Galvanizing

I have just spent the whole evening reading Saving Grace, a bookverse retelling of Project Hail Mary (bookverse) from Rocky's POV. It's well done, especially in how it shows Grace as an alien species. Heartily recommend.

After seeing the movie Project Hail Mary twice¹, I decided to read the book. It's a good hard SF story, but when the only character that sounds like a believable person is your alien character, your characterization and voice need work.

The movie was much better, and if you have to choose between reading the book and watching the movie, I'd recommend the movie. The actors make the characters feel like actual individual people. Also, the movie has Carl. (I'm also glad I saw the movie relatively unspoiled; I'm sure I read one of the big reveals back when the book was published, but I'd forgotten it, so when it happened on screen it hit hard.)

¹ I'd only planned to see it once. We don't go to movies much anymore due to cost, but Youngest specifically requested this one, and I figured okay, this'd be worth seeing in the theater. And then I made the mistake that I as a parent of decades should've known better than to make: I bought tickets for the showing the day after Youngest was going to a slumber party. Yeah. The kid conked out half an hour in and could not be roused even during the fishing scene; it took some work to wake them up after the movie was over. I decided that since I'm the adult and should've known better, I'd take Youngest to see it again on an occasion where they'd stay awake. Fortunately, I liked it enough to see it again, and Youngest declared it peak.

When I read a print book that I own, I write the date I finished the read inside the back cover. That's how I know it's been almost exactly 19 years since I last reread Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong and Dragonsinger, the first two books in the Harper Hall trilogy in McCaffrey's Pern universe.

The story is about Menolly, a musically gifted girl from an isolated fishing village who escapes from her unsupportive family and through luck and her own talent ends up as a rare female apprentice in the Harper Hall (and forms a mental bond with nine fire lizards in the process). It's classic YA "misfit kid finds their place", "modest protag turns out to have superior abilities", and "girl proves she's just as good as the boys".

As a high school student immersed in band and orchestra, I adored these books. I reread them over and over and over. I took them with me to the music camp I went to for three summers; being at that camp felt like what I thought living in the Harper Hall must be like.

Decades later, I still enjoy them. It's nice to escape into a world where people love making music together and you might Impress a fire lizard as a bonus. The Suck Fairy's treated these well; they're not free of problematic aspects, but the books don't have the dubcon/noncon/draconids-made-me-do-it material that a lot of the other Pern books have (indeed, that Dragondrums, the third in the triology has). They're adolescent wish fulfilment, overall done well.

(I don't have a copy of Dragondrums that I know of; if I did, it got purged. Piemur's fun as a side character but isn't who I want to spend a book with.)

just my job five days a week (1838 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Martian - Andy Weir
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Mark Watney
Additional Tags: Epistolary, Log Entries
Summary:

Log excerpts from the notes of Mark Watney, Interplanetary Celebrity, circa 2039.

Jeeves and the Birdcatcher's Costume (11429 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Jeeves & Wooster (TV 1990), Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Reginald Jeeves/Bertram "Bertie" Wooster
Characters: Bertram "Bertie" Wooster, Reginald Jeeves
Additional Tags: Humor, Mistaken Identity, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Class Differences, Pining, First Kiss, POV Bertram "Bertie" Wooster, Misunderstandings, Identity Porn, oh to flirt with your gentleman's gentleman at a masked ball!, Yuletide 2024
Summary:

But here, now, was my chance. I was not the young master to Jeeves now - in fact, Jeeves, in his current role, had no y. m. at all. He was a gentleman of means and breeding, and I a rather fantastically attired birdcatcher of presumably Viennese extraction; and two such fellows could hold a conversation without any wayward “sirs” inserting themselves where they were not wanted.

 

Or: In which a gentleman and his valet both attend a masquerade under false pretences.

Two amazing Shakespeare retellings:

Ammurapi, King of Ugarit (14581 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 12/12
Fandom: Late Bronze Age Collapse RPF, Hamlet - Shakespeare
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Ammurapi of Ugarit, Queen Eḫli-Nikkal, Niqmaddu III of Ugarit, Tanhuwatasha of Hapissa
Summary:

The crops are failing. The sea people are invading. Your beloved father’s corpse is barely cold and your mother has swanned off to marry someone else. You are King Ammurapi of Ugarit, and is it any wonder that your mental health is not great right now?

A loose retelling of Hamlet set during the Late Bronze Age Collapse.

Riddles and Affairs of Death (8150 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Macbeth - Shakespeare
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Hecate (Macbeth), Three Witches (Macbeth), Lady Macbeth (Macbeth)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Noir, Past Hecate/Lady Macbeth, Offstage Macbeth/Lady Macbeth
Summary:

"I tossed the newspaper on the desk, pushed back my chair, and grabbed my coat and hat from where they hung on the hook near the door. Time to go out and find some hard facts about this.

Duncan King had been dead for less than a day, but the whole thing was already starting to stink."

In which Hecate Jones, PI looks into a suspicious death, and grapples with the shadows of her past.

→ Comment with "Questions, please!"
→ I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
→ Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
→ Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.

From troisoiseaux:

1. What is your favorite hobby? Is there a hobby you'd like to try, but haven't?

The #1 spot cycles between various yarny crafts and genealogy. Knitting and spinning satisfy the urge to do something with my hands; genealogy gives me the satisfaction of doing a combined logic puzzle and scavenger hunt.

I'd like to learn to play trumpet. I've played piano and clarinet, and had a year of violin as a kid, but I've never learned a brass instrument.

2. If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be?

Jacob Englebrecht, who lived in Frederick County, Maryland in the 19th century. His diaries are a major resource for anyone doing Frederick County genealogy or history, and while I think he'd drive me up the wall if I went on a trip with him, he'd be fascinating to talk to for a dinner (plus he might have dirt on some of my relatives).

3. Is there a piece of media you read/watched when you were way too young for it?

Arguably the Bible, which I read a great deal of in church at ages 8-10 because the sermons were boring and this was an acceptable way to occupy myself. Tons of sex and violence and people behaving really badly!

4. Is there a piece of media you wish you'd encountered earlier in life?

Two come to mind. The one that I could've encountered earlier in life is Gary Moore's song "Over the Hills and Far Away", which came out in the 1980s and which I heard for the first time a bit over a year ago. I love this song and am sorry that it wasn't part of my life earlier. It's my musical catnip -- good rhythm, tune and accompaniment inducing inchoate longing, good story.

The one that I couldn't have encountered earlier in life? Honestly, Twilight. I read about half of it when it came out and decided I was done, but if it'd been around when I was sixteen I would have adored it and had it as a beloved fandom.

5. What is your second favorite color?

Yellow. My favorite color is blue or purple or teal or bluish turquoise, depending on the day; they're all colors that I look good in, so are top choices when I'm buying clothes or yarn. But yellow is what I'll turn to as an accent color. The color of dandelions makes me happy. My hallway is painted a bright yellow. I can't wear yellow against my face; I'm not going to knit a yellow sweater or hat or scarf. But I love it paired with a blue.

A few months back, when I was taking advantage of Newspapers.com's free-access weekend to do some genealogy research, I ran across a column of book reviews in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, 2 September 1888. Various books were described as "educational, "charming", "wholesome", etc.

And then there was The Tragedy of Brinkwater by Martha Livingstone Moodey:

"This is a murder story. A woman is accused, with the help of her son, of having murdered her step-son. The story is not a good one, nor is it very well told. Murder stories, to be good, ought to be able to harrow one's feelings—to send, so to speak, cold chills up and down one's back, and to render one altogether very uncomfortable. This story does nothing but bore one."

One-star review from 1888? Of course I had to track it down on Google Books and read it.

TL;DR: Yeah, it's bad. Which is a shame, because there's a potentially good story buried in the Noble Suffering Of Virtuous People.

( summary and cast )

( the solution to the mystery )

This could have been a really fun melodramatic romp. It ended up being a compelling letdown.

Rachel Lynn Solomon, Business or Pleasure. A romance between a ghostwriter and an actor whose memoir she's writing. It was a fun read, and the bits of fictional scripts from the actor's projects were a nice touch.

I feel like I'm reading and rereading Lois McMaster Bujold all the time, but I realized I haven't actually reread the Vorkosigan series in at least ten years. While the general outlines are enmeshed in my brain, it's been long enough that the words are fresh, and there's many little details I didn't remember. (For example, I remembered the cremation at the end of Cetaganda, but the bit where the stream of plasma is shot straight up into the sky was an image that I had no memory of.) Currently I'm on the Miles Errant ebook volume -- "Borders of Infinity", Brothers in Arms, and Mirror Dance.

Recent reading:

Deanna Raybourn's Killers of a Certain Age is a delight if you're up for the body count. Four women who've retired from being professional assassins discover that the organization they've spent the past forty years working for is now trying to kill them; they competently kick butt and take names.

Jessie Q. Sutanto's Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers is a nice cozy mystery. The victim is clearly a total shit; the suspects are fascinating people and all had good reason to off the victim; I have great sympathy for Officer Grey. Only quibble:

( vague spoiler )

Claudia Gray's The Murder of Mr. WIckham was a decent mystery and a fun Austen continuation. While I'm not sure I buy the portrayals of all the Austen characters, they're congruent with the people they are in Austen, only with different traits emphasized. And the two original characters are delightful together. I've already put a hold on the sequel for when the library gets it.

I'm in the middle of a reread of Elizabeth Enright's Melendy Family books. They were a favorite read when I was a kid, and they hold up very well. (Hmm, I should read these to Youngest once we finish Swallows & Amazons....)

I finally brought myself to reread AJ Hall's The Queen of Gondal series for the first time since the author's death. Great Sherlock fic series that rewards rereading, and while the series is never going to be finished, at least the end of the final installment is a solid ending and not an eternal cliffhanger.

1. How many stars can you see in the sky at night where you live? (Not looking for an exact number here, just a general description.) Under a hundred.

2. What is your favorite constellation? Orion.

3. Are you able to see and identify any planets in the sky? Which ones? Venus and Mars reliably; Jupiter I can usually guess at.

4. Have you ever seen a satellite orbiting above the earth? Yep! Spouse and I check out Heavens-Above regularly to see when the ISS is passing or when some other bright satellite is visible.

5. Have you ever seen a rocket blasted off into space? Only on video.