azara | Reading

I must admit, I was going, 'And today's Mandy Rice Davies' Well, He Would, Wouldn't He, Award, Goes to Him': Thrillers should be on UK school curriculum to boost reading, says Lee Child.

NB I'm not entirely sure Mr Child is up to date with what is currently on school syllabi and in school libraries, in particular on the basis of that Carol Atherton book, Reading Lessons I was reading recently....(on which I commented, 'how the teaching of EngLit has changed since My Day....'

Does he really think schoolkids get plonked down with David Copperfield in their tiny hands at an early age?

(I think I was, what, 13 and in the top stream at a grammar school when we first got it, and that was back in the Upper Neolithic when we had to read it chiselled on granite slabs. I suspect things have moved on since then.)

And my dr rdrz know me and that I am all for reading should be pleasurable and people should read what they like and children's reading should not be gatekept - hat-tip here to Mr Fischer at my primary school who was all 'Comics are not the devil, comics can be a good thing' which was pretty progressive for 1950 something.

But maybe I'm most in particular raising my eyebrows when A Particular Genre is being touted, and moreover, one that is, shall we say, bloke-coded?

I think he's making a lot of assumptions there about what kids will read and want to read, but what do I know, I was hyper-lexical from an early age.

james_davis_nicoll

In which history long forgotten is recovered.

Abeni and the Kingdom of Gold (Abeni’s Song, volume 2) by P. Djèlí Clark

oursin

Trust's £330k appeal to buy Cerne Giant's 'lair' - if anyone is unaware of the existence of the Cerne Giant, I should issue a NSFW warning for the images - 'the ancient naked figure sculpted into the chalk in Dorset' with a gigantic todger.

The trust said purchasing the land would allow the charity to restore and care for sections of chalk grassland, plant new woodland, and create habitats to support species under threat.

Well, we think there is some primeval fertility mojo all ready to support the threatened species, no?

The National Trust has looked after the Giant and the immediately surrounding sward since 1920. (I now want to poke about in the British Newspaper Archive to see what the reporting, if any, was like....)

And in related matters of burgeoning nature and the work of the National Trust, More than 300 seal pups have been born at a colony just a month into the breeding season:

Last year, 228 pups were born at Orford Ness in Suffolk, which is home to the county's first breeding colony of grey seals.
The breeding season began in November and already hundreds have been born with still about a month to go.
Matt Wilson, the trust's countryside manager, said the team believed the entire colony now consisted of more than 1,000 seals.

***

And another form of conservation: The Digital Future of Stained Glass: Data Standards and Interoperability – Why Recording Stained Glass is Important. (What this sounds like to me is a whole lot of people not talking to one another while doing very similar work and only now getting together....):

Existing data however is currently presented in wildly different formats across different databases, to varying degrees of detail and accuracy, and held on disparate websites managed by individuals. This means that the future of these resources collectively is highly insecure.

Screaming in archivist been there and done that.

james_davis_nicoll

A determined artist faces potentially lethal criticism.

The Merro Tree by Katie Waitman

oursin

Hasppy birthday,

nomeancity!

skygiants

Everything I've previously read by M.T. Anderson emotionally devastated me, so I despite the fact that Nicked was billed as a comedy I went in bravely prepared to be emotionally devastated once again.

This did not happen .... although M.T. Anderson cannot stop himself from wielding a sharp knife on occasion, it it turns out the book is indeed mostly a comedy .....

Nicked is based on a Real Historical Medieval Heist: the city of Bari is plague-ridden, and due to various political pressures the City's powers have decided that the way to resolve this is to steal the bones of St. Nicholas from their home in Myra and bring them to Bari to heal the sick, revive the tourism trade, and generally boost the city's fortunes. The central figures on this quest are Nicephorus, a very nice young monk who had the dubious fortune of receiving a dream about St. Nicholas that might possibly serve as some sort of justification for this endeavor, and Tyun, a professional relic hunter (or con artist? Who Could Say) who is not at really very nice at all but is Very Charismatic And Sexy, which is A Problem for Nicephorus.

The two books that Nicked kept reminding me of, as I read it, were Pratchett's Small Gods and Tolmie's All the Horses of Iceland. Both of those books are slightly better books than this, but as both of them are indeed exceptionally good books I don't think it takes too much away from Nicked to say that it's not quite on their level: it's still really very fun! And, unlike in those other somewhat better books, the unlikely companions do indeed get to make out!

I did end it, unsurprisingly, desperately wanting to know more about the sources on which it was based to know what we do know about this Real Historical Medieval Heist, but it turns out they are mostly not translated into English. Foiled again!

oursin

What I read

Finished Audrey Lane Stirs the Pot - teensy pedantic note that a girl who was a teenage WW2 evacuee was not going to have been called Doris after Doris Day.

I read a couple more nostalgic (I literally read these when I was still at school) Elswyth Thanes (also the ebooks are v cheap), This Was Tomorrow (1951) and Homing (1957), and apart from a couple of fortunately brief scenes in Williamsburg (I get the impression is being done up as Heritage Site with Rockefeller dough?) set in England/Europe just before and at beginning of WW2. Apart from the 2 idealistic Oxford Groupers (it's not actually named but it sounds very like) who want to shed love and light on the Nazis, nobody is for appeasement. So unlike e.g. Lanny Budd's first wife and her second (Brit aristo) husband.... There is also weird reincarnation theme going on.

Latest Literary Review.

Some while ago I was looking for my copy of The Goblin Emperor and it was not in any of the places I thought it plausibly might be and then I spotted it while dusting the bookshelves in a non-intuitive spot and have been re-reading that. Have also read the online short story Min Zemerin's Plan (The Cemeteries of Amalo, #1.5) (2022), which I hadn't come across before, and re-read The Orb of Cairado (The Chronicles of Osreth, #1.1) (2025). Does anyone know how I can get access to Lora Selezh (The Cemeteries of Amalo, #0.5), which was apparently a freebie for preorders of the Tor edition of Witness for the Dead???

On the go

Have started Dickon Edwards, Diary at the Centre of the Earth: Vol. 1 (1997-2007) (2025) - possibly a dipper-inner rather than a read straight through, though sometimes diaries that one thinks this about grab one like the Ancient Mariner, I'm looking at you Mr Isherwood.

Up Next

As may seem predictable, I am on to a re-read of Katherine Addison's Cemeteries of Amalo trilogy.

I should probably also be turning my attention to Dorothy Richardson, Pointed Roofs, for the Pilgrimage online book group discussion in early Jan.

james_davis_nicoll

The tabletop fantasy roleplaying game from Kobold Press of high adventure in a Labyrinth of infinite worlds, and more.

Bundle of Holding: Tales of the Valiant

spiralsheep

- Polls: I've probably got time to post one more poll before my dw paid time runs out, so what should I ask? :D

- Reading: 120 books to 17 Dec 2025.

117. Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales, by Heather Fawcett, 2025, fantasy romance novel, 5/5

I found the first book of this trilogy delightful (although I'm not a fan of dazed [or fainting] heroines tbh), thought the middle book meandered and repeated a tad too much, but this third book was a very good conclusion to the series (so far - although I hope Fawcett continues to grow creatively rather than repeating herself because I do think she has the imagination and skills to branch out further).

I'm sure nobody reading this hasn't heard of Emily Wilde but, just in case, the novels are secondary world fantasy / romantasy rooted in western European folk and fairy tales but with a Strange and Norrell style fake-academia framing (fake-ademia?).

pg22: If Wendell's stepmother has us slain before I have a chance to contribute to the scholarly debate, I will be very disappointed.

120. Good Days, An A-Z of Hope and Happiness, by Michael Rosen, 2025, non-fiction (self-help, philosophy, literature, autobiography, and whatever else he decides to get into).

Rosen is a National Treasure, obviously. I've just begun this but he quotes John Donne in the first chapter, which has already been in my mind recently for obvious reasons:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine
own were. Any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind;
and therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Current Mood: Busy
Current Location: Hopscotching between unflooded rivers

james_davis_nicoll

Micah was a co-worker at the theatre. He was the sort of person who becomes a front of house manager by age 18.

Micah Aaron Tajone Kalap Obituary

As it happens, the bridge nearest the funeral home was just torn down. As a result, access looks like this...

(Buses are even worse)

james_davis_nicoll

Can a community of otaku save their apartment building from gentrification? Should a community of otaku save their apartment building from gentrification?

Princess Jellyfish, volume 1 by Akiko Higashimura

oursin

I will concede that this piece on sperm donation is not about dodgy docs or freelance 'donors' but it still all sounds fairly spooky: Why are sperm donors having hundreds of children? Because while, okay, some criteria seem reasonable:

Rules vary across the world, but in the UK you also have to be relatively young - aged 18-45; be free of infections like HIV and gonorrhoea, and not be a carrier of mutations that can cause genetic conditions like cystic fibrosis, spinal muscular atrophy and sickle cell disease.

Errrr: don't I recollect seeing somewhere that the gene that conveys sickle cell, is actually protective against ?malaria so it was/is actually beneficial in certain environments - and it was like haemophilia that you had to get it from both sides for the dangers to show up?

From this small pool of donors, some men's sperm is just more popular than others.
Donors are not chosen at random. It's a similar process to the savage reality of dating apps, when some men get way more matches than others.... "You know if they're called Sven and they've got blonde hair, and they're 6 ft 4 (1.93m) and they're an athlete, and they play the fiddle and speak seven languages - you know that's far more attractive than a donor that looks like me," says male fertility expert Prof Allan Pacey, pictured, who used to run a sperm bank in Sheffield.

And how much of that is down to environment, hmmmmm? Or at least, non-genetic factors.

I am over here muttering 'Morlock Power!'

On men spreading it about, historically speaking: the challenges of illegitimacy when exploring genealogy and how to find that shadowy figure who is not on the birth certificate/in the baptismal register. (With luck he had a bastard sworn upon him when that was a thing, otherwise it's a lot more work and a lot of surmising.)

Let's blame the woman, let's let's let's, she probably did something wrong: Marked: Birthmarks and Historical Myths of Maternal Responsibility - which just mutatates and mutates, no?

A conversation with historian Dagmar Herzog on Fascism’s Body Politics and disability under fascism in her new book, The New Fascist Body

And I think relating to all these sorts of issues: Reproductive norms: stigma and disruptions in family-building:

Our expectations of conception, reproduction, and family-building are imbued with reproductive norms. In our younger years, we may imagine and expect that we will have a certain number of children at specific ages or points in the life-course, and in particular circumstances. We may think that conception will be straightforward, pregnancy will pass without complications, and our children will be healthy and without disabilities or impairments. We may have hazy, dreamy ideas of what our children will be like and perhaps more defined ideas of what we will be like as parents.

james_davis_nicoll

How great would it be to talk with animals, through magic or technology or… whatever?

Five Books About Conversing With Animals

james_davis_nicoll

Starmen marooned in barbaric America!

Hard Landing by Algis Budrys

mizkit

I was trying to get up to 50K written in 2 weeks (for reasons, and I succeeded), but I didn't have enough brain to write my book, so I asked for fic prompts and someone suggested a Kpop Demon Hunters prompt of "How Sussie ended up with Derpy's hat" and I thought, I can do that!

In an ideal world, you would go read this over at my Patreon and become a member there if you're not already, but nobody's going to strike you down for reading it here. :)

( Read more... )

oursin

[F]irst wild beaver spotted in Norfolk in 500 years and Wild beavers may have spread further than we realise:

It is not clear whether the Pensthorpe beaver, whose sex and age is unknown, was illegally released into the reserve by activists using a practice known as beaver bombing. It is possible it wandered of its own accord into the Wensum – an aquifer-fed chalk river whose name is derived from the Old English adjective for “wandering”.
“It could be a naturally dispersing wild beaver,” said Emily Bowen, a spokesperson for the Beaver Trust, a charity that aims to restore beavers to regenerate landscapes. She said that there were established wild populations in eight areas in England at the moment.
Wild beavers have also been spotted in Kent, Hampshire, Somerset, Wiltshire and Hereford, she said. Norfolk has some captive beavers but none have been reported missing.

Maybe it's a sinister beaver underground conspiracy....

And if we are talking aquatic mammals, see also otters: otters’ revival in Britain. Still rare only 20 years ago, the charismatic animals are in almost every UK river and a conservation success story.

White storks to be introduced to, believe it or not, Dagenham.

A rather different story: voyaging owls: Two burrowing owls stowed away on a cruise ship out of Miami, and are now living the high life at a Spanish resort before returning to the US next month. We think they may have been in flight from being a threatened species in Florida....

james_davis_nicoll

The TRAVELLER 2022 UPDATE corebook, ALIENS guides, sector sourcebooks, and more.

Bundle of Holding: Traveller Explorations (from 2022)

A high-power 800-page adventure for Mongoose Traveller that uncovers the greatest mysteries of Charted Space

Bundle of Holding: Traveller Ancients

james_davis_nicoll

2025: Scientists are astonished when the largest ever dinosaur fossil trackway does not lead into the House of Lords, Tate Britain breaks with English tradition by returning looted art, and in a shocking break from centuries of Catholic precedent, the new Pope is a Cubs fan.

Poll #33961 Clarke Award Finalists 2025

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 25

View Respondents

Which 2025 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
1 (4.0%)

Extremophile by Ian Green
0 (0.0%)

Private Rites by Julia Armfield
1 (4.0%)

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
17 (68.0%)

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
14 (56.0%)

Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock by Maud Woolf
0 (0.0%)

Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2025 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
Extremophile by Ian Green
Private Rites by Julia Armfield
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock by Maud Woolf