Aelfgyfu

Happy Easter!

2026-04-05T20:02:48Z

Happy Easter to all who celebrate it today, whether as a Christian holy day or an excuse to eat candy!

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Misty morning webs

2026-01-11T19:24:52Z

We've had some foggy mornings recently, and the extra moisture helps bring out webs that would otherwise be invisible. This plant looked gorgeous!

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Merry Christmas!

2025-12-25T14:14:09Z

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!

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Happy Thanksgiving

2025-11-28T00:24:36Z

Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends who celebrate it in any way!

I am especially thankful for family and friends this year.

We had our pescatarian feast and finished with a sweet potato pie.

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Octavia Butler

2025-08-31T22:26:21Z

I seem not to have posted about Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, and I finally read Parable of the Talents this summer and haven't posted that either. I started writing about those two books and had to add Kindred. I recommend all three highly. They remain first-rate speculative fiction and timely.

Octavia Butler is phenomenal. I read Kindred years ago and was deeply moved. If you haven't, consider it! She wrote it in 1979, set in 1976—the bicentennial of the United States of America as a country. Dana is a Black woman married to a white man, Kevin; when she wakes up in the hospital missing an arm in the prologue, the police think Kevin must have done it. He didn't. Of course, you have to read almost the whole novel to find out what did happen. Dana finds herself unexpectedly transported back in time—to the early ninteenth century in the US, and yes, that's as bad as you think it is. She travels between her own time and the past several times in the novel. I couldn't stop reading even though at some points I feared what I would read next.

What I love about Octavia Butler: her works are simultaneously unsentimental and yet deeply felt, unsparing and yet optimistic. She doesn't romanticize either the antebellum US or the 1976 version, yet she shows how people in both eras find life worth living—or make it worth living. Her protagonists are imperfect; her antagonists are generally not pure villains. She was writing about systemic racism and the damage it does long before the term critical race theory came into use, but it's surely an excellent lens for appreciating how the flaws in her characters are a combination of personal characteristics and the society in which they live. Everyone is damaged by racism, sexism, and other prejudices. Yet no one has to let that define them. People have to fight for their hopes, but hope is worth fighting for, and it's not in vain!

Parable of the Sower: a lot of people talked about this during Trump's first term, and rightly so. The president campaigns on "Make America Great Again" (though that might be only in the second book); it's eerily prescient, though it was written in 1993. The novel opens 20 July 2024. The first person narrator, Lauren Oya Olamina, is a teenager in a gated community. Life outside the gated community really isn't safe: her father is a professor at the college in town, but he travels only during daylight hours. He's also a pastor, for a faith she no longer believes. She has her own faith: Earthseed. God is Change—a force, not a being. Prayer can help those who pray, but there isn't anyone to pray to. She's convinced that society will fall, and she's making plans for what to do about it. She knows they're not safe even in their gated community. This novel works at every level: the society feels chillingly close to our own. Her family feels real, with its complicated dynamics: Lauren has tensions with her stepmother and complicated relationships with her half brothers. Oh, and the drug her now deceased mother used while pregnant with Lauren caused Lauren to be born with hyperempathy: she feels what she sees other people experience. She feels the pain she sees anyone experience—or that she thinks they experience (a younger brother uses this against her, as a younger brother would).

I first read this novel back when Progeny was small, and I had an edition that seemed to be riddled with typos. Between that and the heavy material, I didn't seek out the sequel. Then I saw them both in a two-volume boxed set when I was Christmas shopping a couple of years ago and bought books for family and then (even more) books for me, including the set. This edition has a few errors, but not like I remember the previous version! (It may seem shallow, but that many typos would just throw me out of the world of the novel: I started wondering about the editor, the publishing house, what the heck had gone wrong here?)

So I reread Parable of the Sower a year or two ago, I recommend both books with the caveat that the second is even heavier, and if you don't want even vague spoilers, stop reading here.

( Parable of the Talents, vague spoilers for Sower )

I wrote about her Dawn here and Adulthood Rites here. I meant to write about Bloodchild, a book of short stories, but never got around to it.

Butler is one of the greats, and I recommend her highly. She's among my favorite novelists.

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Happy birthday, Sholio!

2025-07-26T19:12:08Z

Happy birthday to sholio ! I hope you're enjoying it!

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Schnelbach, "I Didn’t Expect Dr. Gurathin To Be My Favorite Part of Murderbot"

2025-07-24T00:08:44Z

I read paragraph after paragraph of this essay thinking, "Yes. Yes!" Great analysis here. (Don't read the comments. I accidentally scrolled too far when I was checking the byline at the bottom and saw some. Just savor the essay and stop there.)

Leah Schnelbach, "I Didn’t Expect Dr. Gurathin To Be My Favorite Part of Murderbot," Reactor, 22 July 2025.

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Happy birthday, Astrogirl!

2025-07-13T17:58:34Z

Happy birthday to astrogirl!

I hope you're having a good one! I enjoy your posts, especially your book reviews and Doctor Who reactions.

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Doctor Who: "The Reality War"

2025-06-01T01:49:56Z

So we just finished watching and

( spoilers )

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Doctor Who: "The Story and the Engine"

2025-05-26T21:31:26Z

I enjoyed this one, although again, I feel that certain aspects would not withstand much scrutiny, so I will be trying not to look directly at them. The whole felt much greater to me than the sum of its parts.

( Spoilers )

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Murderbot in Five Quick, Easy Steps

2025-05-24T20:25:43Z

Alexander Skårsgard transforms into Murderbot "in five quick, easy steps" in this Facebook video from Apple TV.

Yeah. That's about how I thought it would go.

ETA: revised to use one of my new Murderbot user pics!

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DW "Lucky Day"

2025-05-05T01:51:24Z

I have so many feelings, I mean thoughts, about "Lucky Day"!

( Spoilers )

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Doctor Who: "The Well"

2025-05-01T01:52:26Z

I do hope to make posts about the first two episodes of the season, but "The Well" is the first one of the season that really grabbed me!

( Cut for spoilers )

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Happy Easter!

2025-04-21T00:09:53Z

Happy Easter to all who observe it in any way!

And a good springtime (or autumn, for my friends Down Under) to all.

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Octavia E. Butler, Adulthood Rites

2025-03-24T00:14:50Z

I've fallen a bit behind on posting again, partly because I've been trying to figure out how to write about Adulthood Rites, the second book in the Lilith's Brood/Xenogenesis trilogy, without spoiling the first one. I've been overthinking it. Read as much or as little of this entry as you want, but I really encourage you to read the trilogy!

This book does exactly what the second book in a trilogy should do. Butler assumes we've read her first book and gently reminds us of key points without marching us through them all again. (It probably helps that it hadn't been that long since I read the first book!) She continues her amazing world building while keeping the novel very focused on key characters. The protagonist here wasn't in the first novel, but we see some of the characters from Dawn again in important roles—and I didn't even know I wanted to see some of them again until I did! This series really asks The Big Questions: what does it mean to be human? What do we owe ourselves and each other? What do we owe those we think aren't like us?

I find her worlds very convincing, and she gives enough explanation to stimulate my interest more without overwhelming me or making it dull, because her focus is not so much on how things work but on how people interact with their environment. By "people" I mean humans, Oankali, and ships.

Everything I say without spoilers sounds abstract and kind of dry (no matter how many exclamation points I use), but this book has All The Feels too. The major characters long to connect but have difficulties along the way, some familiar to us and others . . . not exactly like ours. We have found family. My sympathies and my own answers shifted as I read, and I'm eager to read the third. I'm putting it off a little because I find when I space out series a little, I remember them better and enjoy them more than if I try to mainline them or stretch them out too much.

( Slight spoilers )

Read it! Read it!

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Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

2025-01-25T20:28:42Z

I had read some negative reviews of the book and so postponed reading it, even though I'd given it to Brilliant Husband as a gift, and he liked it. Progeny's enjoyment made me pick it up, and it was quite a ride. No regrets!

It helped that I kept in mind how I enjoyed The Martian by the same author: I picked it up in an airport before it was so popular, with low expectations and a desire just to make a long trip tolerable. I soon learned that the word "subtle" is not in Weir's dictionary, that we're not here for the prose or the characterization, but that he can think through the details of an impossible situation scientifically and drag me along for the ride.

This book is significantly more ambitious and tremendously inventive. I should not have waited so long to read it! It opens with a character waking up who can't even remember his name, let alone where he is, and it feels like horror: he can scarcely move, and metal arms come at him and do things like drug him. He realizes after a little bit that two other people are with him—and then that they aren't alive any more. If you want no spoilers, stop there, but it's not really horror! (I should know, because I keep picking up things I think aren't horror only to find that they are.) Our protagonist sciences the dren out of everything while remembering what got him there in a series of flashbacks. It's well paced and a lot of fun to read.

Much of the science is real, and I think all the math is. The novel also has a lot of speculation, though, and I can't always tell the difference!

I have nitpicks, which should probably go behind a cut.

( And here's the cut. )
I just realized I missed Artemis, and the poor reviews might actually have been for Artemis rather than Project Hail Mary, because I thought I was reading his second book. I'm also now not sure which one I gave BH.

I will definitely watch for his next book (and probably read Artemis, but I think I'd best keep my expectations low for that one).

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Get Millie Black

2025-01-19T18:10:39Z

Brilliant Husband and I recently finished watching Get Millie Black, a limited series set mostly in Jamaica. It has only five episodes. It broke my heart every episode.

I heartily recommend it with the caveats that it's violent, centers on children in peril, and uncompromisingly shows anti-trans and anti-gay hatred and violence. It's extraordinarily well written, no doubt because writer Marlon James created it based on his own short story, obviously expanded here. Tamara Lawrence, whom I memorably saw in The Long Song (on PBS), stars as Millie Black. Her mother sent her to London when she was still quite young, and she spent many years there, getting her education and then becoming a detective for Scotland Yard. In that time, her only sibling, a brother, died. She returned to Kingston after her mother died, and she saw her brother's signature on the birth certificate! It turns out she does not in fact have a brother any more; she now has a sister.

All this is backstory. Millie has largely settled into her new job in Kingston but is still trying to work out a relationship with her sister, Hibiscus or "Bis." She has a good working relationship with her partner, Curtis. Then she's asked to find a missing child, which brings up memories of a failure in London.

Get Millie Black and its characters know the tropes of genre fiction. The cast are brilliant. It was very painful to watch because they made me care so much! But it was worth it. It's as much or more about the relationships among the characters and their own personal development (or lack thereof) than a mystery, but it works equally well at both levels. Most mysteries do one or the other. Marlon James is a gay man with a complicated relationship with his homeland, and he, the directors, everyone give Jamaica a depth I hadn't seen before.

The one jarring note was that the whole series is subtitled, and you can't turn it off; you can only change the language of the subtitles. That's because the Jamaican English can be difficult at times. I found them very distracting, and I felt I didn't need them 90% or more of the time. But for that 10% or less, I did. In the end, I was glad they'd given subtitles, because the moments where I needed them were often very dramatic ones where I'd have hated to have to run it back to turn on the subtitles or listen again. I wholeheartedly applaud the way they did it: everyone is subtitled, whether they're speaking Standard British English, Jamaican Creole, or something else. It treats everyone the same, not putting any dialect above any other.

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Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman

2025-01-12T23:13:39Z

I hardly ever write up my reading because I want to write something better than I can with just a little time. Then I regret it later—I can no longer remember which books I read in 2024, for the most part! So I'm turning over a new leaf. (heh heh! I never understood what "turn over a new leaf" meant until the mid-80s, when Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls" had "turned over a new leaf / then tore right through it"—until that moment, I thought the metaphor had to do with trees!)

Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman, written in 2020, was the first novel I finished reading this year. I'm not sure I had read anything by her before, but I may look for more.

One of the two main characters is based on her own grandfather and how he fought the 1953 Termination Bill. I didn't even know that there had been such a bill. Arthur V. Watkins, of Utah, really did sponsor a resolution to eliminate Native American reservations, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and all the services they provided; and force Native Americans to assimilate. He really seems like a mustache-twirling villain, except without a mustache.

While learning of the bill and trying to save the tribe—their land, their jobs, their schools, their ability to live together— are major parts of the novel, the interwoven plots are also very personal. Thomas Wazhashk tries to balance his work for his tribe and against the bill while holding down a job as night watchman at the real Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant and farming. His niece Patrice (who does not want to be called Pixie! even though everyone does) works at the plant but wants to find her sister Vera, who moved to Minneapolis with her husband, had a baby, and then ceased all contact. Patrice also does not want the attentions of some besmitten young men.

The novel kept surprising me, in good ways. I became very attached to Thomas and Patrice, and Millie Cloud, a grad student whose white mother didn't want her to have too much to do with her Native father, but who makes connections when asked to help. Millie is neurospicy (which DW really does not want to let me type!) The tensions between traditional ways and modern life are very much at play without easy answers.

( Spoilers )

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Merry Christmas

2024-12-25T15:03:45Z

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it!

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Chag sameach

2024-12-25T15:03:12Z

A blessed Hanukah to all who celebrate it!

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Happy Thanksgiving to All Who Celebrate

2024-11-28T22:07:41Z

Since Child is in another state again this holiday, Brilliant Husband and I are just having a small Thanksgiving at home for two: fish stuffed with herbs, wild rice, sweet potato polenta, homemade cranberry sauce, peas, and a chocolate silk pie. BH is responsible for all of that except the polenta and the pie. And I somehow missed when I looked back over the recipe last night that it really is one to make the day before and refrigerate overnight so that it can set. I just remembered that last time we made it, it got soggy before we were done.

So the pie may not be set tonight.

What I enjoy the most about this holiday, though, is time with loved ones. (Don't get me started on the fantasy history that underlies this holiday in the US; I don't want to harsh anyone's squee.) BH and I were able to Zoom with Child and my family, and we get time together. I wish we could be with more family, but we'll see more at Christmas.

I hope those of you who are celebrating also get time with people you love.

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Recent books

2024-11-25T00:54:07Z

I always mean to write a little about the books I've read, but I wait until I think I have enough to make a good post, and then I feel I have too many to write about. . . . So this time, I'm just going to write about the last two I read.

Octavia Butler, Dawn: This is the first book of the Xenogenesis trilogy, also known as Lilith's Brood. How did I never read this book before? Lilith Iyapo wakes up in a cell. She remembers waking before. She doesn't know where she is or who is holding her; she remembers seeing what seemed like the end of the world. The book was published in 1987, but I’ll put in a cut before I say more, in case you’re like me. I went in knowing only that I thought Butler’s Kindred and some of her short stories were outstanding. I won't spoil the whole thing! But feel free to discuss fully in comments, because I'd love to talk about it more if others have read it.

( Read more... )

Dawn made me think about sex and gender; what we need, what we're willing to give up, and what we won't compromise to remain ourselves. It's brilliant. Butler preceded N.K. Jemisin and Ann Leckie, and I can only imagine she had some influence on them: the world-building is so thorough, so willing to reconsider basic premises of human life and society.

If you haven't read it, please do! I want to talk about it!

Joyce Lionarons, The Eyes of the Dying: Matthew Cordwainer Book 12. Joyce is a fellow medievalist, and I know her as a colleague and friend. The Cordwainer books are meticulously researched but use that learning just to ; the setting is beautifully integrated with, I think, sufficient explanation for non-specialists without hitting anyone over the head. She also doesn't idealize the Middle Ages; we see a lot of prejudice, violence, and just plain nastiness. And some of that is from Matthew Cordwainer! He's a grumpy old man who sometimes learns better and sometimes doesn't, but I love him anyway (even though I'm very frustrated with him at time.)

I recommend all these books for people who like historical mysteries. They're set in York, mostly in the 1270s. This one starts with a view of the killer, so the suspense is in how Matthew and his associates unravel the mystery, not so much in the who or why. Matthew's physician friend Stefan takes more of a role in this than the previous ones, which I enjoyed, largely because Matthew is stymied by church authorities who assert the freedom of the church from secular officials, including King's Coroner Cordwainer. Matthew is also still having trouble adjusting to his relatively new servant Jarvis, and Jarvis is a teenager having trouble adjusting to his new life. One major figure is an anchorite with a terrible past. I read the whole book yesterday (mostly during a platelet donation, which takes a couple of hours) and was sorry to see it end so soon!

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We're fine

2024-09-28T20:05:35Z

We live in Florida. We came through the hurricane just fine; it was more than a hundred miles to the west of us. We didn't even lose power for more than a few seconds at a time, and only a few times. It's almost surreal, because so many people have been harmed so badly.

Parts of Florida have been devastated, parts even in our own region. Even people several blocks away saw some flooding because they were closer to the river. We know someone whose house had five feet of floodwaters, someone whose garage flooded—which doesn't sound so bad until you realized that they were storing things like photo albums there. People died.

If you want to help, World Central Kitchen is already setting up to feed people whose homes were damaged or destroyed.

We also give to Catholic Charities; this is a link to CCUSA, which has helped with many previous hurricanes in the US.

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DW: "Empire of Death"

2024-06-28T23:35:01Z

We're now not even a week behind! Hurray!

Wait . . . what do you mean that's the end of the season? When do we get MOAR?( spoilers )

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DW: "The Legend of Ruby Sunday"

2024-06-27T23:30:16Z

And by the way, will someone please come get the Rolling Stones out of my head every time I think about the Doctor's companion?

( You know the drill )

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