What I read: November 2023

LHC #228: "The Marrow Thieves" by Cherie Dimaline. Office book club selection. A quick read, a little rape-y but maybe I just found it that way because it's not my lived experience.

The Toronto Public Library's website had some sort of hacking incident or something, which was great, because I can remember enough of my holds list to get the next few books, and I can't add new things to it! Considering that it was up to 94 books, this was a blessing.

LHC #229: "Jade Legacy" by Fonda Lee. The easiest thing to remember, of course, is the sequels on the list. I think I wanted something that stuck more together, this seemed a little pulled apart, across time and space, at least for the first third. The middle was awesome, and I was glad I'd kept reading. About 75-76% I was bawling my eyes out.

"Refuse to be Done" by Matt Bell. I bought it with some credits I had at Indigo and then read most of it on TTC rides to the office. This is where the editing strategies I've been using have been coming from.

LHC #230: The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave. I mean, it had a witch hunter, I guess that's my jam? Not sure what I was expecting, but it was very good.

Best TW feedback ever

Over at the dayjob, SMEs are feverishly trying to get documents back to me all marked up, in preparation for the release that's supposed to happen the week I'm back from VP. Today's best comment: Unfortunately not true. SMEs, they're so cute.

Moraine

So a couple of days I thought I was done with this short story, and I wrote the last line of the story. I even dated it (that's how I can tell it's over). It was a little long, at 6600 words (I was aiming for 5000). But then I was walking to work, and I thought, "My, that was a lame ending. My endings are all crap." So yesterday morning, I scribbled out the date and wrote a bit more. And this morning I wrote a bit more again, and I dated it and called it done. And still, that ending seemed lame. So a few minutes later, in the last paragraph, I scratched out "the Oak Ridges Moraine" and wrote in "that stupid moraine". Much better. Now I can move on. But in the meantime, I was doing a little research about the Moraine, and I discovered that EGTourGuide lives on it. Only by one or two hundred feet, but I thought it was funny. Good for you, EGTourGuide, with all those excellent plants growing on that substandard soil, where in the olden days (you kno...

What I read: March 2024

LHC #240: "Vita Nostra" by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko. Translated by Julia Meitov Hersey. All I knew going in was dark academia. This was a neat thing to read after A Deadly Education last month. The students can leave this school at summer and winter break, but maybe they shouldn't. Also, interesting education method, providing Sasha with a CD player and punishing her if she leaves it in the mode where it plays all the tracks in sequence. "Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman. When I finished Ragnarok by AS Byatt (last month? January?) I was thinking it might have made more sense if I had any knowledge of the subject matter. The boy had left this lying around, and it was not a tough read. LHC #241: "Science on a mission: How Military funding shaped what we do and don't know about the ocean" by Naomi Oreskes. I deferred this once because it was so long. History of science is challenging for me to read, because of the need to get a grasp on dispr...

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