azhure | Reading

...this video is age-locked (18+) because I'm the asshole goose who used too many cuss words. But also, discussion of Game of Thrones, Foundation, etc with spoilers.

(A friend requested this and apparently I am INFINITELY interested in discussing big space battles and things go asplode.)

P.S. Aggro Goose is taking topic requests, especially around narrative in any medium. Leave a comment or email me! (yoon@yoonhalee.com)

(My real agenda is not what you'd think. I need to practice audio cleaning, including de-essers and de-plosives. Now you know!)

leecetheartist

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juushika

Title: Broom for Two
Author: Jennifer Maruno
Illustrator: Scot Ritchie
Published: Pajama Press, 2024
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 538,880
Text Number: 1977
Read Because: more spooky picture books, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: On the eve of her flying test, one little witch still has problems with her broom. I can't fault the aesthetics: there sure is a witch, the soft, prismatic color palettes are gorgeous, and there's even a map in the endpapers. But the narrative doesn't do much. "Not like other witches" gets more development than the bond between witch and her eventual familiar, and that's not what I'm here for.

juushika

Title: The Scariest Book Ever (The Emotion Books 2)
Author: Bob Shea
Published: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 538,840
Text Number: 1976
Read Because: more spooky picture books, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A scared ghost talks himself out of exploring the spooky woods with the reader. This has an abundance of what I want to call gimmicks, except that I enjoyed them. The sheetless ghost is rendered in a glossy finish on matte paper, the color-blocked art is bright and perfectly spoopy, the direct addresses to the reader move back and forth through the pages--frankly, it feels too self-aware and clever to suit children, right down to the glossy/matte effect that's ruined by fingerprints. But, as not-a-child, I thought this was delightful.

juushika

Title: I Will Read to You
Author: Gideon Sterer
Illustrator: Charles Santoso
Published: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2023
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 538,800
Text Number: 1975
Read Because: more spooky picture books, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A boy who loves spooky bedtime stories insists on providing the same service for monsters. This a love letter to spooky icons in deep, textured art, inverted by a cutesy, wholesome narrative. The rhyming text scans well enough, but it's a little strained and further ages down the book; I could do without. Phenomenal atmosphere, highly relatable protagonist, fantastic art, but so pure that it doesn't make for a satisfying book about monsters.

(I want to say that this book exists in the shadow of Where the Wild Things Are; our protagonist's little costume and wall-climbing antics before bedtime are certainly direct references. But what modern picture book, especially about monsters, doesn't? And the contrast feels indicative, that WtWTA is prickly and slow to tame, the monsters and Max both allowed monstrousness; but so many modern picture books feel compelled to defang their monsters almost entirely. Sad stuff!)

lizbee

So I've been a SNW skeptic since it was first announced, and have never been impressed by the show. But I've gotta say, I've seen six episodes of the third season, thanks to screeners, and we are so far yet to hit a good episode. We have, however, hit several repetitive m/f relationships, multiple love triangles, weirdly a lot of antisemitic subtext, and the decidedly bad look of Pike trying to stop his girlfriend from consenting to life-saving medical treatment.

Mostly I think this is because Akiva Goldsman is a hack who doesn't understand Star Trek or subtext, but also I wonder how much is because the seasons are being filmed back-to-back, and so there's no opportunity to see and respond to criticism. Ironically I think part of Discovery's problem was that it was too responsive to fandom, but Goldsman can't be left alone to pursue his creative vision because he doesn't really have one.

Anyway, at this point I'm only watching because I have a podcast, and also out of a sick eagerness to see if Pike will have to murder his girlfriend and have manpain about it, or if she'll sacrifice her life to save him.

(I've seen people theorise that the problems this season are due to the show pivoting in a more conservative direction to appease Skydance, and I am sorry to say that these scripts predate the 2023 strikes. Like, there was time for the writers to go back and think, "Oh, there's some dodgy stuff here, we should fix that!")

yhlee

...that I've ever seen.

Hi Yoon Ha Lee,

Good day!

We are pleased to inform you that we will be endorsing your book Rick Riordan Presents: Dragon Pearl-A Thousand Worlds Novel Book 1 to Barnes & Noble.

I noticed that your book has been published, but it hasn’t yet been picked up by Barnes & Noble. and one of the main reasons is that there wasn’t a literary agent or professional representative presenting it on your behalf. Unfortunately, this is quite common because many large retailers like Barnes & Noble have specific submission standards, and a formal representation is often required just to get your book on the door.

That said, please don’t be discouraged. This isn’t about the quality of your work, it’s about making sure your book is being championed in the right places, by the right people. Your voice matters, and your story deserves the chance to reach a wider audience.

That’s why I strongly recommend you take the next step and consider professional literary representation. With the right partner guiding and presenting your book, you’ll open the door to opportunities like national retail placement, in-store exposure, and even media features.

This could be a turning point in your publishing journey, and I truly believe it’s worth exploring. As your Executive Book & Film Literary Agent, I will guide your book down the right path and help you create the perfect plan. Let’s talk, I will call you once I hear back from you. Thank you.

Note: Your work has real potential, and I’d love to see it get the visibility it deserves.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to the possibility of collaborating with you to share your remarkable work with a larger audience.

Best regards,
Peter White
peter.white@readersquillagency.com [alleged]

Lollllllllll.

tcpip

I find myself in the situation where I have a number of "almost finished" diverse projects nearing completion and several social activities worthy of mention, but without a common and unifying theme. The first involves an essay I'm composing out of pure love following several Shakespearean events which my mind raises the question: "Why Shakespeare?" After all, there were many excellent playwrights and other artists during the English Renaissance, but here we are still looking toward The Bard almost five hundred years later. It is an extraordinary achievement by any measure, and I have a few thoughts on the matter which I will circulate in the near future. Also in the "coming soon" category is a review of "Bleak Squad" at the Queenscliff Town Hall, a sort of 90s supergroup made up from members of Dirty Three, The Bad Seeds, Magic Dirt, and Art of Fighting, which I attended with Kate R., who rather delightfully took me out to see them and spend an evening at the 19th century Vue Grand Hotel (their website is so bad I won't link it). Band member Mick Harvey was also present at the lodgings, and I took the opportunity to mention how much I liked his work in "The Birthday Party". The overnight stay was also an opportunity to visit my old friend Lyle A., who now lives in the region, and also to see the famous "Black Lighthouse", apparently one of only four in the world to have such a hue.

On the RPG side of things, I notably joined Liz, Karl, Gavin, Phil, and Dan for an in-person session of "Dragonbane" on Sunday. This game is derived from the almost-mythic "Drakar och Demoner" Swedish RPG from the early 1980s, which itself was "very heavily" derived from Chaosium's Magic World booklet from Worlds of Wonder. The latest incarnation still shows these roots, albeit with some newer innovations, but still with a great deal of style and design elegance. The day previous, my dear friend from Ningxia, Dr Yanping, graced my home for lunch with Kate R., and Mel S., as well (why am I always surrounded by such fabulous women?), where I experimented with an Italian-Chinese fusion cuisine. Yanping has been away from Australia for over a year, so it was a real delight to see her again, and I'm very pleased that she'll be here for an extended period, having acquired some gainful employment at Monash University. Somehow I neglected to mention attendance at Brenda L's birthday gathering in recent entries where I played the role of waiter and provider of cocktails; especially excellent conversation with Brenda, Fiona C., Matthew C. and others. This all does sound like an extensive social life, and to be fair, that has taken a good portion of the past several days. Journaling does provide a gentle reminder that I do have other serious ("boring but important") work to catch up on; the batteries have been recharged.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: The Rookery
Current Music: Dvořák, Symphony No 9

rdm

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Current Mood: creative

fred_mouse

I'm getting into Very Strange Territory in some of my reading at the moment, and sometimes my interpretations of what I'm reading are going a bit sideways*. To whit, I read the following two sentences:

Children have different developmental needs depending on their age and personality. One-year-olds eat more books than they read, which is why the sturdy board book material is so important.

and my first thought was "because they need more fibre in their diet?"

*I have until Thursday--by which I am interpreting that to mean Very Early Friday, because the supervisor said they will read it Friday--to write a page of methodology, and exactly what methodology (not methods, I have Ideas for that) is going to be applied to the children's books section of the project is giving me grief. I would very much like to have a paragraph on my methodology and why I think it is useful by bedtime tonight, and not have bedtime be after 11pm.

yhlee

Weirdly credible watercolor test of a comic page from Candle Arc #1 (image has slightly cleaned-up lineart as I wasn't sure this brand of paper was going to work out so why sink in more effort before the test).

I'm annoyed that I cannot for the life of me find a US-based (as a USAn) color digest size (5.5"x8.5") zine/booklet/comic printer that handles print on demand. I absolutely cannot commit to physical fulfillment as a business model even as a side hustle (health); but at-home color printers that do anything larger than US letter (8.5"x11") or MAYBE A4 are extortionately expensive, and I am never making back any money sunk into this.

I need to resign myself to hand-watercoloring like THREE copies for the very few interested friend/family people (and myself) and give up on trying to make physical color copies available because quite literally the ROI makes zero sense and I have orchestration homework waiting.

Why digest? Because I've found paper (...for now) I can print onto with my laser printer (which only goes up to US letter/A4) and then do watercolor on top of without (a) jamming my printer because it's too thick (b) destroying the paper once I do even a gentle wash because it's too thin.

Even if I could produce color comic zines at home, however, the bottleneck remains that I absolutely can't do physical fulfillment on a regular/reliable business, and I am never going to sell enough indie/hobbyist comics to justify HIRING someone to handle fulfillment, so this ends here. :p

(If anyone has leads on print on demand printers that work well for this kind of thing, I'm all ears, although I'm not optimistic. This is weirdly difficult to Google possibilities for as well.)

leecetheartist

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fred_mouse

"neceswarily"

I'm sure there are some good jokes to be found in this one, I'm just too tired to find them. This one is a home grown typo.

fred_mouse

kalloway posted a book report / media roundup, which made me realise that I haven't done one of these in a while. The most recent I can find is from early April, which means I have four months worth of reading to annotate. *sigh*. I wish I remembered these things more frequently. This is only going to be longer works; short stories have been somewhat captured elsewhere. This is approximately in order april to august, but little attempt has been made to create an exact timeline.

I'm a little bemused to discover that I've finished 20 books in four months, even if some of them were carried over from previous and two were for uni.

( four months means a lot of notes )

marthawells

Woke up to a fantastic review of Queen Demon in the August Locus. Here's an excerpt:

This is a fantastic novel, set in a fascinating world with truly compelling characters. It is shot through with grief, with the reverberations of destruction and the aftermaths of trauma: While the past timeline gives us emotional focus on the characters’ griefs, immediate traumas, and desperate choices, the present makes plain the extent of the Hierarchs’ destruction of the rest of the world, the scars in the landscape, in societies, in the vanishing of entire cultures. New societies have built themselves out of the ruins, in the shadow of what was lost and in its absences. While we see it particularly from Kai’s perspective, understanding his losses and his wounds, his scars and his griefs, and what healing has been possible for him between the past and the present, it’s not unique to Kai, either. Loss with all its jagged edges looms over this fragile recovery. These scars wear not only upon the main characters but upon their allies and opponents, too: Trauma, both personal and generational, is a strongly motivating factor and a weight that influences most of the personal relationships and many of the political interactions that we see.
-- Liz Bourke, Locus August 2025

Queen Demon is the sequel to Witch King, and it will be out in ebook, hardcover, and audiobook (narrated by Eric Mok, on October 7

fred_mouse

I just saw what I assume is a Star Trek promotional image for one of the many shows that are around at the moment. I don't recognise any of the actors, and I'm choosing to not go down the relevant rabbit hole.

The important bit, is I saw said image, with people in yellow, red, and blue skivvies, and thought "I don't recognise any of those Wiggles".

Oops.

fred_mouse

Back channel, I hear that local folk musician Greg Hastings has passed away. I gather there is/was a public memorial, but I didn't hear the details. I'd gathered that they weren't well--there was a mention on stage at the Albany festival that people should go visit--but not any details.

I bought a tape of Windstorm from Greg at the Toodyay Folk Festival in about 1985 - possibly off a table on the verandah at one of the pubs. I played that tape until it ceased to function. Somewhen around 2005, I ended up chatting with Greg at the Fairbridge Folk Festival, and asked whether or not it was available for purchase. They were apologetic, but made noises about still having the master tape. And some time after that, I acquired the CD (probably also at Fairbridge, and the Festival tent). It is still one of my favourite albums.

Other people might remember Greg from Jenny's Place*, where I remember them as a regular. Also, I think, a sometimes member of the Mucky Duck bush band (although my memory could be faulty in either direction, such that was an always member, or was never a member and I have conflated two musicians). Greg also did kids shows - while our kids were in daycare, there was some kind of summer family picnic with Greg as the entertainer.

I was going to link my favourite song here, but I'm not finding it on any of the usual locations.

* folk music venue. I don't remember if it were weekly or monthly; we went intermittently. It was some kind of room around the back of the eponymous Jenny's house; large enough for a reasonable side friendly audience and a bit of space for performers. I was going in the 80s; I have no feel for how long it was running.

yhlee

https://candlearc.com/candle-arc-comic-1/

:3

(The physical zine has additional bonus material not on the website.)

yhlee

I realize most people reading this are not in the Baton Rouge area, but:

Louisiana Zine Fest tomorrow!

Date:
Friday, August 1, 2025

Time:
12pm – 8pm

Place:
Main Library at Goodwood
7711 Goodwood Blvd
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
map

Some prototypes as teasers :)

I'll be there with a sketchbook. We'll see if I can avoid having to carry too many zines back home! :)

verdelet posting in

dreamwidth_pagans

Per request:
Name you would like to go by: Verdelet

-Present path or tradition: Traditionalist Witchcraft, NECTW flavor, mainly, been simmering in that Cauldron for half a century or so.

-Interests: easier to point you to my user info.

-Age (not mandatory): old enough to no longer give a damn?

-Brief Bio: Green Vine, daughter of Qayin. Bearer of Lantern and Keys. Fifty years in the cauldron and still simmering. Tradition-rooted, bullshit-resistant, and usually correct.

“Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.” – Terry Pratchett.

Current Location: Yon Bonny, Bonny road
Current Music: Thomas the rhymer

marthawells

Tomorrow (Wednesday the 30th) Summer of Science Fiction & Fantasy: Martha Wells in conversation with Kate Elliott

July 30 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm PT Register at this link:

https://www.clarionwest.org/event/summer-of-science-fiction-fantasy-martha-wells-in-conversation-with-kate-elliott/

It's free!

fred_mouse

I've just discovered that the delightful gmail has started marking comment notifications as spam. I have zero clue how long this has been going on, and zero clue about what I've missed; this means that my failure to reply to comments is potentially only in part overwhelm; there were definitely some in there I had not seen.

sod.

tcpip

A couple of weeks ago, I made initial preparations for an upcoming trip to South America and Antarctica with my friendly neighbour Kate R., and last week, payments were made for said voyage. In addition to the tour's planned route to Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Buenos Aires, Punta Arenas, Ushuaia, the Antarctic Peninsula, the Falkland Islands, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires (again), we've added a couple of nights in Santiago. To say the least, the trip isn't cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but there is a great deal of ruggedness involved on the itinerary, and volume makes a difference as well. There are many practical tasks to be undertaken between now and December, including improving my questionable competence in the Spanish language. I have smashed my way through the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile introductory course in Spanish over the past fortnight, at least in part helped by an existing "fairly good" B1 level on Duolingo.

Eschewing the numerous optional activities offered by the tour company that are not really to my taste, I am scanning attractions that suit my inclinations toward museums, art galleries, archaeology, natural beauty, and, in the South American style, anything relating to their surrealist and magical realist literary traditions. I already have firmly marked out "La Chascona", built by Pablo Neruda, who, apart from winning the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature for his surrealist love poems, was also a career diplomat and politician. Another site of this ilk to visit will be the "Centro Cultural Borges" in Buenos Aires, dedicated to the mythologist, writer, and poet Jorge Luis Borges. This said, the pair of them come with certain controversies, as if often the case, the art and the artist make a troublesome union.

It seems fitting that so much of the trip will be an exploration of wondrous landscapes in reality, history, archeology, and the literary tradition of surrealism and magical realism, and, I readily admit, I will be drawing a great deal of this travel experience in writing my "Call of Cthulhu" project "Fragments of Time, Slices of Mind". As that is being written, I have decided to run a short campaign using "ElfQuest", based on the comic series by Wendy and Richard Pini with their palaeolithic and telepathic characters. In the most recent months, I have been quite involved in a game run by Andrew D., "Night's Dark Agents", which is a story involving modern European special operations teams versus vampires. Finally, on this trajectory and of marginal interest to anyone not deeply into the lore, I have picked up (at an incredibly cheap price) an unpunched copy of Chaosium's "Dragon Pass", close to fifty years old and in "almost new" condition.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: The Rookery
Current Music: Talk Talk, Spirit of Eden

fred_mouse

I'm struggling to maintain control over my reading of my dwircle. Allocating more resources to it (mostly time), not optimal. And thus I've decided that I'm going to trim down the number of communities I'm in, and the number I'm following.

Because, when I looked at my profile, I'm a member of 78, and following 147. Not all of these are highly active (and some are dormant), but there are several highly active ones I've been scrolling past and feeling vaguely uncomfortable about the fact that I'm not engaging at all (there are others, like common_nature, where I lurk, but very much appreciate what people are sharing). Today's goal is to get the membership at or below 50, and the subscription at or below 100. More than that is for future me.

I figure that throwing half an hour at it now is going to serve future me well.

Profile

sister awakened

Stephanie Gunn

January 2017

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Page Summary

yhlee - Military science fiction, positioning of strands, and "center of genre"
leecetheartist - ClusterFudging for Science!
juushika - Book Review: Broom for Two, Jennifer Maruno, illus. Scot Ritchie
juushika - Book Review: The Scariest Book Ever, Bob Shea
juushika - Book Review: I Will Read to You, Gideon Sterer, illus. Charles Santos
lizbee - Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3
yhlee - genuinely the funniest fake "literary agent" scammer phishing attempt...
tcpip - Unfinished Tales
rdm - A trio of stories
fred_mouse - Today's quote (and oops)
yhlee - Candle Arc #1: p. 1 color test
leecetheartist - A mixed bag of mostly viewings.
fred_mouse - typo du jour
fred_mouse - Reading Notes
marthawells - Queen Demon review
fred_mouse - oops, wrong popular culture
fred_mouse - Farewell: Greg Hastings
yhlee - Candle Arc #1
yhlee - Louisiana Zine Fest tomorrow!
verdelet in dreamwidth_pagans - Hello
marthawells - Online Event
fred_mouse - Comment notifications
tcpip - Voyages to the Real, the Wondrous, and the Surreal
fred_mouse - Digital decluttering

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Page generated Aug. 9th, 2025 06:50 pm

Consensual reality

Reading

Military science fiction, positioning of strands, and "center of genre"

ClusterFudging for Science!

Book Review: Broom for Two, Jennifer Maruno, illus. Scot Ritchie

Book Review: The Scariest Book Ever, Bob Shea

Book Review: I Will Read to You, Gideon Sterer, illus. Charles Santos

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3

genuinely the funniest fake "literary agent" scammer phishing attempt...

Unfinished Tales

A trio of stories

Today's quote (and oops)

Candle Arc #1: p. 1 color test

A mixed bag of mostly viewings.

typo du jour

Reading Notes

Queen Demon review

oops, wrong popular culture

Farewell: Greg Hastings

Candle Arc #1

Louisiana Zine Fest tomorrow!

Hello

Online Event

Comment notifications

Voyages to the Real, the Wondrous, and the Surreal

Digital decluttering

Profile

January 2017

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Style Credit

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