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Contra Benn Jordan, data center (and all) sub-audible infrasound issues are fake - The cottage industry of flashing papers on screen that uh, don't say, what you claim they say has always been a bemusing one to me. (And yes, obviously people would use this pseudoscience against wind turbines too, how could anyone ever be surprised by that?)

16 Inch Gun Training Film - A 9 minute US Navy training film from the 1950s on the architecture and operation of 16-inch guns on a battleship.

Mary Had Schizophrenia—Then Suddenly She Didn’t - Always good to remember how incredibly untrue dualism is, even if it makes me go eughhhh.

Machines that make the most advanced chips - ~50 minute video on ASML and how its machines print circuit patterns onto wafers.

Hanging out in the 19th century, some locations more tolerable than others.

Journey To The Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

The narrator of this novel lacks the equanimity of the heroes of the previous Jules Verne novel I read, and is thus quite bewildered and upset to be dragged along by his uncle to climb down into an quiescent volcano, all because of a scrap of runes indicating that a 16th century Icelandic alchemist did so and found the very centre of the earth.

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The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

I continue my adventures in the “Woman Makes Unwise Romantic Choices Tsk-Tsk” classics: Gilded Age New York edition.

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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

I...did not enjoy this book. I found it alternately boring and frustrating. Not the fun sort of frustration. It went on for so long, and for what?

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Wikipedia is telling me the language is a pastiche of 19th century writing, such as Dickens and Austen. Now, I’ve only read 1-2 books of each author, but I found their prose much more palatable than this novel’s, which I kept bouncing off of. I thought about the difference in my responses, and after a while I concluded my dissatisfaction with prose and characters come from the same underlying place, which is a lack of psychological intimacy with the characters. There are moments of such intimacy, yes, but not long enough to make me care. That’s fine in a genre work if lots of cool shit is happening. Lots of cool shit is not happening during most of the novel.

Perhaps that’s just the intention of the book, given the academic nature of the footnoting but eh. If I wanted to read an academic text that didn’t move me emotionally, I’d rather read about the real world.

Deleteduser.com - a $15 PII magnet - Can you believe this is how some companies handle deleted users in their databases? Somehow I am still surprised.

The Consequences of Caste in Village India - Examination of life in rural India and the economic (and other) roles caste plays. Worth reading alone for the description of how kinship networks act as both floor and ceiling — it doesn't completely disappear in urban environments but it's way less of a force, and easier to escape.

Forests in the olden days - YouTube video on what medieval-era managed and unmanaged woods actually looked like

A Family Doctor’s Search for Salvation - Profile of a pediatrician who accidentally killed his own son and became relentlessly altruistic in response.

Where To Find The Colors Your Screen Can't Show You - I've genuinely never thought about how the classic RGB screen spectrum (0–255 for each of red, green, and blue) compares to the actual spectrum of color humans can see. I gotta go stare at some green stuff outside!

The Algebra Gatekeepers - One of those articles that made me have to go on a walk because I got so frustrated, as someone who grew up in a regimented and rigorous education system. What do you mean you decide who gets to take harder math classes entirely on teacher recommendation and ignore grades and test scores entirely? What do you mean you don't have enough math teachers who can teach Algebra I to add an extra section, for I am entirely inclined to agree with the comment that any person whose job is Math Teacher should be able to do that.

Doctor Wihtout Borders - Good longform article on a Palestinian doctor in Israel. “I did it for myself and also for my daughters. I wanted them to understand that a human being is a human being.”

Patricia’s Perfect Pull: A Crystal Grower’s Story - So many jobs, past and present, that I have not even conceived of, and before this article, crystal puller was one of them. Fun insight into one such crystal puller's life.

The Analects

My previous osmosis of Confucius was the emphasis on filial piety. Thus what surprised me most from reading The Analects — a compilation of Confucius’s teachings by his followers — is that most of it is about self-mastery, a love of learning, and the concept of “humaneness”. Naturally the latter has a connection to Confucius’s belief in filial piety, and to his advice on ruling, for Confucius spent his life in government, or advising government, (non-exclusive) or in exile due to pissing off people in government.

I read the Penguin Classics edition and found both the translation and commentary quite readable.

Aunty Lee’s Delights by Ovidia Yu

A mystery set in Singapore, where our detective is the titular Aunty Lee, a kaypoh Peranak widow who runs a cafe. The characters are recognizable Singapore archetypes that’d fit a Christie-style arrangement and the descriptions of food enticing, but I found the mystery plot and some writing choices dissatisfying. Author’s note mentions the first draft was written in Nanowrimo. Might show, but unlike the last book I read with such an author’s note, I’m willing to give her later books a read to see if they get better. Previously read the author’s play collection.

Book gave me the opportunity to laugh at myself for not realizing that a family with the last name Peters, with children named Marianne and Mycroft, are far more likely to be Indian than Chinese. SMH at myself.

Spoilers under the cut.

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Oh, also I resented the over-explanation of various bits of Singapore context. Surely if I can google pharmaceuticals or regions or simply guess their meanings from context while reading Christie, a reader can survive without an explanation of what prata is.

From The Earth To The Moon by Jules Verne

This novel is about a Baltimore-based artillery club languishing in boredom after the end of the Civil War, until their president decides they shall send a projectile to the moon. Jules Verne knows so much about American artillery of the time and will tell you all about it. We are getting lots of details and numbers and I learned some stuff about telescopes and construction methods.

Probably good that the novel ends with them getting caught by the moon’s orbit. I was wondering how the whole uh, hitting the moon bit would work out for them.

The Lavender House by Lev A.C. Rosen

A police officer in 1950s San Francisco gets kicked off the force because he gets caught in a raid in a gay bar. He’s planning to throw himself into the bay till an older rich lady offers him a job as a private detective: solve the possible murder of her wife.

Thus we are led to a house filled with queer characters and a case to solve. I enjoyed this novel thoroughly, the mechanics of the plot were interesting, and I was fond of our detective. It felt very grounded in place and time. What a delightful cast of characters, I want to see them all on the big screen. Make this a movie!

My only dislike is that the solution felt too neat. Spoilers under the cut.

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Definitely reading the other books in this series.

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 by Jia Lynn Yang

I picked up this book recommendation when I went to a talk in 2019 about the US census. Very readable, fairly informative. I had a vague sense that there was a 1965 immigration law that permitted the influx of non-European-origin immigration, but was far less familiar with the restrictive immigration policies of earlier in the twentieth century. One wishes the debates around those rhymed less with the present’s. In 1917 you get the exclusion of immigrants from almost all of Asia (building upon the Chinese exclusion act of 1882). In 1921 and 1924 you get ludicrous national origin quotas derived from decades-old demographic data, motivated by anti-semitism, eugenics, anti-communism, unions scared of an influx of labor, etc.

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Spent by Alison Bechdel

Another longform comic work from Bechdel. Unlike her previous three, this is more graphic novel than graphic memoir. It stars a thoroughly fictionalized version of herself, who while still a cartoonist also runs a pygmy goat sanctuary. (“Fun Home” becomes “Death and Taxidermy”, her father turned ignominious taxidermist and the work very loosely adapted into a TV show, “Dykes To Watch Out For” becomes “Lesbian PETA Members To Watch Out For”).

The fictional Bechdel is trying to draw a longform comic about money and capitalism and all that jazz, in between freaking out about politics, but the tone is much less somber than such a description makes it sound. I’d say the mood is far closer to that of DTWOF than any of her nonfiction work, Bechdel very willing to poke fun at her neuroses and her foibles. Some of the DTWOF characters even show up as major characters!

All in all, a fun read.

Dragon Age: Asunder by David Gaider

Look, the line graph of my response to the DA novels has been a positive slope but uh. It’s not a steep slope. Cole, Wynne, and Shale are all-around delights here, as is Leliana popping in at the end. Divine Justinia V is entertaining in the way Grand Cleric Elthina was entertaining in DA2 despite the former loving to do things the way the latter loved doing nothing, in that she clearly accomplishes nothing while thinking she’s accomplishing everything. (In retrospect, this does make Veilguard’s supposed Black Divine doing nothing another occurrence of the pattern. It’s not sexism that the matriarchal religious authority doesn’t do shit in the present day, the patriarchal version in Tevinter doesn’t do shit either :P)

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The Apocrypha

A follow-on to my years-ago reading of the Bible. I did recognize the the stories of Judith and Susanna, but I reached peak entertainment with Tobit, where Tobit’s son Tobias goes off to collect some of Tobit’s money from another city, only to end up marrying Sarah, who keeps marrying guys who get demon-killed during the wedding night. An angel intervenes, all is fine, yada yada, but the thing that got me was when Tobias is like sweet, okay, let me go home and let my parents know everything is chill, and his father-in-law is like. No. You must stay here a whole fortnight in celebration. So Tobias’s poor parents back home are like wow...our son is dead probably...we are very sad...until Tobias finally shows up to clarify things.

Seven Ages of Paris by Alistair Horne

Book covering seven distinct eras of Paris, from the 12th century to the mid-20th century. Probably not the best pick for someone who didn’t know much French history — frequent visits to Wikipedia were made — but informative nonetheless. Has the foibles one would expect of a book written by an old British guy. (E.g. opening the book saying London is a dude, NYC is ~ambiguous~, and Paris is certainly a woman + describing some lady as seducing her own father in a way that made me go “hmmmm”).

The Importance of Being Young At Heart by R. Zamora Linmark

Ken Z is a teenager living in the Pacific island nation of South Kristol, about to graduate high school and obsessed with Oscar Wilde. He’s spending an afternoon bunburying in a fancy mall when he runs into Ran, a guy his age from South Kristol’s richer more militaristic neighbor, North Kristol. Thus starts a whirlwind romance.

I was optimistic at first, for even if I didn’t quite jibe with these teens I was curious as to where the tensions between the countries might lead. The answer is: nowhere. Ran disappears but we don’t ever find out why, and Ken Z’s coping with it isn’t that interesting. Sort of felt like a whole lot of nothing.

The most compelling bit was Ken Z’s confronting Oscar Wilde (yes, he pops up here and talks, don’t worry about it) about letting himself be taken advantage of by his lover. Of course I have no idea how accurate that is, but I enjoyed the argument.

Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare getting his gory B-movie urges out. Read this because I was going to watch a production of it, which was as bloody on stage as it is in the text. (Perhaps technically less so, given the absence of one death in the opening act.) Even if you didn’t know it was a tragedy, you’d probably know Titus is fucked once he refuses the position of emperor. My guy, what did you think was going to happen?

The production I saw genderswapped the uncle, Marcus Andronicus, which I enjoyed. It removes one of Titus’s sons and Titus’s killing of him in the first act, which somehow made it feel like there was a more suspenseful build-up to the violence of this play. (Even though Titus does kill the firstborn of the Queen of the Goths. A more suspenseful build-up from the perspective of the Andronici, I suppose.)

Remains true for me that I can enjoy watching/reading bloody murders and self-dismemberments, having it wrap around to so exaggerated it’s comical, but this does not not really apply to sexual assault.

Titus roping both his children into holding his lopped-off arm and their dead brothers’ heads, complete with Lavinia holding her item in her teeth, remains so stupidly funny to me lmfao. I wondered if the production would cut that bit and it did not.

S. Rajaratnam, The Authorised Biography, Volume One: The Singapore Lion by Irene Ng

Anyone with sense is wary of a biography labeled an “authorised” one. That holds true here, where the life of one founder of the People’s Action Party (PAP), the still-ruling party of Singapore, is documented by an author who was both a PAP MP herself and whose journalism career was in SPH, the state-owned newspaper corporation. The writing itself is rather middling.

Those caveats aside, I enjoyed learning about this guy, to the extent that I might give volume two of the propaganda a shot the next time I’m in the country. Like, I’ll be fully transparent, my vague knowledge of him was “wrote the national pledge” and “the one Indian guy who isn’t Devan Nair among the PAP 1st gen” and I now feel pretty damn embarrassed about that.

( let us run down the biographical facts )

The polemical journalist becomes Minister of Culture and then slams down restrictions on the press, expressing himself just as vigorously on the supposed necessity of that. Classic, isn’t it.

And yet the thing that’s stuck with me, a month later, is this constant sincere yearning of his for multiracialism, pluralism, whatever it is one wants to call a society that isn’t so fundamentally demarcated by race. He was one of the last holdouts on Singapore’s separation from Malaysia, because he was Malaya-born himself and wanted to believe this was a federation that could work without racial animosity being so destabilizing as to make it impossible.

I dunno. It’s a throughline that made me morose because like, in the 80s and 90s (not covered in this volume but the next one), he’s going to be publicly dismayed about the government emphasizing race more — in what your second language is, in which group you go to if you need economic/other assistance, in immigration quotas, and so on. And one can go, well yeah, natural consequence of PAP, but if we’re talking about the 50s, everyone’s crazy about race. The communists are. UMNO is. There’s no fucking escape. I get why an English-speaking Indian guy is looking around going okay, I’m sticking with LKY.

But some of the stuff he’ll get dismayed about will happen while he’s still holding office, and I suspect there is a certain political ineffectualness at work too, a kinda guy who cannot play the game beyond expressing himself and then sticking with his party.

Interesting fella, all in all.

The Singapore I recognize: Essays on home, community, and hope by Kirsten Han

On the other end of the time scale, we have here a series of essays by a writer whose work I used to read online all the time back in high school. The most surprising thing was learning she accidentally stumbled face-first into anti-death-penalty activism after college — she just got a journalism job, was assigned to cover a death penalty case, and found herself horrified by a part of the Singapore legal system that she’d previously dismissed without much thought as “probably necessary”.

A good read all around, with insights on how journalism and/or activism functions (or doesn’t) in Singapore’’s specific environment.

The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie

Another Christie thriller, a quasi-sequel to The Secret of Chimneys. Much better than that one, and I am so mad at myself for not figuring out the bad guy. Such a classic Christie move, ugh!

Saving Central Park: A History and a Memoir by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers

Realizing that the books in this post have self-explanatory titles and so make me feel like a dummy when I write these first sentences, but I shall bravely forge on anyway: we’ve got here a memoir by the woman who helped found the Central Park Conservancy, a private nonprofit that did a lot of work in the restoration of Central Park in the 1980s and 1990s and basically manages the park today.

It was cool to hear about folks trying to restore some of the landscape design principles that Central Park was originally laid down by, while still making space for new practical purposes people were using the park for —- sports, playgrounds, and so on. My logistics-brain loved hearing about the acre-by-acre plans for maintenance and improvements. The rigor of the planning combined with the donations of a fair number of very rich people worked out well for Central Park. Not the sort of framework that seems extensible to many city parks, but there’s something to be said about going oh, you’d like to donate to our park, here’s our detailed list of projects we’ve already mapped out, pick your favorite.

The Calling (Dragon Age #2) by David Gaider

Not a high bar, but this was better than The Stolen Throne. Even if I did groan at Maric once more sleeping with an elven woman in the Deep Roads, and groaned more at him even running into the Deep Roads in the first place. Couldn’t care much about Maric or Fiona. Was moderately engaged by a young Duncan’s past as Orlesian street thief, not what one would guess from the first game. Don’t know how I feel about Genevieve’s whole thing. When I get to the relevant DLC in watching the Origins LP, I’m curious to see which characters recur.

Mudlark: In Search of London's Past Along the River Thames by Lara Maiklem

The Thames is a tidal river, and it turns out there are a bunch of people who go down there during low tide to see what they can pick up from the mudflats. Which turns out to be quite a lot! Our author alone is a mudlark who’s stumbled across printing press type, ordnance (!), mementos thrown out by prisoners on ships about to go out to Australia, and more.

The book is a fun read, going from west to east along the river, bits of London’s history and the history of Thames mudlarking uncovered as we travel.

The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie

The first Superintendent Battle book. One of Christie’s mediocre thrillers, but I entertained myself by figuring out one of the three hidden identities this book had.

Singapore: A Modern History by Michael D. Barr

I suppose I’ll just keep reading histories of Singapore forever. I’ve heard one of the author’s other books, The Ruling Elite of Singapore: Networks of Power and Influence, is very good, but alas my neighbourhood library lacked it and so I settled for this revisionist history.

Random points

The leadership of independent Singapore has alway framed the miniscule size of Singapore as a threat to it, but it has strong benefits of its own. Something I do try to remind myself of when I unfavorably compare other cities to Singapore in certain regards.
Perhaps obvious to many, but I don’t think I was fully aware of how early submarine cables were laid down across the world?? By 1872 all continents but Antartica were connected by them, and both today and in colonial days Singapore was a major node, situated as it is
Singapore was not Raffles’ first or even second choice and it’s possible the EIC even changed its mind about wanting an outpost in that specific location at all. Raffles was looking for a point that wasn’t already claimed by the Dutch and had someone he could make a deal with.
Apparently Singapore was often more profitable to private entrepreneurs than the British East India company itself, thanks to the whole free trade deal. The EIC relied on tax farming for a chunk of its revenue
Economics is so far out of my wheelhouse that I don’t know what to make of this, but the author argues that even at the time of writing (2018), Singapore has struggled to improve productivity. It’s great at increasing the amount of labor, and providing more capital, but actual productivity increases aren’t great. Is this correct? No idea!

The book also mentioned the classic criticism of Singapore too often demolishing old buildings/changing landscapes, and I’m afraid that while I agree with many classic criticisms of Singapore, that still isn’t one of them. On my most recent visit, I spent a deranged day walking from a point on the northern coast to a point on the southern coast (25 miles at EoD, phew), and it was cool to see old railway stations preserved, but like, I don’t care about the old National Library building getting demolished when the new one exists.

The Stolen Throne (Dragon Age #1) by David Gaider

This is the worst piece of Dragon Age content I've ever consumed. A hetero love quadrangle that makes me detest everyone involved, starring a sexy elf bard that does not seem like a real character but a plot device for our rebelling king to have manpain about. I never got far enough into Origins to decide Loghain's fate, but now I am certain the correct choice is to kill that man, because this book wants me to think he is so Cool And Pragmatic. No. He is Insufferable.

That and the shameful military leadership had me rooting for the Orlesians to win. The Orlesians!

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

My previous sequence of Classic Novels Where Married Woman Makes Unwise Romantic Choices polluted my brain, because the whole time I was so concerned about Janie's marital choices bringing bad consequences to her, but nope! She gets a happy as a life out of her husbands as she can manage, and an ending on her own terms.

Thailand: A Short History by David K. Wyatt

Was this inspired by my spate of watching Thai GLs and BLs? Perhaps. A dense history that goes up to 2002, and made me shamefully realize how much SEA history I do not know. Parts of interest to me were

19th century Thailand negotiating with the British on one side and the French on the other to avoid getting colonized like everyone else in SEA, while still being forced to concede territory and terms given the asymmetry of power.
The number of military coups. The first is in 1932 and then it's like a bottle has been uncorked, can't stop the coups. The importance of the monarch receding for a bit but then coming back in force was interesting.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Way shorter than I expected, I didn't realize it was a novella. Liked it, sank into the prose pretty quickly. Also more...oblique about the horrors than I anticipated? Not like it was trying to avoid them, the horrors are fully there, but we also only meet Kurtz briefly before he dies and I definitely didn't expect that. The copy I borrowed from the library had a couple of essays on the novella and one of them made an interesting point about how many adaptations refuse to keep the original setting. Scrolling through the adaptations list on Wikipedia, I'm more intrigued by how many have Marlow's assigned goal be to kill Kurtz, when that is not on Marlow's mind at all. He is fascinated by Kurtz, a fascination I don't really get, but his bystander-like affect feels like the point of the story.

A fun fact I knew beforehand: English was Conrad's third language.

Scarlet Morning by N.D. Stevenson

Middle-grade illustrated novel by the creator of Nimona and that She-Ra reboot, about two teens abandoned on an island who join a pirate crew and learn more about how the world was shattered to turn the sea terrible, right before they were born. A breezy read, and the drawings were all really cute!

I didn’t realize right till the end that there would be a sequel so I went !?!?!?! over all my lore questions, as I enjoyed finding out more and more backstories with different revelations each time. Of course, I adored everything to do with Viola and Captain Chase <3.

The Red Badge of Courage and Other Stories by Stephen Crane

Haven’t read any other fiction set in the midst of the Civil War battles, or anything else by Crane. The main novel here is written in a sort of abstract way, the soldiers only given titles in dialogue, our protagonist never thinking of the names of the sides or even about the war is over. A self-involved guy, that fella, who ultimately overcomes his cowardice by losing his mind in the moment of battle.

Found it amusing that this collection involved both the the Civil War novel (The Red Badge of Courage) and a short story about four men left adrift on a boat after their ship capsizes (The Open Boat) — the former was so popular and specific that people would assume Crane had served in the Union army when he’d in fact been born after the war, while the latter was inspired by Crane actually being adrift at sea when his ship to Cuba sank.

A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie

Did Christie title this with “Pocket Full” instead of “Pocketful” so that it would be distinguished from the very nursery rhyme it’s based off of? Seems possible. Anyway, we continue our adventures in Marple stories. While the cast is a mostly miserable lot, Miss Marple shines. The first time I’ve seen her so genuinely outraged over a murder, appearing in this book almost as if she were an avenging angel. Makes the ending lines quite satisfying.

It took me way too long to figure out who did it, because apparently I am still vulnerable to the obfuscation of that character type. The inspector and the housekeeper were my favorites of the ensemble cast, well-drawn.

John Adams: A Life by John Ferling

Mr second president of the US of A. My prior knowledge was snippets from the Hamilton musical along with whatever mentions he got in Chernow’s Hamilton and Washington biographies. And osmosis from somewhere that he ditched the capital a bunch to go hang out with his wife, which meant that I was surprised by his treatment of said wife in the earlier parts of his career.

Solid biography for getting the sense of the man’s work, his personality, and his ultimate impact. Picked it off the recommendation of https://bestpresidentialbios.com/curriculum/ because if someone out there is going to read every single biography that exists for every single president, I’m okay with taking in their judgement of the bios.

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I dunno which president’s bio will be next (which will be a while in the future), either Jefferson’s or Lincoln’s.

Floodtide by Heather Rose Jones

While I enjoyed the drastically different perspective of a maid, unlike the fancier ladies we’ve followed, this book shared with its predecessor a lack of a satisfying ending and romance. My overall assessment is that the first two books of the Alpennia series are by far the best, and so are the romances therein.

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Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

Bro this felt like reading a coffeeshop AU without the benefit of having prior affection for or backstory knowledge of any of the characters. A solid Meh. I am vulnerable to the sort of story this book is aiming to be but uh, it needed to do more work to grab me. (I am not vulnerable to the idea that everyone who tries coffee loves it immediately, as someone who does not drink it.)

Honestly, the comparison might be unfair to coffeeshop AUs as a fic genre — I’ve read a number with more effort to their worldbuilding and backstory development than this novel has.

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

You know, I thought I read it as a teenager, but I see no record of it in my books log and I sure as hell did not remember most of the novel, so I might’ve made up a memory of that. I did as a kid definitely read a children’s illustrated version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and from that I only remember a faked funeral and that I liked the bit where Tom tricks other kids into painting his fence for him.

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Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser

A book on the dynamics and functioning of modern cities, one that often deconstructs myths about the way cities work (Aren’t the urban poor we see worse off than the rural poor we don’t? No. Doesn’t keeping buildings short keep housing cheap? No.)

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Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

Read most of it before I watched this year’s Shakespeare in the Park production, finished the rest after.

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Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Like. What do I even say. This entire book was wild from start to finish. I kept sending excerpts of it to my friends to go ??? over.

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The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Previous Arthur Miller knowledge: That episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (4x22 Restless) where Willow gets stuck in Death of A Salesman, CTRL-Fing through All My Sons for the Researcher’s First Murder puzzle and....incorrectly thinking Evelyn Miller in Red Dead Redemption 2 was a reference to him until this very moment when I’ve googled and learned that he’s actually a Thoreau reference and yeah, that makes way more sense timeline-wise.

None of that is relevant to this play, which I read the Saturday before I watched John Proctor Is The Villain because I love giving myself homework.

It was enjoyable enough a read, though I felt no great compulsion to watch a production afterwards. The most compelling scenes were where John Proctor and his wife are tricked into condemning each other while trying to protect each other, and that very end of the play where he decides not to lie. Though a part of me still went damn bro just stay alive and provide for your pregnant wife, wtf is she supposed to do now.

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

A weaker read than the original trilogy and the Snow book, but still a fun time. And look, I gotta respect the author for going yes, you will read the entirety of a long-ass Poe poem in my epilogue as we catch up Haymitch all the way through the lonely years ahead of him.

There’s two things that make Haymitch’s tale less appealing to me than Katniss’s or Snow’s. First is the PoV. I like Haymitch. He’s fine. The point of him is that he is a regular teenage dude. But for me the appeal of Katniss and Snow is the specific ways they’re deranged, the ways they feel utterly alien to their societies even as they are stuck being a part of them, and how they are often blind to even their own motivations. Haymitch is...well, I’d have a drink with him over the other two, but I wasn’t as hooked by him.

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Six Medieval Arrow Types - What are they for? - Video of a guy talking through types of arrow heads and their uses.

Put down the pitchforks for a moment and hear me out: Perspectives on Singapore Retail - Surprised as anyone to be linking a LinkedIn post, but as someone who grew up spending a lot of time in malls, I found this article from the perspective of a mall operator fairly interesting. Still a big fan of malls myself. (And there's nothing like exiting a train directly into the basement of a mall, that's for sure...)

I Was A Juror On A Murder Trial - Exactly what it says on the tin. I've never attended a trial but I have observed Night Court before, and shared this writer's sensation of a parallel world.

The Portrait of a Lady | Anna Chronistic and the Scarab of Destiny | Mother of Souls

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

Continuing my adventures in the classics where a woman makes very bad romantic choices. Alas, this time she goes so far as to marry the bad choice. I knew nothing about this book other than the title and its author until February of this year, when I came across a reference to “Isabel Archer sitting in her chair” in Researcher’s First Murder.

She sure sits in that chair, huh.

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Side note: Read a decent chunk of this while sitting in a park and a random fellow remarked “I finished that book two months ago, it’s very psychological” and I was like yeah, you’re not wrong.

Anna Chronistic and the Scarab of Destiny by Anakaret Wells

Time-travel novel that made me wonder if I’m a dummy or if the plot in the last third of the book was poorly explained. Of course, those are not mutually exclusive options.

Additionally, I think it rude to offer several intriguing times and locations and then spend the bulk of your time travel novel in an upper-class home in 18th/19th century England. (No, I cannot recall which century it was and I may even be mistaken in this broad range.)

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Mother of Souls by Heather Rose Jones

Third book in the Alpennia series. The new romance here was my least favorite of the three couples, perhaps because it itself is least certain of being a settled Romance at all. Yet I did enjoy the imagery of their particular pairing. Also, just plain fun to hang out with the gang again.

...I may have gained a het ship I support in this series, despite the impossibility of the class and religious differences???? C’mon, I know this setting is too grounded for it but I think the hets should have this.

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To Catch A Thief | Swing Time | My Man Godfrey

To Catch A Thief (1955)

The campiest Hitchcock I’ve seen, and so far the only time I’ve been mad about the ending to a Hitchcock film.

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Swing Time (1936)

14/419 on the NYC list. A Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers piece, and the first I’ve seen.

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My Man Godfrey (1936)

15/419 on the NYC list. Funnier than I thought it would be, given the start in the East River Hoovervilles. Godfrey, resident of one such shantytown, becomes the butler to a truly bonkers family, handling all their nonsense.

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Imogen, Obviously | The Return of The Native | The Obelisk Gate

Imogen, Obviously by Becky Albertalli

YA novel by the author of Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda. I didn’t read that book but I did watch Love, Simon back when it was released in theatres and my main thought across the two works is god these teens are so stressed that I get second-hand stressed.

Also our poor protagonist really needs to Log Off. Never have I wanted a protagonist to delete social media more.

The plot goes as follows: Imogen, #StraightAlly, is visiting her childhood best friend, Lily, at college. Only Lily, embarrassed at her own lack of romantic experience, has told all of her friends that Imogen is her ex. Imogen agrees to go along with it, first having a internal crisis over The Ethics of Pretending To Be Queer, and then has a realization or two when thrust into a social context where no one thinks she’s straight.

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Got reminded to read Leah on the Offbeat sometime.

The Return of The Native by Thomas Hardy

Much heath such plants wow. Lady did not actually do affair but she almost did so time to die lady goodbye.

I mean that basically summarizes it. I will say, though, out of the “lady does affair back in the day” books I’ve read, I found something compelling in Eustacia Vye that I did not in Bovary or Anna Karenina. Perhaps it is the nature of her selfishness. The men themselves are not her goal but that they can convey her to somewhere other than the dreary heath, to Budmouth or even Paris. (It is definitely not that she doesn’t actually have an affair, I don’t care about that.)

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The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

Hmmmm does some interesting character stuff, but the style started to grate as did the plot. Ultimately liked the first book in the series more. I am curious to see how things end in the final book.

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Man’s Castle | A Study of Negro Artists | Murder In Harlem

Man’s Castle (1933)

11/419 on the NYC list A depression-era pre-code film focused on a couple living in a Hooverville near the East River. Once more I think Loretta Young (playing Trina) should get away from that man, but at least here the man is forgivable.

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The film was re-released in 1938 with nine minutes of cuts made for the Hays Code, though it was later at least partially restored. There was an odd cut while Bill and Fay were sitting on the couch and I wondered if something was lost there, since it was uncharacteristic of the rest of the film.t

A Study Of Negro Artists (1935)

12/419 on the NYC list. A 35 minute silent film of visual artists of the Harlem Rennaissance at work. My favourite artists to watch here were the sculptors, including the little kids learning some art.

Murder In Harlem (1935)

13/419 on the NYC list. A whodunit loosely inspired by the Leo Frank case, that made me go “ehhhhh” at the film on its own merits and how it handles its inspiration. Unfortunate, I was looking forward to a Harlem-set mystery.

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Taxi | 42nd Street | King Kong

Taxi (1931)

8/419 on the NYC list. Not as focused on the independent cab drivers vs the big consolidated company as I thought it would be. The primary plot is the romance between the daughter of a cabbie who dies in prison and a hotheaded independent cabbie. Again, I thought the way the hotheadedness would cause conflict would be mainly because of said taxi war, and it does come up at the climactic plot, but overall cabbie Nolan is hotheaded about things that don’t make any sense.

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42nd Street

9/419 on the NYC list. Another backstage musical. Don’t get the appeal of our chorus girl protagonist turned leading lady. Without knowing Ann was Ginger Rogers I thought she felt far more alive than our wallflower ingenue. Another character introduces himself as a “Broadway juvenile” and I still don’t know what that means.

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King Kong (1933)

10/419 on the NYC list. Fay Wray got hired to scream and boy did she scream. My favorite monster fight scene here has to be King Kong vs that T-Rex looking creature, primarily because of the method by which King Kong wins but also because Ann screams so fucking loudly that the T-Rex creature doesn’t like it.

Nightmare subway commute dropped: King Kong peeling off the tracks and peering into a window

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