rj_anderson | Reading

Had a productive day yesterday, with lots of small tasks & errands accomplished, culminating with actually making dinner! I seared the little round roast in a frying pan, then opened the preheated oven and grabbed the rack to lower it.

With my bare hand.

We ate dinner (it was yummy), then finished the evening at the nearest 24-hour urgent care, because while the damage wasn't too bad, burns hurt. Surprisingly, they did actually supply effective pain relief. Fortunately the 2nd-degree burn on the pad of the ring finger is small, and the burn on the webbing between finger & thumb is only 1st degree. Still, that was 2 seconds of stupid that's going to cost me 2 weeks of raging inconvenience.

So if I'm slower than usual replying to folks, that's why.

Any remaining typos brought to you by my amazing one-handed touch-typing.

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Music: some

Tags:

sartorias

I was taking to a felow customer when I stopped for sandwiches while strolling around downtown Albany last night, and when I commented on the deepeness of the verdure around me--I can't get enough of it--he said that it's been a very wet season here.

I took a walk along the Hudson, stopping at a little side canal, or whatever they are called, when I saw a bridge and inviting shadows (the sun was overly warm and the hair humid and kind of dirty). I snapped this shot:

If it works right, and you embiggen, look just above the top branch of the fallen tree. I'd spotted a pair of geeze swimming toward it, and thought they'd make a splendid shot framed by the two branches. But they never emerged from behind the top one, some twenty feet below me and upstream. I could see the ripples from them paddling, but no sign of the geese.

When I looked closer, I just spotted a black and white goose head peeking at me from beyond that branch. They were clearly waiting for the monster to lurk somewhere else.

And now I'm on my way northwards toward Montreal, which I should reach this evening.

Tags:

on the road

kiwiria

Swept Away - Beth O'Leary, 2.5/5, Audiobook ~10hrs
I loved the first part. Reading about Zeke and Lexi being stuck on the boat hit all the right notes of the "forced proximity" trope for me. Sure, it was unrealistic as - but it worked for me.

So 4 - almost 5 stars for that part.

But then ... apparently Beth O'Leary didn't think that almost drowning was conflict enough, but added the most ridiculous and unnecessary of all twists, and I came close to giving up on the book right then and there. Completely pointless, and just plain mean.

So 1 star for that part.

Fortunately they managed to resolve things in a decent manner, which is why I decided to round up rather than down on goodreads. But I could have done without the epilogue!

Waking Gods - Sylvain Neuvel*, 3.5/5, 336 pages
I downgraded the rating a bit on this reread (from 4.5 to 3.5) - there were just too many things left unanswered and too many jumps in narration. I realize this was a deliberate choice by the author, but it kept pulling me out of the narrative. Still enjoyed it otherwise though.

Faraday's Flowers - Tony Kendrick*, 2/5, 190 pages
I first discovered this book when I was a young teen. I came across it at a flee market while on vacation in Bornholm, thought the back blurb looked interesting and picked it up. As such it was one of the first "grown-up" books I read, which probably had a lot to do with how much I liked it. I hadn't reread it in ~25 years though, and alas, this book did not stand the test of time, and I had to downgrade the rating from a 4 to a 2! The mere fact that it took me TWO WEEKS to finish this short 190-page book should tell you something by itself.

None of the characters seemed fleshed out, and Wayse seemed to mostly just stumble his way around Shanghai and accidentally discovering the people he needed to talk to without any real rhyme or reason.

Nostalgia demands that I hold on to this book, as I really did love it as a teen! But I don't see myself ever rereading it.

The House Witch - Delemhach, 4/5, Audiobook ~17hrs
Lovely cozy fantasy :-) The first in a series, but while it did have a bit of an abrupt ending, it was very much a fairytale-style ending, so it was still nicely self-contained. But very charming, so I want to continue on with the series.
I want to read more about life in the kitchen - how Fin uses his magic, how the knights and maids work side by side ... basically more cozy fantasy stuff and less political intrigue stuff ;-)

Library of the Dead - Glenn Cooper*, 4/5, 350 pages
I'm in a bit of a reading slump, so decided to try to restart it by rereading an old favourite - time will show if it worked. It's a fascinating read even on this, my fourth reread.

Books Read: 37
Pages Read: 6,775
Hours Listened To: 144
Book of the Month: "The House Witch"
Biggest Disappointment: "Swept Away".

Tags:

books: monthly

lizvogel

We get a lot of wildlife at the pond, including the occasional heron, sometimes a pair of mallards stopping by, and some kind of bug-fishing bird I haven't yet identified. Geese are rare.

Sunday I looked up to find a small flock of geese making their way from the woods to the water. Six adults, five half-grown goslings... and, yes, two smaller goslings, barely more than bundles of yellowey-gray fluff. They swam around the pond for a bit, then waddled out on the far side and nibbled their way over the berm and back woods-ward.

Today they were back, in the front lawn. (Just coming from over the road, I think; I'd wondered what the cars were slowing down for.) I got a much better look at the tiny goslings this time. They and their parents seem like an annex of the flock; with it, but a bit off to the side. Possibly the parents are just very protective of their much-smaller offspring, as who could blame them?

Just now I can see the four adults and five teenagers in the field across the road again. No sign of the others; I hope that means they've decided not to chance the road so much until their tiny balls of fluff can waddle a bit faster.

In related news, I've been enjoying watching the muskrats swim about and collect bits for what I assume is a nest. I was less pleased to discover that one of them has burrowed into the main patch of water iris, and eaten about two-thirds of the plants to the ground. We may have to have words about that, though overall I do quite like muskrats; they're rather like pond-otters.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: The Tragically Hip, "Ahead By A Century"

Tags:

wildlife

sartorias

Brigadoon meets Buffy

When I wrote the first of the series, a couple friends said, you can’t ignore the vampires. So I put them in because yeah, they were a thing in Eastern Europe.(Maria Theresia sent investigators, even, in the mid-1700s...) But I don't read horror, and I'm indifferent to vamps unless they are characters, not monsters, so I tried to play around with the uncanny valley/alien idea.

In THE PRINCESS AND THE SLAYMATE, Ruli, a new vampire, is trying to adjust to this change in…can you call it a life? She’s lost everything. But that including her old reputation for weakness and lack of direction, as she discovers the lure of badassery.

At the same time, Kim and the crown prince of Dobrenica are on their honeymoon at last, but just as she and Alec are relishing the magic of Venice, they find themselves cornered and nearly grabbed by goons. Whose? More important, why? They have to figure out the roadmap to royal marriage while on the run.

Kim reaches out to Ruli for answers, and so begins a wild adventure as ancient enemies redefine what it means to be human. And inhuman.

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my-books

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5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

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