Viridian5's House of "...What?"

It took me forever to get through it, though the back half is easier to get into a flow reading it than the front.

With this book I ordered from the library, I didn't know it had "a novel" on the cover until I received it. And it has the kind of bs I associate with books that have "a novel" on the cover. This is why I prefer genre fiction.

( spoilers )

The number of times recently when I was reading the cover copy summary of a fantasy book and get interested in the plot... and then it gets to the part about the protagonist's attraction to so-and-so and I realize it's a romantasy and put it down... way too many. And it's almost always a dark, illicit, or unwanted attraction.

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My left ankle is doing well! It barely hurts. I left off the compression/support sleeve altogether today because it was making the top of my foot hurt and I was fine. I'm looking around and walking much more carefully and with more awareness though.

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I tried the first episode of season 1 of Peacemaker and bounced off it hard. I didn't even make it all the way through the first half. Didn't like the characters, didn't like the tone, it didn't make me care.

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My current WIPs are Encanto. No idea if anybody here is reading my Encanto fics, but it's what I'm doing.

It's a quick read that pulls you through it, and it certainly has a lot going on. I appreciated how it dealt with what's seems to be the obligatory for YA love triangle thing. Some of its twists didn't surprise me. The ending made me order the next book, Heavenly Tyrant, from the library to see where things go from there.

While the book's selling point seems to be the giant mecha, the majority of the plot is more about personal and societal politics.

I have a bit of an issue with the book being considered feminist by some people. For all that Zetian (and Iron Widow) talks about the poor girls murdered by Chrysalis piloting and the many horrible ways this society oppresses and mutilates women, almost every single other female character in the book, who are very few in number and don't get much page time, is an antagonist for Zetian, someone brainwashed by their society and thus against her one way or another. (Which makes one ask how Zetian alone is so different. She's just Not Like the Other Girls.) She's self-righteous but is she really fighting to make things better for anyone other than herself and the few people she deems worthy? ( spoiler ) For all I know, this might be the author's point about Zetian and we just haven't gotten there yet.

I found Li Shimin interesting. ( spoiler ) I do not trust Yizhi--he seems too good to be true for me, especially considering all the lying and betraying almost everyone does around Zetian--but I guess I'll have to wait to see if I'm right on that.


There was a thing in the text that stopped me dead: ( spoiler ) Maybe the author is trying to get at that, but "vacancy" is not it. Maybe it's meant to be something like "intensity"?

This edition is several printings in, so it's not a first pass thing either. It seriously stopped my reading flow dead for a while.

I have to admit that I picked up this book because I loved the cover.

The use of Slavic mythology was intriguing, as was the contemporary but noir-tinged Chicago setting. I didn't quite connect with the characters, though part of that might be due to When Among Crows being novella-length. The narrative being so close-mouthed about Dymitr's motives and background until the very end might also be part of that problem.

I'd be interested in seeing more with these characters and this setting.

(By the way, yes, it's the Veronica Roth who wrote the Divergent series.)

I'm having my usual January, where I spend much more time sleepy and sleeping than I ever want to. It's frustrating.

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Ugh, my arm was itchy, so I scratched it. I now have a 4 and a 1/2-inch scratch along that arm from myself. Good going, me.

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From dine, who saw this meme on bluesky:
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

I just changed the URL in two fics to the Wayback Machine cache's URL of the fic collection they belonged to (One Thousand and One Arabian Drabbles). The march of time, the disappearance of fandom pages....

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Some good news for me for once: a week later GEICO still couldn't get the guy who hit my car on 12/30 to talk to them on the phone because he was ducking them but--using my photo evidence, my account of the incident, and the fact it was a rear-ended situation--they declared without him that he was 100% at fault for the incident and his insurance is paying for my car repairs in full right upfront, no deductible needed from me or me paying out and then having to be reimbursed later. I put my car into the shop this morning and now have a rental car.

Me accidentally taking a photo of the guy checking his front bumper with the time, date, and geo-tag on said photo worked out for me.

I'm going to have to try to avoid going into Manhattan while I have the rental though because, due to the Congestion Zone tolls and other bs, driving my rental through it would cost me an additional $5 a day plus the actual tolls.


I brought my own E-ZPass out of my own car with me hoping I could use that with the rental car, but nope. ( Read more... )

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From dine, who saw this meme on bluesky:
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

I didn’t leave my car at the auto place to get fixed today because GEICO hasn’t gotten the guy on the phone yet to talk about what happened and I refused to sign something saying I owe the auto place a $500 deductible without some sort of pledge from GEICO that they’ll give me the money to pay it. They want me to give him the "benefit of the doubt" but also told me they've been calling, texting, and e-mailing him for days without him answering. "Trust the process!" Trusting the process would have had me signing something that put me on the hook to pay for this and wouldn't have actually started a claim on his insurance because...

He never called in a claim himself. His SUV is barely damaged and maybe he thinks he’ll skate by. I wish I called the cops to come to the scene but the adjuster on the phone said it wasn’t necessary and I went with that. (Sometimes the cops don't even come out to scene for it! But the call itself is supposedly a kind of evidence? Bullshit. I don't trust the cops to do squat that helps after my recent other experience with them.)

I have a photo of him looking at his bumper with the geo-tag on the location and date that I sent to GEICO, so I hope that evidence will help.

This morning GEICO said they'll call me when they get him on the phone. They didn't call me today to say they got him so....

But I'm not signing to put myself potentially liable for paying the deductible when GEICO hadn't even started a claim on his side yet because he hasn't talked to anyone and they dropped the ball. But GEICO wouldn't let the auto place inspect or start repairs unless I signed all that crap first.

I keep getting hit with problems I wouldn’t think to worry about. So I’m still driving my own car.

Meanwhile the cracks are opening up more as I'm driving it more.

I don't know if there's damage to the drivability of the car from the hit. It feels a bit different to me, but I'm also sensitive and paranoid after everything I've been through lately.


Meanwhile, I had a doctor's appointment today that I drove 20 miles to, the longest drive since I was hit Monday, and my neck and shoulders were so stiff and painful for a while afterward. I have no benefit of the doubt for the man who hit me trying to sleaze out of this.

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From dine, who saw this meme on bluesky:
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

From dine, who saw this meme on bluesky:
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

I saw this today:
Escapade needs your help!
We need your help! The future of the conventions is at stake.
...
Many of you can’t make it this year. Our registered attendance is currently in the 60s. Not only does this make us all really, really sad – it could also be catastrophic for Escapade.

Bottom line: we’ve got to get our attendance up above 100, or the future of the convention is at stake. So we’re reaching out to you, our Escapade family, and asking for help.

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From dine, who saw this meme on bluesky:
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

The Husky and His White Cat Shizun [Erha He Ta De Bai Mao Shizun]: vol. 3 by Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou

Some parts of this I really enjoyed, while others bored or annoyed me, making it difficult for me to rate this volume.

( spoilers )