okrablossom | Reading

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/07/01/the-big-idea-matthew-kressel/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56299

Hop on board for author Matthew Kressel’s newest ride through the galaxy, Space Trucker Jess. In this Big Idea as he takes you through not only his writing process for this particular story, but on a journey through a high-concept sci-fi world viewed through the eyes of a teenage girl.

MATTHEW KRESSEL:

I was a feral kid. Both my parents worked full-time jobs, and I’d come home to an empty house. I had no supervision. I went off with friends and we, ahem, did things. Stupid things. Really fucking stupid things. And when I look back on those days I’m like, How the hell did I make it out alive?

But that freedom was glorious. You could do whatever you wanted. Go anywhere. You had the feeling that anything could happen. And it often did. The good and the bad.

That’s the kind of feeling I hope to evoke in Space Trucker Jess. The joy and spontaneity of discovery. In my childhood, we got into trouble all around the neighborhood. In my novel, Jess gets into hijinx across the galaxy.

Like Jess herself, I began the book with a simple premise: Screw the “rules.”

In my past stories and novels, I labored over every paragraph, sentence, word, and punctuation mark until I’d wound myself into a Gordian knot a million words long. In Jess, I felt the need to loosen the bridles, to let my idea run wild, like that feral kid who got into trouble around the neighborhood. What emerged was Jess, a take-no-shit foul-mouthed kick-ass teenaged girl who’s smart as hell, caring and empathetic, who solves problems not with violence but with brains and determination. Though too often for her own good, Jess’s curiosity gets her into trouble. Big trouble.

Think Natasha Lyonne narrating 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There’s lots of high-concept SF, and, yeah, Space Trucker Jess has all the tropes: starships and FTL travel, alien gods, missing planets, galactic secrets. But I wanted to tell the story a different way. Not from an omniscient or a dry and distant third person, but from deep in the point of view of a sensitive and expressive girl who’s journeyed across the Milk and back a thousand times and who knows more about starships than most people know their own nose.

And so you get high philosophy and fart jokes. Orthodox religion and irreverent sacrilege. Weird inscrutable aliens and deadbeat dads. All told from a foul-mouthed over-confident, wicked-smart and sometimes willfully naive girl who just wants, at the end of the day, to be left the hell alone.

Space Trucker Jess is also about identity. I wrote a good chunk of the book during the first Covid lockdowns. Cut off from friends and family, from work and all the many inter-personal relationships I took for granted, I felt my sense of self drifting. Without those external interactions reflecting my identity back to me, I didn’t know who I was anymore. It was very disconcerting.

A lot of that experience makes its way into the book. Jess’s worldview expands enormously throughout the novel, sometimes suddenly and violently, and she is forced to reckon with a new sense of self and a greater awareness.

Also, Space Trucker Jess is about family. Jess loves her deadbeat dad, and she and him have been grifting their way across the galaxy for years. But she knows he’s an asshole, he knows he’s an asshole, but she just can’t let him go. The relationship is, from the start, highly dysfunctional. Jess just wants stability, away from him. But getting away is harder than it sounds. Without getting too personal, I had a lot of turbulence in my childhood home, and I wanted to explore the contrasts between the family we’re born with and the family we choose, and how those dynamics can alter the course of our entire lives, for better or worse.

So if you want to go on a fun adventure alongside a bad-ass genius girl head-firsting her way through the galaxy who’s just looking for some peace in an uncaring universe, while encountering alien gods, missing planets, galactic secrets, and more, well then, Space Trucker Jess might just be your ride.

Space Trucker Jess: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author socials: Website|Facebook|Instagram|Bluesky

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/07/01/the-big-idea-matthew-kressel/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56299

mrissa

Syr Hayati Beker, What a Fish Looks Like. Discussed elsewhere.

A.S. Byatt, The Virgin in the Garden. Weirdly I had read books 2-4 of this series and not this one. It worked perfectly well that way, and I think for some people I'd even recommend it, because this one is substantially about teachers attempting (and often succeeding) in sleeping with their teenage girl students and a mental health crisis not being responsibly addressed. All of it is very period-appropriate for the early 1950s, all of it is beautifully observed and written about. It still had the "I want to keep reading this" nature that her prose always does for me. And Lord knows Antonia Byatt was there and knew how it all went down in that era. It's just that if you want to do without this bit, it'll be fine, it really is about those things and it's really okay to not want to do that on a particular day.

William Dalrymple, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World. This is largely How Buddhism Transformed the World and a little bit of How Hinduism Transformed the World. There is a tiny bit about math and a few references to astronomy without a lot of detail. If you're looking for how Ancient Indian religions transformed the world, that's an interesting topic and this is so far as I, a non-expert, can tell, well done on it. But I wanted more math, astronomy, and other cultural influences.

Robert Darnton, The Writer's Lot: Culture and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France. Comparing the economic situations and lifestyles of several writers of the era--how they lived, how they were able to live, how they wrote. Also revisiting some of his own early-career analysis in an interesting way I'd like to see more of from other authors. Should this be your first Darnton: no probably not. Should you read some Darnton and also this: quite possibly.

J. R. Dawson, The First Bright Thing. Reread. Still gut-wrenching and bright, superpowers and magic circus and found family, what we can change and what we can't. Reread for an event I'll tell you about soon.

Reginald Hill, Arms and the Women, Death's Jest Book, Dialogues of the Dead, and Good Morning, Midnight. Rereads. Well into the meat of the series on this reread now. The middle two are basically one book in two volumes, which the rest of the series does not do, and also they feature a character I really hate, so I kept on for one more to clear the taste of that character out of my brain. Still all worth reading/rereading, of course; they also have the "I just want to keep reading this prose" quality, though in a very different way than Byatt. Really glad we've gotten to the part of the series with contrasting younger cop characters.

Vidar Hreinsson, Wakeful Nights: Stefan G. Stefansson: Icelandic-Canadian Poet. Kindle. This is the kind of biography that is more concerned with comprehensive accounts of where its subject went and what he did and who he talked to than with overarching themes, so if you're not interested in Stefansson in particular or anti-war/immigrant Canadian poets in the early 20th more generally, will be very tedious.

Deanna Raybourn, Killers of a Certain Age. Recently retired assassins discover that their conglomerate is attempting to retire them. Good times, good older female friendships, not deep but fun.

Clay Risen, Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America. Very straightforwardly what it says on the tin. Recognizes clearly the lack of angels involved without valorizing the people destroying other people's lives on shady evidence.

Caitlin Rozakis, The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association. When Vivian and Daniel's daughter Aria gets turned into a werewolf, they have to find another kindergarten to accommodate her needs. But with new schools come new problems. This is charming and fun, and I'm delighted to have it be the second recent book (I'm thinking of Emily Tesh's The Incandescent, which is very different tonally and plotwise) to remember that schools come with grown-ups, not just kids.

James C. Scott, In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings. You know I love James C. Scott, friends. You know that. But if you're thinking a lot about riverine flooding in the first place, this does not bring a lot that's new to the table, and there are twee sections where I'm like, buddy, pal, neighbor, what are you doing, having the dolphin introduce other species to say what's going on with them, this is not actually a book for 8yos, what even. So I don't know. If you're not thinking a lot about watersheds and riverine ecosystems and rhythms in the first place, probably a lovely place to start modulo a few weird bits. But very 101.

Madeleine Thien, The Book of Records. You'd think she'd have had me at "Hannah Arendt and Baruch Spinoza are two of the major characters," but instead it just didn't really come together for me. The speculative conceit was there to hang the historical references on, and in my opinion this book's reach exceeded its grasp. I mean, if you're going to have those two and Du Fu, you've set the bar for yourself pretty high, and also a cross-time sea is also a firecracker of a concept, and...it all just sort of sits together in a lump. Ah well.

Katy Watson, A Lively Midwinter Murder. Latest in the Three Dahlias series, still good fun, the Dahlias are invited to a wedding and get snowed in and also murder ensues. Not revolutionizing the genre, just giving you what you came for, which is valid too.

Christopher Wills, Why Ecosystems Matter: Preserving the Key to Our Survival. "Did the author have a better title for that and the publisher made him change it to something hooky?" asked one of my family members suspiciously, and the answer is probably yes, you have spotted exactly what kind of book this is, this is the kind of book where someone knows interesting things about a topic (population genetics and their evolution) and is nudged to try to make its presentation slightly more grabby for the normies in hopes of selling more than three copies. It's interesting in the details it has on various organisms and does not waste your time on why ecosystems matter because duh obviously. If you were the sort of person who wasn't sure that they did, you would never pick up this book anyway.

minoanmiss

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minoanmiss

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minoanmiss

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Current Mood: scared

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Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/30/close-to-home-grist/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56264

Have you ever had one of those places you want to go to, but never get around to checking out, and suddenly a year has passed and you’ve still never been? That’s how it was for me and Grist, a restaurant in downtown Dayton that I had heard about from so many people and had been meaning to get out to for literal months. Well, I finally made it happen, and I’m so glad I did.

Bryant and I were going out to dinner, and I asked him what kind of food he wanted. He picked Italian, which, in my opinion, is the hardest cuisine to get around this area. At least, good Italian, that is. There’s always Fazoli’s, and TripAdvisor has the audacity to label Marion’s Pizza as the number one Italian spot in the area, so pickings are slim for Italian ’round these parts. But I wanted something nicer than Spaghetti Warehouse.

Eventually my searching led me to Grist, which was labeled as Italian, and looked pretty dang amazing from the photos provided. Plus, I’d heard from numerous Daytonians in the past that they liked Grist, and I trust my sources. So, I made us a reservation for that evening, excited to try somewhere new.

Located on Fifth Street, it’s just down the street from the Oregon District, and close to the Dayton Convention Center. There’s a parking garage right across the street from it, and some street parking, too.

Upon walking in, the first thing I noticed was how bright and open it is. The large wall of windows let in so much natural light, and you immediately get to see all the baked goods in their glass display case.

A shot of the display case holding the desserts and baked goods. You can also see wine glasses and stacks of dishes in the background, and in the very back is a huge bookshelf type wall.

I immediately loved the decor and vibe in Grist. It was like sort of rustic but nice at the same time. Like fancy Italian farmhouse vibes? It was really cute.

A huge bookshelf/cabinet set up that takes up an entire wall, and is painted a really pretty sea salt blue. The bookshelf looking portion is filled with jars of pasta, bottles of olive oils and some t-shirts for sale. There's also a really nice stand/shelving thingy on the other wall with wine bottles on it.

And there was even a selection of wine for purchase:

A rack and cooler of wine bottles.

I didn’t get a shot of their other indoor dining area or their little patio, but it does have a super cute patio.

Grist has casual service, so you can either place your order at the counter or order at your table using your phone, and they bring the food out to your table. I chose to use my phone because there was a pretty steady flow of people ordering to-go stuff from the register.

Here’s what they were offering on their dinner menu:

It’s basically a law that you have to try a restaurant’s bread. The bread a restaurant offers is a window into all the rest of their food, and also into their soul. So we split the half loaf of rosemary and parmesan focaccia:

A beautiful loaf of focaccia cut in half long ways, and sliced into shareable slices. A round puck of butter sits beside it. It is served on a wood serving platter.

Bryant and I both loved the focaccia, and there was more than enough for both of us. The outside was just a little bit crispy and the bread inside was soft and chewy. It wasn’t overwhelmingly herbaceous, and was definitely worth the six dollars in my opinion. The only acceptable reason to not try this bread if you visit is if you’re gluten intolerant.

We also shared the house-made meatballs:

A small black bowl with five sizeable meatballs, all covered in red sauce and parmesan cheese grated on top.

I can’t say I’m like, a huge meatball fan. I don’t really eat them that often and they’re not something I crave regularly or think about all that much. However, these meatballs were really yummy! I was impressed that there were five of them, and they were quite sizeable. I think the portion size is honestly pretty good. They definitely tasted like they were made fresh in-house, and had just the right amount of sauce on them. I would be more than happy to have a meatball marinara sub made with these meatballs.

And our final appetizer was the mushroom pate:

Three slices of toasted bread served alongside a small white bowl filled with the mushroom pate, which is topped with pickled shallot and sesame seeds.

First off, I love how toasty the ciabatta was, it’s like the perfect shade for toast. The mushroom pate was packed to the brim with mushroomy, umami flavor. Total flavor bomb, and a little goes a long way. The pickled shallots added a wild contrast, and there was a lot of interesting textures. It was seriously delish.

To accompany the starters, I decided to try their sweet wine flight, which came with three wines for fourteen dollars:

A slim wooden flight board with three small glasses of wine. One red and two white.

I can’t remember what the red one was, but the two whites are a Riesling and a sparkling Moscato. I did not care for the red at all, in my opinion it wasn’t even remotely sweet, but I generally prefer white anyway so maybe it just wasn’t my cup of tea (or wine, I suppose). Normally I like Rieslings but this one was kind of a miss for me, too. The Moscato was the bomb dot com though. I loved the bubbles and the sweetness level was perfect. It was so smooth and delish, I ended up polishing that one off but didn’t really drink the other two.

Choosing an entree was pretty dang tough, but Bryant ended up picking the Cacio e Pepe Orecchiette:

A large white bowl/plate type of dish with a large portion of risotto, drizzled with some sort of cream sauce and with chunks of baked parmesan and pepper on top.

I absolutely loved the presentation of this dish, and I’m a huge risotto fan, but I honestly didn’t care for this dish. It just really didn’t taste like much to me, but then again I only had one bite and Bryant said he really liked it, so maybe it was a me issue. I’m glad he enjoyed it!

I opted for the Sweet Corn Agnolotti:

A black bowl containing about thirteen pieces of Agnolotti. Fresh parmesan is shaved on top.

I actually wasn’t sure what type of pasta agnolotti was, but it’s basically just a stuffed pasta, kind of like a ravioli. These little dudes were stuffed with a delicious, creamy filling that I totally burned the frick frack out of my tongue on. They had a great corn flavor, you could definitely tell it was sweet corn. I noticed on the menu it also said it had black truffle in it but I actually didn’t notice any truffle flavor at all, so that’s kind of odd. I really enjoyed my entree, and I think next time I’d like to try the squid ink pasta since I still have yet to try squid ink.

Of course, we had to save room for dessert, and you can’t eat an Italian dinner without ending it with tiramisu:

A small white plate with a big ol cube of tiramisu on it. It is a heck of a solid block of creamy white goodness and cocoa powder.

Funny enough, Bryant’s favorite dessert is tiramisu, so he definitely wasn’t gonna pass this up. He was kind enough to let me try a bite, and I feel confident saying it’s a pretty good tiramisu! It was creamy and rich, and honestly didn’t have any sort of alcohol-y boozy type flavor. No complaints, solid tiramisu.

I went with the apricot and passionfruit tart with pepita crust:

A long and narrow slice of a tart, the filling of which is bright orange and topped with dollops of toasted meringue (at least I think that's what it is?).

Oh my DAYS! This bloody thing was loaded with flavor. Holy cannoli this thing literally punched my tastebuds into next week! The passionfruit flavor is absolutely bonkers on this sucker. Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious. It was sweet and tart and the crust was awesome and the meringue on top was fantastic and wow. Seriously wow. It took me three separate tries to eat this after I took it home, because I would take one bite and be like, okay that’s plenty for now. But don’t misunderstand me, it is very good!

Before leaving, I simply had to get one of their incredible looking cookies to take home, and I picked the white chocolate pineapple one:

A big cookie with flaky sea salt on top, being held up by me in front of a light purple wall.

This cookie was dense, chewy, perfectly sweet with pieces of pineapple throughout, and the flaky sea salt on top really was the cherry on top, or I guess it was the flaky sea salt on top (I know, it’s not a funny joke). Definitely pick up a cookie on your way out, you won’t regret it!

Grist is open Tuesday-Saturday for lunch and dinner, with a break in between the two. You can make reservations for dinner but not for lunch, and you can order online for lunch but not for dinner. While I was there I learned that Grist also hosts cooking classes on Sundays, so that’s neat! I’d love to check one out sometime.

All in all, Grist was a great experience. Though we didn’t have waiters and whatnot, the service we got from the people at the counter and from the chefs that brought our plates out was extremely friendly, and also the food came out really quickly. We both really loved the food and the vibes, and I also like the prices. I definitely want to come back and try pretty much everything I didn’t get to this first time around.

Have you tried Grist before? Which dish looks the best to you? Do you have any recommendations for nice Italian places in Dayton? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day! And be sure to follow Grist on Instagram.

-AMS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/30/close-to-home-grist/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56264

forestofglory

I have been sewing a lot recently! It's really fun!

( many pictures )

alierak posting in

dw_maintenance

We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.

stonepicnicking_okapi posting in

1word1day

tantalus [tan-tl-uhs]

noun

1. a stand or rack containing visible decanters, especially of wines or liquors, secured by a lock; a case in which bottles may be locked with their contents tantalizingly visible

examples

1. A tantalus containing three kinds of spirit, all of a liqueur excellence, stood always on this table of luxury; but the fanciful have asserted that the whisky, brandy, and rum seemed always to stand at the same level. The Wisdom of Father Brown G.K. Chesterton

2. Carstairs made a gesture towards the tantalus on the table. Afterwards Kathlyn Rhodes

origin

Latin, from Greek Tantalos, from the Greek myth of Tantalus, a wicked king and son of Zeus; condemned in Hades to stand in water that receded when he tried to drink and beneath fruit that receded when he reached for it

asakiyume

This question popped into my head when I looked out my window and saw a catbird balancing on a stick, using its wings to help it balance.

Would you trade your arms and hands for wings?

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/29/things-i-was-not-expecting-outside-my-hotel-window-last-night-fireworks-edition/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56257

July 4 is most of a week away, so I was not anticipating that outside my hotel window last night would be a full-fledged professional fireworks display. But it turns out the hotel I was at, was next door to a Masonic Temple compound, and I guess they had some premature patriotic fervor. Inasmuch as I got a free fireworks show I didn’t even need to leave my hotel room for (and it ended early enough that I didn’t lose any sleep over it), I suppose I can’t complain.

Back at home now. Not anticipating a fireworks display tonight. We’ll see if that prediction holds.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/29/things-i-was-not-expecting-outside-my-hotel-window-last-night-fireworks-edition/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56257

rimrunner

Cover art for the anthology Shakespeare Adjacent, showing a portrait of William Shakespeare, sitting in front of a laptop and holding a smartphone. He has a pair of earbuds in and is wearing a digital watch. In the background are modern objects: a digital photo and an electric lamp.

I'm so excited to announce that the Kickstarter for the 2 Jokers Publishing anthology Shakespeare Adjacent is now live! It's a delight to work once again with Lou Tambone, who also co-edited From Bayou to Abyss, as well as co-editor Ali McDowell. I have a longstanding love for Shakespeare's stories, especially his skill at characterization and, of course, his witty dialogue. I also love how his stories can be remixed, retold, and translated to other media without losing any of their power or relatability. It's a real treat to get to play around with one of my favorites of his plays, and try it out in a novel setting.

I don't write a lot of romance, despite having respect and affection for the genre, so I decided to try my hand at one of the romantic comedies. Of course there's a lot more going on in Much Ado About Nothing beyond the central romances (as fun as it always is to watch Benedick and Beatrice spar--if you've never seen David Tennant and Catherine Tate in those roles, incidentally, it's well worth it), including the larger political context in which the story is set, the family rivalry between Don Pedro and Don John, and the changing gender norms and relationships at the time that Shakespeare wrote it. Do all of these still work in a future Western setting beset by drought and political deterioration?

Back the Kickstarter, and judge for yourself--and get 12 other stories to read, into the bargain!

An invitation to back the Kickstarter for the anthology Shakespeare Adjacent, with the book’s cover showing a portrait of William Shakespeare, sitting in front of a laptop and holding a smartphone. He has a pair of earbuds in and is wearing a digital watch. In the background are modern objects: a digital photo and an electric lamp.

Current Mood: jubilant

sallymn posting in

1word1day

bagatelle [bag-uh-tel]

noun:
1 something of little value or importance; a trifle
2 a game played on a board having holes at one end into which balls are to be struck with a cue
3 a short literary or musical piece in light style

Examples:

If anything, the slowly accumulating final chord of the bagatelle could have set up the softly arpeggiated one at the start of 'Twilight Way', the first of the 'Poetic Tone Pictures.' (Joshua Barone, Review: Dvorak’s 'Poetic Tone Pictures’ Makes Its Carnegie Debut, New York Times, February 2023)

Pinball got its start in 18th-century France with the billiardslike tabletop game bagatelle, which used a springlike launcher. (World-ranked pinball wizard is reviving the game in San Antonio with a new startup, san Antonio Express-News, March 2020)

When you are caught in a web of conspiracies, the best of deeds becomes a mere bagatelle, as we find in the fall of Udensi. (Henry Akubuiro, Travails of a Good Samaritan , The Sun Nigeria, March 2021)

Among the most divisive issues in philosophy today is whether there is anything important to be said about the essential nature of truth. Bullshit, by contrast, might seem to be a mere bagatelle. (Jim Holt, Say Anything, The New Yorker, August 2005)

'Overdue; was the title he had decided for it, and its length he believed would not be more than sixty thousand words - a bagatelle for him with his splendid vigor of production. (Jack London, Martin Eden)

The betrayal of one's friends is a bagatelle in the stakes of love, but the betrayal of oneself is a lifelong regret. (Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love)

Then there were the bird cages, the iron hoops, the steel skates, the Queen Anne coal-scuttle, the bagatelle board, the hand organ - all gone, and jewels, too. (Virginia Woolf, 'The Mark on the Wall')

Origin:

1630s, 'a trifle, thing of no importance,' from French bagatelle 'knick-knack, bauble, trinket' (16c.), from Italian bagatella 'a trifle,' which is perhaps a diminutive of Latin baca 'berry,' or from one of the continental words (such as Old French bague 'bundle') from the same source as English bag. As 'a piece of light music,' it is attested from 1827. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

adrian_turtle

I noticed something when I used public toilets in London a couple of months ago. For years, I've been seeing UK TERFs absolutely freak out about the possibility that a transwoman might be in a stall next to a ciswoman. So I somehow thought they were less private than the stalls here. Or at least no more private. The standard I'm accustomed to is that the doors come down to about knee height, maybe a little lower. (Plenty of space to run a mop under them.) The public toilets I used in London had doors that almost touched the tops of my shoes! And the doors closed with proper hinges, without big gaps on the hinge side.

I've always known the TERFs were outrageous bullies, but it was so weird to see this particular wrongness. It's like they've been saying they hate people because it's raining outside, and then it turns out it wasn't even raining?

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/28/view-from-a-hotel-window-6-28-25-medina-oh/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56252

Very different from the last View From a Hotel Window I posted, seeing that one was from Venice, Italy. This one is greener, though. And has a parking lot! Very few of those in Venice, I have to say.

Why am I here? Because of the Big Ohio Book Con, where Tochi Onyebuchi and I are in conversation tomorrow at 12:30, followed by us both signing books. If you are in the vicinity of Medina, OH tomorrow, come down and see us (the book festival is also happening today! Right now! As I write this!). If you’re not in the vicinity of Medina, Ohio today or tomorrow, well, try to have a good time anyway.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/28/view-from-a-hotel-window-6-28-25-medina-oh/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56252

rachelmanija

84 Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff

A sweet epistolatory memoir consisting of the letters written by a woman in New York City with extremely specific tastes (mostly classic nonfiction) and the English bookseller whose books she buys. Their correspondence continues over 20 years, from the 1940s to the 1960s. It's an enjoyable read but I think it became a ginormous bestseller largely because it hit some kind of cultural zeitgeist when it came out.

I Survived the Great Molasses Flood, by Lauren Tarshis

The graphic novel version! I read this after DNFing the supposedly definitive book on the event, Dark Flood, due to the author making all sorts of unsourced claims while bragging about all the research he did. The point at which I returned the book to Ingram with extreme prejudice was when he claimed that no one had ever written about the flood before him except for children's books where it was depicted as a delightful fairyland where children danced around snacking on candy. WHAT CHILDREN'S BOOKS ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

The heroine of I Survived the Great Molasses Flood is an immigrant from Italy whose family was decimated in a flood over there. A water flood. It's got a nice storyline about the immigrant experience. The molasses flood is not depicted as a delightful fairyland because I suspect no one has ever done that. It also provides the intriguing context that the molasses was not used for sweetening food, but was going to be converted into sugar alcohol to be used, among other things, for making bombs!

My favorite horrifying detail was that when the giant molasses vat started expanding, screws popped out so fast that they acted as shrapnel. I also enjoyed the SPLOOSH! SPLAT! GRRRRMMMMM! sound effects.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton

A very unusual murder mystery/historical/fantasy/??? about a guy who wakes up with amnesia in someone else's body. He quickly learns that he is being body-switched every time he falls asleep, into the bodies of assorted people present at a party where Evelyn Hardcastle was murdered. He needs to solve the mystery, or else.

This premise gets even more complicated from then on; it's not just a mystery who killed Evelyn Hardcastle, but why he's being bodyswapped, and who other mysterious people are. It's technically adept and entertaining. Everything does have an explanation, and a fairly interesting and weird one - which makes sense, as it's a weird book.

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: shocked

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Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/27/new-books-and-arcs-6-27-25/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56245

I was traveling much of June, and as a result we have an extra-large collection of new books and ARCs to consider here at the end of the month. What in this double stack of reading goodness would you like to take on in this final weekend of the first half of the year? Share in the comments!

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/27/new-books-and-arcs-6-27-25/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56245

pegkerr

For the last week I have slept on the futon in my office because my bedroom had been emptied so that it could be replastered and painted. I hired a contractor to do the plastering, and they did a great job (badly needed, as the wall was full of a bunch of long, meandering cracks). I opted to do the painting myself to save money.

The painting got delayed because it was so hot last weekend. I managed most of it over two or three days but then (total klutz that I am) I stumbled over a painting extension pole and managed to break a toe, making it increasingly painful to get up and down off the floor, just when it was time to paint the baseboards. To make things worse, I suddenly started experiencing arthritis, this time in my right hand. Suddenly, the painting job was getting to be a bit too much.

Rather desperately, I sent out a call for help to my family text thread, and one of my nephews gracefully came through. He showed up and put in several hours putting the second coat on the baseboards and window frames and finishing up the closet.

I love my bedroom's new look. I have to get new linens and curtains and put up artwork. But I'm really pleased with how it looks so far.

I found a light switch cover with a tree of life on it, which is a much-appreciated touch.

Image description: Two views of a freshly painted bedroom. Lower half: view of a bedroom with blue/green walls. Upper left corner: a small chair and side table in a corner, where dark green and light blue/green colors meet. Upper right corner: a light switch plate with an ornate botanical tree of life.

Painting

25 Painting

Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

Current Mood: creative

watersword

Very pleased at how fast my ankle's been healing; it barely hurts at all except when I flex my toes, and I assume that will get better next week. Ice and rest doing their job as advertised! The knee is — I don't want to say getting worse, that's not true, but as the scab gets thicker and more attached to the skin, it feels more uncomfortable to move my knee through flexion/extension, and that is not fun. Botheration.

I have a dark feeling I should get PT after this; I can feel my gait getting fucked up by having both legs injured in different ways. A new adulting experience, and I already do not like it because it will involve insurance. Maybe I'll call the EAP and make them give me a to-do list or something.

While lying in bed and icing my ankle, I have re-read Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy and Fledgling; I know we've talked about it before, but wow it gets more and more noticeable how she just doesn't think of queerness as related to desire. The stuff she's interested in about gender and sexuality forces her to acknowledge the existence of same-sex sexual interactions, but nothing about them is ever anyone's first choice or pleasurable except in the ways her worldbuilding allows her to impose on the characters.

I am idly fantasizing about a shopping app that lets me:

manually add items from a variety of independent vendors (i.e., not Amazon);
once a month (or whatever time period I set), checks if any of the items on the list are on sale;
if it finds an item on sale, it stops going through the list and purchases that item, removing it from the list;
if nothing is on sale, it picks a random item from the list, purchases it, and removes it from the list;
repeat next month.

Note: steps 2-5 do not involve me making decisions or receiving alerts.

Things to Get Me [referral link] is perfect at #1. Google Shopping kind of does #2 but only kind of. The rest of it, I'm fairly sure it doesn't exist and I understand why, I can easily see where this could go very wrong, but I want it for myself and I'm mad that either I gotta build it (no) or outsource to a human. Further botheration.

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okrablossom

December 2011

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Page Summary

scalziwhatever_feed - The Big Idea: Matthew Kressel
mrissa - Books read, late June
minoanmiss - News Items That Would Make Good Story Ideas
minoanmiss - Beauty in Nature
minoanmiss - *clutches my passport*
scalziwhatever_feed - Close To Home: Grist
forestofglory - More Doll outfit pictures!
alierak in dw_maintenance - Rebuilding journal search again
stonepicnicking_okapi in 1word1day - Monday Word: tantalus
asakiyume - a trade
scalziwhatever_feed - Things I Was Not Expecting Outside My Hotel Window Last Night, Fireworks Edition
rimrunner - Kickstarter Launched! Shakespeare Adjacent from 2 Jokers Publishing
sallymn in 1word1day - Sunday Word: Bagatelle
adrian_turtle - Boston and London
scalziwhatever_feed - View From a Hotel Window, 6/28/25: Medina, OH
rachelmanija - Misc Books: Helene Hanff, Lauren Tarshis, Stuart Turton
minoanmiss - There is a shade of purple now gone from the world
scalziwhatever_feed - New Books and ARCs, 6/27/25
pegkerr - 2025 52 Card Project: Week 25: Painting
watersword - idle contemplations

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Page generated Jul. 7th, 2025 04:37 am

Water Down Words Up

Reading

The Big Idea: Matthew Kressel

Books read, late June

News Items That Would Make Good Story Ideas

Beauty in Nature

clutches my passport

Close To Home: Grist

More Doll outfit pictures!

Rebuilding journal search again

Monday Word: tantalus

a trade

Things I Was Not Expecting Outside My Hotel Window Last Night, Fireworks Edition

Kickstarter Launched! Shakespeare Adjacent from 2 Jokers Publishing

Sunday Word: Bagatelle

Boston and London

View From a Hotel Window, 6/28/25: Medina, OH

Misc Books: Helene Hanff, Lauren Tarshis, Stuart Turton

There is a shade of purple now gone from the world

New Books and ARCs, 6/27/25

2025 52 Card Project: Week 25: Painting

idle contemplations

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December 2011

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