Network

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abandoned

DNFs

Seven Devils by Elizabeth May and Laura Lam

Enemies to lovers sapphic (at least that’s where I assume it’s going, based on the setup) scifi about the heir to the evil galactic empire running away to join the rebellion, and the ship mechanic she is forced to work with despite bad history. Sounds potentially fun, right? It might be, but this was sold as adult and no. Incorrect. This reads so much like YA, I had formed this opinion before even finishing the first page. Not in the mood, particularly for this brand of YA where the main characters are supposed to be in their twenties but are in their feelings – and their feelings about their feelings – as if they are sixteen. Probably reads better if you know what it is going in. Why do publishers mismarket a book like this?

Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn

Woof. If I’d read this in the 90’s when it came out, I would have eaten it up with a spoon. It’s 90’s romantasy, using that definition of romantasy as ‘reads like YA but with more sex.’ I read 25% of this and came so close to liking it. Young prince who wants to do things smarter not harder, and what’s up with the dragons. But I just cannot with the gender and sexual politics here. There was a lot that was hard to swallow (the dying father advising his son to make sure his wife knows who is the “master” in bed, and the book is like way into that) but I noped out for good when our hero finds out our heroine isn’t a virgin (like he is) and throws a massive tantrum. I suspect he will improve but nope. Out.

The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

Cozy fantasy about the travelling seer whose lonely existence is disrupted by accidentally acquiring a found family, also various plot things. Lots of people like this one. I have no soul, so was variously bored and annoyed by it, even though it is perfectly competent at what it is doing.

Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman

Trans scifi with a literary bent that is supposedly about the trans kid of trans parents discovering that they were revolutionaries after their deaths. I could not pay attention to this to save my life, and I don’t know why, since I gave up so early and have little sense of it. Worth trying again sometime?

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Book review: Annihilation

Today I wrapped up Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, a horror/sci-fi novel with fantastical (?) elements about a biologist exploring a very unsettling landscape.

There are no names given in this book—the narrator and protagonist is simply "the Biologist," and she refers to her other three teammates by their job titles as well. Locations outside of the place they're exploring—Area X—are not given either, but the world is implied to be much the same as our own, with Area X a troubling and relatively recent anomaly. A private company hires the Biologist and her colleagues to venture into this strange place and take notes. They are the 12th such expedition.

I appreciate that much of the horror in Annihilation isn't in-your-face: it's the slow build of things that are just off. This quiet and subtle approach means that when something extreme happens, it feels extreme. The Biologist and her colleagues know that Area X is dangerous before they venture in, but even so, they are unprepared for how and to what degree. VanderMeer's portrayal of how trust frays among relative strangers under these conditions felt realistic.

( Read more... )

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Super Boba Cafe # 1, by Nidhi Chanani

A middle-grade graphic novel about a boba shop with a secret.

Aria comes to stay with her grandmother in San Francisco for the summer to escape a bad social situation. Her grandmother owns a boba shop that doesn't seem too popular, and Aria throws herself into making it more so - most successfully when Grandma's cat Bao has eight kittens, and Aria advertises it as a kitten cafe. But why is Grandma so adamant about never letting Aria set foot in the kitchen, and kicking out the customers at 6:00 on the dot? Why do the prairie dogs in the backyard seem so smart?

This graphic novel has absolutely adorable illustrations. The story isn't as strong. The first half is mostly a realistic, gentle, cozy slice of life. The second half is a fantasy adventure with light horror aspects. Even though the latter is throughly foreshadowed in the former, it still feels kind of like two books jammed together.

My larger issue was with tone and content that also felt jammed together. The book is somewhat didactic - which is fine, especially in a middle-grade book - but I feel like if the book is teaching lessons, it should teach them consistently and appropriately. The lessons in this book were a bit off or inconsistent, creating an uncanny valley feeling.

Spoilers! ( Read more... )

Fantastic art, kind of odd story.

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call RFK Jr. about vaccine access

If anyone wants to call RFK Jr. to complain about him not funding vaccines, the phone number is 202-690-7000. I called during office hours (8:30-5 Eastern time) and got voicemail. The message asked for a phone number, and claimed someone would call me back.

If anyone wants a script, my message was:

My name is Vicki Rosenzweig. I’m calling from Boston, to demand that the secretary restore funding for MRNA vaccines. He must make the fall covid and flu boosters available to everyone. I’m immune-compromised, and my safety depends on my family being vaccinated and not giving me a virus. My phone number is [your number here]

Edit as appropriate.

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Book review: "The Dispossessed"

Title: The Dispossessed
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: Fantasy, speculative fiction

"There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, the idea of a boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing more important than that wall."

I knew this book was going to hit hard from the opening paragraph above, and it did not disappoint. I've enjoyed Ursula Le Guin's work before--The Left Hand of Darkness is one of my favorite books—and I absolutely see why The Dispossessed is considered one of her crowning pieces. The setting for this book is a planet and its moon—Urras, the planet, is a lush world not dissimilar from Earth, which is home to several capitalist countries and at least one socialist country; and Anarres, the moon, which is a dusty, resource-scanty place home to a society of anarchists who fled from Urras just under two hundred years ago. The core of the novel concerns Shevek, a theoretical physicist from Anarres who chooses to relocate to Urras.

Le Guin captures truly great sci-fi because this work is so imbued with curiosity. Le Guin is asking questions at the heart of any great sci-fi work: What defines humanity? What can we achieve, and how is it done, and what does that mean for society? What is society? What does it mean to be alone? What does it mean to be part of a whole? To me, sci-fi can't be truly sci-fi without a measure of philosophy, and The Dispossessed has this in droves.

( Read more... )

RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

Who is winning, you or you TBR list?

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The Bog Wife, by Kay Chronister

The Haddesley family has an ancient tradition: when the patriarch dies, the oldest son summons a wife from the bog. Now living in Appalachia, the current patriarch is dying and a new bog wife must be summoned soon, but their covenant with the bog may be going wrong: one daughter fled years ago to live in the modern world, the last bog wife vanished under mysterious circumstances, the bog is drying up, and something very bad has happened to the oldest son...

Isn't that an amazing premise? The actual book absolutely lives up to it, but not in the way that I expected.

It was marketed as horror, and was the inaugural book of the Paper & Clay horror book club. But my very first question to the club was "Do you think this book is horror?"

The club's consensus was no, or not exactly; it definitely has strong folk horror elements, but overall we found it hard to categorize by genre. I am currently cross-shelving it in literary fiction. We all loved it though, and it was a great book to discuss in a book club; very thought-provoking.

One of the aspects I enjoyed was how unpredictable it was. The plot both did and didn't go in directions I expected, partly because the pacing was also unpredictable: events didn't happen at the pace or in the order I expected from the premise. If the book sounds interesting to you, I recommend not spoiling yourself.

The family is a basically a small family cult, living in depressing squalor under the rule of the patriarch. It's basically anti-cottagecore, where being close to nature in modern America may mean deluding yourself that you're living an ancient tradition of natural life where you're not even close to being self-sustaining, but also missing all the advantages of modern life like medical treatment and hot water. I found all this incredibly relatable and validating, as I grew up in similar circumstances though with the reason of religion rather than an ancient covenant with the bog.

The family has been psychologically twisted by their circumstances, so they're all pretty weird and also don't get along. I didn't like them for large stretches, but I did care a lot about them all by the end, and was very invested in their fates. (Except the patriarch. He can go fuck himself.)

It's beautifully written, incredibly atmospheric, and very well-characterized. The atmosphere is very oppressive and claustrophobic, but if you're up for the journey, it will take you somewhere very worthwhile. The book club discussion of the ending was completely split on its emotional implications (not on the actual events, those are clear): we were equally divided between thinking it was mostly hopeful/uplifing with bittersweet elements, mostly sad with some hopeful elements, and perfectly bittersweet.

SPOILERS!

( Read more... )

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Massachusetts Universal Voting Restoration

For anyone registered to vote in Massachusetts -- you can sign up to get reminded when it's time to officially sign papers to put on the Massachusetts ballot a measure to repeal the Massachusetts constitutional amendment that took the right to vote away from people serving felony sentences.

From an email from Progressive Mass:

Unlock Democracy in Massachusetts

In 2000, Massachusetts passed a constitutional amendment that took away voting rights from people incarcerated for a felony conviction. This stripping of rights was in response to political organizing happening in prison. The Empowering Descendant Communities to Unlock Democracy project and allies aim to get voting rights restoration on the statewide ballot. If you are a registered voter in Massachusetts, please take a minute to fill out our pledge form now: https://tinyurl.com/uvrpledge. Once the Attorney General approves the language, organizers will reach out to those who filled out the pledge with dates/locations for nearby signature collection efforts.

The EDC to Unlock Democracy is is committed to ensuring that democracy does not stop at prisons and jails in Massachusetts. It is a collaborative project between the Democracy Behind Bars Coalition, the African American Coalition Committee at MCI-Norfolk, Healing our Land, Inc., and more. To get in touch email EDCtoUnlockDemocracyMA@gmail.com.

July check-in post

July was a quieter month on the community, with four posts:

On July 17,

gingicat posted about virtual Good Trouble Lives on rallies.

On July 22,

executrix post about a Womens March program on feminism and fan culture.

Also on July 22,

gingicat warned about apparent voter registration shenanigans and linked to a place to check your registration.

On July 30, I posted about a call for public comments about gender-affirming care.

Thanks to everyone who posted.

Here's a poll to tell us what you've been doing:

Poll #33466

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 17

View Respondents

Since the last check-in, I....

View Answers

called one of my senators
4 (23.5%)

called my other senator
4 (23.5%)

called my congressmember
4 (23.5%)

called my governor
1 (5.9%)

called my mayor, state rep, or other local official
1 (5.9%)

did get-out-the-vote work, such as postcarding or phone banking
0 (0.0%)

voted
1 (5.9%)

sent a postcard/email/letter/fax to a government official or agency
6 (35.3%)

went to a protest
4 (23.5%)

attended an in-person activist group
3 (17.6%)

went to a town hall
0 (0.0%)

participated in phone or online training
3 (17.6%)

donated money to a cause
10 (58.8%)

worked for a campaign
1 (5.9%)

did textbanking or phonebanking
0 (0.0%)

took care of myself
10 (58.8%)

not a US citizen, but worked in solidarity in my community
2 (11.8%)

did something else (tell us about it in comments)
4 (23.5%)

committed to action in the coming month
2 (11.8%)

As always, everyone is free to make posts about any issues and actions they think the comm should know about. You can also drop some information into a comment to our sticky post if you'd like the mods to do it.

If you're looking for information on anything else, you can use our tags to check for any ongoing actions or resources relevant to the issues you care about. I try to keep the tag list up-to-date. If you need a tag added, you can DM me.

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Silver in the Wood and Drowned Country by Emily Tesh

Greenhollow duology

3/5. Pair of novellas about the wild man of the wood and the folklorist who moves in next door.

Okay, now I’m taking this personally. I picked these up because I got interested in Tesh, who wrote a book sharing some themes with mine. But I thought I wouldn’t be as into these and we wouldn’t crossover interests here because I’m generally meh on British folklore. And indeed, these are well-written, but not very interesting to me.

But do you know what the second one is about? In part, it’s about the mistakes of a queer near-immortal who is having a really hard time loving a short-lived mortal, and who makes some bad decisions as a result. Do you know what I am currently writing about? Do you?

Content notes: Various kinds of magical mind control.

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Katabasis, by R. F. Kuang

Katabasis releases at the end of August. I read an advance copy.

I have to conclude that R. F. Kuang's fiction is just not to my taste. This is the first book of hers that I even managed to finish, having previously given up on both Babel (anvillicious, with anvillicious footnotes) and The Poppy War (boring) quite early on. However, a lot of my customers love her books, so I will buy and sell multiple copies of this one.

The structure and concept of Katabasis is quite appealing. Alice Law is at magic college, obsessively determined to succeed. When exploitative working conditions lead to her making a mistake that gorily kills her mentor Professor Grimes, Alice still needs his recommendation... so she goes to Hell to fetch him back! She's followed by another student, Peter, who is a perfect genius who she doesn't realize is in love with her. Their journey through Hell takes up almost all of the book, interspersed by flashbacks to college.

Lots of people will undoubtedly love this book. I found it thuddingly obvious and lacking in charm. The humor was mildly amusing at best. The magic is boring and highly technical. Alice is frustratingly oblivious, self-centered, and monomaniacal - which is clearly a deliberate character choice, but I did not enjoy reading about her. Hell was boring - how do you make Hell boring?!

Spoilery reveal about Peter: ( Read more... )

The entire book, I felt like I was sitting there twiddling my fingers waiting for Alice to figure out that it's not okay for college to be exploitative and abusive, that it was bad for Professor Grimes to have sexually assaulted her, that Peter loved her, and that success isn't everything. Though at least it didn't have anvillicious footnotes [1] like Babel!

[1] Legally and morally, Professor Grimes sexually assaulted Alice. It is common for survivors of sexual assault to not recognize it as such at the time, especially when the assault involves an abuse of power. [2]

[2] It is an abuse of power for a professor to make any sexual overture to a student, even a seemingly consensual [3] one.

[3] Due to the power differential, no sexual relations between a professor and a student can ever be truly consensual.

I will continue to stock Kuang's books but this is probably the last time I will attempt to actually read one.

I do love the cover.

Bujold impersonator is still scamming

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/25957796-bujold-impersonator-is-still-scamming

It is reported...

A person with the email loismcmasterb@gmail.com is out there pretending to be me. This not my email, and This Is Not Me.

This appears to be the same scammer who was impersonating me on X/Twitter and Mastodon a while back. Apparently their protocol is to engage the person in some conversation, and then try to sell them some kind of writing/editing scam.

Pass the warning along...

Ta, L.

posted by Lois McMaster Bujold on July, 30

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/25957796-bujold-impersonator-is-still-scamming

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(no subject)

Poll #33444

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 126

View Respondents

Which of these books that I've recently read would you most like me to review?

View Answers

Red Rising, by Pierce Brown. SF dystopia much beloved by many dudes.
19 (15.1%)

The Daughter's War & Blacktongue Thief, by Christopher Buehlman. Dark fantasy featuring WAR CORVIDS.
36 (28.6%)

The Bog Wife, by Kay Chronister. Very hard to categorize novel about a family whose oldest son can call a wife from the bog. Maybe.
36 (28.6%)

Katabasis, by R. F. Kuang. A descent into Hell by a pair of magic students.
51 (40.5%)

The Bewitching, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Three timelines, all involving witches.
23 (18.3%)

Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Exactly what it sounds like.
41 (32.5%)

Lone Women, by Victor LaValle. It's so much harder to write reviews of books I love.
38 (30.2%)

Troubled Waters, by Sharon Shinn. Small-scale fantasy with really original magic system; loved this.
59 (46.8%)

Hominids, by Robert Sawyer. Alternate world where Neanderthals reign meets ours.
32 (25.4%)

Under One Banner, by Graydon Saunders. Yes I will get to this, but it'll be a re-read in chunks.
13 (10.3%)

A round-up of multiple books (not the ones in this poll) with just a couple sentences each
24 (19.0%)

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

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public comments sought on gender-affirming care

The FTC is inviting public comment about gender-affirming care for minors, and alleged deception by providers. They are blatantly looking for attacks on gender-affirming care, but every unique comment posted may slow down whatever crap they're planning here.

Personalizing these comments is good, even if it's just "I'm writing from Boston."

I'm posting at the request of

minoanmiss. If anyone has a good script or talking points, I'd be delighted to add them to this post.

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The Husbands, by Holly Gramazio

This book has a hilarious premise: a single woman's attic suddenly starts producing husbands! A husband comes down from the attic of Lauren's London flat, and she's instantly in an alternate reality in which she married that guy. The decor of her flat shifts, sometimes her own body or job shifts depending on whether she now works out regularly or some such, and sometimes there's wider ripple effects. Lauren is always aware of the changes, but no one else is. If the husband goes back into the attic, he vanishes and a new husband comes down.

I adore this premise, and the book absolutely commits to it. It is 100% about husbands coming down from the attic. Unfortunately, I didn't really like the way it explored the premise. It's largely a metaphor for dating in a time when you can swipe on an internet profile and instantly get rid of a possible match, so Lauren cycles through hundreds of husbands, often rejecting them at a glance, and we only ever get to know a very small number of them. Of the ones we do get to know, they're mostly fairly one-note - handsome and nice and American, handsome and nice but chews with his mouth open, handsome and nice but boring, or mean and hard to get rid of. The falling Ken dolls cover is apt in more ways than one. Lauren is also pretty one-note - shallow and frantic.

I also had an issue with the pacing. There's so much repetition of the same actions. A husband comes down, Lauren examines her text messages and photos for evidence of their history together, Lauren calls her friends to see what they know about him. A husband comes down, Lauren takes one look at him and sends him back. Some of this is funny but it gets old. The book felt at least 50 pages longer than it needed to be.

I would have liked the book a lot more if there had been way fewer husbands, and more time spent with each one. I never really got a sense of what Lauren wanted in a man, apart from some surface-level characteristics, or what she wanted in life. Her lives were also generally not that different, which didn't help.

There was one part that I really liked and was actually surprising.

( Read more... )

Rec by Naomi Kritzer, who liked it more than I did. But thanks for the rec! It was an interesting read, and not one I'd have found by myself.

My absolute favorite alternate lives story remains the novella And Then There were (N-One), by Sarah Pinsker, available free online at that link.

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type: meme

RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

What are you reading?

Sneaky signal-boost: [Sign-Up Post] October Review-a-Thon 2025

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Book review: "Someone You Can Build a Nest In" by John Wiswell

Title: Someone You Can Build a Nest In
Author: John Wiswell
Genre: Fiction, fantasy, romance

A+ Library is my bit where I review books with asexual and aromantic characters.

Went on a weekend trip with the squad this weekend and we had to stop at the local Barnes and Noble (It's been a while since I was in one that big! Ours in my town is now in the mall, so it's quite small.) where I spent too much and picked up some things on my TBR plus my own copy of Our Wives Under the Sea. We had some downtime on the trip and I managed to finish the first of the new books while we were there. This was Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell.

I wanted so much to like this book, and not just because I was charmed by the purple-themed Barnes and Noble-exclusive cover and edging. It landed on my TBR for being an asexual romance (sapphic, if you take Shesheshen for female, which you don't have to do), and I enjoyed the plot concept. Unfortunately, I did not like the book. If I had not paid for it I probably would not have finished it. The following review is not to say it's a bad book—it has an average rating of 4.05 stars on StoryGraph based on over 6,000 reviews, so obviously people like it—but to say that it specifically had a number of things that made it a big thumbs down for me.

The character: Shesheshen, asexual; Homily, asexual

Final verdict: Thumbs down

Previous read: To Be Taught, if Fortunate

( Full review below )

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Chill Chinese Reality Shows Rec List

In the last few years I’ve gotten into Chinese reality shows. I like them because they are relaxing, feature teamwork, and often have fun outfits and stage design. They are also helpful for my Chinese language study.

The term for all of these shows in Mandarin is zongyijiemu (綜藝節目) which I most often see translated as “variety show”, but seems to be a term for any kind of unscripted TV. I’ve used the term reality show here because that’s what I’m more familiar with and what I think will be more familiar to Lady Business readers.

Reality shows are a bit of a sidestep from my love of Chinese dramas. I got into these in part because I wanted to see my favorite actors in other contexts, and because I wanted something that worked for me to watch in short chunks, but was low stress. I have RSI problems with my hands and it helps to take frequent short rests, and these types of shows work well for me as things to watch in my hand breaks. These shows tend to have quite long episodes (over an hour) and I would have trouble watching an episode in one go but they work for me in smaller pieces.

( Read more... )

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Book review: "How I Survived a Chinese Reeducation Camp" by Gulbahar Haitiwaji

Title: How I Survived a Chinese "Reeducation" Camp: A Uyghur Woman's Story
Author: Gulbahar Haitiwaji with Rozenn Morgat
Genre: Nonfiction, memoir

Some books you read not for the experience of reading them, but for the information within. Such is the case with Gulbahar Haitiwaji's memoir, How I Survived a Chinese "Reeducation" Camp: A Uyghur Woman's Story. As the title suggests, this is a first-person account of Haitiwaji's experience in Xinjiang, where she was subjected to "reeducation" on suspicion of terroristic activity. This book was written with the help of Rozenn Morgat and Haitiwaji's daughter Gulhumar, and translated from French by Edward Gauvin.

To quickly summarize for anyone unaware, the Uyghurs (also spelled "Uighur") are an ethnic minority in China, inhabiting the northwestern region of Xinjiang, which is quite large. They are predominantly Muslim; speak Uyghur, a Turkic language; and frequently have more culturally in common with neighboring Kazakhstan and Tajikistan than with the Han in eastern China. For many decades, the Chinese government has viewed Uyghurs with suspicion and since the 1950s has continually ramped up levels of surveillance against Xinjiang. I wrote a paper on this situation in graduate school several years ago concluding that China is enacting a slow genocide against Uyghurs, with the intent of fully wiping out their culture.

Uyghurs are subjected to relentless video surveillance, intrusive police home visits, regularly summoned to the police station for interrogation without any suspicion of a real crime, forcibly sterilized, and punished for any excessive displays of religiosity such as wearing a hijab or visiting mosque too frequently. Some years ago, "reeducation schools" entered the picture.

( Read more... )

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movie: the old guard

New Vid: Just To Ask A Dance | The Old Guard movies

Title: Just To Ask A Dance
Fandom: The Old Guard & The Old Guard 2
Music: Just To Ask A Dance by Heartworms
Summary: 'think I'll die/ when you die, I'll die, a mutual sigh/ with your hand in mine'
Notes: Premiered at DC-Slash 2025!
Warnings: quick zooms in the source, flickering lights, blood, violence

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