Lily Pads on the Water, View from Bridge
May. 27th, 2026 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
i_like_the_stars posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
common_natureWent on a hike Monday with my friends. This was our last stop, a graffiti bridge with a nice view.
( One more under cut )
( One more under cut )
Kill the Villainess
May. 27th, 2026 11:39 ammarycatelli posting in booksKill the Villainess, Vol. 6 by Haegi and Your Your April
Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes.
( Read more... )
Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes.
( Read more... )
Kill the Villainess
May. 27th, 2026 11:36 ammarycatelli posting in book_loveKill the Villainess, Vol. 6 by Haegi and Your Your April
Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes.
( Read more... )
Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes.
( Read more... )
Girl Genius for Wednesday, May 27, 2026
May. 27th, 2026 04:00 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
girlgenius_main_feedThe Girl Genius comic for Wednesday, May 27, 2026 has been posted.
We Burned So Bright, by TJ Klune (DNF)
May. 26th, 2026 09:42 amrachelmanija
After 40 years together, Don and Rodney face the end of the world from a black hole that will swallow the Earth in exactly one month. So they embark on a road trip to keep a promise they made to their son.
Klune sells very well at my shop. He is good at doing what he does, and what he does is gay, twee, and glurgy. I did not enjoy The House on the Cerulean Sea and I did not enjoy this either. Both of them made my eyes glaze over. I started both of them, disliked them both, started skimming, still was bored and irritated, then skipped to the end to see how it all came out. Then I learned some information that made me revise my opinion of the book even lower. In the case of The House in the Cerulean Sea, it was an interview where he mentioned that his sappy, trivializing book was inspired by the Sixties Scoop. In the case of We Burned So Bright, it was his afterword.
Spoilery. ( Read more... )
Klune's books are very deeply meaningful for a lot of my customers, but UGH. The best thing I can say about it is that I quite like the covers.
Tashkent ladybirds
May. 26th, 2026 03:00 pmpilottttt posting in common_nature
You can find all the photos from the walk during which we found these ladybirds in this Russian-language post.
request for comment: cars make the world worse
May. 26th, 2026 10:36 ammindstalkThe uncomfortable reality about cars: every time you drive, you make the world worse. Toxic tire dust literally poisons the ecosystem, leading to e.g. mass die-off of coho salmon[2]. Car noise stresses out humans and animals[1], with real health effects like extended high cortisol levels. Animals that try to cross roads risk becoming roadkill -- as do humans. Animals that avoid busy roads get isolated into tiny genetically-fragile islands.
( Read more... )
This exists
May. 25th, 2026 05:11 pmradiantfracture...and is relevant to my interests
Night of the Lepus (1972)
WHY does the ad keep saying "WHAT could it be?" without ANswerING?
Because it's these guys
Me I would walk joyfully into the nibbling jaws of death
[ETA] And DeForest Kelley is in it!
§rf§
Night of the Lepus (1972)
WHY does the ad keep saying "WHAT could it be?" without ANswerING?
Because it's these guys
Me I would walk joyfully into the nibbling jaws of death
[ETA] And DeForest Kelley is in it!
§rf§
Pirate King of Star Patrol
May. 25th, 2026 08:02 pmmarycatelli posting in booksPirate King of Star Patrol by John C. Wright
Starquest book seven. Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes
( Read more... )
Starquest book seven. Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes
( Read more... )
Pirate King of Star Patrol
May. 25th, 2026 08:02 pmmarycatelli posting in book_lovePirate King of Star Patrol by John C. Wright
Starquest book seven. Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes
( Read more... )
Starquest book seven. Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes
( Read more... )
The Glass Mermaid by Susan Clymer
May. 25th, 2026 01:44 pmrachelmanija
When you pick up an old children's book because it says it's about a tiny glass mermaid coming to life, you probably don't expect most of the story to involve the main character going to another world where she has to face an evil pirate witch who wants to nonconsensually adopt her. Admittedly this all happens while they're lugging around the now full-sized mermaid so she can be the best friend of the other world's sole mermaid, but if they miss the deadline she'll turn back to glass, while the witch pirate throws spells at them, but... Did I mention that all of this takes place inside a Christmas tree?
This is a pretty fun book but like many older children's books, recounting the plot is like describing a half-remembered dream.
A third Tale-of-the-Polity story
May. 25th, 2026 09:29 amasakiyumeI've written two stories about Sweeting, a decommissioner of deities working for the Ministry of Divinities in an authoritarian country that refers to itself as the Polity. The first was The Inconvenient God, a novelette, in which Sweeting had to decommission a god of truancy and slacking off who was causing embarrassment for a prestigious university. The job didn't go as planned. The second was Lagoonfire, a novella, in which it seemed initially like one of the retired gods whom Sweeting first decommissioned might somehow be causing problems for a resort development. Looking into the case revealed all kinds of unexpected things, including things about Sweeting's own past that she would have liked to keep securely buried.
Lagoonfire came out in 2021. In the intervening five years I've been writing a novel that follows directly on the events of Lagoonfire, and recently I finished it. In the meantime my publisher, a micropress, closed up shop, but the woman behind it kindly agreed to read the novel anyway, and even more kindly agreed to publish it! Hurray! So at sometime in the nearish future, maybe-probably within this year or early next year, we will be able to share A Flash of Scarlet with you.
Even though it's a sequel, I've written it so that you can read it without having read Lagoonfire (and Lagoonfire and The Inconvenient God are completely independent of each other). As with the earlier two stories, this one is about how the past will never, ever, stay past. It WILL come forward again. This one features incipient divinities, spirits, and ghosts, and, unfortunately for Sweeting, more dealings with Civil Order, the Polity's feared police force. But (to her own surprise) she's not without friends and resources, both divine and earthly.
Lagoonfire came out in 2021. In the intervening five years I've been writing a novel that follows directly on the events of Lagoonfire, and recently I finished it. In the meantime my publisher, a micropress, closed up shop, but the woman behind it kindly agreed to read the novel anyway, and even more kindly agreed to publish it! Hurray! So at sometime in the nearish future, maybe-probably within this year or early next year, we will be able to share A Flash of Scarlet with you.
Even though it's a sequel, I've written it so that you can read it without having read Lagoonfire (and Lagoonfire and The Inconvenient God are completely independent of each other). As with the earlier two stories, this one is about how the past will never, ever, stay past. It WILL come forward again. This one features incipient divinities, spirits, and ghosts, and, unfortunately for Sweeting, more dealings with Civil Order, the Polity's feared police force. But (to her own surprise) she's not without friends and resources, both divine and earthly.
Aomori-Omiya May 25
May. 25th, 2026 07:59 pmmindstalkFirst some random notes:
I saw a lifted pickup in Aomori. And on the tiny street to my place, yesterday I had to squeeze past one of those monster SUVs -- driven by a woman, if you care. The street is one of those "two-way, if you're really polite" lanes; I'd kind of like to see two of those childkillers pass each other.
A friend from Japan has claimed that e-bikes are taking over. I don't know what new sales are like, but judging by bikes parking at train stations, classic bikes are still dominant -- at Shin-Aomori today I counted 50 classic and zero e-bikes, and some other locations are similar. Perhaps owners are reluctant to leave their e-bikes at a station?
It occurs to me that I've actually spent not much time on Japanese subways. Like in Osaka 2019, I think most of my trips were on elevated trains, whether private or city. Fujisawa was all about JR or Enoshima, elevated or surface trains. Komagome, I was right by the Yamamote line. Namba... I barely took trains, I think. Tengachaya, largely elevated again. If I stay in Saitama for the week, it's going to continue to be a JR life.
Sidewalks tend to have tactile paving, like so, for the visually impaired; I realized it also helps guide the visually non-impaired who might be semi-lost: "this yellow tack road probably goes somewhere important, let's follow it."
( Read more... )
