's been... oh, at least a dozen years, if not more.

The King-Killing Queen by Shawn Speakman.

In the end, it was just... mediocre.

I had great hopes for this book. It was described as High Fantasy, and yeah, it fits the category, but there was a lot of hype around it and I was looking forward to reading it.

The good: a few of the characters were interesting.

The rest: Where do I even start? Oh wait, I know, I start with adding a spoiler cut!
( Read more... )
So yeah. Mediocre.

Not totally obsolete, of course, but what with 90% of the books -wait, I can calculate that- make that 89.89% of books I read last year being e- or audio books, I don't turn a lot of page. 9 books worth, most of those graphical novels, out of 89 books read.

What I miss?

Bookmarks.

I loved -love- bookmarks. I rarely had "official" ones, but pieces of found carboard, boarding passes and train tickets, postcards, a few rectangles cut from greeting cards, things like that.

Never intentional, always found, bits of carboard falling into the role of bookmark as I needed them.

Used for a book or two, put away somewhere, usually between two books on a shelf, to be discovered or retrieved later.

I miss that. I miss going through my little pile of found cardboard and picking one for a given book.

I have a physical book right now and I could use a bookmark, but umm... I can't remember between what books my stash is! I remember moving it probably over a year ago, because it was interfering with my putting something away and I don't feel like going through my shelves to find where I put it right this moment. They'll turn up.

In the meanwhile, I'm looking around for a new suitable piece of cardboard for the paper book I'm reading right now.

I read 89 books this year. My goal was 79, but I snuck a few extra in.

Here's my Year in Books. I love those, but I loved the old metric goodreads used to give at the end of the year better. Ah well.

Some good books, some disappointing, some bad. My awards...

Best book of the year, non-fiction This one is easy: Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking by Mehdi Hasan. Bonus, we listened to the audiobook read by the author. Truly a good book. It may not have been the most profound book I read this year (_Prequel_ by Rachel Maddow) but it was a good book, interesting, full of good information, and just overall the kind of non-fiction book that is really hard to find.


Best books of the year, fiction This is my hardest category and this year was really hard. My favorite book isn't like any of the ones I usually read, so it feels very out of place.

Runners up:
The Weaver and the Witch Queen by Genevieve Gornichec. Compelling story, beautifully written, grounded enough in reality that it felt solid, but also, magic. I also loved her other book The Witch's Heart. I listened to these on audio and the reader was excellent.

A series on this one, though if I had to say, I liked book 1 better than book 2. Book 3, after a delay, is due out next Autumn and both Linnea and I are looking forward to it, despite some reservations (white fonted) about how book 2 ended, sob!. The Shadow of the Gods and The Hunger of the Gods by John Gwynne.

Best book: The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng. It was lovely and immersive, and I adored it.


Worst book of the year, non-fiction Two in this category. One because it annoyed me, the other not because it was bad-terrible, but because it was boring and mediocre.

The boring and mediocre one, from a physician that I know from twitter is brilliant. How Medicine Works and When It Doesn't: Learning Who to Trust to Get and Stay Healthy by F. Perry Wilson. It felt like neither fish nor fowl, not in depth enough scientifically/biomedically to be captivating but not enough anecdotes to be an interesting romp into people and medicine. I felt a bit condescended to, in some way. Disappointing.

The one that annoyed me: Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream by David Leonhardt. Part of this book -Part One, The Rise- was brilliant. Part Two, The Fall? Less so. Author fell into that NYTimes pitfall of both-siderism and never really admitted that while Dems/liberals/progressives aren't always right or always perfect, they are not equal-but-opposite to the crazies of the Republican wingnuts. He did say that it would be hard to ally with them to make this better for all of us because they can be meaner than Dems but hello? These people don't acknowledge my bodily autonomy, they are following a leader who has admitted he wants to be a dictator and who has promised to be their "retribution". There is no common cause possible. Next idea?


Worst book of the year, fiction Tough category this year, but two books stand out as a tie, with another not far behind, and a fourth is listed because it was the worst disappointment of the year.

Runner up for worst book: The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal. It was just... stupid, or maybe stupidly pretentious. I spent the whole book wanting to drop kick the stupid dog. At least it was short.

Worst books, tie:
-- The Sacrifice by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. An overly long -omg long!- dreadful spewing of drivel on page.
-- The Atlas Six. First book I read in 2023 and even back then I knew it was bad enough that it would be in contention for this category. So bad. I reviewed it on goodreads.

Worst disappointment: this broke my heart. I love her other series so much that this book felt even more awful as a result. Rubicon by J.S. Dewes. See my review over there.

I read. I read a lot, as much as I can. Sometimes I read real books, but that's getting more and more rare. But I also read on my Kindle and I listen to audiobooks, which I most certainly count as reading.

Some books are good. Some are less good. Some are dreadful.

And every once and a while, you hit a gem.

Sometimes, it's in a genre you love, and yay for that. Sometimes it's in a genre you don't usually read and a book you don't remember putting on your list or how you heard about it.

That's the book I'm listening to right now. _The House of Doors_ by Tan Twan Eng. I haven't looked up the author and I won't until I'm done, but right now, at about 80% done, I think this book, which is nothing like the books I usually read, will end up my fave book of 2023. It's heartbreakingly beautiful, the writing is extraordinary, and the readers are fabulous, bringing the book to life in a way that makes me glad I chose voices rather than words on the screen. I've been listening on my morning walks through the woods, and instead of being in Redmond WA in a wooded park on trails covered with damp yellow and brown big leaf maple leaves, I swear I get transported to Penang in the early part of the 20th century. The descriptions are done so lightly that you don't notice as they create a place and time so vivid you look around in surprise when you notice that you aren't in face in Malaysia in 1910 or 1921.

It's been such a pleasure, reading this book. I'll probably finish it tomorrow and I hope the ending lives up to the first 80%!

As everyone knows, I want to publish a romance. So periodically, I try to read a few to see if I can figure out where my own little book best slots. And some have been fun, some have been good, some have been dreadful. I just finished a pretty awful one (_Maggie Moves On_ by Lucy Score). I usually don't give a star rating to romances because I feel that, absent something Very Wrong with the book, it's not a genre I spend a lot of time with, so rating them would be a bit disingenuous. I gave this one two stars, because well... It's probably just me, but I'm very rapidly realizing that I despise any sort of romance with an 'alpha' main male lead. They grate on my nerves. The thing is... you cannot prop up the main female character enough, give her enough accomplishments or wit or intelligence to make up for the gravelly voiced large male who possesses her lips and next her body or whatever, carries her off, doesn't matter. It's not that they don't try to give the 'alpha' sweet and intelligent traits or even some vulnerabilities that they reveal to only her. It's that at a fundamental level, they cannot meet as equals. No woman is going to out-alpha the alpha male and ew, why would she want to? But it creates, immediately a playing field in which she might be able to "tame" the alpha, but he's still the alpha male. I'm not sure I'm explaining this well, but that whole premise in romance doesn't do it for me, and indeed annoys me to no end. Ah well.

1. I'm not sure I can do another drive to or from Bend with my mother again. It was fucking awful.

2. You know when you find a book that seems to be really really good, great characters, the story seems interesting, and the writing good, but the writer uses the old sexy-enemy vs boring but reliable old friend who has a crush on the MC trope on the romance, and it kinda cheapens the rest of the story? Well, we're listening to that book and I'm really fucking annoyed, LOL.

3. Prep has started for our trip to see the total eclipse in April '24. It looks we're going with sis and BIL and we'll stay at his daughter's place outside of Austin, they should actually be on the path of totality. The big problem is... what to do with my mom? She can't come with us, my brother may or may not have sold his house and be living on a boat by then, and that's it for potential help. UGH. We shall see.

I'm in Baton Rouge, where it a) is great to see my bro, SIL, niece, nephew, and my mom, b) is hotter than fucking Hades (*) and humid OMG, and c) was a special treat to go out for cafe au lait and beignets, yum. (*) There is a fucking heat dome over the PNW this week so it's not pretty there either. But not humid.

A story.

When we moved to Tunisia, I learned to speak and read French to grade level pretty quickly, but I was slower to catch up to the level of books I was reading in English so I pretty much read anything in English I could get my grubby hands on. Thus the year when I was 9-10, I read Heidi, Catcher in the Rye, and Gone with the Wind. I washed out on Crime and Punishment but read it when I was 11 or 12. Anything in English. There is a point to this.

After I read Gone with the Wind my mother sat me down to tell me that it was all bullshit, not to get taken in by the benign portrayal of slavery etc, and gave me a lesson in reality. It was a good talk, and one that I believe helped shape a lot of opinions. She also explained the difference between the slavery as practiced by the Romans and Greeks, and what happened in the US. And the slave triangle, not leaving Europe's responsibility out of the tale. And because she could never leave well enough alone, LOL, she also told me about the Haitian Revolution and Toussaint Louverture. Years later, in history class, at the question of a teacher to the class, I was able to give a quick rundown of the event, and the teacher was so impressed, he gave me full credit on the next test which I then didn't have to take or study for, LOL.

Anyhow.

Since I got here, my mother has been at me to go visit a plantation. WTF, thought I, immediately, and then she went on to explain that I needed to see the slave quarters, so I'd know how bad it was, and how awful conditions had been and all that.

Dementia does strange things to people. I guess that, of all the things it has taken from her, one that it has not is her horror of slavery.