Okay, so I'm going to be...

Jul. 11th, 2025 08:19 pm
catherineldf: (Default)
[personal profile] catherineldf
at Readercon next week as a guest and I'm quite excited about it! I also have no plans whatsoever, beyond programming. Want to hang out? Eat a meal? Let me know!

Sidetracks - July 11, 2025

Jul. 11th, 2025 06:51 pm
helloladies: Gray icon with a horseshoe open side facing down with pink text underneath that says Sidetracks (sidetracks)
[personal profile] helloladies posting in [community profile] ladybusiness
Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.
Read more... )
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[personal profile] sartorias
Actually I've been doing a ton of reading while I shake off the last of this influenza, which is mostly now lingering chest crud and zero stamina.

While nothing has blown me away, and I've abandoned some other "not for me" books, I did make a virtuous start on The Cull. Beginning with C.S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet, first published in 1938.

My copy, the 1965 paperback edition printed in the US, has a cover that actually sort of fits the book, unlike a lot of SF covers of the time depicting generic space skies and cigar rocket ships, with or without a scantily clad lady joined by guys in glass helmets and bulky space suits.

No woman on the cover here, which would have been false advertising as the only woman on stage during the entire novel is a distraught country housewife in the first few pages. (And no, I do not think that this is a sign that Lewis despised women, so much as that he had spent all his childhood and early manhood among males, so his default characters are going to be "he" among "hims". But that's a discussion for another book.)

I've had Lewis's space trilogy since high school (1968). This one I read I think twice, once that year, and then again when the Mythopoeic Society had branches and our West LA discussion group covered the three books.

Teen-me trudged through the first reading looking for story elements that would interest me, and though a line here and there was promising, I found it overall tedious, missing the humor entirely. On that second reading during my college years I saw the humor, and found more to appreciate in Lewis's thematic argument, but that was a lukewarm enough response that I never reread it during the ensuing fifty years.

Now in old age it's time to cull a massive print library that neither of my kids wants to inherit. What to keep and what to donate? I reread this book finally, and found myself largely charmed. The structure is strongly reminiscent of the fin de siecle SF of Wells, Verne, etc--inheritors of the immensely popular "travelogue" of the 1600-1700s--which means it moves rather slowly, full of the description of discovery (and anticipatory terror) as its protagonist, a scholar named Ransom, stumbles into a situation that gets him kidnapped by a figure from his boarding school days, Weston, and Weston's companion, a man named Devine.

As was common in the all-male world of British men of Lewis's social strata, the men all go by last names--I don't think Weston or Devine are ever given a first name, and there are at most two mentions of Ransom's first name, Elwin, which I suspect was only added as a nod to JRRT. Apparently this book owes its origin to a bet made between Lewis and Tolkien, which I think worth mentioning because of the (I think totally wrong) assumptions that Lewis was anti-science. The bet, and the dedication to Lewis's brother, make it plain that they read and enjoyed science fiction--had as boys.

I suppose it's possible to eagerly read SF and still be anti-science, but I don't think that's the case here; accusations that Lewis hates scientific progress seem to go hand-in-hand with scorn for Lewis's Christianity. But I see the scientific knowledge of mid-thirties all over this book. In fact, I don't recollect reading in other contemporary SF (admittedly I haven't read a lot of it) the idea that once you're out of Earth's gravity well, notions of up and down become entirely arbitrary. Though Lewis seems not to understand freefall, he does represent the changes in gravity and in light and heat--it seems to me that the science, though full of errors that are now common knowledge, was as up-to-date as he could make it. That also shows in the meticulous worldbuilding--and to some extent in the fun he had building his Martian language.

What he argues against when the three men are at last brought before the god-like Oyarsa, is a certain attitude toward Progress as understood then, and also up through my entire childhood: that it didn't matter what you did to other beings or to the environment, as long as it was in the name of Progress or Humanity. We get little throwaways right from the start that Lewis's stance clear, such as when Devine and Weston squabble about having a guard dog to protect their secret space ship, but Devine points out that Weston had had one but experimented on it.

Lewis hated vivisection. He knew it was torture for the poor helpless beasts in the hands of the vivisectionists, who believed animals had no feelings, etc etc. He also hated the byproducts of mass industrialization, as he makes plain in vivid images. Lewis also makes reference to splitting the atom and its possible results; I think it worthwhile to note that during the thirties no one knew what the result would be--but there was a lot of rhetoric hammering that we need bigger and better bombs, and splitting the atom would give us that. All in the name of Humanity. Individual lives have no meaning, and can be sacrificed with impunity as long as it's in the name of "saving Humanity."

As his theme develops, it's made very clear that moral dilemmas trouble Ransom--he's aware that humans contain the capability for brilliant innovation and for vast cruelty. He also holds up for scruntiny the idea that the (white) man is the pinnacle of intelligence in the cosmos. The scene when Weston talks excruciating pidgin in his determination to subordinate the Martians and their culture to the level of "tribal witch doctors" is equally hilarious and cringey.

In short, it took over fifty years for me to appreciate this book within the context of its time. I don't feel any impulse to eagerly reread it, but I might some day. At any rate, it stays on the shelf.
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[personal profile] renay posting in [community profile] ladybusiness
Well, I made a reading list last month...how did I do? Read more... )
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[personal profile] coffeeandink

Ghost Quartet is a band: Dave Malloy on keyboard, Brent Arnold on cello, Gelsey Bell and Brittain Ashford on various instruments, and everyone providing vocals. Ghost Quartet is a song cycle, a concert album performed semi-staged, a mash-up of "Snow White, Rose Red," The One Thousand and One Nights, the Noh play Matsukaze, "Cruel Sister", "The Fall of the House of Usher", the front page photo of a fatal train accident, and a grab bag of Twilight Zone episodes. The ghost of Thelonious Monk is sometimes invoked, but does not appear; whisky is often invoked, and, if you see the show live, will most certainly appear. "I'm confused/And more than a little frightened," says (one incarnation of) the (more-or-less) protagonist. "It's okay, my dear," her sister/lover/mother/daughter/deuteragonist reassures her, "this is a circular story."

Once upon a time two sisters fell in love with an astronomer who lived in a tree. He seduced Rose, the younger, then stole her work ("for a prestigious astronomy journal"), and then abandoned her for her sister, Pearl. Rose asked a bear to maul the astronomer in revenge, but the bear first demanded a pot of honey, a piece of stardust, a secret baptism, and a photograph of a ghost. (The music is a direct quote of the list of spell ingredients from Into the Woods.) Rose searches for all these ingredients through multiple lifetimes; and that's the plot.

Except it is much less comprehensible than that. The songs are nested in each other like Scheherazade's stories; you can follow from one song to the next, but retracing the connections in memory is impossible; this is less a narrative than a maze. Surreal timelines crash together in atonal cacophany; one moment Dave Malloy, or a nameless astronomer played by Dave Malloy, or Dave Malloy playing Dave Malloy is trying to solve epistemology and another moment the entire house of Usher, or all the actors, are telling you about their favorite whiskies. The climax is a subway accident we have glimpsed before, in aftermath, in full, circling around it, a trauma and a terror that cannot be faced directly; the crash is the fall of a house is the failure to act is the failure to look is the failure to look away.

There are two recordings available. Ghost Quartet, recorded in a studio, has cleaner audio, but Live at the McKitterick includes more of the interstitial scenes and feels more like the performance.

In Greenwood Cemetery, there were three slightly raised stages separated by batches of folding chairs, one for Dave Malloy, one for Brent Arnold, and one for Gelsey Bell and Brittain Ashford, with a flat patch of grass in the center across which they sang to each other, and into which they sometimes moved; you could sit in the chairs, or on cushions in front of the first row, or with cheaper tickets you could sit in the grass on the very low hills above the staging area, among the monuments and gravestones, and, presumably, among more ghosts. The show started a little before sunset; I saw a hawk fly over, and I could hear birds singing along when the humans sang a capella. It was in the middle of Brooklyn, so even after dark I couldn't see stars; but fireflies sparked everywhere.

[heron fic] Hegesistratus

Jul. 5th, 2025 10:37 am
sanguinity: woodcut by M.C. Escher, "Snakes" (Default)
[personal profile] sanguinity
Been reading a lot of Herodotus lately. The flight of Hegesistratus made me think of Ewen.

Hegesistratus (100 words) by sanguinity
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Jacobite Trilogy | The Flight of the Heron Series - D. K. Broster, The Histories - Herodotus
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Ewen Cameron
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Drabble, Angst
Summary:

Ewen Cameron, lame and hunted after his escape at High Bridge, remembers his childhood daydreams.



...now back to finishing Book IX before book group tomorrow!

hey baby, it's the Fourth of July

Jul. 4th, 2025 03:27 pm
gwynnega: (books poisoninjest)
[personal profile] gwynnega
I think this is the first 4th of July that I've gone to a protest. Today's Los Feliz protest was smaller than the No Kings one, but still sizable and raucous. Many motorists honked their support. (At one point there was an "ICE OUT! LET'S GO!" chant to the tune of "Blitzkrieg Bop.") I'm so glad I went. Afterwards I stopped in at Skylight Books, which had a signboard outside reading: "BRING THE HEAT. F*CK ICE."

Now I'm listening to X's See How We Are, as is my 4th of July tradition.

Sales and other updatey things

Jul. 1st, 2025 08:18 pm
catherineldf: (Default)
[personal profile] catherineldf
Spent the weekend peddling books at TC Pride and it was a....LOT. Hot, sporadic rainstorms (with a big one overnight that trashed some folk's tents) and other wackiness. Full writeup here. Short version: terrible location, lower sales than last year, a state funeral next door with all that goes with that, primo people watching, good chats, nice folks and TC Pride in all its gigantic glory. Also, vendor pals gave me a piece of really tasty homemade coffeecake and Alexa (my assistant) is a champ.

The other cool thing that happened was that the Queen of Swords Press reissue of the classic gay fantasy, Point of Hopes (Astreiant #1) by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett, won the Midwest Book Award from the Midwest Independent Publisher's Association! Very pleased about this. Hopes was our third title to be a finalist for these awards and is now our second award-winning title after The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper by A.J. Fitzwater, winner of a Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Collection. :-D

2 days left on the Pride StoryBundle! Melissa and I got a really great lineup this year and we've raised $770 for Rainbow Railroad so far. I might add that the proceeds from this will also be a nice help to the participating publishers and authors, including my own press, and that, seeing as I will be unemployed by Thursday, my half of the curator's fee will help cover my travel expenses for Readercon which would be super helpful. If you're in a position to get one and it looks appealing, maybe pick one up?

The Summer/Winter Smashwords Sale has also kicked off today and you can get a great deal on Queen of Swords Press titles, including my own books. This is traditionally a solid sale for us and it means that I can pay myself more this month if it goes well. Also, speaking of sales, the audiobook for my second Wolves of Wolf's Point novel, Blood Moon, is on sale right now through 7/15. The narrator that Tantor hired is really good - I've been enjoying listening to her reading my books while I get regrounded for/in Book 3.

What am I going to do for the next couple of weeks? Honestly, rest. Write. Read. Get caught up on projects like the developmental editing class I paid to take online...last year. Clear some stuff out of the house. Put some things up for sale. Spend time with people who I've wanted to see for quite a while. Spend some time with my kitties (I don't think Shu will be around a whole lot longer). Can I afford to retire? Alas, no. But I have got to unglue from the ceiling and the last 8 months of this job have been toxic with a cherry on top. I will need to start job hunting soon after I get back from Readercon though and possibly exploring other areas of endeavor if IT has dried up for me so lots of uncertainty ahead. In the meantime, if you are in a position to support me recovering for a bit, consider pledging the Patreon and buying a book or two. I also have a Ko-fi and will be more active out there soon. Stay tuned! More updates ahead.
And hugs to everyone who needs them.




Robert and Gracia Fay Ellwood

Jul. 1st, 2025 10:03 am
sartorias: (Default)
[personal profile] sartorias
I think one or two old Mythies might still be reading here; at any rate, these old friends had been on my mind this spring. Came back to discover that they died a week apart at the end of May/beginning of June.

They met in the very early sixties at the U of Chicago, where both were studying. Robert was a bit on the spectrum; he said, and he stuck with it, he would never date anyone who couldn't read and love Lord of the Rings, which had blown him away when it came out. In retrospect I don't even know how he stumbled across it because to my later knowledge of him he didn't read fiction. Maybe he thought it was a northern saga when he stumbled on the first volume? Anyway, his field was religion and Japanese literature, and I remember him sitting in his rose garden reading copies of ancient Japanese texts for pleasure.

She was also blown away by it, but not especially by him. But he'd fallen hard for her, and when she also loved LOTR, he wasn't about to give up. They married around 1963, I think; by the time I met them in 1967, they were living in West LA, he a professor of Religious Studies at USC. They used to host many meetings of the early Mythopoeic Society; he'd disappear while she socialized with us gawky teens. She was a great role model for us; she was a scholar, married to someone who respected her brains, which was tough to find during the mid and late sixties.

I was on hand to deliver both their kids, now middle-aged. He married my spouse and me in 1980. They became Quakers later; they were firm pacifists and human rights advocates.

Time is just so relentless! But they used theirs well, living gently and kindly, always loving beauty, grace, and laughter.

culture consumed (June, 2025)

Jun. 30th, 2025 10:05 pm
hermionesviolin: a build-a-bear, facing the viewer, with a white t-shirt and a rainbow stitched tattoo bicep tattoo (pride)
[personal profile] hermionesviolin
The last few months (March, April, May) I keep just posting a draft private-locked because I get overwhelmed trying to write up something or other from the month.  But I think I managed a publishable June one.

film

As mentioned [in the private-locked May entry], I got a virtual pass for NewFest Pride (May 29 - June 2).

  • Heightened Scrutiny
    A riveting documentary that sees ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio, veteran journalists, and unwavering activists show strength and resistance in the face of an actively unfolding story around anti-trans legislation


    From the intrepid filmmakers behind the groundbreaking DISCOLURE, this riveting documentary traces the arc of an epic legal battle alongside a revealing breakdown of anti-trans mainstream media bias. Follow Queens-based ACLU attorney, father, and cat lover Chase Strangio – the first out trans person to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court – as he strategizes to fight a 2023 Tennessee state law banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, with a consequential decision expected in June 2025.


    Resistance and logic are key as veteran journalists and activists – along with Strangio – lucidly dismantle distorted, panic-inducing rhetoric and collectively respond to the shocking complicity hard-won trans rights being rolled back. HEIGHTENED SCRUTINY compelling captures the timely fight against anti-trans legislation all the way to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court and provides a powerful call to action for bodily autonomy, civil rights, and truth.

    I'm glad I managed to see this film before the Skrmetti decision dropped, because I think it would have felt a lot harder to watch it afterward.

  • I was bummed that Enigma didn't show up as available for me in the virtual pass, even though it was originally listed as included in that pass.  I know the film fest indicated that due to licensing agreements, virtual screenings could also "sell out," so it's possible that happened?  But I would have thought it would say that -- rather than just not showing up at all.  I guess I could have tried to reach out at someone at the festival about it, but apparently I was not that invested.

books
live music
  • Kinsey Scales Pride Concert 2025! at my local library with Abby
    🏳️‍🌈 Come join us at the Medford Public Library for our free annual Pride Concert! 🏳️‍🌈

    Saturday, June 21st, at 4:30pm

    The theme of this year's concert is POWER! We will be performing a cappella arrangements of music from artists like Rage Against the Machine, Diana Ross, and many more, centered around reclaiming power and celebrating strength in community.

    - Masking is strongly encouraged

    - Be advised that some songs may not be appropriate for small children

    See you there! 🌈🎶

    Yes, they legit did an a cappella arrangement of Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name." (It was the last song before the intermission, and they warned people that they might wanna take their kids out to intermission early.)

    A bunch of the songs are conversations, and I thought the acting was particularly good in "The Wedding Song" from Hadestown (though generally good overall).

tv
  • Ironheart episodes 1-3 with Abby

    It's the new Marvel mini-series -- starring the black woman MIT student who has a part in the second Black Panther movie.  The first 3 episodes dropped last Tuesday, and we watched them over the weekend.  The next 3 episodes drop tomorrow night, and we'll probably watch them separately (Abby left town tonight for some travel, and we won't see each other for over 2 weeks -- and we'll first see each other while visiting my family for a few days).

***

Currently Reading:

[bff book club] Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction by Shira Hassan (with Foreword by adrienne maree brown & Introduction by Tourmaline) (2022)

Changelings: An Autistic Trans Anthology edited by Ryan Vale and Ocean Riley (2023) -- a trans-masc and non-binary anthology, though apparently Extraterrestrials, the trans-fem and non-binary anthology they worked on next, is in fact in progress (I reached out to Ryan over the weekend, and he said, "We are currently in the editing stages and are hoping to publish by the end of 2025.")

Reading Next:

As mentioned above, potentially more of the Amelia Temple books (the Beneath Strange Lights sequels).

This month I definitely leaned into some less brain-heavy reading, and I think that will continue.  I got a bunch of queer YA and some trans memoirs from the library, since that was the closest I could figure out to what my brain was wanting.

I'm gonna be traveling for most of July and don't have much book club reading for that month. Though I also have a week until I travel, so I can't actually save all my library books for my travel -- plus I'm not in transit that much, so I shouldn't over-expect how much reading I'll get done in transit.

my one book club book for July:

[July 30 "June" DEI book club -- Pride Month] The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen (2020) -- YA fiction, graphic novel, gay son of Vietnamese immigrants

and for August:

[Aug 10 feminist sff book club] Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (2023)

[Aug 14 local library rainbow book group] The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy (2024) -- my suggestion! (and The Transfeminine Review 2024 Reader's Choice Award winner for Outstanding Fantasy -- and shortlisted for TFR’s Best Transfeminine Fiction of 2024 Award)

[Aug 22 work book club] Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao (2025)

[edit: I have not actually asked if we wanna do DEI book club in August. June's meeting got pushed to late July because of people's vacation plans, so I'm imagining we'll punt August and just do September. It doesn't feel like it makes sense to try to discuss August plans when people's being-around overlaps so little, since it would then be a very long asynchronous conversation process.]

So I will definitely potentially try to do some book club reading during my travels since my August is front-loaded with book clubs (and the first two August book club books are both kinda long).

sanguinity: woodcut by M.C. Escher, "Snakes" (Default)
[personal profile] sanguinity
Pursuant to yesterday's (locked) post where I discussed federal public health funding:

'Where's our money?' CDC grant funding is moving so slowly layoffs are happening (NPR)

God, that's eerie, to see NPR saying the same thing I was saying.

The grants mentioned in the article are all national in scope, btw: it's everybody who's not getting these grants, not just Texas or North Carolina. These grants aren't flashy or sexy, but they absolutely save lives.

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