rec request

Jul. 13th, 2025 02:14 pm
sixbeforelunch: stack of books, no text (books)
[personal profile] sixbeforelunch posting in [community profile] booknook
Can anyone recommend a non-fiction book about the Napoleonic Wars that's more focused on the sociology and politics of the era than the nitty gritty of the battles? High level overviews of the various engagements are fine but my eyes glaze over when confronted with twenty pages of detailed battle descriptions and military tactics. Unfortunately most people who write war histories tend to want to talk way more about that sort of thing than I have patience for.

Weekly proof of life: mainly media

Jul. 13th, 2025 11:01 am
umadoshi: (summer light (florianschild))
[personal profile] umadoshi
We made it to the little market down the road for the second week running and found the first vendor we visited down to his last several boxes of raspberries, so we bought two and headed back home. First raspberries of the season!

(I think yesterday was the first time I ever actually stopped and noticed why raspberries are called that.)

Reading: In non-fiction, I'm still reading through Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace.

On the fiction front, last week I read Cameron Reed's The Fortunate Fall, relatively recently (and finally!) reissued under her current name after its first life as an award-winning SFF novel under her deadname literal decades ago. (I believe her upcoming novel is her first since this one!) It didn't actually hit my emotional buttons very hard (which isn't indicative of how anyone else might react), but it's beautifully constructed and executed. I see why it's so beloved by so many people. ^_^

I also read We Are All Completely Fine (Daryl Gregory), which I didn't realize was a novella until I started reading, so it went by pretty quickly. Interesting horror worldbuilding, although other than the characters' specific histories it's almost entirely hinted at or nodded to; I, at least, came away with almost no actual idea of what's actually going on on a larger scale.

And I read the new Murderbot story ("Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy") that Martha Wells released for the show finale (note that Murderbot itself isn't actually present in the story).

Watching: No Leverage this week, I don't think. [personal profile] scruloose and I have agreed to switch this to an "I watch this when I feel like it, and if they're around and feel like it, they'll watch with me" show rather than one we're Watching Together. They enjoy it, but don't feel a burning need to see every episode.

I kind of wonder if I haven't been started a show on my own for so long because I'm sort of subconsciously waiting to be able to watch the rest of Justice in the Dark whenever the whole thing is subbed somewhere.

We've seen the Murderbot finale, and I'm awfully glad the show's been renewed.

Beyond that, the two of us have now watched the very first episode of Silo, having had good luck with Apple SFF shows. I haven't read the books, so I know almost nothing about it.

(I have food stuff to talk about, but I think I'll call this a post and hope to write more later.)

(no subject)

Jul. 13th, 2025 12:50 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] kimsnarks!

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Jul. 13th, 2025 06:34 am
valoise: (Default)
[personal profile] valoise posting in [community profile] booknook
Horror is generally out of my comfort zone, but I recently watched Sinners, a movie set in an African American community in the American South. This was such a unique and extremely well done perspective on vampires that I decided to try another unusual vampire POV story - The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones.

The narrator at the beginning and end is a struggling academic in 2012, but the bulk of the book is a diary written 100 years earlier by Arthur Beaucarne, a Lutheran pastor in Miles City, Montana. He is approached by a Blackfeet man named Good Stab who wants the pastor to hear his confession.

The author does such a fantastic job of capturing the style of each of his subjects. The use of language is spot on:
A native person whose understanding of the world around him is shaped by centuries of history and told in English in way that embodies both him and his culture; the elderly, academically-trained white pastor who writes in the formal way you encounter in writing of that era; the modern woman struggling towards tenure in the 21st century - the story of these people was so compelling.

Whale path, swan road

Jul. 13th, 2025 11:36 am
dolorosa_12: (ocean)
[personal profile] dolorosa_12
I returned home last night after a week's holiday in Shetland, where the weather was a delightfully consistent 14-15 degrees, the views were dramatic, and the ocean was a restorative and constant presence. Thank you to all who offered advice a few posts back — between your tips and our own research, Matthias and I enjoyed a trip that was a perfect mix of outdoorsy walking and views, museums and learning, and good food and serendipitous wandering.

I did journal a little bit while I was there, so if you want more details of what the trip involved, click behind the cut to see the transcript.

The girl and the sea )

I would highly, highly recommend Shetland as a place to spend some time, especially if you live in the UK, and will happily expand on any of what I've written above in the comments, if you're interested. I've also got a lot of photos up over at [instagram.com profile] ronnidolorosa — it's a very photogenic place!
sholio: tv murderbot andrew skarsgard looking to the side (Murderbot-MB)
[personal profile] sholio


I watched this like 4 times in a row. It definitely contain spoilers, but it's divorced enough from the actual plotline of the show that if you don't mind SOME spoilers and want to get an idea of what the show is like, this might be a nice one to watch. (Warning for some gore.)

On AO3

K-Drama Update #16: July Releases

Jul. 13th, 2025 09:49 am
feurioo: (tv: the atypical family)
[personal profile] feurioo posting in [community profile] tv_talk

S LINE | July 11
Cast: Lee Soo Hyuk, Lee Da Hee, Arin, Lee Eun Saem

S Line; the red line that ties you and your sexual partner. Hyun-heup has lived since birth in a world filled with red threads. When a single pair of glasses appears, granting the same power to those wearing them, she and a detective team up to halt this crisis and find the person behind it.
More K-dramas behind the cut! )
sholio: tv murderbot andrew skarsgard looking to the side (Murderbot-MB)
[personal profile] sholio
[personal profile] scioscribe gave me a delightful Murderbot TV-verse prompt, hidden because it's somewhat spoilery for the finale:
Click to viewPost-finale Gurathin, burdened with all these memories of Sanctuary Moon, still doesn't like the show but now can't resist getting into nitpicky arguments about it on futuristic forums, where he and Murderbot keep crossing paths and gradually realize who they're talking to and get very fond about it without admitting to anything.


600 words or so of future fan forum shenanigans )
tinny: Bridgerton: Penelope in an orange dress, happily sauntering off with a book in her hand, the text "Time to go read a good book" on yellow background (bridgerton_penelope read a book)
[personal profile] tinny
Once Broken Faith by Seanan McGuire
Once Broken Faith by Seanan McGuire
Toby Daye #10


The king convenes a conclave to decide whether to allow the use of [the important thing Toby discovered last time]. Of course some people use the gathering to further their own political agenda - by murdering people.

Another wonderful installment of the Toby Daye series. I got through it very fast - it was a fun and easy read. Which doesn't mean fluffy. :D As usual for that series, there's lots of death and attempted assassinations (including Toby's and her loved ones'). I simply love Toby's snarking pov, and it makes reading those books a joy every time.

some thoughts WITH SPOILERS

* The stakes kinda can't go any higher for Toby, since she's virtually immortal already and her accelerated healing means she comes back even from being dead now. (She already did in the last book, so that's nothing new. :)) So the threats now expand to her loved ones. In this case, Tybalt and Quentin.

* I love Tybalt with Toby. Period.

* I loved how she pretty much resigned herself to Tybalt being dead and/or asleep for 100 years. Even if the book didn't go there, having her agonize over it was painful enough, thank you. Entertaining the thought for a few minutes was stressful enough for me.

* I also liked all the thoughts Toby has on growing up - not her own, Quentin's mostly. That gave the book some nice weight, in the sense that it brought out the amount of time that has passed in-verse, and that Toby develops and grows along with 'the kids'.

* Apropos kids, I really liked how she described the pyjama party. She's more of a mom now than she used to be (although Toby has always been a mom, but it wasn't as clear in the earlier books).

* Considering the book took place during a political meeting, the politicking was kept to a minimum and didn't get on my nerves. It always helps that Toby doesn't like it either. :D

* Plot-wise, I thought it was suspenseful and even though one would think that there's not much new to tell after this many installments, I didn't feel it was too repetitive.


4 stars - Another fun time with Toby being undiplomatic and almost dying a few times. :D



1 - 5 stars - Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky The Final Architecture #1 [DW link]
2 - 2 stars - Miss Merkel: Mord auf dem Friedhof by David Safier Miss Merkel #2 [DW link]
3 - 4 stars - Once Broken Faith by Seanan McGuire Toby Daye #10 [DW link]

(I'm terribly behind on those reviews... not on the books, luckily, but I have to write up a few more soon.)
mific: (Sinners)
[personal profile] mific posting in [community profile] fanart_recs
Fandom: Sinners
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Smoke, Stack, Sammie (Preacherboy), Annie, Mary, Bo Chow, Grace Chow, Delta Slim, Pearline
Content Notes/Warnings: none
Medium: digital art
Artist on DW/LJ: n/a
Artist Website/Gallery: doodlesnoff on tumblr
Why this piece is awesome: A great montage of them all dancing at the Juke, before everything goes to hell. I love the warm colours and the joy.
Link: "for a few hours, we were free"
olivermoss: (Default)
[personal profile] olivermoss


I am 98% of the way through my character conversions. I still need to note errata that has come out since for my character. See that full sheet of paper nearest the camera? That is most of what should go into one tiny square on my character sheet, but obvs it wont fit so I made a reference sheet. When I took the picture I hadn't realized I'd missed a few things.

Not shown: multiple tracker sheets for things like milestone leveling

And that is just me working on Alec. Tristan wasn't quiet as bad, but I still need to finish one of his reference sheets. Alec is my Leyfarers main, but Tristan is my alt so I can put off finishing him. So many rules changed for my main. Like, he still has Favored Enemy, but those words point to a completely different game mechanic than they did in the old rules. Ditto Stonecunning, ditto a lot of stuff.

This is why I am unlikely to write The Gang Plays D&D for most canons, but The Gang Gets Pulled Into a Let's Play For Charity has a lot of potential
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep posting in [community profile] booknook
If you read a "Raynor Winn" book and enjoyed it or it helped you in any way then I'm extremely glad for you (especially because any positive result came 100% from you yourself) - but you might want to stop reading here because the remainder of this post is not positive about the author or her books.

The real Salt Path (link to The Observer): how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation.

The Salt Path-ological liar, The Wild Lies, and Landlies )

(no subject)

Jul. 12th, 2025 11:29 am
skygiants: the aunts from Pushing Daisies reading and sipping wine on a couch (wine and books)
[personal profile] skygiants
lest you think that having returned The Pushcart War to its rightful owner I went away with my bookshelves lighter! I did NOT, as she pushed 84, Charing Cross Road into my hands at the airport as I was leaving again with strict instructions to read it ASAP.

This is another one that's been on my list for years -- specifically, since I read Between Silk and Cyanide, as cryptography wunderkind Leo Marks chronicling the desperate heroism and impossible failures of the SOE is of course the son of the owner of Marks & Co., the bookstore featuring in 84, Charing Cross Road, because the whole of England contains approximately fifteen people tops.

84, Charing Cross Road collects the correspondence between jobbing writer Helene Hanff -- who started ordering various idiosyncratic books at Marks & Co. in 1949 -- and the various bookstore employees, primarily but not exclusively chief buyer Frank Doel. Not only does Hanff has strong and funny opinions about the books she wants to read and the editions she's being sent, she also spends much of the late forties and early fifties expressing her appreciation by sending parcels of rationed items to the store employees. A friendship develops, and the store employees enthusiastically invite Hanff to visit them in England, but there always seems to be something that comes up to prevent it. Hanff gets and loses jobs, and some of the staff move on. Rationing ends, and Hanff doesn't send so many parcels, but keeps buying books. Twenty years go by like this.

Since 84, Charing Cross Road was a bestseller in 1970 and subsequently multiply adapted to stage and screen, and Between Silk and Cyanide did not receive publication permission until 1998, I think most people familiar with these two books have read them in the reverse order that I did. I think it did make sort of a difference to feel the shadow of Between Silk and Cyanide hanging over this charming correspondence -- not for the worse, as an experience, just certain elements emphasized. Something about the strength and fragility of a letter or a telegram as a thread to connect people, and how much of a story it does and doesn't tell.

As a sidenote, in looking up specific publication dates I have also learned by way of Wikipedia that there is apparently a Chinese romcom about two people who both independently read 84, Charing Cross Road, decide that the book has ruined their lives for reasons that are obscure to me in the Wikipedia summary, write angry letters to the address 84 Charing Cross Road, and then get matchmade by the man who lives there now. Extremely funny and I kind of do want to watch it.

Assortment

Jul. 12th, 2025 04:12 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

Walkouts, feuds and broken friendships: when book clubs go bad. I don't think I've ever been in a book club of this kind. Many years ago at My Place Of Work there used to be an informal monthly reading group which would discuss some work of relevance to the academic mission of the institution, very broadly defined, and that was quite congenial, and I am currently in an online group read-through and discussion of A Dance to the Music of Time, but both these have rather more focus perhaps? certainly I do not perceive that they have people turning up without having reading the actual books....

Mind you, I am given the ick, and this is I will concede My Garbage, by those Reading Group Suggestions that some books have at the end, or that were flashed up during an online book group discussion of a book in which I was interested.

Going to book groups without Doing The Reading perhaps goes under the heading of Faking It, which has been in the news a lot lately (I assume everybody has heard about The Salt Roads thing): and here are a couple of furthe instances:

(This one is rather beautifully recursive) What if every artwork you’ve ever seen is a fake?:

Many years ago, I met a man in a pub in Bloomsbury who said he worked at the British Museum. He told me that every single item on display in the museum was a replica, and that all the original artefacts were locked away in storage for preservation.
....
Later, Googling, I discovered that none of what the man had told me was true. The artefacts in the British Museum are original, unless otherwise explicitly stated. It was the man who claimed to work there who was a fake.

This one is more complex, and about masquerade and fantasy as much as 'hoax' perhaps: The schoolteacher who spawned a Highland literary hoax

This is not so much about fakery but about areas of doubt: We still do not understand family resemblance which suggests that GENES are by no means the whole story.

Brick

Jul. 12th, 2025 05:26 pm
profiterole_reads: (Kings - Jack and David)
[personal profile] profiterole_reads
Netflix's German movie Brick was intriguing. People end up stuck in their building when a mysterious black wall suddenly surrounds it.

I thought the explanation at the end was solid (movies like that tend to either leave you without an explanation or have an explanation so basic that no explanation would have been better).

Matthias Schweighöfer (Ludwig Dieter in Army of Thieves, Jack of Hearts in Heart of Stone) stars in this.

(no subject)

Jul. 12th, 2025 03:52 pm
turps: (beach)
[personal profile] turps
I've had a very lazy day today as James has been off doing a community overtime event for work. So, I've been tidying up indoors, given the garden a good soak and got caught up online. Well, the DW posts anyway, I've still got so much TV to watch, and yes, I know, the tiniest violin needed for me.

Tomorrow we're taking my MiL out for a belated birthday lunch, so I've enjoyed the quiet do very little day. Even enjoying the sunshine and the heat, due to not having to actually do anything but waft around in it.

Sunshine revival challenge prompt now.

Sunshine-Revival-Carnival-2.png

Journaling prompt: What are your favorite summer-associated foods?
Creative prompt: Draw art of or make graphics of summer foods, or post your favorite summer recipes. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


The first thing that came to mind here was beach sandwiches. Which were the chopped salad cream, egg and tomato sandwiches my mam used to make for us when I was a kidlet. We'd head off to the beach, and have a picnic, and the sandwiches were always soggy, flat, and always had sand in them, no matter how carefully they were handled. But, at the same time, they always tasted delicious, especially so as mam used to buy a carton of chips to share while eating them.

A more up to date summer food. I was in the garden picking strawberries, raspberries, chillis and pea pods yesterday. There aren't that many of them as I only have a small garden, and the tomatoes haven't started to ripen yet. But, I thought the bowl looked pretty.

Speak Up Saturday

Jul. 12th, 2025 04:13 pm
feurioo: (music: guesch etienne mv)
[personal profile] feurioo posting in [community profile] tv_talk
Assortment of black and white speech bubbles

Welcome to the weekly roundup post! What are you watching this week? What are you excited about?