superborb

It was soooo helpful to be able to look back at notes from last time, so here are my NYE party notes for 2025! Now that I have recovered a bit from the sleep deprivation of being in a noisy house with a toddler...

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Overall, I thought the food was pretty successful! Even though I was very sleep deprived, having the schedule did keep everything on task. I guess the real concerns for next time are trying to time hot food better (not really sure if that's possible with this style of food), and maybe I should consider more complicated dishes? I think it would've been easy to do a red braised pork, since that reheats well. I always want to have lots of little snacks before because that was My Job for ages, but it might be too much and detract from the meal...

Metal from Heaven, by August Clarke:

In an industrializing fantasy setting with a horribly oppressed labor class, a lesbian highwaywoman seeks her revenge. Reading this was roughly like being hit over the head, so much was happening. It was quite satisfying and the whole hung together, but it picked up and abandoned complete genres as it went. I'm not sure its politics fully held together, but it sure was a ride.

Where the Axe is Buried, by Ray Nayler:

A revolution brews in a world where the West is ruled by AI Prime Ministers and the Federation is ruled by the President, who maintains his grip on power by transferring his mind to new bodies. Very meaty, though no individual idea was especially novel, it was put together in a satisfying way. I liked solving the puzzle of who was pulling the strings and the larger plot, but despite its ostensible focus on systems, it is very much a Great Man type of story. Really enjoyed!

The City in Glass, by Nghi Vo:

The story of a demon who loves a city, told over centuries. A beautiful read, but not too much substance. Well, it was still satisfying as a story of grief and moving on, but because of how brief each described snapshot is, it felt less substantial than it ought to have? I enjoyed this, but found it forgettable.

Semiosis, by Sue Burke:

Pacifist colonists escape the war and ecological disaster on Earth for a distant planet, and the story of the colony and the alien life they encounter is told by one character per generation for seven generations. The science is pretty bad and not consistent: if no Earth plants/animals can survive, why are humans the exception? Why not try to bring some samples over? And then after all the detail about how the biochemistry is different... it's similar enough that they are largely affected by drugs the same way. I also wish it dug more into the difficulties of pacifism or how specific culture is (the prohibition on eating the dead is not universal even on Earth...). Basically, while the story itself was satisfying and I really enjoyed the conceit of the generations passing, I wish it were more than it was.
PS: If you're worried about reproduction on the new planet and only have frozen ova/sperm for reproductive technology, why not have way more woman colonists in gen one?
Spoiler CW: there was two paragraphs of on screen rape that came out of nowhere

Gauguin (game): A sudoku like game that I enjoyed for being a bit tricky to figure out. I was searching for puzzle-y games to play while nursing, and went through several similar type games (Tents and Trees, Star Battle) for being too easy... I wanted to like Cosmic Express or Mini Metro for this, but they require too much movement during gameplay. Games like Two Dots and Candy Crush get a little too same-y since they aren't solvable the same way, and games like Rummikub and Azul are too solvable when played against the computer. Basically, I'm too picky, and I fear the end result of this is that I really need to get into Tsumego...

Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder, by Asako Yuzuki, trans. Polly Barton: A journalist gets a bit too involved in the worldview of a woman who has been jailed for allegedly killing her boyfriends, and who has garnered the hatred of the public for unapologetically prioritizing herself and being fat.
- The weight stuff was unexpectedly hard to read...
- The lesbian undertones were interestingly obscured by the protag's view, but also really pragmatically stated; in her world, going to a girl's school meant she was cast / cast herself as a prince character to the other girls.
- The food descriptions are quite good; I really wanted rice with butter and soy sauce after.
- Either journalistic standards in Japan must be very different or the protag must not be a very good journalist.
Didn't quite come together for me, the subtle commentary not quite refined enough -- like, it felt like it was trying to say stuff subtly, but did it really say anything in the end... I did like parts of it though, and it was a very distinct voice.

Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu: Asian American studies 101. Not in a bad way necessarily, but not sure I came out if it having felt the content was new; however, the structure was very creative. I expected a little bit more oompf from the ending though. Still, a propulsive read.

The Hidden Palace: A Novel of the Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker: Sequel to The Golem and the Jinni. Vibe is more of the same, and it doesn't really do a ton that was novel. None of the new characters were quite as good as the OGs. I enjoyed reading this, but it isn't a must read IMO.

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, by Henry Grabar: As the tin says. Some interesting case studies, nothing especially novel in the overarching argument, but ties it together. I didn't feel like the thesis was especially strong (seems that writing it during the pandemic should have changed said thesis more than it did).

In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden: A successful professional woman leaves her high status, respected position in London to join a cloistered Benedictine monastery. When Providence is part of the premise, it does Watsonionally explain a lot of "and then the protag was a great friend of someone random that solves their problem." I largely enjoyed this, the focus on living in community, the head hopping style as we learn about the nuns and their stories.

The Doors of Eden, by Adrian Tchaikovsky: A world much like our own is actually part of a series of parallel universes with different sentient creatures and a misfit group must save the world. I guess it being not actually our world might explain things like the UK having an SSN, but that was pretty weird. The cultures and worlds all had a sameyness and the characters, both human and non, felt quite thin. (It very definitely suffers from the 'whole world is just one culture!' trap.) It was a fine romp, but despite all the talk about Tchaikovsky having 'weird aliens,' I wasn't impressed.

Killingly, by Katharine Beutner: Based on the 1897 real-life disappearance of a Mount Holyoke student and telling a story of what might have happened and the people that might have been around her. [Rot13] V qba'g guvax n qbez sheanpr va 1897 jbhyq or ubg rabhtu gb perzngr n obql naq guvf vf npghnyyl rkgerzryl cybg pevgvpny? But otherwise what it says on the tin, though a bit thin and the ending is very pat. I liked the college students and their descriptions best, but otherwise, I would only recommend it to people who do like that kind of historical fiction.

https://368chickens.com/: I played across my phone and computer, so I dug into the code to check how many tries it took me -- 32 for the first win, then I think I got a method that worked. It does make me feel like a game theorist could come up with some interesting principles about winning based on the random chicken selector...

Jiang Ziya (2020) (DNF): Part two of the animated Ne Zha series. The fight scenes are pretty tedious, so I DNF'd in the end.

Ancient Detective (2020) (DNF): I don't think I'll ever come back to this, and I did follow the group watch until ep 16 / verdict was that it wasn't really worth finishing, so I guess I might as well boot this out of my drafts. It's a detective story, but in that boring way where it follows the standard detecting case solving storylines in terms of beats -- lots of talking over clues / people around to be witness, arguments about who is accused etc with everyone in the case standing around, then smaller discussions with a Watson. Finally, the killer admits to it after being confronted and explains his motivations, and the recap of how the crime happened is extremely lengthy. The medicine was bad (blowing on an open wound! Dry finger bones being attached to each other!) and the sound mixing was extremely bad. However, there were fun moments! The distinctive weapons were nice, and there were some genuinely funny scenes (the character that records all the happenings triggered some as that premise might suggest, and my notes say something about a sad poetry recitation being really funny, though it's been... over a year, so not funny enough for me to remember it that long afterwards).

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, by Mary Beard (DNF): This was very much pop history, with minimal citation, and I didn't feel like it was scaffolding me enough for me to retain any of the info.

I have ALSO skimmed a number of sleep training books, but they are all useless.

Mirror Visitor Quartet (A Winter's Promise, The Missing of Clairdelune, The Memory of Babel, The Storm of Echoes) by Christelle Dabos, translated by Hildegarde Serle: The world has been broken up into 21 arks, each presided over by a family spirit whose descendants have related powers; our protag is about to marry into a different ark with an unknown and dangerous culture. Recced by skygiants. I found all four to be fun, zippy reads, with the second book being the most compelling -- the characters felt more natural, and you had more time with the setting and characters from book 1, as books 1+2 are largely set in one ark with the same characters. I also found those characters the most interesting, though there were many places where I had to tell myself it's book logic, the characters are magic. Some of the text, especially the dialog is tonally inconsistent, which I guess might be the translation, but also generally there were some infelicities, like repeating oriental doll as the only feature of one side character. I really liked some of the reveals in the last book as the hints earlier came together, but I don't know that that needed so many words...  Also parts of the worldbuilding logic are a bit, dwelling on it too long is probably best avoided, lest it fall apart. After contemplating it more, I think I overall enjoyed the ending as satisfying on a worldbuilding level, but what it did to the family spirits was not a satisfying resolution.

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (DNF): A history of cancer. Very easy to read, but not much new -- snippets of the discoveries on the way without much depth, so I stopped midway through.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis: Letters from a demon tempter to his nephew on how to tempt humans. I feel like I've learned a lot about what C.S. Lewis valued in a person and in society... But relatively few universal truths -- the multiple ways in which man tricks himself with a sense of superiority notable among them. Less fun than the premise made it seem.

Ghost Music by An Yu: Former concert pianist with depression finds a connection to a mysterious disappeared pianist and mushrooms. I really enjoyed this and read it in one gulp. Atmospheric meditation on loss and searching for meaning, with compelling characters.

Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa: First book in a series set in a fantasy Africa based world, heavily about power and caste. Do not love the way the world building has to be spelled out, it felt a bit YA? Felt often that people were making decisions / things were happening that drove plot instead of made sense. Didn't continue to the next book.

Nü Er Hong (2023): One of those mini GL cdramas. Pretty cute, super fast paced. I guess the twist was technically foreshadowed from the beginning, but it was so surprising I didn't expect it hahaha. I do enjoy these kinds of tropes (even though 'suck the poison out' really shouldn't work that much time afterwards...), but I don't think the mini dramas are for me...

Home Is Not Here, by Wang Gungwu: a memoir about growing up in Ipoh around the time of WW2. From qian's rec! It was interesting to read about his experiences and the people he met. I found it especially interesting that the Chinese-in-China were more likely to have been learning English for cultural value, as opposed to the overseas Chinese learning it primarily for its usefulness. However, could have used editing to avoid repetition and inconsistencies and also generally needed copyediting. Enjoyable if you're curious about the time period, but I didn't find it insightful enough to be a blanket rec.

In Other Words, by Jhumpa Lahiri, translated by Ann Goldstein: Memoir of the author's reasons for, after a series of successful English works, making the decision to learn and then write exclusively in Italian. Quote "I believe that reading in a foreign language is the most intimate way of reading" perhaps sums up her approach to Italian. Some interesting thoughts on language -- the chapter on how people would not understand her Italian because they perceive her to be a foreigner really hit. Though, I found it interesting that she had the experience of people in the US perceiving her English as requiring justification (portrayed as emotionally to the same degree as in Italy), when I've heard often from the younger generation of immigrants in my circles that this is much less common in the US compared to Europe. Anyway, I found the experience of reading moderately excruciating: she's just so pretentious and I found it repetitive (I simply do not care about wallowing around in language to this extent). On a more serious note, her extreme, for lack of better word, foreignization of language felt strange. Perhaps related to her much more extreme experience growing up bilingual? Because she's a writer? A register of discussion that I do not usually engage in? I would be curious what people thought about this, but I also cannot recommend it generally.

Hui-Lan Koo, Madame Wellington Koo: An Autobiography, as Told to Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer: Madame Koo grew up fabulously wealthy in Java, the spoiled child of the "Rockefeller of Asia", and the book covers her childhood in the 1890s through China during the warlord period and finally as the wife of the Ambassador of the Republic of China during WWII. From qian's rec! Could use an editor. I found it really weird that she doesn't mention her first marriage/son to the point that she refers to her children with her remarriage as if they were her first/second. She's so wildly rich and out of touch that I found it easy to sympathize with the people who looked and chafed at this wealth disparity. Her preoccupations are just so consumerist? You can tell she really cared about what other fancy people thought of her and those are the feelings that lasted the decades until she told this story. I guess she is obligated to care about the glamorous diplomatic life, but it's so glittering... What a waste of money, food, and time. Fascinating to read about though, and the little tidbits about people are interesting; wish it was more of the tidbits and less of her preoccupations. Her beautiful pink palace in Beijing sure is memorably described!

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, by John le Carré: A classic (/the/ classic?) cold war spy novel! skygiants recced this here. I was a bit surprised at how... serviceable the prose read? Not that I expected it to be High Lit or anything, just the distance between 1963 and 2024 seemed very narrow! I felt a bit like le Carré couldn't imagine why someone would be attracted to the communist ideology and so Liz came off as-- not childish, but unexplainable in motivation. Still, a classic for a reason, a fast moving and exciting read.

She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat (Season 1): cute f/f jdrama (total runtime 2.5 h) basically summed up by the title -- a woman who would really love to cook larger meals discovers her neighbor has a big appetite. The social commentary is definitely a major part of the show, but never felt too heavy handed (e.g. severe period pain means you should go to the gyn) -- the realization of the protag that she's lesbian takes a few eps, but it always felt natural along the way. I like that the food is home cooking food and not super fancy! Though Japanese home cooking uses so much plastic wrap lol. (I knew this, but still!) The main leads both felt like normal people and so did all the side charas; no OTT obnoxious coworkers here, just normally obnoxious ones! If the summary sounds appealing, it is well executed and I would recommend!

What Did You Eat Yesterday? (2019 drama and the 2020 special): Cute adaptation from a manga following the life of a middle aged gay couple and centered around the food they cook for each other. (Though despite their age and living together, you later realize they aren't that serious yet -- part of the arc is their relationship developing!) Lots of fun moments -- loved the subtle humor of the supermarket lady and the bargain grocery shopping, and there were several scenes that were genuinely laugh out loud -- but sometimes the drama was just so prolonged. I know this is very jdrama style, esp when adapting from a manga, but I do feel like this is presented more as a slice of life (realistic) drama instead of leaning into that type of humor as a comedy drama, so it felt out of place when it got so extended. The emotional arc as the main chara's parents and the main chara himself come to terms with him being gay was so satisfying ("ARE YOU HALF-ASSING YOUR HOMOSEXUAL LIFESTYLE" iconic), though the main chara's stress over being closeted and his internalized homophobia was extremely extended and painful to watch. The real down factor in this show is the secondary pairing, who are SO ANNOYING; they do catalyze some interesting discussion over gay culture, but is it worth the ridiculously OTT childishness... (Another adaptation issue where because the slice of life vibe is trying to play it as normal when it needs to be played as OTT.) Anyway, cute and satisfying, and I enjoyed that there were lots of extended cooking scenes! Except when they did ketchup pasta.

Context: we always have a Big Party (~30 people attending) for NYE, and this year I unilaterally decided to be the main chef. I wrote up reflections on each dish for next year's reference, so I thought I might post them here. I'd add pictures, but then my chances of actually posting this would decrease, so perhaps not.

( This is a lot of words )

I'm wondering if anyone uses an external RSS reader for reading their DW pages?

I currently use inoreader, and I find it much easier to use as an interface (and the mobile is great too). I see that DW supports ?auth=digest that would allow flocked entries to be pulled to RSS readers, but inoreader is expensive enough that I wanted to check out the field first. Also, I think there isn't a feed for your reading list, so you'd have to add each subscription as a separate feed...

Additional features I want:
- Hotkey navigation for next articles (j/k for preference)
- "Read" marking (the feature that DW lacks that I find hugely important)

Cuckoo Song, by Frances Hardinge: Hardinge is excellent as always, LOVED all the little details of the world in this one. Was totally surprised at some of the twists, but in a way where they were very natural; a 'how come I didn't call this?!' situation. I felt like once the action was about to hit its peak, it got a bit weaker in the sometimes shoving Lessons Learned into characters' mouths, but it is MG after all. Probably the strongest overall of the three Hardinges I've read so far (the others were Deeplight and The Lie Tree), but I feel like I have to ration the rest q_q there's only nine total.

The Iron Children, by Rebecca Fraimow: Told from the PoV of three characters: the not-yet-fully trained commander (by which one means has not yet put her soul in a robot and is still a squishy human) who must bring a group of cyborg soldiers to meet the main forces over treacherous terrain, the sergeant of the cyborg soldiers who is the only really seasoned soldier among them, and a spy. Like much of DW, I know the author and therefore cannot be fully objective! I really liked the confidence of the worldbuilding: that there was a sense of a larger world and there was no need to explain concepts that would be obvious to the characters. Also, the ~reveal~ of who the spy is was not the climax or even an especially emotional moment (to the reader anyway, the commander sure finds it emotional), subverting expectations! I found the ending extremely satisfying: in a world where the protagonists are soldiers on the being-conquered-but-also-doing-unethical-stuff side, the ending must also be complex, but each character reaches a point where it feels like an emotional arc has finished and the next step is coming.

Geometries of Belonging, by R.B. Lemberg (short story, not the collection): Part of a larger secondary world fantasy, this one centers on a mindhealer suffering after the loss of family and the aftermath of a war. From silveredeye's rec. I found it very compelling to read! It verges on issuefic re: gender in the sense that it's a bit heavy handed, but ymmv. I enjoyed the sense that there was a broader world out there, always something I'm picky about.

Nimona (2023): In a medieval-futurist city, the first commoner is about to be knighted, only to framed for murder of the queen. On the one hand, this was intended for kids, so the simplistic setup and straightforward morals are par for the course, but I still found this really didactic and unsubtle. I also don't think the message of "you should just trust me [refuses to explain anything]" really works when the love interest never does just believe in the main character, they never address this, and their future relationship is shown as all roses and kittens. Nimona, the shapeshifting "monster", was quite affecting though.

The One Percent (2006): I watch a lot of youtube-y documentaries, and this was actually really interesting. It's a documentary by one of the J&J heirs about the growing wealth gap, and as a member of that elite class, he is able to interview people who are more frank than they may otherwise be. I wouldn't consider this a must watch, but if this is a topic of interest, it's more unique than a lot of the dross on youtube.