oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

Finished Imperial Palace, v good, by 1930 Enoch Arnold had got into the groove of being able to maintain dramatic narrative drive without having to throw in millionaires and European royalty and sinister plots, but just the business of running a hotel and the interpersonal things going on.

Then took a break with Agatha Christie, Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot, #17) (1937) - I slightly mark it down for having dreary old Hastings as narrator, but points for the murderer not being the Greek doctor.

Finished Grand Babylon Hotel, batshit to the last.

Discovered - since they are only on Kindle and although I occasionally get emails telling me about all the things that surely I will like to read available on Kindle, did they tell me about these, any more than the latest David Wishart? did they hell - that there are been two further DB Borton Cat Caliban mysteries and one more which published yesterday. So I can read these on the tablet and so far have read Ten Clues to Murder (2025) involving a suspect hit and run death of a member of a writers' group - the plot ahem ahem thickens.... Was a bit took aback by the gloves in the archives at the local history museum, but for all I know they still pursue this benighted practice.

Have also read, prep for next meeting of the reading group, Dorothy Richardson, Backwater (Pilgrimage, #2) (1916).

On the go

Recently posted on Project Gutenberg, three of Ann Bannon's classic works of lesbian pulp, so I downloaded these, and started I Am a Woman (1957) which is rather slow with a lot of brooding and yearning - our protag Laura has hardly met any women yet on moving to New York except her work colleagues and her room-mate so she is crushing on the latter, who is still bonking her ex-husband. But has now at least acquired a gay BF, even if he is mostly drunk.

Have just started DB Borton, Eleven Hours to Murder (2025).

Have also at least dipped into book for review and intro suggests person is not terribly well-acquainted with the field in general and the existing literature, because ahem ahem I actually have a chapter in big fat book which points out exactly those two contradictory strands - control vs individual liberation.

Up next

Well, I suspect the very recent Borton that arrived this week will be quite high priority!

wembley: CBS Ghosts, Trevor and Alberta (trevor alberta cute)
[personal profile] wembley
Does anyone know if anyone's created a third-party tool to download a work from AO3 with comments included? I'd love to be able to, like, d/l my own works but with the comments in a readable format, 

I saw this on Reddit, but I don't know how to run it (I am not tech-savvy at all, like if you tell me what to paste into the command line I can do it but you need to hold my hand). 

I tried to see if this tool could do it, but I can't get it to open (even after telling my Mac's security to let me go ahead and open it, it just bounces in the dock and disappears).

Calibre's batch-download stuff downloads files the way AO3 permits: just the work, no comments.
muccamukk: Jan flying. Text: "Watch out where you swing that hammer, Golden Boy! There's a lady present!" (Marvel: Feminism)
[personal profile] muccamukk
I'm putting together a presentation for school on the misogyny slop ecosystem, and how PR companies astroturf a hate campaign to defame and discredit (usually female) people their employer doesn't like. Here's some links I might include in that, some of which I've posted here before. Taken together, they're chilling.

Posted in roughly the order they came across my line of sight, which is largely chronological.

✨: Probably going to include in the project. (A lot of the later links are just recent stuff I haven't included yet, which may be of interest to those following the case.)

Eight Links with quote decks. Includes references to Epstein, but no details. )

I'm still looking for something short that clearly lays out the way information is fed to influencers. It's a common misconception that whoever's running the smear will pay the influencers, and sometimes that's the case, but it's not usually how shilling works. The influencers take the exclusive information, publish it, potentially get their post boosted by the PR company's bots, and then the payment shows up in the ad revenue. (It's explained in "Who Trolled Amber?", but that's too long.)

Wednesday Reading Meme

Feb. 18th, 2026 12:42 pm
osprey_archer: (books)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Strange Pictures, by Uketsu, translated by Jim Rion. Very scary! Made the mistake of reading it in the evening then felt small and scared and sent SOS texts to friends who soothed me with cat pictures. (There’s nothing particularly graphic in the book, but one of the murder methods just struck me as extra scary.)

As with Uketsu’s other novel Strange Houses, the mystery here didn’t strike me as particularly plausible, but who cares when the atmosphere is so impeccable? Propulsively readable. Zipped through the whole thing in one evening and even though I was scared, I wanted another. Maybe there are more Uketsu translations on deck?

I also read Catherine Coneybeare’s Augustine the African, a biography of St. Augustine which focuses on his position as a provincial from North Africa in the late Roman Empire, and the effect this may have had on his theological thought. I’ve long been interested in the Roman Empire, but most of my nonfiction reading has focused on its earlier days, so it was super interesting to learn more about the crumbling of the empire (even after Alaric sacked Rome, it kept chugging along to an amazing extent), and also look at it all from a provincial angle.

I also enjoyed Coneybeare’s emphasis on Augustine’s social networks, and the way the Christian social networks often cut across lines of class and geography - especially after the sack of Rome, when many wealthy Roman Christians fled to North Africa for safety. And she clearly explained both the Donatist and Arian heresies, which have long puzzled me! I’m still working out the details of the Pelagian heresy (too much works, not enough faith?) but one cannot expect to understand all the heresies all at once.

What I’m Reading Now

William Dean Howells’ My Mark Twain, which starts with a description of Twain bursting into the offices of The Atlantic wearing a sealskin coat with the fur out. This is apparently NOT how you wear a sealskin coat, as later on Howells and Twain went walking through Boston together, Howells suffering and Twain exulting in the stares of all the passersby.

What I Plan to Read Next

We’re coming up on my annual St. Patrick’s Day reading! I’m planning to read Sarah Tolmie’s The Fourth Island (about a magical fourth Island of Aran, I believe) and Eve Bunting’s St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning, illustrated by Jan Brett - one of Brett’s earliest books I believe, so I’ll be curious to compare it with her later illustration style.
maevedarcy: (nabrielise)
[personal profile] maevedarcy posting in [community profile] threeisnotacrowd
Three is Not a Crowd works are due in exactly 3 days (Countdown here).

I am begging you to check the countdown, as works are due Feb 21st 2026 23:59 (GMT-3), not your typical exchange timezone.

Works will be approved to the collection at my earliest convenience.

We also have the following PHs. Though lack to fill them will not hold reveals back, it would be nice for them to get a gift as well.

PH 3 - The Starving Saints - Caitlin Starling, Watashi o Tabetai Hitodenashi | A Monster Wants to Eat Me (Manga), The Locked Tomb Series | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir  )

CLAIMED! - PH 7 - Mission: Impossible (Movies)  )

To claim any of these PHs, please comment the number of PH you're claiming and your AO3 username on this post. Comments are screened.

If you have any questions about your assignment, don't forget you can contact the mod at maevedarcy at proton.me

If you didn't have time to sign up but would like to treat someone, check Three is Not a Crowd on the AutoAO3 App.

AO3 collection

Books read, early February

Feb. 18th, 2026 10:47 am
mrissa: (Default)
[personal profile] mrissa
 

Moniquill Blackgoose, To Ride a Rising Storm. I'm usually a second book person, but this one took a minute to win me over. I think the bar was set so high by the first one that when the second one felt like "more of the same," I was disappointed. It is, however, going somewhere, and it finished up with a bang, and I am very excited for the third one. (But where it finished with a bang was more like a starting pistol. Do not expect closure here. This is very much a middle book.)

Lila Caimari, Cities and News. Kindle. A study of how newspapers evolved and influenced the culture in late 19th century South American cities, which was off the beaten Anglophone path and rather interesting, especially because the way that snowy places were exoticized pretty much exactly paralleled how these cities were exoticized in snowy places.

Colin Cotterill, Curse of the Pogo Stick, The Merry Misogynist, and Love Songs from a Shallow Grave. Rereads. And this, unfortunately, is where the series ends for me. I enjoyed Pogo Stick, and then the other two had mystery plots that were "serial killer because tormented intersex person" (REALLY STOP IT, these books came out in the 21st century, NOT OKAY) and "bitches be crazy, yo" (WELP). The mystery plots are not nearly as central to these mysteries as one might expect of, well, mysteries, but on the other hand they are integral to the book and not ignorable and I am done. When I read this series previously I endured these two in hopes that it would get better again, and now I know it doesn't. Well. Five books I like is more than most people manage.

Jeannine Hall Gailey, Field Guide to the End of the World. I still resonate less with prose poems than with other formats of poem, and this had several, but it was otherwise...unfortunately apropos, a worthy companion in our own ongoing ends of worlds.

Tove Jansson, Moominpappa's Memoirs. Kindle, reread. Charming and quirky as always, with some hilarious moments about memoir that went over my head when I was small.

Laurie Marks, Fire Logic, Earth Logic, Water Logic, and Air Logic. Rereads. I still really enjoy this series, but on the reread it was quite clear to me that water is very, very much the weakest element here, no contest. The water witches are not really portrayed as people, nobody with water affinity gets to be a character, they're very much the "oh yeah I guess we have more than three elements" element in this series. Water is the element I connect with the most strongly. I still like this series, I still think it's doing really good things with peace being an active rather than passive state and one that has to be made by imperfect humans--more unusual things than they should be. As with the Cotterill books above, the fact that it was a reread meant that I couldn't keep saying to myself, "Maybe there'll be more on this later," because there won't, the series is complete. But in contrast to the Cotterill it was complete in a way I still find satisfying.

Alice Evelyn Yang, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing. This is a family history novel with strong--in fact integral--fantastical elements, but only the realistic plot resolution is satisfying, not the fantasy plot at all. The fantasy elements are required for the plot to happen as portrayed, there's no chance they're only metaphors, but they only work as metaphors. Ah well. If you're up for a Chinese family history novel that goes into detail of the horrors of both the Japanese occupation and the Cultural Revolution, this one has really good sentences and paragraphs. But go in braced.

zoo story

Feb. 18th, 2026 11:15 am
nineweaving: (Default)
[personal profile] nineweaving
[personal profile] rushthatspeaks and I took a delighted young Fox to the Stone Zoo for a much-belated Christmas present. (The Antarctic weather we've had would have daunted all but the hardiest animals, let alone us.)

Some of the denizens, of course, revelled in the snow.

The Arctic fox was snug and smug.



The snow leopard was serenely aloof.



Wolves on the horizon! Shades of Willoughby Chase.




The colobus monkeys have a mischievous toddler. Its parents clearly told its older sibling to babysit, and the brat kept teasing and tigging and dive bombing the poor guy from the ceiling.



Fennec fox. Those ears!



The orangest flamingos!



Red panda.




I didn't get pictures of the bats or the bears, and the otters stayed snug in their grotto, over hot chocolate and Monopoly. They must play something.

Nine
davidgillon: Text: You can take a heroic last stand against the forces of darkness. Or you can not die. It's entirely up to you" (Heroic Last Stand)
[personal profile] davidgillon

My sister and I went out with family friends last week* to catch a band at one of the local pubs, the slightly unusual element being that it was at the local biker bar (Satan's Slaves, County Durham Chapter). I did wonder if the band ('One-oh-One, I think) would be any good, but they opened with All The Small Things, then segued into London Calling, followed by No More Heroes, and I'd basically found my ideal playlist - I did think at one point 'All this needs to be perfect is Swords of a Thousand Men', and it cropped up shortly afterwards.

There's something slightly incongruous about having a bunch of bikers in denim and leathers warning you as you leave to "Be careful on these steps now, they're really slippy. Hope you had a good time, this rainy weather's horrible, isn't it?'

My sister was also out the day before at a Lourdes fundraiser at a church-hall over in Darlington - pie, peas, and 'Bongo-Bingo'. Proper Bongo-Bingo is apparently a raucous franchise version of bingo with lots of party games, silly prizes and dancing on tables, but this was the Catholic version, so they missed out the dancing on tables. The compere/bingo caller, sitting next to a life-sized cut-out of Pope Leo, was moonlighting from his day-job as Head of RE at the local Catholic comprehensive, and pointed out any complaints should go to the Dean (senior priest, sitting on my sister's table).

Sample bingo call: 'Thirty-Three - Nailed to a Tree' (OMG, you can't say that!)

"We have bingo dabbers for sale if you need them - a pound to Catholics, four pounds to Protestants"!

"Hands up if you're a teacher?", followed by  disappointed look + <*Teacherly voice /*> "It's your own time you're wasting".

Trying to jolly everyone up "This is about as lively as the Lourdes fund-raiser at St Johns!"**

First prize dished out was a Virgin Mary fancy dress costume, other prizes included the life-sized cut-out of Pope Leo.

* I wrote this the next day, but accidentally lost the complete post just short of posting and didn't have the energy to re-write it, but it restored itself when I accidentally went into message creation just now.

** The next Catholic comprehensive over, the one I went to.

Read-in-Progress Wednesday

Feb. 19th, 2026 12:17 am
geraineon: (Default)
[personal profile] geraineon posting in [community profile] cnovels
Happy Lunar New Year to everyone who celebrates!

This is your weekly read-in-progress post~

For spoilers:

<details><summary>insert summary</summary>Your spoilers goes here</details>

<b>Highlight for spoilers!*</b><span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Your spoilers goes here.</span>*

Ash Wednesday

Feb. 18th, 2026 07:18 am
ladyjax: (Default)
[personal profile] ladyjax
One of the downsides of working from home (also not having a car but that's more about convenience in this particular case) is that getting to church for Ash Wednesday is more of a struggle for me.  When I still went into my office, I could take a longer lunch and go up to the church closest to me for the noontime service.  Last year, I was able to go since it was on the way home from a training and figured at the very least I could get ashes on the corner if I didn't make the service over at St. Paul's.  As luck would have it, I made the service.  I don't go to church regularly much anymore but St. Paul's is a good place to go when I do.

This year, my time is stacked because I've to to leave work early for something else and I didn't necessarily want to take the whole day off. I did do the readings for the day, which conveniently come in email (yay, technology).  Also, I have chosen a saint for Lent Madness - this is new for me but hey, having saints duking it out in a March Madness style bracket cracks me up. I am pulling for Marina the Monk, who wanted to join a monastary rather than get married (her dad was going to marry her off and join a monastary himself and she said nope, let's be monks together) and dressed as a a young man to join up.I was previously unfamiliar with her story but the Episcopal Church added her to the liturgical calendar in 2022. She's been long venerated in Easter Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox Churches. 

I love saint stories.  They start out pretty tame but then you run into something like, "Oh, by the way, there was that thing with the snakes and it was pretty amazing."

(no subject)

Feb. 18th, 2026 09:36 am
aurumcalendula: gold, blue, orange, and purple shapes on a black background (Default)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
Unhallowed by Jordan L. Hawk is free on kobo through the 23rd!

Crow Bath

Feb. 18th, 2026 02:26 pm
bookscorpion: This is Chelifer cancroides, a book scorpion. Not a real scorpion, but an arachnid called a pseudoscorpion for obvious reasons. (Default)
[personal profile] bookscorpion posting in [community profile] common_nature


The sun came out and everyone was enjoying it so much after more than a week of clouds and snowfall. This crow was taking a very energetic bath - look how far the water droplets are flying all around him!

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Only witches hunt demons, all witches are women, and Uroro cannot be defeated by any woman. Uroro feels entirely safe, right until the world's first male witch defeats him.

Ichi the Witch, volume 1 by Osamu NIchi & Shiro Usazaki (Translated by Adrienne Beck)

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