coraa | Reading

This all-new Painted Wastelands Bundle tours The Painted Wastelands, a prismatic pastel realm from Agamemnon Press for use with Old-School Essentials and other tabletop fantasy roleplaying games.

Bundle of Holding: The Painted Wastelands

oursin

What I read

Finished Diary at the Centre of the Earth, which I really enjoyed.

Then on to Anthony Powell, Hearing Secret Harmonies (A Dance to the Music of Time) (1975) in anticipation of the final meeting of the reading group. This is the one that appears to have been invaded by characters from a Simon Raven novel, or that thing I have mentioned about writers getting a plot-bunny that was meant to go to someone else.... On another paw, at least Isobel gets rather more on-page time than she was usually wont.

Finished The Lathe of Heaven.

Discovered that there was a new David Wishart Corvinus mystery, Dead in the Water (2025) - I would say that not being informed of this is due to their only being available via Kindle these days, except Kobo, really not all that at keeping one informed of books in series one has been keeping up with. So I gritted my teeth, and read it via the app on the tablet. Not perhaps one of the top entrants in the series.

On the go

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dream Count (2025), for the in-person book group meeting in a week on Sunday, and nearly finished. I have writ before of the genre of '4 (usually youngish) women, connected in some way, affronting their destinies', which was all over in the 60s-80s, but possibly not so much these days? to which this has some resemblances.

Up next

I got partner the most recent Slough House thriller for Christmas and he has now finished it, so I guess that's probably my next read.

rachelmanija

It's a zombie apocalypse, only instead of zombies, there's cats.

In a future in which 90% of the population owned a cat, a strange virus spreads. If you cuddle a cat, or a cat nuzzles you, you turn into a cat! It's a catastrophe! A catlamity! A nyandemic!

Not only are cats everywhere, but the cats are either instinctively trying to turn humans into cats, or they just want to be petted. Cue every zombie movie scene ever, but with cats. Cats scratch at the doors! Cats peer through the windows! Groups of cats ambush you in tunnels!

The characters are all very upset by this, because they love cats! And now there's cats everywhere, just begging to be skritched! And they can't skritch them! "We can't even squish their little toe beans!" The horror!

Needless to say, they would never ever harm a cat. In fact they feel bad when they're forced to spray cats with water to shoo them away.

I'm not sure how this can possibly be sustained for seven volumes, but on the other hand I could happily read seven volumes of it. The cat art is really fun and adorable. I would definitely do better in a zombie apocalypse than a cat apocalypse, because I would never be able to resist those cats.

Content notes: None, the cats are fine.

james_davis_nicoll

My other group is moving to CoC 3rd edition. That's the one the GM owns. It turns out between the group we own a vast assortment of CoC editions, generally speaking one edition per player, including an original from 1981.

My character, Daniel Soren, has some good stats (Strength, Constitution, Intelligence) and some terrible stats (Dex, Power, and Edu). Unfortunately, in 3E you get Intx5 and Edux15 skill points, so being smart doesn't make up for being a grade school dropout. He does have some decent skills, but very narrowly focused: he's a competent cabbie and a moderately successful pulp writer with ambitions to appear in Weird Tales.

Power governs sanity in CoC so I don't know how long he will last.

james_davis_nicoll

astrafoxen on blusky created some visual aids showing Saturnian moon orbits.

They're all great but a detail in this one is worth mentioning.

The odd green squiggle to the right is a visual of Neptune's outer irregular moons, whose orbits around Neptune are large enough to be visible across the solar system. https://www.dreamwidth.org/comments/recent

james_davis_nicoll

A powerful but timid sorcerer is sent to guard a prince as he attends school.

Secrets Of The Silent Witch, volume 1 by Matsuri Isora (Translated by Alice Prowse)

rydra_wong

As well as Venezuela, I think you might want to start phoning your representatives and screaming about how very much you do not think the US should invade and occupy Greenland.

I don't know how it's being reported on in the US, but it's looking extremely imminent over here:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/06/trump-greenland-control-us-military
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/07/france-and-allies-discuss-possible-response-to-donald-trump-us-invasion-of-greenland
https://news.sky.com/story/trump-is-likely-gambling-he-could-get-away-with-greenland-grab-as-nato-needs-us-more-than-he-needs-it-13491116

mindstalk

I have returned. Another 90 minutes journey. Fortunately, the Shonan line emptied out at Shibuya so I got a seat most of the way.

Discoveries:

the JR train doors are labeled with a sticker, "car 15 door 2". You'd think they'd like the flexibility of mixing units, but nope, a traincar is dedicated to being Car 15 for the rest of its life. Weird.

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oursin

Happy birthday,

beeswing,

ciiriianan and

queen_ypolita!

autumninpluto posting in

smallbatchicons

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musesfool

Back at work, but thankfully 1. I don't have to commute, and 2. we are having no-meeting week, so I can just cross one major task off my list every day without adding new things like meeting notes or whatever.

I think the thing I've enjoyed most about the ancillary explosion of joy around Heated Rivalry is the two hockey podcasts that engaged fully and open-heartedly with it (well, and the proliferation of "Ilya gets added to the WAG chat" fic). Normally hockey podcast bros are not a species I have time for (aside from not being good at podcasts or audiobooks in general), but the Empty Netters dudes were super adorable in their reviews, and they also interviewed Ksenia Daniela with great excitement and are scheduled to have Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie on soon.

I also enjoyed What Chaos's less in-depth but still positive look at the show, and they have a couple of interviews with Jacob Tierney available that I haven't watched yet. I was also very pleased when, during a discussion about Shane's ginger ale habit, one of the dudes started talking about a restaurant(?) that lets you choose ginger ale or 7Up for your Shirley Temples, and I was like, "gotta go with ginger ale on that" and then the guy was like, "and the ones with ginger ale are great!" Because that is the legit truth, my friends. I'm not saying I won't drink a Shirley Temple with 7UP, but I am saying that the ones with ginger ale are 1. how we made them when I was a kid, and 2. better. I was reminded of how we ordered one every night at the free cocktail hour on that cruise we went on back in 2015, which definitely made an impression on the staff. *g* (Princess Donut also approves.)

So I feel like those were a great extender of joy, if you are in need. It's really lovely to see some cishet hockey dudes becoming fans of m/m romance.

In other fannish news, I just read that Sebastian Stan may be in Matt Reeve's The Batman, Part 2 and I don't want to get my hopes up or get fixated on a specific part for him to play, but like, wouldn't he be a fantastic Harvey Dent/Two-Face??? GIVE IT TO ME.

Scarlett Johansson has also been rumored to be involved somehow, and she'd have to be like, Poison Ivy, right? Though maybe they're going with more of a Mask of the Phantasm type thing and she'll be Andrea Beaumont? But I am not sure I buy Battinson as having a girlfriend before Selina, and also, why would you try to compete with Mask of the Phantasm? It's so good, you're just setting yourself up for not measuring up. (I guess she could be Talia, but I hope not.)

I guess we'll see what materializes! I'm kind of sad that they are not in continuity with James Gunn's Superman, because that would be fun to see.

*

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Hey Jack Kerouac - 10000 Maniacs

goodbyebird posting in

smallbatchicons

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signoftea posting in

common_nature

It started snowing yesterday, and now there's about 5 cm of snow, an amount that is very rare here. I went for a walk to see the beach, because it looks so cool when it's covered in snow. To my surprise, there was even ice on the water! A fragile crust of little floes had formed and seemed to slow down the movement of the waves as they licked the snow away from the breakwater bit by bit.

At first, I didn't hear any bird calls. I did see a few sanderlings darting around, some big birds (probably black-backed gulls) hovering over the sea, and a huge swarm of smaller birds, but they were all far away. I was about to leave when suddenly an impressive formation of geese appeared in the sky. My birding app identified them as barnacle geese. Then the app recorded some more calls, including one from a dunling, a bird I had never seen or heard before.

The snow and the greyish sky skewed my perspective in interesting ways, so that it looked like there were mountains growing out of the sea near the horizon, or like there was a huge wave rolling towards the beach. It felt surreal and a little eerie.

North Sea beach with snow and ice

rachelmanija

Once upon a time, the moon Panga was industrial and capitalist and miserable. Then robots suddenly and inexplicably gained self-awareness. They chose to stop working, leave human habitation, and go into the wilderness. The humans not only didn't try to stop them, but this event somehow precipitated a huge political change. Half of Panga was left to the wilderness, and humans developed a kinder, ecologically friendly, sustainable way of life. But the robots were never seen again.

That's all backstory. When the book opens, Sibling Dex, a nonbinary monk, is dissatisfied with their life for reasons unclear to themself. They leave the monastery to become a traveling tea monk, which is a sort of counselor: you tell the monk your troubles, and the monk listens and fixes you a cup of tea. Dex's first day on the job is hilariously disastrous, but they get better and better, until they're very good at it... but still inexplicably dissatisfied. So they venture out into the wilderness, where they meet a robot, Mosscap - the first human-robot meeting in hundreds of years.

I had previously failed to get very far into The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this novella. It's cozy in a good way, with plenty of atmosphere, a world that isn't quite perfect but is definitely one I'd like to live in, and some interesting philosophical exploration. My favorite part was actually Dex's life as a tea monk before they meet Mosscap - it's very relatable if you've ever been a counselor or therapist, from the horrible first day to the pleasure of familiar clients later on. I would absolutely go to a tea monk.

I would have liked Mosscap to be a bit more flawed - it's very lovable and has a lot of interesting things to say, but is pretty much always right. Mosscap is surprised and delighted by humanity, but I'm not sure Dex ever shakes up its worldview in a way it finds true but uncomfortable, which Mosscap repeatedly does to Dex. Maybe in the second novella, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy.

And while I'm on things which are implausibly neat/perfect, this is a puzzling backstory:

1) Robots gain self-awareness and leave.

2) ????

3) ~~PROFIT!~~ Society goes from capitalist hellscape to environmentalist paradise.

Maybe we'll learn more about the ???? later.

But overall, I did quite like the novella. The parts where Dex is a tea monk, with the interactions with their clients and their life in their caravan, are very successfully cozy - an instant comfort read. And I liked the robot society and the religious orders, as well as a lot of the Mosscap/Dex relationship. I'll definitely read the sequel.

minoanmiss posting in

agonyaunt

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oursin

Though by now it's mostly dispersed - still lying in parts.

***

Yesterday had that exasperating thing of asking what I thought was a question for very specific thing (not even for myself, for someone who didn't have access to this particular knowledge-resource) and got, okay, one really good response that was right on point, and several which demonstrated that actual humans are quite capable all by themselves of hallucinating what the question actually was and providing answers entirely tangential and Point Thahr Misst.

***

I have had to do with this campaigner: ‘Women have to fight for what they want’: UK campaigner’s 60-year unfinished battle for abortion rights over archives of campaigns she was involved in (I even, as I recollect, suggested an appropriate riposte - a bouquet of parsley - to some weird hostile message sent to her by the notorious Victoria Gillick.)

Pretty much her contemporary, I don't think I ever met the recently-deceased Molly Parkin, but I certainly read various of her writings, including most of her various 'bonk-busters' - I'm not sure they entirely fit that category - which seem to have fallen out of print, at least, they do not seem to have enjoyed e-revival.

james_davis_nicoll

What was the purpose behind raising an unconventional child like Thorn?

Cuckoo’s Egg by C J Cherryh

mindstalk

Jan 4: I'd gotten 4 hours sleep before yesterday's museum visit. Woke up after 9-10 hours today, still tired, ankle still hurting. So I wasn't ambitious. I did try to go to the Fabre Insect Museum a short walk away, but it turned out to be closed.

I noticed a bunch of street advertising that looks like official street signs, a la: ( Read more... )

ckd

As usual, ordered by first visit and asterisks indicate multiple separate visits.

2025 got my travel ramping back up (finally), even though I only went to two conventions and one of them (Worldcon) was literally in my city (between my apartment and my usual airport, though technically there's also an airport with international service between my apartment and downtown -- LKE). Two overnights from delayed flights; both would have stuck me at DTW (Romulus, MI) except that for the second one I was able to rebook on the next morning's IAD-SEA nonstop instead.

The big trip was Kraków and environs, with a bonus pair of overnights in Calgary because business class YYC-KRK was literally half the price of SEA-KRK or YVR-KRK. Having NEXUS made a Canada stopover easy; though I kinda miss the old iris scan kiosks, the new facial recognition ones are a lot faster.

Cambridge, MA*
Seattle, WA*
Romulus, MI
Arlington, VA*
Calgary, AB, CA*
KL678 YYC-AMS
Kraków, PL*
Jaworze, PL
Balice, PL
Sneads Ferry, NC
Minneapolis, MN
Harrisonburg, VA
Sterling, VA
Port Townsend, WA
SeaTac, WA
Tysons, VA

Airports (connection-only*, new to me@): BOS, SEA, DTW (should have only been a connection, sigh), DCA, MSP, YYC@, AMS*, KRK@, ATL*, ILM@, IAD.

james_davis_nicoll

My new group created Outgunned characters. The cast is

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coraa

April 2013

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Page Summary

james_davis_nicoll - Bundle of Holding: The Painted Wastelands
oursin - Wednesday is indulging in a spicy margarita
rachelmanija - Night of the Living Cat # 1, by Hawkman & Mecha-Roots
james_davis_nicoll - On the matter of new characters
james_davis_nicoll - Cool
james_davis_nicoll - Secrets Of The Silent Witch, volume 1 by Matsuri Isora (Translated by Alice Prowse)
rydra_wong - PSA to US people
mindstalk - Back to Fujisawa
oursin - (no subject)
autumninpluto in smallbatchicons - hunter x hunter, killua zoldyck
musesfool - her little boy lost in our little world that hated
goodbyebird in smallbatchicons - Dana Scully
signoftea in common_nature - Nature diary
rachelmanija - A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers
minoanmiss in agonyaunt - Ask a Manager: head of HR is waging a pressure campaign to make me adopt a puppy
oursin - Today it did snow
james_davis_nicoll - Cuckoo’s Egg by C J Cherryh
mindstalk - Jan 4-6
ckd - Overnights, 2025
james_davis_nicoll - This could be amusing

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Page generated Jan. 17th, 2026 10:12 am

the owl and the olive tree

books, food, writing, and more

Reading

Bundle of Holding: The Painted Wastelands

Wednesday is indulging in a spicy margarita

Night of the Living Cat # 1, by Hawkman & Mecha-Roots

On the matter of new characters

Cool

Secrets Of The Silent Witch, volume 1 by Matsuri Isora (Translated by Alice Prowse)

PSA to US people

Back to Fujisawa

(no subject)

hunter x hunter, killua zoldyck

her little boy lost in our little world that hated

Dana Scully

Nature diary

A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers

Ask a Manager: head of HR is waging a pressure campaign to make me adopt a puppy

Today it did snow

Cuckoo’s Egg by C J Cherryh

Jan 4-6

Overnights, 2025

This could be amusing

Profile

April 2013

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