Norabelle414's Trilogy in One Part

My dogNephew, Ryder, in his Christmas pajamas

Hello and welcome! I'm Nora. I live in the Washington DC area. This is my sixteenth year in the 75ers group! How can it have been so long? Aside from books, I also love:

animals/biology/zoology - I volunteer at the National Zoo
TV - scripted only (except Taskmaster and a few documentaries), mostly science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction; especially anything based on a book
regional theater - I have season tickets to Arena Stage but I go to shows elsewhere as well
podcasts - especially about books
knitting (I'm on Ravelry), and also occasional cross stitch and embroidery
progressive politics (particularly urbanism, workers' rights, and trans rights (which shouldn't be a particularly progressive issue but here we are))

You can find me on Bluesky @ norabelle.bsky.social (now open to all, no invite needed!)

Last year I set a few "mini-goals" for my reading, as opposed to one year-long goal, and it went well so I'm doing it again:
1) Follow more people in this group DONE!
2) Write reviews promptly after finishing a book
3) Read at least two books by the same author
4) Read another book in a series I've already started DONE!
5) Read at least one book in each of the following categories: romance, science non-fiction, science fiction, fantasy, memoir, picture book, graphic novel, audiobook
6) Get caught up on a series of at least 3 books
7) Read at least 1 book published in each year from 2015 to 2025: 2015-2016, 2017, 2018-2020, 2021, 2022, 2023-2025
8) Read 3 books that were gifts

A selection of books I have finished recently:
Knight Owl by Christopher Denise - 5/5
The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore - 3/5
Dead Lions (Slough House, Book 2) (audiobook) by Mick Herron - 4/5
The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild by Lawrence Anthony - 4/5
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern - 4.5/5

For a full list of books I've read in 2025, click here: https://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=norabelle414&collection=915880...

2024 Statistics

In 2024, I read 132 books. That's 87 more than last year, and the most I've ever read in a year.
44 of those were picture books, a short story, or comic books less than 100 pages, but that's still 88 full books, which is still the most I've ever read in a year.
23,999 pages, plus 65 hours and 4 minutes of audiobooks.
I averaged 11 days per book (8 if you don't count The Iliad), 65 pages per day, 11 books per month.
Average book length was 192 pages.

The longest paper book was The Iliad at 836 pages
The longest audiobook was Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland at 14 hours and 47 minutes.
The shortest paper book was Waddle! A Scanimation Picture Book at 12 pages
The shortest audiobook was Strong Female Character at 6 hours and 43 minutes.

I acquired 56 books (8 of which were individual issues of comics).
I bought 46 books (8 of which were individual issues of comics).
I deaccessioned 16 books, 8 fewer than last year.

Books read this year:
83 (63%) were marketed for adults
20 (15%) for middle grade/young adult
29 (22%) for children.

94 (60%) of the authors/artists I read were non-male. (Some books have multiple authors/artists)*

31 (23%) had authors/artists of color*
19 (14%) had a main character of color.
28 (21%) had out LGBTQ authors/artists*
38 (29%) had an LGBTQ major character.
8 (6%) had an out trans author*
8 (6%) had a trans major character.

(*These are to the best of my knowledge. It is very hard to find biographic information about a lot of picture book authors!)

24 (18%) had a major character with a disability.

6 (5%) were translated from another language (French, Russian, Japanese, Modern Greek, Ancient Greek).

32 (24%) of the books I read were were purchased by me
62 (47%) checked out from the library
1 was in the public domain
30 (22%) borrowed (mostly from my niece)
4 (3%) gifts
3 (2%) early review copies.

124 (94%) were print books
1 (1%) ebook
7 (5%) audiobooks.

62 (47%) prose books
0 were plays
40 (30%) comics
1 (1%) poetry*
29 (22%) picture books.*
(*There's a picture book category now so I'm no longer counting rhyming picture books as poetry)

114 (86%) fiction
18 (14%) non-fiction

13 (10%) rereads

8 (6%) published in 2024
87 (66%) published from 2014-2023
37 (28%) published before 2014.
The oldest book I read, not counting The Iliad, was The Death of Ivan Ilyich, originally published in 1886.

My best reading month was August, in which I finished 20 books. My worst reading month was March, in which I finished "only" 7 books.

My most-read genre was speculative fiction/science fiction/fantasy/horror, of which I read 59 books (45%).
35 (27%) general fiction
9 (7%) Romance
8 (6%) biography/memoir
6 (5%) historical fiction & fantasy
5 (4%) adventure/mystery/thriller
3 (5%) each science non-fiction, general non-fiction, history non-fiction
1 (1%) short story collection

89 (67%) were from the US
24 (18%) from the UK
6 (5%) from Canada
2 (2%) each from France and Greece
1 (1%) each from Ireland, Japan, Czechia, South Africa, New Zealand, Russia, Italy, and Costa Rica

Favorites:
-Gender Queer
-We Could Be So Good
-Babel; Or the Necessity of Violence
-System Collapse (Murderbot #7)
-The Shadow Cabinet (HMRC #2)

Dishonorable Mentions:
-A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
-The Scarlet Pimpernel
-Once There Were Wolves
-The Wind in the Willows
-Waddle! A Scanimation Picture Book

Welcome to 2025! I'll still be in the old group ( https://www.librarything.com/topic/365643 ) for a few more days but feel free to say hi here.

Welcome back, Nora!

I will be following along with you as always, Nora.

I'll definitely be following along with your 2025 adventures, Nora.

Happy New Year! I hope to actually follow along this time.

Happy 2025, Nora! Looking forward to seeing what you read (and what else you get up to) this year.

Happy 2025, Nora

Happy 2025, Nora!

Here's to more great reads this year.

Thanks Jim, Paul, Micky, Zoe, Natalie, and Angela! I have a few more updates for my old thread and then I'll move over here.

Happy New Year Nora!

Happy New Year Nora!

Happy new year of reading, Nora!

>1 norabelle414: What a wonderful tree.

cute pyjamas! I had no idea that there exists pj's for dogs. Quite adorable

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year and happy new thread! What an adorable pupper!

Hope you have a great 2025 with lots of interesting reads!

Thanks Anne, Beth, Katie, Anita, foggi, and Lori!

Year-end stats have been posted to >4 norabelle414: and I'll be back tomorrow for an update!

Happy New Year!

On the 1st I went to my brother's house for brunch and we exchanged stocking stuff. When my niece went down for a nap we quickly took down all of the Christmas decorations. I'm sure she was shocked when she woke up! But it was easier than doing it while she was awake. My mom and her husband ended up leaving on the first instead of the 4th as they had planned because my mom's husband hurt his back.

Yesterday I teleworked because the office was closed. Today I am in the office. I'll be going to my brother's house after work to help with my niece.

Tomorrow I need to go return the book I bought for my mom that she already had. Not sure what I'm going to get her instead. I was planning to let her pick something if she had stayed a little longer. I might use the store credit here for myself and buy her something at her local bookstore. Sunday I'm going to the zoo to preview the new giant pandas with my cousin and his family.

Currently reading:
I started Solitaire and Three Bags Full on the 1st. Listening to All Things Bright and Beautiful on audio but I've barely started.
January plans: Solitaire, Three Bags Full, All Things Bright and Beautiful, Make the Season Bright
Reviews behind: 0
Consecutive reading days: 1 (yesterday was a hard day, mentally, for no particular reason, and I completely forgot to read. I'd rather forget to read because I'm doing something fun, but alas.)

Currently crafting:
Nothing

Currently listening:
You Look a Lot Like Me by Mal Blum. I saw them as the weather at a Welcome to Night Vale live show and really enjoyed them.

Currently watching:
Doctor Who Christmas Special (great), one episode of Say Nothing, two episodes of Marvel's What If?

Rough draft of some goals for this year:

Last year I set a few "mini-goals" for my reading, as opposed to one year-long goal, and it went well so I'm doing it again:
1) Follow more people in this group
2) Write reviews promptly after finishing a book
3) Read at least two books by the same author
4) Read another book in a series I've already started
5) Read at least one book in each of the following categories: romance, science non-fiction, science fiction, memoir, picture book, graphic novel, audiobook
6) Get caught up on a series of at least 3 books
7) Read at least 1 book published in each year from 2015 to 2025
8) Read 3 books that were gifts

Here are some graphs of my reading from last year:





(this is my favorite graph in the LibraryThing Charts & Graphs. It's on the "Pages" subpage)
(yes, I should be asleep right now)

Happy 2025, Nora! Hope the year brings you good things and great books!

(Is Bluesky the new twitter?)

I love the graphs and the stats. I've been thinking of keeping track of children's (chapter/picture), middleschool/teen, audiobook, and nonfiction, but don't know if it would be too much work.

>24 ChelleBearss: Hi Chelle! Happy New Year!
Yes, Bluesky is pretty similar to how Twitter used to be. I'm sure it won't be this nice forever, but it is pretty great right now.

>25 The_Hibernator: Thanks Rachel! I find that as long as I tag my books well as I go along, doing stats and making graphs is pretty easy. I make a collection for each year's books (e.g. "read in 2025") and then tag with anything I might want to keep track of (e.g. "picture book", "library", etc.) then it only takes a few seconds at the end of the year to filter what I'm looking for. And LibraryThing will even keep track of a lot of that for me if I enter "date finished".

Happy New Year!

Yesterday after work I went to my brother's house and had a nice evening with my niblings. It snowed a bit while I was walking to their house from the Metro, which I loved. When the 3yo got home we played "crunch crunch", which is when we stomp around in the fresh snow and make it go "crunch crunch". The 6mo rolled over! Not his first time but the first time I've seen it. After bedtime I chatted with my sister-in-law for a long time and got home very late, but it's fine because it was a Friday.

Today I went to the bookstore to return the book I got my mom, but they couldn't process it since it was an online order. I left the book with them and they're going to call me when they figure it out. I stopped at a cafe next door for lunch. Nothing going on this evening.

Tomorrow I'm getting to the zoo bright and early (8:30) for the staff preview of the giant pandas. Nothing going on the rest of the day.

Currently reading:
I'm rearranging my reading a bit: I'm still working on Solitaire (50% done). I'm putting Three Bags Full aside because I got a "grab & go" copy of North Woods from the library. I'm also putting aside the audiobook All Things Bright and Beautiful and picked up the audiobook The Jungle (thankfully always-available from one of my many libraries). I put a couple more books on hold which are going to be discussed this month on the Overdue podcast (as is The Jungle).
January plans: Solitaire, The Jungle, North Woods, Thornhedge, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Make the Season Bright
Reviews behind: 0
Consecutive reading days: 2

Currently crafting:
Nothing

Currently listening:
Nothing

Currently watching:
Taskmaster New Zealand s4e1, and caught up on Silo

Yay Pandas! Crunch, crunch sounds fun. 😀🐼

Love your opening photo of your doggie nephew in his jammies. What a cute guy!

I am totally jealous of your gig at the National Zoo and the Giant Pandas.

Great graphs! I didn't keep up very well putting my 'finished' dates in the books I read last year, but plan on remedying that.

Have a great time with the pandas today!

Ohh yay, pandas!! Hope you are allowed to take some pictures. Pandas are adorable, and even more so when they are red pandas!

>28 elorin: Hi Robyn! It was fun, especially because it only lasted about 5 minutes. I love playing preschooler games but sometimes they can go on a bit too long.

>29 streamsong: Thanks Janet! I find it more motivating to enter finished dates when I know I will get something fun from them, like pretty charts.

>30 MickyFine: Thanks Micky! I did

>31 ChelleBearss: Hi Chelle! I was allowed to take pictures but they are embargoed so I can't post them. The zoo is pretty good about posting photos on their social media, though ( https://nationalzoo.si.edu/ - social media links at the bottom). Hopefully they'll post some today since it's snowing.

>32 norabelle414: How much snow did you get, Nora? We had about 4" overnight and some additional light snow during the morning. A "second round" is supposed to come through mid/late afternoon.

It's Monday.

Yesterday I got up very early and met my cousin and his kids at the zoo to see the staff preview of the giant pandas. I was worried it would be crowded but it was not bad at all. We watched the pandas outside for awhile and then inside the panda house for awhile. We went to see the elephants, the small mammal house (my cousin's daughter's favorite animal is fennec foxes), the reptile house (my cousin's son's favorite animal is snakes), and the Przewalski's horses. Didn't do anything else the rest of the day.

Today we're having a snowstorm so I'm working from home. Not sure what the status will be tomorrow.

Currently reading:
Started a bit of North Woods. 20% through The Jungle.
January plans: Solitaire, The Jungle, North Woods, Thornhedge, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Make the Season Bright
Reviews behind: 0
Consecutive reading days: 3

Currently crafting:
Nothing

Currently listening:
Nothing

Currently watching:
I caught up on everything (based on my own schedule where I stretch binge-watch shows out over several weeks)! Interior Chinatown, Animal Control, Happy's Place, Say Nothing, The Day of the Jackal, Laid. I finished Marvel's What If? and started the new show Going Dutch, which is not good. I'm caught up on my rewatch of seasons 1-4 of Ghosts UK so soon I'll watch s5 for the first time.

>33 lauralkeet: Hi Laura! I got about 3 inches here, but my street has a weird wind pattern and we always get less snow than the surrounding areas. I walked a few blocks away on my walk this morning and saw ~6 inches. I hope your dogs are enjoying it!

Glad to hear the zoo was a good visit for all.

Enjoy your snow!

Sounds like a great zoo trip! I saw on the news that if DC gets more than 8.3" of snow (yes, it was that specific), it will be more than the city's had since 2016... which was before my nephew was born and my niece was very young, so I imagine they're really enjoy their snow days. Sorry you still had to work! I guess you can't really get snow days when work from home is an option.

Thanks for the link! I will have to come back and check again once the panda cam is live!

Happy New Year, Nora!

Enjoyed hearing about your zoo trop and I'm jealous of the snow you got. We missed out the other day and just have a dusting, but I think we'll get some tomorrow and Saturday, so maybe my boys can play crunch crunch. We haven't had much snow for a few years now.

>36 MickyFine: Thanks Micky! It's been pretty great.

>37 bell7: Hmm... We got 10 inches in 2019 so I'm not sure that's correct. We ended up with an official measurement of 7in for this storm. February used to be our snowiest month but that seems to be shifting to January in recent years.

>38 ChelleBearss: They did post a video of the pandas in the snow! https://www.facebook.com/nationalzoo/videos/1109662917132819

>39 aktakukac: Thanks Rachel! We usually get an inch or two every year, but not enough for me!

>23 norabelle414: Nora, Can you please tell me where you obtained the graphs?

>34 norabelle414: What a wonderful trip to the zoo!

Happy Thursday!

Monday I worked from home due to the snowstorm. After work I walked in the snow went to a weekly bar trivia meetup, which I don't usually get to go to because I'm too tired after work. It was nice to see people in real life. We got 4th place out of about 10 teams. I'm hoping to go again on the 20th. The walk was about 3/4 mile each way and it was perfect. The snow was ongoing so there were almost no cars out, and the snow was cold and fluffy and not slippery at all. I loved it.
Tuesday the government was closed again so I worked from home. It would have been nice to take some time off one of these days to walk around in the snow during daylight, but my paid leave was reset to zero on January 1.
Yesterday I went into the office. I finished my big annual project so I'm feeling much less stressed. I got a new work computer and it's very annoying to get all my settings the way I want them to be.
Today is a federal holiday for President Carter's funeral, so I am working from home. After work I'm going to bundle up (it's 18F out) and trek to the library to pick up some holds.

Tomorrow I have to work in the office, since I worked from home Monday, Tuesday, and today. This weekend I was going to sign up to work at the zoo for the Giant Panda member weekend, but all the shifts I want are full. That's good! I signed up for a shift on the 19th.

Currently reading:
I'm spreading myself too thin lately. I'm 50% through Solitaire, 35% The Jungle (audiobook), and 25% North Woods. I have 8 books out from the library.
January plans: Solitaire, The Jungle, North Woods, Thornhedge, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Make the Season Bright
Reviews behind: 0
Consecutive reading days: 6

Currently crafting:
Nothing

Currently listening:
Nothing

Currently watching:
Nothing

>41 Whisper1: Hi Linda! The first graph and the last graph are from LibraryThing. If you fill out the "date finished" field then the graphs will be generated in "charts & graphs". The first graph is from the "Year in Review" subpage, and the last graph is from the "pages" subpage, filtered by "Read In"

The four middle graphs are from a separate spreadsheet that I keep. It's based on the Bookriot Reading Log (here's the 2025 version: https://bookriot.com/introducing-the-2025-reading-log/ ) but I make a lot of changes to suit my needs.

Oh wow, that video is adorable!! I love how they just roll around

>1 norabelle414: Happy New Year Nora! Ryder looks cute. I doubt we'd ever get Jasper to sit still for long enough for pyjamas; we can barely get a hat on him that stays on for more than a second.

>26 norabelle414: Obviously I need to start entering 'date finished'.

>44 ChelleBearss: They really love the snow! We're getting more snow this weekend but I won't be able to go see them.

>45 humouress: Thanks Nina! Ryder likes wearing clothes when it's cold out because his fur is not very thick.

Happy Friday!

Yesterday was uneventful, except for walking to the library in the snow. The sidewalks were cleared early but then the street plows went through and piled up all of the gross street snow onto the crosswalks and curbs, with no regard for pedestrians at all. So I had to climb up a few hills to get there. Luckily my snowboots are still in good shape since I only wear them a couple times a year.

I stayed up a little too late last night and then had to get up early to go into the office, so I'm a bit tired but I have managed to be productive. I was thinking of maybe going to a meetup tonight with the same people I saw at trivia on Monday, but I'm definitely too tired for that. No plans this weekend except grocery shopping and hopefully finishing a dang book.

Currently reading:
I'm 50% through Solitaire, 56% The Jungle (audiobook), and 25% North Woods. I have 8 books out from the library.
January plans: Solitaire, The Jungle, North Woods, Thornhedge, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Make the Season Bright
Reviews behind: 0
Consecutive reading days: 8

Currently crafting:
Nothing

Currently listening:
Nothing

Currently watching:
Ghosts (UK), s5e1&2, High Potential, and Abbott Elementary (the crossover episode with It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.)

I'm glad you've got a chance to enjoy some of the snow.

We've been having an unusually warm week for January (highs are a couple degrees above freezing), which would be fine except for the resulting ice on sidewalks everywhere as the snowpack is still sticking around.

Have a great weekend!

Hey Nora! Did you finish a book?

>48 MickyFine: This was the first snow in a very long time (decades?) where it was actually COLD and not hovering around freezing, and that made it a much better experience. The freeze-thaw-freeze cycle is really the worst part of snow (the only bad part? imo).

>49 The_Hibernator: Hi Rachel! I did! I'm also going to count a picture book I read earlier this month because it's really stuck with me.

Hi Nora! I didn't realize how rare snow is in the DC area. It does cause problems if the area rarely gets it. We get a lot of snow in CO, but one really nice thing is that we have a lot of sunshine (more than Florida it's been said) so our snow doesn't stick around and get yucky. Happy new year - looking forward to following your reads.

It's Monday.

This weekend was uneventful. I bought the suitcases my dad "bought" (he's going to pay me back for buying them for myself) me for Christmas. I was supposed to do it in December but I put it off and they tripled in price after Christmas. Whoops! They went back down this weekend so I pounced. Now I just have go to pick them up at some point and then email the receipt to my dad, who will then give me a check, which I then have to deposit into my bank account. A lot of work for something that's supposed to be a gift. I also went to the grocery store, and cleaned up my apartment a tiny bit.

I slept super late on Saturday morning; it was nice to get tons of sleep for once but I did find it hard to get to sleep on time Saturday night and last night. It doesn't help that I'm right on the edge of getting over this cold (yes, the same one I've had since Christmas). Not bad enough to take medicine for but it does sometimes keep me up. I slipped and fell on my way to work this morning. Surprising that it's my first time this snowfall, since I have to clamber over a foot or more of ice any time I want to cross the dang street. I'm fine now but I might be in pain tomorrow.

Today I'm in the office. After work hopefully I'll remember to pick up my suitcases and also a package that was just delivered which I suspect has an early reviewer book in it. Just what I need, another book to read! (serious but also joking but also serious). I also have a to-do list at home but I don't remember what's on it. Oh well!

Currently reading:
I finished listening to The Jungle on audio and it was SO BLEAK. I immediately pivoted to All Things Bright and Beautiful as a palate cleanser. I read a big chunk of North Woods yesterday so I should be able to finish tomorrow (its due back at the library tomorrow). I'm 50% through Solitaire, a chapter or so into Three Bags Full, and last night for some reason I decided to start Make the Season Bright. It should be a quick read but it is due back to the library on the 21st and has a long wait list. I also need to read Thornhedge and Before the Coffee Gets Cold because they were covered on Overdue last week and I can't listen until I read the books. I'm exhausted just typing all that out.
January plans: Solitaire, North Woods, Thornhedge, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Make the Season Bright, LTER book
Reviews behind: 2
Consecutive reading days: 11

Currently crafting:
Nothing. I'd like to repair some holes in my favorite tights (they're sparkly!) and the elbow of my favorite cardigan (it's gray and goes with anything)

Currently listening:
Chappell Roan again.

Currently watching:
Ghosts (UK) s54, All Creatures Great and Small (excellent cat shenanigans), Miss Scarlet (I wasn't fully paying attention so I need to rewatch), Taskmaster New Zealand, and a few episodes of the last season of Evil.

>51 AMQS: Hi Anne! We get snow here a couple times a year, but it's usually a few inches of warm snow, which then melts, and freezes into ice. Not very fun or pretty.

You have a lot going on on the reading front! Before the Coffee Gets Cold is on my list to read this year, too.

I too am listening to Chappell Roan again. She's so fun.

>54 curioussquared: It's been on my list forever, I'm glad my favorite podcast is covering it to motivate me to finally get to it!

I did not want to mention this as part of my regular update because it's such a bummer, but I think it's important to talk about. Neil Gaiman has been credibly accused of sexual assault and abuse by many women, at least 9 on the record. These stories started to come out in July of last year, but I hesitated to share them because, except for a very early Rolling Stone piece, the reporting was piecemeal and some of it came via outlets I don't trust.

Today, an article was published on Vulture (a division of New York Magazine) with extensive details and histories, confirming the previously reported accounts and including several new ones. Content warning for sexual assault, abuse, child abuse, gaslighting, suicidal ideation, and I'm sure some other things I'm forgetting: https://www.vulture.com/article/neil-gaiman-allegations-controversy-amanda-palme...

The incidents reported on in this story are so awful that I truly can't recommend anyone read it, but if you have had doubts about what he did, this will end them. If you do read some of it, please take care of yourself. This kind of reporting takes an incredible amount of time, effort, dedication, and lawyers. I've now subscribed to New York Magazine to help support it.

Dealing with this kind of thing is so hard as a reader. But it's not my first rodeo, and removing his books from my shelves will create space for more authors who are not abusive shitheads, just like Orson Scott Card and JK Rowling before him.

Happy New Year, Nora! Thanks for visiting my thread. I think this is the first time I have dropped by yours, but it won't be the last.

I didn't realize that you volunteered at the zoo. How cool! And especially that you got to go to the staff preview of the giant pandas. What fun!

>23 norabelle414: The reading graphs are interesting. I have been good about noting when I finish a book, but I haven't really gone in-depth into the graphs available on LT. I guess I should go play with them more. And maybe think if there are other things that I might want to track in a spreadsheet.

>56 norabelle414: I heard about and read the article this morning. It was horrifying, and so disappointing. I agree that it's important to talk about, so thank you for posting about it. I'll probably also get rid of my copies of his books, although I'll have to make a call on Good Omens, since I still love Terry Pratchett. I won't be watching the final season (did they shorten it to just one episode?) of the show, though.

>52 norabelle414: All Creatures Great and Small (excellent cat shenanigans),
We watched the first episode last night and I immediately sent a text to my daughter, urging her to prioritize watching it because of the cat shenanigans!

>56 norabelle414:, >58 curioussquared: I had tickets to see Gaiman at Wolftrap in July. Rolling Stone article was published a few weeks before, but I hadn't heard about it. The show was canceled the morning and we had almost no warning. At the time, the story was pretty sketchy - mostly coming from news sources not so credible, like Nora said, so I've been watching to see how it went. Truly is horrible and disappointing.

>56 norabelle414: - I saw the news of this yesterday, and I'm glad you posted about it, Nora. Awful stuff.

>56 norabelle414: This is just so awful. My daughter was texting me last night, just absolutely gutted. She was hit so hard, as she was a fan of both Gaiman and his former wife, and of course we were predisposed to love him as he has always been such a champion of librarians and teachers. I had weeded a book of his from the library last week due to low (no) circulation. There was another book I was considering, but I ultimately decided to read a bit of it to a third grade class next week as their "First Chapter Friday." This is a really sharp class of terrific readers and great language lovers and I thought they would love it. And they would. But I can't. And I can't imagine what parents would say when students brought it home. So it's in the weed pile also, along with Coraline, which I was also planning to keep.

>56 norabelle414: This is so disappointing. That doesn't seem like strong enough language, but it does disappoint me that people with money and fame can get away with such horrible behavior without getting called out for it for so long.

Is it possible to share a guest link to that article in Vulture? It says I can read it if I subscribe, and that I have used up my free access (odd, because as far as I can remember I have never read anything in Vulture).

>27 norabelle414: Aw, I love that. I'm gonna think of "crunch crunch" when I commute from now on, lol.
Sorry about the book. It genuinely sucks when someone has a legit problem you can't solve at the point of register. I hope things get resolved.

>56 norabelle414: I...am not in the headspace at the moment to read stuff like this. However, I will take your word that this is credible, especially since so many people have shared similar sentiments. His writing had such an impact on mine this... shit.

Re: Neil Gaiman
(I'm going to separate out my posts like this for now, so that people can skip them if they need to)

>58 curioussquared: I'm very surprised to find that as far as I can tell I'm the first person to mention this on LT outside of few messages in Fine Press Forum (one press canceled a book of his when the first reporting came out, but others have continued to distribute and promote his work). Yes, there's an additional article on Vulture that says Good Omens s3 was reduced to one episode, but The Sandman and Anansi Boys were still on schedule. We'll see what happens now.

>60 drneutron: I had a little hope when the Wolftrap event was canceled, but everything seemed to go back to normal after a month or so.

>61 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie! I have kind of felt bad for not mentioning it before now because I kept seeing people reading his work and realized they didn't know. His PR machine is strong and well-funded.

>62 AMQS: It's such a hard place to be in, as someone who discusses books and promotes them to others. I'm glad you made the decision not to introduce the kids to his work. There are so many other good stories.

>63 BLBera: It's hard to have the right words at the moment. So many terrible things can be done with power, both the power he exerted over those women and the power to cover it up.

>64 laytonwoman3rd: I don't think New York Magazine has a gift-link feature, but I think this Archive.org link should work: https://archive.is/mbY02

>65 Ravenwoodwitch: You absolutely do not have to read it! It is hard to get through. The purpose it serves is a well-investigated report to link to, not to be trauma porn.

>57 atozgrl: Hi Irene! I love playing around with the Charts & Graphs sections of LT. They're so much fun (though I don't think they handle rereads very well).

>59 lauralkeet: I was rolling my eyes a bit because it's a bit similar to the cat shenanigans in the first season, but then at dinner they mentioned that James had done the same thing when he first started, which was so charming.

>65 Ravenwoodwitch: At first I was not bothered by being unable to return the book, but now it's been over a week so I'm a bit annoyed. I'll probably go back and tell them I'll just keep the book myself if they can't return it (though I might be more cautious when buying online from them in the future, knowing this).

It's Tuesday.

Yesterday after work I did remember to pick up my new suitcases. Next on my to-do list is to take my old suitcases to the dumpster. I'm loathe to throw things away that someone could use, but the zippers are broken, the hard plastic inside is breaking off in chunks, and one of the handles doesn't retract so I don't think there's anything else that can be done. Can't do it today, though, because just by chance it's the one day per year the dumpster is closed for cleaning. I also need to pick up my package, which I tried to do last night but the front desk attendant was super busy.

Nothing else going on this week.

Currently reading:
I have about 60 pages left in North Woods so I should be able to finish it today if I read on the bus and then a bit more at home. I probably won't return it today, but tomorrow will only be one day late, which is not bad.
January plans: Solitaire, North Woods, Thornhedge, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Make the Season Bright, LTER book
Reviews behind: 2
Consecutive reading days: 12

Currently crafting:
Nothing

Currently watching:
Nothing

>56 norabelle414: Yuck. I've been a fan of his writing in the past, but I won't be reading any more by him.

>68 norabelle414: I have a similar suitcase dilemma: I bought new ones last year, but I've kept the old one. The handle is broken, but I keep thinking maybe someone could use it...? So it sits in my attic.

>67 norabelle414: re: cat shenanigans, yes that was cute. Our plot quibble was about Mrs Hall. How did she get hold of that warden uniform when women weren't allowed to serve? Still, I love the series.

>69 foggidawn:. Hmmm, now I'm reading about people storing Christmas decorations or craft supplies in their broken suitcases, and doubting myself. I wouldn't trust them on a journey, but if they burst open or fall apart in my closet that's not a big deal.

>70 lauralkeet: I assumed it was her old uniform from when she was a Wren in WWI? The Wrens were reactivated in 1939 but I don't remember exactly what year we're currently in.

>71 norabelle414: We've just watched the All Creatures episode, and I agree, I think Mrs. Hall was wearing her Wren uniform -- she was wearing service ribbons, which must date from that time).

>71 norabelle414:, >72 laytonwoman3rd: Ahhhh, now that makes complete sense! Thanks for clearing it up!

>50 norabelle414: I count picture books if I'm reading them for the first time. Otherwise, I'd have hundreds of books a year, lol.

I once threw a suitcase away in a bagster. It was in terrible shape...long past tossing-time. Someone "stole" it out of the bagster, and I really laughed.

Do you have bagsters out there? Maybe not. They're a gigantic bag that acts like a mini-dumpster. You put it in your yard by the curb, and tell the garbage agency to pick it up. There are bagster-divers who spend time driving up and down roads looking for bagsters that they can loot. I think they think of it as a free section in a garage sale.

>74 The_Hibernator: I'd never hear of bagsters before -- interesting! I wish our garbage company had something like that, as John and I need to do a basement & attic clean-out this spring.

>56 norabelle414: I had no idea. Very sad and awful. I don't think I have read anything by Gaiman. I checked my personal library and the only thing there is that he wrote an introduction to Dune. So that's a relief.

Happy Wednesday!

Yesterday after work I picked up my package, which did indeed contain my Early Reviewer book. Onto the stack it goes! Thankfully most of the books on the stack are quite short now.

After work I'd like to review North Woods, which I finished yesterday, and return it to the library. I don't have any holds to pick up, and god knows I don't need anything else to read, so I don't need to go while it's open. One of the other books I have out looks like it might not be renewable, even though I thought it was, so it might need to go back unread. *sigh*.

Nothing going on this week until I volunteer at the zoo on Sunday.

Currently reading:
I finished North Woods, listened to more of All Things Bright and Beautiful (26%), and started Before the Coffee Gets Cold on the bus.
January plans: Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Thornhedge, Make the Season Bright, LTER book, Solitaire, All Things Bright and Beautiful
Reviews behind: 2
Consecutive reading days: 13

Currently crafting:
Nothing

Currently watching:
Nothing

>74 The_Hibernator: Yeah, I only count picture books once, and only if I get a thorough read-through with no distractions (sometimes that's the second or third time I read them to my niece). I realized after I posted >50 norabelle414: that the reason the book is sticking with me so much is that I already reviewed it in December.
I'm not sure if we have bagster here. I've lived in an apartment building for 13 years so I've never had to use anything like that.

(I listened to this as an audiobook so I hadn't actually looked at this cover much...what an odd choice! Not just to have a huge close-up of meat, but also that this particular meat looks high quality. I assure you, no meat in the book looks anything like this.)

1. The Jungle {audiobook} by Upton Sinclair, narrated by Grover Gardner

Jurgis Rudkus and his family emigrate from Lithuania to the United States because they live a very hard life and were told the wages are much higher here. What they were not told is that costs are also much higher, so the family ends up typical of the poorest of the poor. After having most of their money swindled in New York, they make it to Chicago to live in a single room in a fetid boarding house, from which all the family members can get jobs. With several incomes they make the smart choice to buy a house in the slaughterhouse district, the only place they can afford to live and work. This proves to be another swindle, as the house is falling apart, their interest is high, and if they fail to make a single payment they will be evicted. Their jobs in the slaughterhouses are incredibly difficult and dangerous. Men have life-threatening accidents every day, and the meat is rotting and full of toxic chemicals. The workers get sick with tuberculosis and other contagious disease often, but can’t afford to take time off, even unpaid, as they will lose their job. Family members die or go missing. Jurgis ends up in prison for beating a man who raped his wife, and when he gets out his wife dies in childbirth, the family is evicted, and his other child dies. Jurgis leaves them and becomes a tramp and then a thief. He becomes a vote fixer for the Republican Party, then the Democratic Party, and then a strikebreaker for the very union he used to belong to. After another stint in prison he returns to his two remaining family members, his wife’s stepmother and cousin, to find the latter has been trafficked into prostitution. One day, when looking for a warm place to loiter, Jurgis hears a speech by a great socialist orator. The words he hears reflect Jurgis’ lived experience, unlike any politics he's heard before, and offer him hope for the future and something to fight for. After the speech, Jurgis meets the speaker, who offers him a job as a porter at a hotel run by a socialist, where he thrives.

I had not ever read this classic before, and I'm very glad that I did. The descriptions of work at the slaughterhouse that are so famous are only in about a third of the book (the first third, which makes me wonder if some readers only get that far). Overall, the book is about the plight of immigrants, the poor who work so hard for nothing, and the lie of the American Dream. Jurgis and his family frequently lament that there's no such thing as freedom if you can't afford it, and they would not have been fundamentally worse off if they had stayed in Lithuania.
After the horrible things he's been through, socialism is a light at the end of the tunnel for Jurgis. He doesn't find utopia, he just finds a system that acknowledges him and cares about people like him and gives him something to look forward to. The ending is bittersweet from a modern perspective, as the socialists are so optimistic but the reader knows what will actually happen to the reputation of socialism over the next 115 years. The book does go a bit too far in trying to overexplain the nickels and dimes of how much different people will get paid for different tasks under socialism. Quit while you're ahead!
Cynics like to point out that the only change this book catalyzed when it was published was food safety, not socialism or worker welfare or a social safety net, but that's absolutely not nothing. The upper class aren't eating the rotten tubercular pork or the beef sausage full of rats and workers’ body parts - the workers and the poor themselves are. Food safety improvements help them most.
I often find that “classics” don't hold up as well as people claim they do, but this book is great and I'm so glad I finally read it.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ♥ (4.5/5)

2. North Woods by Daniel Mason

Long ago, a pair of lovers escape their oppressive community to live together in a remote forest cabin in northwestern Massachusetts. Many years later, a woman held captive by Native Americans is sent to the cabin, now occupied by an old woman, to live in peace away from both the Natives and the colonists. Many years later, a soldier moves in with his two daughters to start an orchard and a life. And so on and so on, for centuries the land and the forest and the house and the animals and the people are a haven, welcoming new people and seeing them leave, but holding their history close.

What a fascinating read. There's a slightly mixed media feel to it, with a few illustrations, a few poems/songs, and a very graphic chapter from the perspective of an insect. It also feels mixed-genre, containing history and mystery and science and ghosts and magical realism, and spanning centuries from the 1600s(??) to the present day.
Is this a perfect book? It might be. It doesn’t feel like it was written specifically for me, the way some books do, just that it sprang fully formed into ideal existence. It’s a bit like a better version of The Overstory or Cloud Atlas, intertwining a diversity of stories, but without getting bogged down in any one for too long. The discovery of the stories of the past by the people of the future feels very natural - sometimes they find a hidden letter, or a literal skeleton, or have a mental break, or meet a ghost. I really enjoyed the slightly supernatural or magical realism aspects. My only small quibble is that we are never told exactly what year it is, which meant I was always distracting myself by trying to figure out the years from context clues instead of immersing myself in the reading. But that's just the kind of reader I am.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ (5/5)

Happy Weekend!

Thursday and Friday were uneventful. After work yesterday I went to the library to return some books (one unread, sad), and had a burger and a beer while I was out. It's annoying how much better I feel when I leave the house.

Today is also uneventful, just reading and sewing and tidying and maybe some TV. Tomorrow I'm volunteering at the zoo in the morning. Monday is a holiday, so I'll be going to trivia in the evening.

I've finalized my draft reading goals and moved them into >1 norabelle414:, including crossing out some that are already done!

Currently reading:
Really broke the dam on finishing books over the last couple days. After finishing North Woods on Wednesday, I finished Before the Coffee Gets Cold yesterday. I only have about 30 pages left in Thornhedge, and I'm 90% through All Things Bright and Beautiful. The next book in that series is available now, but I think I'll listen to a historical romance or memoir instead. Next up in paper is Make the Season Bright, which is due back on Tuesday but should be a quick read.
January plans: Thornhedge, Make the Season Bright, LTER book, Solitaire, All Things Bright and Beautiful, She-Hulk 14
Reviews behind: 1
Consecutive reading days: 16

Currently crafting:
I repaired the toes of my favorite tights on Friday and it really is a miracle how well it works (I'm using this method, for anyone new: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBpwvd2MByg).
I moved on to repairing a t-shirt that had two small holes in the middle of the chest (a lot of my shirts have this issue due to someone always clawing me there when he wants attention) and that did not go very well. I watched several youtube videos and tried different methods on two different holes but in each case the mend is VERY noticeable (moreso than the hole was, unless I wear a contrasting bra) and the raw edges from the hole ended up on the outside. All of the t-shirts in the videos had much thicker fibers than mine so maybe that has something to do with it. For the next one I might try a ladder stitch on the outside, like I use to repair stuffed animals. It can't be worse.

Currently watching:
Vienna Blood, Taskmaster New Zealand s4e3. Behind on everything else.

Re: Neil Gaiman

>76 figsfromthistle: I have quite a lot of his books, and I'm always torn about what to do with them in this situation. I certainly don't want to look at them on my pretty bookshelf, and while putting used copies back into the market might prevent someone from buying a new copy and monetarily supporting the author, I also don't want to introduce anyone new to his work. So I've put them in the back of the closet for now.

It's annoying how much better I feel when I leave the house.

Right? I often tell Mr. Fine how annoying it is that I do feel better (and sleep better) if I get a 20-30 minute walk in at some point during the day. How dare exercise make me feel good?!

Looking forward to your reviews for all your soon to be finished books. :)

>83 MickyFine: How DARE the endorphins make me happy??

It's Tuesday!

I had a mostly relaxing weekend. Some TV, some reading, some crafting. Sunday I volunteered at the zoo, my first time interpreting the giant pandas since 2023, and it went fine. Getting home was uncomfortable, since I had to take the Metro through downtown where the inaugural events were happening. There was a lot of yelling and chanting and signs but nothing truly concerning.

Yesterday I stayed home and did nothing until going to trivia in the evening. The group I go with was very large this week so we split into two teams. My team was in second place until the last round when we dropped to 4th, and the other half of our group won. There was a question about The Jungle, which was a fun coincidence.

Today I'm in the office. Tomorrow after work I'm going to my brother's house. I don't think anything else is going on until the weekend, when I'm volunteering at the zoo on Saturday and going to my friend's house for Lunar New Year on Sunday.

Currently reading:
I finished Thornhedge and All Things Bright and Beautiful. I managed to snag a skip-the-line copy of Kelly Bishop's memoir The Third Gilmore Girl. It's short so I'm at about 25% already. Due back Feb 1. I have 80 pages left in Make the Season Bright but I don't like reading spicy romance on the work shuttle so I might not finish it today. Instead on the shuttle this morning I read Solitaire. After those two books it's on to my LTER book, Coyote Run.
January plans: Make the Season Bright, LTER book, Solitaire, The Third Gilmore Girl, She-Hulk 14
Reviews behind: 3
Consecutive reading days: 19

Currently crafting:
I darned a hole in the toe of a sock, and a larger hole in the arm of a sweater. I don't love darning, I find it so inexact and I don't think it looks nice. Also I wonder if modern clothes are just too flimsy for it. Next up is another pair of tights. These have a hole in the toe and the seam of the crotch, both of which I have mended before, but also a hole in the heel, which I have not. I'm concerned about having a knot under my heel so I'll try to weave in the ends instead. They're also much sheer-er tights than I've mended before.

Currently watching:
Caught up on All Creatures Great and Small, Interior Chinatown e9, Animal Control, and Miss Scarlet

>83 MickyFine: Looking forward to your reviews
You and me both! I'm so behind on writing them.

3. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot

In a basement cafe in Tokyo, you can go back in time. There are a lot of rules - you have to stay in your seat, you can’t change the future, and you have to return to the present before the coffee gets cold - but a few people still decide to go back. A young woman goes back to tell her boyfriend how she feels before he leaves the country, an older woman goes back to see her husband before he has dementia, a woman spends time with her estranged sister, and another woman attempts to

This book is more about the people who work at the cafe than about the time travel, really. Pretty cozy, because nothing really happens. I really enjoyed the unexpected element of the ghost, which raises the stakes very slightly. I found it interesting (but also boring?) that all of the people who wanted to time travel were women despite the book being written by a man. I hope there’s more variety in future stories. I was a bit disappointed. It didn’t blow me away, but I’m happy to read more.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ (4/5)

4. All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot, narrated by Christopher Timothy

More tales of James Herriot’s adventures as a rural veterinarian in Yorkshire in the 1920s and 30s. Featuring cats, dogs, horses, sheep, cows, pigs, and a goldfish.

I didn’t love this collection as much as the first. It’s a bit disjointed and not many of the stories are memorable. Although sometimes he tells a few stories with a similar theme (his boss Mr. Farnan being hypocritical, farmers being mercurial and not trusting him, everyone being drunk, women being attractive, incredibly reckless driving) they are not in any particular chronological order, which isn’t very motivating to keep reading. Fine to have in the background but not a must-read. I do really enjoy Christopher Timothy as a narrator, he does about 3 or 4 different accents which is plenty.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ♥ (3.5/5)

>88 norabelle414: I read that ages and ages ago, when the first TV series (starring Christopher Timothy) was going strong. We still watch those old episodes from time to time, but now I am fully invested in the new series. I absolutely adore Samuel West.

>79 norabelle414: The Jungle
Where did I just... hear?... a synopsis of this? On a podcast? Regardless, it registered as a book I've been occasionally interested in reading but haven't actually gotten to. Your review is another reminder.

>89 lauralkeet: There are newer editions of the audiobook with Nicholas Ralph as the narrator, which I would love to listen to but none of my (many) libraries have more than the first one. The Christopher Timothy editions are old enough that they have the little interstitial music to let you know to change the tape/CD, which is so charming.
It's blasphemy, I know, but I like the TV show way better than the books. I think they've made all the major characters more sympathetic than they are portrayed in the books (Book-James is constantly commenting on women's looks and trying to get them to flirt with him, even after he's married), and bumped up the importance (and inner lives) of Mrs Hall, Helen, etc.

>90 qebo: It definitely hit me the right way reading it now. I do wonder if it would have radicalized me earlier if I had read it when I was supposed to (2005, I think) or just passed over my head

Thanks for your review of The Jungle. I read it back in high school and have wondered how it would affect me if I read it again now that I am older.

Terrific reviews. We love the Herriot books on audio read by Christopher Timothy. They became our go-to audios for road trips when the girls were younger.

I Loved North Woods - I had never read anything like it. I didn't care for Before the Coffee Gets Cold. I do associate it with endless PT exercises after hip surgery, though.

It's Wednesday.

Yesterday after work I mostly doomscrolled and fretted. I've been applying for jobs for the past several months since I might be employed in February (and just because things have been rough here) so yesterday morning I got 39 rejection emails as the Federal hiring freeze went into effect. I did also spend some time on a video chat with a friend as I taught him how to mend a hole in his pants pocket, so that was a nice distraction. I was also waiting for the Taskmaster series 19 cast announcement, which was supposed to be in December but was delayed for no reason until last night, when there was a live premiere of the first episode for like 1000 people (this is a whole thing and I'm very annoyed about it). Glad I didn't try to stay up to see the announcement because it eventually came out at like 5am.

Today after work I'm going to my brother's house. Hoping to go to the library tomorrow - I'll have between 2 and 4 books to return and once those are back I'll only have 2 out. I'm volunteering at the zoo this weekend and hoping to get a commemorative Giant Panda Metro card on the way.

Currently reading:
Read Make the Season Bright last night and Solitaire this morning. I'm finding both of them very mediocre. I also stuck Coyote Run in my purse in case I finish Solitaire on my way home.
January plans: Make the Season Bright, LTER book, Solitaire, The Third Gilmore Girl, She-Hulk 14
Reviews behind: 1
Consecutive reading days: 20

Currently crafting:
While I was showing my friend how to sew the hole in his pocket, I also repaired another pair of tights. I went ahead and used knots for the hole in the foot. If it bothers me I'll just cut the thread and repair them again. Today I'm wearing the sweater that I darned the elbow of. It's not noticeable to me but I'll ask my sister-in-law if it's noticeable to her later.

Currently watching:
Nothing

>93 aktakukac: Hi Rachel! It's worth a revisit, if you don't mind rereading things.

>94 AMQS: I think I probably listened to them on road trips when I was a kid, too, but I only vaguely remember them through osmosis.
I can definitely see how people would bounce off of Before the Coffee Gets Cold. I'm going to give it another book to hook me, but if I don't love the next one then I'm probably done.

Sorry about the job stress, Nora. It really sucks.

Oof, 39 rejection emails no matter the reason would definitely put me in a bad mood.

>97 katiekrug: What Katie said. That's really rough. What kind of work do you do?

Thanks Katie and Natalie.

>99 lauralkeet: I work in compliance for the federal government. Technically I am a contractor, but most work in my field is government jobs. My contract is up in mid-February and there's a good chance it won't be renewed.

>100 norabelle414: Well that sucks, Nora. I'm well aware how much of NoVA's economy revolves around govt contracts. I hope you're able to find something despite the near-term challenges.

>100 norabelle414: That does suck, Nora.

>79 norabelle414: I read this years ago, and I have been wary about hot dogs ever since! Maybe it's time for a reread.

>80 norabelle414: I think you liked this more than I did. I always get invested in the characters, and then the story moves on, so the format doesn't work well for me.

>87 norabelle414: I've been looking at this one, now I'm not sure. I've reserved a copy from the library, so I might give it a try.

Adding my sympathies on the job stress. That sucks and I'm sorry you're dealing with it right now.

>88 norabelle414: I have this one checked out right now and it'll be next up after I finish my current audiobook (probably early next week). I agree Christopher Timothy's reading is delightful.

>87 norabelle414: Oooh! I just started this book so I'm not going to read your review 'til I'm done. I'm trying to do all light reads for now due to fear, sadness, and anxiety over what's going on in our country. My heart goes out to you in your job search. Having lost my job twice in my career, I understand (a bit maybe, but the situation is so much worse now). I don't want to make you feel bad. I only wanted to say hi and hope I can get to see you sometimes this year.

>101 lauralkeet: Thanks Laura

>102 BLBera: I did really enjoy the characters in North Woods, but that made it very thrilling for me when they pop up again later, in letters or as ghosts.

>103 MickyFine: James Herriot's books are great to have on in the background. I feel like he does a good job of glossing over the bad things that he sees as a vet. He mentions that they happen but doesn't go into detail.

>104 SqueakyChu: Hi Madeleine! I think you will really like Before the Coffee Gets Cold. It's a bit more emotional than I usually read, but is more your style. I hope I get to see you this year too!

5. Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

As Sleeping Beauty slumbers in her castle, a hideous magical fairy has kept her hidden and captive for a thousand years. One day a handsome knight comes along, seeking adventure, but he stops to listen to the fairy's story and realizes maybe legends are not always what they seem.

A really enjoyable short reverse fairy tale. Toadling is a great main character and I found her story fascinating. I love the imagery of her growing up in a gross swamp raised by creatures we would consider disgusting, who are very loving. They are a great opposition to the more traditional fairies that are attractive but cruel. I've never really understood the logic behind changelings, but swapping out a princess to destabilize a kingdom makes a lot of sense. I can't give the book full marks because it was just too short, but I highly recommend it.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ♥ (4.5/5)

6. Make the Season Bright by Ashley Herring Blake

Ex-fiancees Charlotte and Brighton each go home with a friend for Christmas, but whoops! Their friends are sisters and now they have to spend the holidays in the same house. They make the extremely normal decision to pretend they’ve never met so that Charlotte doesn’t have to deal with her feelings of abandonment and Brighton doesn’t have to tell anyone that she left her childhood best friend at the altar. Okay yes they are obviously going to get back together, but how will they make it work when Charlotte has a great life and career in New York City, which is literally what Brighton was running away from?

A mixed bag. The pretend-to-be-strangers trope really strains credulity, especially when they’re spending 24 hours a day in a house with their best friends. They spend an entire dinner openly poking each other in the pet peeves in a way that would be psychopathic between strangers. I really liked Charlotte’s backstory as a reason why she would be The Grumpy One and closed-off, but the beginning of the book spends a long time explaining that her Decembers are cursed, a concept which fizzles to nothing very quickly. I had some trouble differentiating the women’s narrative voices aside from their appearances (the grumpy / sunshine uniform of black pants / bright A-line dress). And although they end up evenly matched in the end, I felt the book played more both-sides-ism with their backstory than I felt was warranted (though that could be because I’m very much a Charlotte myself).
The side characters are great, as usual. All of Blake’s books take place in a fantasy world where everyone is pansexual all the time and no one feels the need to comment on it, and that’s a very nice place to spend time.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ♥ (3.5/5)

Happy weekend!

Wednesday after work I baby-sat. My sister-in-law got stuck in traffic so I helped out with dinner while she picked up the kids from daycare. I really do not like cooking because I am very bad at it but because I was alone I didn't feel self-conscious and it turned out fine. I made cauliflower in the air-fryer and it was great. I spent most of the evening dog-sitting instead of baby-sitting, since the dog thinks it's super fun to eat his own frozen poop from the backyard. I also spent some time on Wednesday trying to get a mental health appointment now that I have this year's insurance card (though my insurance will change again in February) but once again I could not find anyone who takes my insurance and has availability.

Thursday and Friday were uneventful. I went to the library to return 3 books and checked out 3 more.

Yesterday was the giant pandas' public debut at the zoo and today was my first volunteer shift with them. Everything went really well, I talked to about 300 visitors in my 3-hour shift. I want to start keeping better track of the hours I volunteer - this year I have to volunteer at least 50 hours but starting next year it will be 75 - so I made myself a little spreadsheet. I get credit hours for attending book club meetings and other educational meetings so I can use the spreadsheet to keep track of those as well. I've signed up for a LOT of shifts over the next few months, both because I prefer the colder weather and also to distract myself from current events.

Currently reading:
Finished Make the Season Bright and Solitaire. Started Coyote Run. Still working through The Third Gilmore Girl.
January plans: Coyote Run, The Third Gilmore Girl, She-Hulk 14, Three Bags Full
February plans: Nickel Boys, Animorphs 1, She-Hulk 15
Reviews behind: 1
Consecutive reading days: 23

Currently crafting:
Nothing

Currently watching:
Caught up on Severance, Animal Control, Going Dutch, Abbott Elementary, and High Potential, as well as watched Laid s1e6, Silo s2e9, and Taskmaster New Zealand s4e4.. Finished The Day of the Jackal.

Hi Nora. Our pup Ellie enjoys poopsicles too, but not her own. Either way, it's gross.

The volunteer stint at the zoo sounds fun. You mentioned keeping track of your hours and other things that "count" -- is this a requirement the zoo has for its volunteers?

I'm impressed you finished Jackal. We made it pretty far (ep 8, I think) but the gratuitous violence got to be a bit much, and we also really disliked the Bianca character. Fortunately there's plenty of other programs to watch.

Sorry about the job insecurity stress, Nora, and hope you're able to get something before the contract runs out.

I've been meaning to try Abbott Elementary, and I have access to it on Hulu. Maybe that'll be my February watch.

It's Monday.

Yesterday I went to my friend's house to have hot pot and play games for lunar new year.

Today I'm in the office. No news on my contract. I badly need to go to the grocery store, as all of my dairy products are living on borrowed time. However, I found out on Saturday that my apartment maintenance needs to access my living room on Tuesday so I'm going to spend all of this evening tidying. (Thankfully I can just move a lot of things into my bedroom, since they don't need to go in there.) I have an unfortunate situation going on with a badly rumpled rug that is underneath my couch and I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it. I might need to move it into the walkway, then tip it on its side (it's L-shaped so it can only be tipped on one side, which is the side currently against the wall) and see if I can get the rug out from underneath it that way. The rumpled rug has also prevented me from vacuuming for a few weeks so things are not looking great in there.

Tuesday after work I'll go to the grocery store, then at some point I need to pick up another library hold (surprising no one, I have once again bitten off more than I can chew). Nothing else going on this week until Saturday, when I have a zoo book club meeting (to discuss The Elephant Whisperer which I finished in November so I'm ahead of the game) and then a shift volunteering in the bird house.

Currently reading:
Last night I read She-Hulk (2022) #14. I have about 30 pages left in Coyote Run so I will have no trouble finishing it this month. The Third Gilmore Girl is due back on Feb 1 but I only have 2.5 hours left so that will be no problem. Not sure what audiobook is up next. I have a few on hold but they're still 3 or 4 weeks out. I'm back to Three Bags Full as my purse book but only on page 50 out of 350 so I don't think there's any way I finish it before the end of the month. In February the Overdue podcast will be covering The Nickel Boys and the first Animorphs book so those are both moving up my list.
January plans: Coyote Run, The Third Gilmore Girl, Three Bags Full (maybe)
February plans: The Nickel Boys, Animorphs 1, She-Hulk 15
Reviews behind: 2
Consecutive reading days: 25

Currently playing:
At my friend's lunar new year celebration we played Drawful 2, a pictionary-type game. It worked well for our group but I still like other versions (e.g. Gartic Phone) better.
I started playing a new computer game called Ale & Tale Tavern, about running a tavern (cooking food, serving customers, building furniture, etc.) and it is terrible. It looks awful and is from a 3rd person POV and it's very laggy and jerky (which is probably a problem with my computer)
So then I started a different game which is also about running a tavern, called Travellers Rest, which I love. It's much more like Stardew Valley but the only way to get money is to sell food and drink at your tavern. I wish it were more goal-oriented, but I am really enjoying it anyway.

Currently crafting:
Reminder to myself that I need to mend the cream-colored tights I'm wearing today.

Currently listening:
Somehow I only found out this weekend that Sum-41 had a whole new album out last year, Heaven :x: Hell. I listened to the whole thing several times and it did make me feel 15 again. I particularly loved the songs Landmines and House of Liars.

Currently watching:
Vienna Blood and All Creatures Great and Small

>109 lauralkeet: We're not required to keep track of our hours ourselves, we have a timecard system that does that for us. But the system doesn't always work perfectly, and occasionally I will forget to clock in or out on time. Plus the extra hours for book club meetings and trainings are added by hand by staff and not always in a timely manner. So I just want to make sure the hours in the timecard system match my count of how many hours I should have, plus a formula to tell me how many more hours I need before the end of the year.
I didn't love The Day of the Jackal, but I thought the parallels between Jackal and Bianca were interesting, as they both blew up their personal lives for work. I thought it was a little different than the usual fare (e.g. Killing Eve) in that neither Jackal nor Bianca got obsessed with each other on a personal level (I find that kind of tedious). The thing that really kept me going was Nuria's perspective. I wasn't expecting her to find him out so quickly and I wanted to see what she would do about it.

>110 bell7: I think you'll really like Abbott Elementary. It's very lighthearted.

>112 norabelle414: Thanks for answering my questions Nora! I liked Nuria's Jackal storyline, too. I decided to read a couple of episode recaps to learn how the season ended. I think that's all I need ...

Hi Nora! Good luck getting your grocery shopping done. It's a chore I really dislike. Luckily Aaron is willing to do it weekly if I make the list and order most of the stuff to be picked up by driveup at Target.

>111 norabelle414: I am very familiar with playing expiry date chicken with dairy in my fridge. I hope you come out on top!

It only Tuesday.

Yesterday I picked up and flattened all of the cardboard boxes in my apartment and took them to the recycling. I also took out my non-cardboard recycling, changed the litterbox, and took out the trash. I picked up all of the junk from my couch (the couch is usually a repository for library books, mail, and crafting WIPs) and put it in a box and put it in my bedroom. Then I moved the couch away from the wall, flipped it on it's end, removed the rug and rolled it up, put the couch back down, moved it back into place, then moved the rolled-up rug into the bedroom and stuck it in the corner. All by myself. I only hit the ceiling fan with the rug twice, and it seems to be okay. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the rug. Having a rug in the living room instead of the beige renter's carpet made it feel like a home, but a fucked up rug is worse than no rug at all. There is no space in my apartment big enough to lay an 8x10 rug flat to un-rumple it. I might try Buy Nothing, though I feel bad offering something so dirty, even for free. With the rug moved I was able to charge my Roomba, though it didn't get enough charge to vacuum before bedtime. I did run it for a few minutes this morning.

I also used a software called Redact to start deleting my social media posts. The free version takes quite a long time and is limited to certain things, but I let it run overnight and it deleted all of my Twitter likes. While I'm at work it's deleting all of my retweets.

In the office again today. Still no news on my contract. Entire career fields adjacent to mine are being shut down so it's probably just a matter of time.

Today after work I need to go to the grocery store, and also to Target. I need to review Solitaire so I can take it back to the library later this week and pick up my hold. Friday evening I'm attending a livestream and Saturday morning I have a book club meeting at the zoo and then a volunteer shift at the bird house.

Currently reading:
Read Three Bags Full on the bus home. Listened to The Third Gilmore Girl while cleaning, now have an hour left. No reading before bed, no reading on the bus this morning.
January plans: Coyote Run, The Third Gilmore Girl, Three Bags Full (maybe)
February plans: The Nickel Boys, Animorphs 1, She-Hulk 15
Reviews behind: 2
Consecutive reading days: 25

Currently playing:
Nothing

Currently crafting:
Still need to mend my cream-colored tights. I have a pair of holey cheap ugly socks that are probably not worth darning but I need the practice. Today I'm wearing the tights I mended that had a hole in the sole and the mend doesn't bother me at all; good to know.

Currently listening:
The podcast The Dream is back for a 4th season, this time just random episodes of material cut from previous seasons, updates, and other ephemera.

Currently watching:
Nothing

>113 lauralkeet: It's been renewed, though I'm not sure what they're going to do with it.

>114 The_Hibernator: I don't mind grocery shopping at all, but that's because the grocery store is right across the street from my apartment so the whole trip only takes about 15 minutes.

>115 MickyFine: I made it through breakfast so I have won, knock on wood.

It's a bad mental health day, in a long line of bad mental health days. I'm taking some advice adapted from Rachel Hoffman in a Bluesky post and doing three things every day:
1. Something for myself, in the moment (comforting or relaxing or distracting or fun)
2. Something for myself, long term
3. Something for my community (friends, neighbors, country, world)

Yesterday:
1. Zoned out and listened to Kelly Bishop describe episodes of Gilmore Girls to me as if I had never heard of it before
2. Cleaning my apartment/getting rid of the rug/cleaning up social media
3. It's a long story but I run a fake book award in a fandom Discord server and I rescinded the 2 fake awards that had been won by Neil Gaiman in 2023 and awarded them to the runners up.

Today:
1. I found 4 Halloween candies in the back of my desk and ate them
2. Applied for one job and bookmarked two more
3. tbd (maybe I'll do something about one of the fresh hells this evening is sure to bring)

>2 norabelle414: There's a recent sequel to Night Owl, and it's super adorable!

I'm sorry about the contract uncertainty, Nora, and also the bad mental health days.

What a shitshow all over. I like the 3 things mission! It's especially good as a reminder that little drops in the community bucket help!

>118 norabelle414: If ever a fake award deserved to be rescinded, it's that guy's. 😆

Nora, this is such an awful time for so many, and I am so, sorry. You are doing the right things by prioritizing yourself and your mental health.

>118 norabelle414: - Thank you for sharing this, Nora. My cousin, who is trans and in college in Texas, texted me yesterday to ask for advice on how to deal with our current hellscape. I didn't have much help to offer at the time, but I've now shared the "3 Things" idea with him, and he's excited to try it. So thank you. You accomplished a #3 for the day :)

>121 katiekrug: I liked Nora's "3 things" ritual a lot, and I love this.

I also really like the 3 things practice! Putting that one aside for future use. I hope each day gets better.

Wednesday.

Yesterday after work I stopped at Target on the way home to pick up a couple toiletries. Everything looked fine in my apartment; maintenance came by during the day to place some kind of radon detector and left a note telling me not to touch it, and they'll come back to pick it up on Friday. But they didn't tell me where it is! I knew it would drive me crazy if I didn't know where it was so I spent awhile looking for it (it was behind the tv). I intended to go to the grocery store as soon as I put my back down and changed my shoes, but I got distracted and forgot until 9:30pm. That's not too late to go, since it only takes me ~20 minutes, but they were out of milk which was what I was there for in the first place. Sigh.

Redact did not work as well as I hoped it would to delete my tweets, because of twitter's rate limiting. It got a few hundred but then I need to wait 3-6 hours to get more.

In the office today. My boss is being extremely picky about a stupid graph so I'm in a bad mood.

Today after work I need to do laundry (my favorite skirts are dirty and I need them for emotional support) and I'd like to spend some time either *just* watching tv (no phone or computer allowed) or reading a paper book. I'm feeling pretty bad again, I just can't shake this sinus infection I've had since Christmas. I think I need to start taking medication again so I'll do that after work.

Yesterday's 3 things:
1. I found 4 Halloween candies in the back of my desk and ate them
2. Applied for one job and bookmarked two more
3. I used 5calls.org to call my 2 senators to ask them to oppose the nomination of RFKJr., my Rep. to ask him to oppose the federal funding freeze, and my 2 state legislators to ask them to oppose any and all anti-trans legislation at the state level. This was my first time using 5calls.org. I entered my location and picked from a list of topics to call about and it showed me the phone number for the members responsible for that issue (e.g. only US Senators for cabinet nominations) and a short script to use. It was late in the evening so I left voicemails where I read the script (except for one who did not have voicemail, TIM KAINE). The scripts for my state legislators were pretty vague so I might edit them myself in the future, but other than that it was pretty easy. I recommend doing it yourself at least once!

Today's 3 things:
1. Ate a donut for breakfast
2. Laundry and/or medication
3. I convinced 2 people to subscribe to Washingtonian Magazine, a local magazine that does great reporting on issues for Federal employees (and also what restaurants are good, what neighborhoods are good for shopping, etc.)

Currently reading:
Finished The Third Gilmore Girl but not reading much else.
January plans: Coyote Run
February plans: The Nickel Boys, Animorphs 1, She-Hulk 15, Three Bags Full
Reviews behind: 3
Consecutive reading days: 27

Currently playing:
Nothing

Currently crafting:
I mended one of the holes in my cream-colored tights, but found another one right before bed. I also need to mend the black tights I'm wearing today.

Currently listening:
Nothing

Currently watching:
Nothing

>119 libraryperilous: I definitely have my eye on the Knight Owl sequel for my niece's next birthday!

>120 AMQS: Thanks Anne. I always like to remember that I can do BOTH things - take care of myself and make things slightly better for others

>121 katiekrug: Wow, thank you Katie! The bluesky account @teamufyh.bsky.social (I don't know if it's Rachel Hoffman herself or someone else) is a really nice follow. I'm not one for self-help but her advice is really aimed at people who struggle and helping them do a few little things. Make sure to tell your cousin that he is doing his thing #3 just by being himself.

>123 curioussquared: Thanks Natalie! Each day will certainly bring fresh horrors, but I will be here anyway.

>74 The_Hibernator:. Norabelle414., I never heard of a Bagster. I am on a mission to declutter. Luckily a family services business is right up the street. They have large bins outside where people drop off unwanted items. I confess, that throughout the years, I've culled some things and brought them home. What a funny thing to do -- drop off items and then bring some back!

>118 norabelle414: three things
I may adopt this. Channels the stewing into something coherent.
>124 norabelle414: 5calls.org
Wasn't aware of this. Thanks.

>95 norabelle414: Oh man, 39 rejections is awful. I am sure you will find a place that is perfect for you and they will be lucky to have you as an employee.

It is nice to hear that people are actually repairing clothes instead of throwing them away. My grandfather ( never met him) was a tailor and learned his trade in Hungary. My dad ended having to help him and so it was always my dad who taught me to mend clothes or sew a button back on.

Anyhow, happy rest of the week!

I love the three things! I am so sorry about your job uncertainty, Nora. Take care.

>118 norabelle414: What a wonderful idea! I love this! I'm sure it will help as you deal with all your current concerns. I'm sorry the work situation is so difficult, and I hate what the new administration is doing as it makes everything so much worse (unnecessarily).

I hate to hear that you are still dealing with a sinus infection. It seems like they are worse than usual this year. My DH had one in November, and it took him so long to get over it that he went back to the doctor for a second look. The doctor told him there was no active infection remaining and recommended more use of humidifiers (which he was already using at night). He got a small, portable one and took it around with him during the day, and he said it helped. I hope you can shake the thing quickly, it's definitely not fun to have to suffer through that.

>126 Whisper1: Hi Linda, I had never heard of Bagster either. One of the nice things about living in an apartment building is we have a robust trade in "one person's trash is another person's treasure". I got a nice lamp for my desk last weekend from someone down the hall.

>127 qebo: Hi qebo, glad to help.

>128 figsfromthistle: It's well over 50 rejections at this point, and those are only the ones from the federal government. I do not have any hope of anything perfect, I just need something good enough since I don't have a safety net.
It's very hard to find good-quality clothes anymore, and most of mine are probably not worth mending, but it gives me something to do.

>129 BLBera: Thank you Beth.

>130 atozgrl: I think my sinus problems might be related to humidity as well, since the only problem is congestion and not sneezing or coughing. I already have a humidifier in my bedroom so I'm trying to drink more water and see if that helps.

7. Solitaire by Alice Oseman

Tori Spring hates everything, except her brother Charlie and movies. She hates school, and her friends, and the other students. Two new students start at her school - a friend of hers from elementary school named Lucas and a new boy named Michael. Lucas tries to rekindle their friendship, while she and Michael investigate mysterious messages popping up around the school from someone called Solitaire. Solitaire starts pulling pranks until things suddenly get very serious.

I’m struggling to review this book because I didn’t care for it at all. There are obvious similarities to Catcher in the Rye (which I also did not like at all), and the book does my least-favorite thing of referencing Catcher in the Rye just to tell the reader that the story is nothing like Catcher in the Rye, while actually still being just like Catcher in the Rye. I didn’t care for Tori or for being in her head, as all she wants to do is complain about people even when they do the thing she was just complaining that they didn’t do. Though I do have a lot of empathy as she is clearly having a book-long mental breakdown and her parents are borderline neglectful. They are admittedly dealing with Charlie’s eating disorder and the aftermath of his hospital stay, but they’re doing a bad job with that too. The plot didn’t do much for me either; Solitaire’s “pranks” went from jokes and gossip on a blog to setting kids on fire????? extremely quickly, which I couldn't take seriously.

I’ve read enough Oseman at this point to know she can write stuff I like, so I’ll keep what I enjoyed from this and forget about the rest.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ (3/5)

What a week.

I spent the whole work day on Wednesday trying to work on one graph my boss wanted. I got home too mentally tired to do much, and then I couldn't sleep because I was glued to the news of the plane crash. My apartment looks out on planes approaching from the north, but the crash was a plane approaching from the south, so I did not see it. I could hear sirens all night long. The thought of all those people in the ice cold Potomac is so sad.

I worked from home yesterday, then went to the library. I was there to pick up one hold but I checked out 8 instead, why not. More teleworking today, and my contract lead said we would definitely know by the end of the day today what is going on with our contract, but we don't. I don't think I did my three things at all the rest of the week. And I still haven't done laundry.

Tomorrow is a new day. I have book club in the morning and then a volunteer shift at the bird house.

Currently reading:
Finished Coyote Run. Started Unmasked by the Marquess (audio) and The Nickel Boys.
February plans: The Nickel Boys, Animorphs 1, She-Hulk 15, Three Bags Full
Reviews behind: 3
Consecutive reading days: 29

Currently playing:
I was thinking of buying Hello Kitty Island Adventure now that it's out on Switch, but it's kind of expensive for what it is so I'm going to wait for a sale. Instead I bought Hole.io which I used to really enjoy on mobile. You play a hole that floats around and gets bigger as things fall in it, until you can "eat" whole buildings and mountains.

Currently crafting:
Finished mending the cream tights and the black tights.

Currently listening:
Nothing

Currently watching:
Happy's Place, St. Denis Medical, Going Dutch, Harley Quinn, Taskmaster New Zealand, and Animal Control. Finished Say Nothing and Silo.

>131 norabelle414: Nora, I buy my clothes from Talbots on sale. If you go to their website, and add your name and email, they will send notices of sales. Often they have 50% off sales, both in the stores and online. Most of my wardrobe is from Talbots. A few days ago, they had a beautiful dress coat on sale for $149.00. I bought two coats from them, one 15 years ago, and another this year. Both wear very well.

After Covid, when the stores were open, they had a lot of excess inventory. Very good sweaters were $10.00. I bought ten -- total $100.00 and I wear them a lot, they look like new.

Many don't go to Talbots thinking it is too expensive, but that's not true, unless you want something right after the store has it. I've never paid full price for anything, and the quality is superb and lasts a long time.

>131 norabelle414: You might want to try looking at Talbots. Right now they have 40 and 50% off sales. Most of my wardrobe is Talbots, all clothes purchased on sale. A winter coat over 12-15 years looks brand new.

8. She-Hulk (2022) #14 by Rainbow Rowell, illustrated by Andres Genolet

The Fantastic Four try to figure out what The Scoundrel is up to. Jack is still distant. The Scoundrel whisks Jen away for a romantic evening on his spaceship.

Uneventful until the last moment, building up to next issue, which is the last.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ (4/5)

9. The Third Gilmore Girl {audiobook} by Kelly Bishop (and Lindsay Harrison), narrated by Kelly Bishop

Kelly Bishop always knew she wanted to be a dancer, first in the ballet and then as a chorus girl. She got her breakthrough acting role, and her Tony Award, in A Chorus Line, playing a part that was based on her real experiences. From there she became a beloved actress in Dirty Dancing, Gilmore Girls, and Bunheads.

Very soothing to listen to. She had a few setbacks - a cheating father, professional rejection, a gambling addict husband - but mostly things in her life worked out nicely and she's very pragmatic about it. There's absolutely no gossip, just her nice voice telling you about her life, how much she loves her pets, her friendship with her coworkers, and how she has no interest in fame. She details the plots of several movies and tv shows that I have seen many times, which I found endearing. Nothing revolutionary, but exactly what I needed at the moment. It's a little disappointing that she didn't write more about her life when she was younger, and possibly with a more dynamic co-writer, but if this is the only way we could get them, that's fine.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ (4/5)

>134 Whisper1: Thanks Linda! I have a few basics from Talbots but generally they don't fit me very well and aren't quite my style. I have an odd body shape and I prefer bright colors and meaningful patterns.

It's Monday.

Saturday I went to book club at the zoo to discuss The Elephant Whisperer. We had a guest speaker from the elephant house at the zoo, which was very fun, but we just talked to him for the whole hour and didn't discuss the book at all, which I found kind of annoying. I had a lot to say and was looking forward to talking to other people about it. The next book club book will be Walking with Gorillas, with a meeting in late March. After that I had a volunteer shift at the Bird House, which was good. The giant panda house and Asia Trail were absolutely mobbed but the Bird House was on the quiet side. I saw the male painted bunting, who I've never seen before. Stunning.

Yesterday I mostly did nothing, but I did go to the grocery store. Due to recent concerns I'm going to try to bring back my early-COVID practice of keeping twice as much food on hand as I need. It takes up way more space in my tiny apartment but needs must.

Today I'm in the office. Wednesday I'm going to my brother's house after work. Thursday I'm supposed to go to the theater with my dad but I haven't heard when he's coming back from his annual vacation. Saturday I have a volunteer shift at the bird house and then I'm going to a lecture about bird-friendly coffee.

Currently reading:
Read a bit of The Nickel Boys, but eyeball reading is hard at the moment. I've been plowing through audiobooks - finished Unmasked by the Marquess and I'm 30% through It Gets Better...Except When It Gets Worse by Nicole Maines. If I keep going at this rate I'm going to have to branch out from romances and celebrity memoirs because I don't want that to be all I read this year.
February plans: The Nickel Boys, Animorphs 1, She-Hulk 15, Three Bags Full, It Gets Better
Reviews behind: 2
Consecutive reading days: 32

Currently playing:
I played a Switch game called A Short Hike, in which you play a little bird guy who needs to hike to the top of a mountain to get cell signal, but the "short hike" is not actually short as you have to do a lot of other tasks to get there. It was fun but I beat it in about an hour. Then I started a game called I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, where you have to go to class and build up skills while on a strange planet where things can go wrong. It's fine but requires too much reading and there's also a deckbuilding aspect that I don't like.

Currently crafting:
Nothing

Currently listening:
Nothing

Currently watching:
Severance, Abbott Elementary, High Potential

January in Review (yoinked from Katie, thank you)
(Numbers in parentheses are YTD)

Books Read: 10 (10)
Pages Read: 1,554 (1,554)
Time listened: 33:30:51 (33:30:51)

Mine: 2 (2)
Library: 8 (8)

Male authors: 4 (4)
Female authors: 6 (6)
Non-Binary: 0 (0)

New-to-me authors: 5 (5)
Authors of Color: 1 (1)
Queer Authors: 2 (2)
US/UK authors: 9 (9)
Other: 1 - Japan (1 - Japan)

Print-Prose: 6 (6)
Print-Comics: 1 (1)
Print-Picture: 0 (0)
Audio: 3 (3)

Fiction: 8 (8)
Nonfiction: 2 (2)

Publication:
2025
2024
2023
2018
2015
1974
1906

Re-reads: 1 (1)

Best of the month: North Woods
Worst of the month: Solitaire (not by much)

It only Tuesday.

Late yesterday the director of my department yelled at my boss about a chart we have been working on for a week. He wants us to use a specific program to make the chart but also wants us to make alterations to it that can't be made in that program. After working on it for a few hours I came up with a jury-rigged solution (involving printing out a chart on a piece of paper and folding it into squares to make a grid so that I can recreate it in a graphic design program!!!) that I was extremely proud of so I felt pretty good about myself. After work I did nothing.

Today I came into the office and the director was yelling at my boss again because he didn't like the solution I came up with (he hasn't seen it yet). So not sure what today will bring. Still no word on my contract; at this point in the best-case scenario I will probably be unemployed for a few days between contracts. I would love to work almost anywhere else but my entire field of work has vanished and the DC-area job market is going to be a nightmare for months, if not years. I have never had another job and I have never been able to get so much as an interview anywhere.

Tonight after work: nothing. Tomorrow I'm baby-sitting after work. My dad returned from vacation yesterday so on Thursday we're going to see The Bedwetter (based on Sarah Silverman's The Bedwetter, with music by Adam Schlesinger (the last thing he was working on before he died of COVID in 2020)).

Currently reading:
Read a little of The Nickel Boys on the bus this morning even though people on the shuttle would not shut up.
February plans: The Nickel Boys, Animorphs 1, She-Hulk 15, Three Bags Full, It Gets Better...
Reviews behind: 2
Consecutive reading days: 33

Currently playing:
Nothing

Currently crafting:
Nothing

Currently listening:
Nothing

Currently watching:
Paradise

>141 norabelle414: (((hugs))) Sounds like a lot of stress.

>141 norabelle414: Job stress is awful. You are in my thoughts and lots of good job energy flying your way.

>141 norabelle414: I am so sorry about your job stress. I can't begin to imagine what government workers and contractors are going through right now.

>144 BLBera: What Beth said. I've been thinking of you, Nora.

>145 lauralkeet: Ditto >144 BLBera: and >145 lauralkeet:. The job stress must be terrible right now. You are in my thoughts.

Sorry about all of the job stress, Nora.

>139 norabelle414: I enjoyed A Short Hike but yeah, a bit TOO short IMO.

Thanks for the 5calls.org call-out; I haven't heard of that before. Listening to Bishop narrate her book sounds soothing right now. I'll have to look it up in my library.

I'm so sorry about the extra stress you are carrying.

Just sending all the hugs your way.

Thanks for the good thoughts, Foggi, Robyn, Beth, Laura, Irene, Natalie, Emilie, and Micky. It means a lot.

10. Coyote Run by Lilith Saintcrow

LibraryThing Early Reviewer book

Coyote is a shapeshifter, hiding out in a dirty saloon in what used to be Mexico, when she's hired by Marge, another shapeshifter, to rescue her sister from a concentration camp deep in fascist Lindbergh territory (formerly known as Texas). Coyote never says no to money, no matter how crazy the heist, so off they go into the desert. Coyote has escaped from this particular concentration camp before, and she and the chief medical officer have history.

A fun little adventure story. The world-building took some time to get used to, but I enjoyed it in the end. The villains are not really anything to speak of, because the story is all about how cool the good guys are. Some of the world-building touches are fun, like a mechanical pack-robot called DONQ-E, but there was just too much of it for a short story - a pandemic AND a civil war between Texas and the US+Mexico (and there’s some other third faction that’s barely mentioned?) AND mutant shapeshifters. That’s a lot. I would gladly devour more stories set in this world though.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ (4/5)

It's Friday.

Work on Wednesday was uneventful. Afterward I babysat my niece. Delightful as always. We read A Visitor for Bear and another book I don't remember.

Working from home on Thursday was also uneventful. My team had a meeting with someone from our current company, who did not really have any answers. She did say that if we don't get picked up on a contract (either the prime company to my company's subcontractor wins but doesn't pick up all of our staff, or they give us an offer and we decline it, or a different company wins and doesn't pick up all the staff or gives us an offer or we decline it, or the contract is canceled) our health insurance is good through the end of the month. So that's something, I guess.

Thursday evening I had dinner with my dad and then we went to see Sarah Silverman's The Bedwetter: A New Musical, with music and lyrics by Adam Schlesinger. It's still in previews and there were some technical difficulties in the middle so they had to stop, and then Sarah Silverman herself came out to talk about writing the musical and buy time while the set was fixed. Unexpected and fun. Young Sarah was played by an understudy, and it was her very first time performing on stage for a paying audience. She was great, and the musical was great. I don't think any of the songs were catchy enough to remember out of context, but within the show they worked great (and were mostly for comedic effect, as you'd expect from both Silverman and Schlesinger). I'm definitely going to pick up the memoir it's based on.

Today the same colleague from my company called me to let me know that if the prime company wins the contract I will be moving over to the prime company. A pretty anti-climactic way to find out I only have one week left with the company I've been working for for 13 years. Either way I'll be out of work next Friday, and then possibly starting a new job the following Tuesday. Or not. Who knows?

Tomorrow's lecture on bird-friendly coffee has been moved online due to weather, which means I won't be able to attend because I'll be at the zoo for my volunteer shift. Sigh.

Currently reading:
I finished The Nickel Boys. I read it very slowly because I didn't feel like I could skip a single word. What a book. I stopped a few times to go back and reread previous chapters. I'm almost done with the graphic novel GLOW vs the Star Primas (yes, GLOW as in the tv show).
February plans: Animorphs 1, She-Hulk 15, Three Bags Full, It Gets Better..., GLOW vs the Star Primas
Reviews behind: 3
Consecutive reading days: 36

>152 norabelle414: Who knows?
I'm sorry for all the stress around your job, on top of all the stress in the country.

11. Unmasked by the Marquess {audiobook} by Cat Sebastian, narrated by Joel Leslie

Alistair, the Marquess of Pembroke, has barely finished getting his wasteful late father’s estate in order when multiple relatives come calling asking for favors. To teach them all a lesson, he picks one goddaughter and plans to publicly embarrass her. Unfortunately her older brother Robert is very charming and the two quickly become best friends (who are very attracted to each other and make out sometimes). When they get too horny to live, Robert reveals the truth - he’s actually the goddaughter’s maid Charity, disguised as a man, and the real Robert is dead. Alistair is thrilled, not because he cares what gender his partner is but because it means they can get married and officially start a life together, but Charity has no interest in being a woman for the rest of her life, let alone a whatever-the-female-equivalent-of-a-marquess-is.

Perfectly serviceable. The characters are good (though feel a little similar to Sebastian’s other Regencies). The romance is good. The cross-dressing aspect is fascinating - it’s not modern day so of course Charity doesn’t fit into any of the labels she might find community in today. She’s just very assertively herself. I loved the nonchalance of Alistair’s bisexuality. The conflict doesn’t really make any sense - if the late Marquess was not really Louisa’s godfather, how did they even find out about him to make up the story?? Did they pick a name randomly out of the Regency phone book?? But that's easily ignored.

The narrator, Joel Leslie, was FANTASTIC. He did a lot of different voices for the supporting characters, but was appropriately serious during the spicy scenes. I would love to listen to more by him but it seems most of his work is Amazon-exclusive.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ (4/5)

12. A Visitor for Bear by Bonny Becker, illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton

A bear does NOT want visitors, but a persistent little mouse keeps coming over until the bear relents. He realizes maybe he actually does want visitors!

I try not to think about the part where the bear repeatedly sets a boundary and the mouse spends the whole book violating it until the bear gives up. Oops! It’s very cute in the end, though. My niece loves looking for the mouse on every page. Also the bear has a real midwestern hoosier cabinet, which is such a cute touch.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ (4/5)

13. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Elwood is a well-behaved, smart teenager. He gets good grades in school and has a job at a corner store. He listens to records of Dr. King’s speeches, attends peaceful protests for civil rights, and is starting to take college classes soon. In his excitement to get to class early he hitchhikes, in a car that turns out to be stolen. Elwood is sent to Nickel Academy, a reform school practicing corruption and violence like Elwood has never known before. He’s beaten almost to death for standing up for a smaller student, but months of toeing the line afterward gets him a cushy role selling the tax-dollar-supplied school provisions (only the Black kids’ provisions, of course) to the neighboring townspeople in exchange for cash to line the administrators’ pockets.
In the present day, adult Elwood lives in New York City and mostly tries not to think about Nickel, until he hears the news that archaeologists have dug up the many, many bodies buried there.

What a book. Very closely based on the real Dozier School, Whitehead once again writes fiction that is just as real as the truth. The short book feels dense, like every sparse sentence contains a full story in just a few words. Every character feels immediately recognizable, and it especially felt like I understood Elwood deeply from the moment I met him. I was confused how the elder Elwood could be so different from the boy I knew, and then after the twist everything clicked into place.
Every time I read something by Whitehead it just makes me want to read more immediately.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ (5/5)

>156 norabelle414: I was reading a book about the Dozier School last year, We Carry Their Bones by a forensic anthropologist who used DNA testing to link graveyard burials to families. My bookmark indicates that I set it aside halfway through (as I did with many other books last year; a matter of mood, not merit), but I've been intending to pick it up again and also read The Nickel Boys with recent release of the movie.

>157 qebo: The Nickel Boys is only 213 pages and VERY compelling, so I highly recommend it. It's also not super graphic, a lot of the rape and violence are talked around, as they would have been at the school.

Great review of The Nickel Boys, Nora. I also thought it was very good. I'm hoping to see the film soon...

A great bunch of reviews, Nora.

Hopefully the bird house is warm even if the weather is miserable.

>159 katiekrug: Thanks Katie! I'm not sure I can take the film right now (not that I watch movies much anyway)

>160 MickyFine: The HVAC in the bird house is broken so it's HOT in there, which is not my favorite. The birds love it though.

It's Monday.

No news. I'm acting now like I'm going to be laid off on Friday, just because I don't know what else to do. Tidying up my files, taking things home from my cubicle. I'm planning to go into the office every day this week, because if my job is over I'll need to take everything home, and if it's not over I'll need to speed-run through the check-in process.

Saturday I volunteered at the Bird House. It was pretty quiet, I only talked to about 50 people over 30 hours. Highlights were a very attractive man with binoculars who chatted about birds for almost an hour, and a 5yo who read all of the names of the birds in the coffee farm (what kind of 5yo can read "Magnolia warbler"???). Low lights: getting pooped on twice (thankfully just a few seconds apart, so I only had to wash up in the bathroom once)

Yesterday I did nothing. Today after work I'm going to my brother's house to have dinner with my dad. Tomorrow there's a snowstorm so I might be working from home (though the part of the government in charge of closing for snow storms maybe doesn't exist anymore.)

Currently playing:
Some more I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (still too much reading. I want to know what happens at the end but not that badly). Picked up a few video games I haven't played in awhile to see if any of them scratched an itch: Civilization V and Katamari Damacy (both still hold my interest but I've gotten all the achievements and can play them in my sleep) and Cult of the Lamb, which I think is right. The combination of resource-managing a cult and going on little battle runs really works for me. I played for a few hours.

Currently reading:
I finished GLOW vs the Star Primas. It was good but oddly juvenile for a comic based on a TV show that begins with a nude sex scene?? I also finished It Gets Better ... Except When It Gets Worse. I started Animorphs 1: The Invasion before bed and read more Three Bags Full. I started listening to the audiobook of Boyfriend Material, which I don't love (the premise is extremely stupid, though I like the love interest a lot) but I'm already 5 hours in (thank you, anxiety) so I'll finish it.
I'm not sure what I'll read next - I have a bunch of books out from the library but I think the one I want to read most can't be renewed.
February plans: Animorphs 1, She-Hulk 15, Three Bags Full
Reviews behind: 2
Consecutive reading days: 39

I'm sorry for all the job uncertainty, Nora. It sounds like you're doing all you can to cope with it but it sure is stressful.

Attention audiobook listeners/catalogers:

There's now a feature to record audiobook length in LibraryThing! Where you record the number of pages you can change the drop-down from "1,2,3" to "hours" or "minutes" (or add a second line and use both)

Hello!
>79 norabelle414: I thought about "classics" in terms of quality recently. I've come to realize that it's just a label for books that were popular at some point, be it in their time or later.
Scary truth? Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey will be added, very likely, to that pile a good couple decades from now. For being "milestones".
>95 norabelle414: ugggh thats so many, I'm so sorry.
Job hunting is absoluly soul-sucking no matter the situation.
>116 norabelle414: wohoo! Nice work on the rug and the couch!
>141 norabelle414: It really breaks my heart to see you go through this. It is beyond unfair what's happening to you and I'm so fucking sorry.

Sorry the job stuff is still up in the air and I hope things work out.

I haven't played Cult of the Lamb but have been toying with it. I recently learned they added a co-op mode last year so I might try to play with Tim -- it sounds like the rare kind of game we both might like.

Quick update to say there's no update. I teleworked on Tuesday and Wednesday due to snow and now I'm back in the office. Today I'm finishing a couple tasks and packing up half of my desk. Tomorrow I'll transfer all of my files to the shared drive, surrender my computer, and pack up the rest of my desk.

Ugh, I'm sorry things are so up in the air for you, Nora. That's so stressful. Sending the biggest of hugs.

>140 norabelle414: Great stats!

>141 norabelle414: that does not sound like a fun work environment to hear yelling between department heads......Hopefully things become more calm in the office.

>168 MickyFine: >169 figsfromthistle: Thanks Micky and Anita.

Update: the contract was awarded, but if I get an offer letter from the new company it won't be until at least Tuesday.

>170 norabelle414: baby steps. I hope the offer letter comes through soon, Nora.

>170 norabelle414: Fingers crossed, Nora.

>170 norabelle414: I'm crossing all the crossables for you Nora, in hopes the offer comes through.

Just checking in, Nora. So sorry to hear about all the stress and uncertainty with work. It's awful what's happening 😔

Hi Nora, that's terrible about your job. Let us know how you are

Hello miss Nora.
I haven't been present for a bit and I see your time hasn't been going so well either. Wherever things are for you I hope that you are physically okay and to hear from you soon. I'm so sorry that they're subjecting you to this bullshit; it's unfair, unprofessional, and you don't deserve it.

Hi Nora. Your absence leads me to think things have not improved on the job front. I'm so sorry.

>177 katiekrug: What Katie said. I took heart when I saw you commenting in one of the LT threads (bug collectors or new features, I can't remember). I hope you'll return here when you're ready. Take care, Nora.

Thanks Laura, Beth, Irene, Mary, Rachel, Angela, and Katie. Things are mostly resolved but the dust is still settling.

It's Monday again.

Friday my contract was awarded at the very last minute. Some of my coworkers were staying with the same company and had a seamless transition but a few of us were "transferred" (without any notice or input from us) to a new company. I was unemployed on Friday, surrendered my computer and ID, and lost access to all of my company resources at 6pm. Saturday I did nothing.

Sunday I volunteered at the panda house at the zoo, which I thought would cheer me up. I had a horrible time, to the point where I wrote up my concerns about the behavior of other zoo staff and sent it to my supervisor. It also poured rain the whole time. The visitors and the pandas themselves were great.

Monday would have been a holiday except, you know, I was unemployed. I did get an email from the new company that won my contract and had a short discussion with them and they sent me an offer letter. I only had a couple hours to accept, which was stressful. I am getting a significant pay increase, a slight reduction in paid leave (I don't use it all anyway and the extra money will allow me more flexibility than leave), more expensive health insurance, but it will cover more. The new company is incredibly tiny and has way fewer resources (no EAP, no continuing education, etc.) so I need to decide what resources I actually need and advocate for those myself instead of just taking advantage of what's available.

Monday night I went to trivia and we got first place. I really love this trivia group and I wish there were a way I could play with them more often, but I'm just so tired.

The rest of last week was a whirlwind of onboarding with the new company and getting back to my actual work. I still have a lot to do. My role will be changing under the new contract and not in a way I am very pleased with. I have been hoping to get out of this job for quite awhile but the chances of that in the current environment are pretty much zero.

This weekend I did not do much, but severe lack of sleep for several weeks did lead me to sleep almost 13 hours on Friday night. Hopefully I can get back on a good schedule now. I did catch up on book reviews and deep-clean the bathroom and cook some curry to eat as leftovers.

Nothing extracurricular planned this week.

Currently playing/crafting/watching/reading coming later today.

You've been through a lot these last few weeks Nora. It's understandable that you'd be exhausted. I'm glad you are employed again, and that some parts of your compensation & benefits are an improvement. Keep taking care of yourself -- that's important!

Hi, Nora. I'm so sorry life has been so stressful for you, especially in regards to your job. I'm glad you're not going to be unemployed, but your new job seems to have its own difficulties. Your trivia group sounds like a fun distraction. Everyone I know says they are "tired' now. We are all so worn down by the new reality in our broken country. {{{Hugs}}

Currently reading:
I finished Boyfriend Material, Animorphs #1, She-Hulk #15, and Pretties. I'm still reading Three Bags Full and I'm determined to finish it even though it was due yesterday. I ended up in limbo with so many library books - I started FIVE of them that each had to be returned when I was only a few pages in. Very frustrating and certainly contributed to my bad mood. Current audiobook is Real Tigers.
February plans: Three Bags Full
March plans: Real Tigers, Spider-Gwen #1
Reviews behind: 0
Consecutive reading days: 53

Currently playing:
Nothing

Currently crafting:
The sweater I darned the elbow of a month ago already has another big hole along the edge of the darn. I might need a patch, but I don't have any fabric.
I finally started learning to use a fancy darning loom that I bought in the early pandemic. Getting it set up was difficult, I am not good at judging lengths or how many stitches I need or spacing them evenly. The weaving itself was quite easy. At the end I was left with THIRTY ends to weave in, which is wild. The video I watched just said "then weave in all of your ends" as if that's easy or normal?? I posted about it on social media and got some advice that there are better ways to do the warp threads that don't result in so many ends. So I will try again.
Today I got a big run up the side of my tights so I guess I will be further testing my tights mending technique.


Currently watching:
Mostly caught up on things - Mythic Quest, Abbott Elementary, Happy's Place, Taskmaster New Zealand, St. Denis Medical, Severance, Paradise, Harley Quinn, Going Dutch, Animal Control, All Creatures Great and Small, Saturday Night Live, Last Week Tonight, Miss Scarlet, Vienna Blood, Funny Woman, The White Lotus, High Potential, and Wild Cards. Started the new show Good Cop / Bad Cop.

>180 norabelle414: Well, I guess the good news is, you DO have a job, and maybe the roller coaster of emotions will level out a bit as you get accustomed to the changes? The damage being done to individuals in this mess is just appalling.

Is your new job near your old one, or do you have to master a whole new commute?

I am glad it's not a total loss of job/benefits, but the change sounds stressful. Hang in there!

>184 laytonwoman3rd: I'm feeling a bit better already, but it's still annoying that the best I can manage is to stay in my same old job I don't really like forever, because I don't have any other options.

>185 katiekrug: It's mostly the same job I had before, on the same site with the same team, my paychecks just come from a different company and there have been small tweaks to my job description.

>183 norabelle414: I am happy to hear you still have work, as much as it seems like an uneven compromise for you.
I hope it works our for the better, somehow. But your annoyance is valid.

>139 norabelle414: How great that you live near a zoo and can attend discussions! I would love this!

Good news that you still have work, Nora. Good luck!

Love the weaving, Nora. Are you starting over altogether? Or weaving that in and then learning the new technique? What social media do you use for crafts? I was wondering if I should start an instagram account.

>187 Ravenwoodwitch: Thanks Angela! I have less job stress than many right now, for sure.

>188 Whisper1: I don't live nearly as close to the zoo as I wish I did, Linda. It takes me about 45 minutes to get there. Before COVID they had lots of events on the weekends and evenings that I could attend, but they restructured and now almost all of the events are during the 9-5, M-F workday so I can't attend very many of them, even the virtual ones. Most large zoos have some virtual webinars etc. that are open to the public. I recommend finding an accredited zoo near you (or far away, virtually!) HERE and signing up for their mailing list.

>189 BLBera: Thank you Beth! It is one weight off my shoulders.

>190 The_Hibernator: Thanks Rachel! I finished the blue and white patch in >183 norabelle414: and it looks fine from the outside, it was just a ton of work to weave in all the ends and it looks bad on the inside. I started a new, smaller patch with the advice I got from others and it is much easier and looks way better! I'll share pictures when I'm done.
I'm not much of a photo person so I have never gotten into Instagram, and now I'm trying to stay away from Meta products as much as possible (I still have a facebook account because I want to keep an eye on what my parents are posting). I post on Bluesky about crafts (or books, or politics, or whatever), and there are particular words or emojis I can use to get picked up by e.g. a fiber crafts feed. I also post about crafts in a few Discord servers, though they're mostly servers about other things, not dedicated to crafting.

>186 norabelle414: I'm sure better to have a job than not, but sorry that you're stuck in suboptimal.
>183 norabelle414: I've seen videos of this sort of thing. They don't mention the ends. :-)
>191 norabelle414: I've spot checked craft feeds on BlueSky but don't read them regularly, being kinda overwhelmed by the politics. (I have an account but I don't post.)

>192 qebo: It drives me nuts in both embroidery and knitting when videos or tutorials or books don't show you what to do with your ends or how to finish your projects. I'm having flashbacks to 2023 when I knit 8 pieces of a stuffed giant panda toy and then the directions just said "sew into shape".

It's Wednesday.

Yesterday was uneventful. Things have mostly settled down at work. My whole office got an invitation to the promotion ceremony of one of our old directors, which is Monday at noon all the way on the other side of town. That's crazy, it would take almost the entire workday. And less than a week's notice! The rest of my coworkers feel bad that we can't go but I'm just annoyed.

Today is also uneventful, fingers crossed. I need to do some laundry and grocery shop, but not urgently.

Tomorrow I'll be teleworking. Hopefully I'll be able to finish all of my company onboarding because I'm very behind.

Now that my job is settled I can focus on March Mammal Madness, which is starting soon! A bunch of biologists get together and have a tournament of pretend animal battles. It's very fun and a great way to learn about biology and revel in the joy of science communication. You can find out more and see this year's bracket HERE. I haven't filled mine out yet but I suspect I'll be team narwhal.

Currently reading:
I'm finally getting really into Three Bags Full just in time to be almost finished. 40 pages left. I'm a little over halfway through Real Tigers so it's possible I could finish this month but unlikely. After I saw the musical of The Bedwetter I put the memoir on hold at the library and it came in much earlier than expected because my local library bought more copies! That has to be because of the production, it's not a new book.
I also forgot to mention the next zoo book club book, Walking with Gorillas. I haven't started yet but I do have it out from the library. The meeting is on March 22.
February plans: Three Bags Full
March plans: Real Tigers, Spider-Gwen #1, The Bedwetter, Walking with Gorillas, Piranesi
Reviews behind: 0 (the last 5 or so are all written and posted to the book pages I just haven't formatted them for Talk yet)
Consecutive reading days: 55

Currently playing:
I saw a review on Polygon of the next Two Point game, which is about MUSEUMS and is coming out NEXT WEEK. Thrilling.

Currently listening:
I've started listening to a few of this year's Eurovision songs but nothing notable yet. The official playlist won't be up until all of the songs have been announced, which should be next week.

Currently crafting:
As mentioned above I started another mend with my darning loom and it's going much better than the first.

Currently watching:
I had the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary concert on in the background yesterday. It was perfectly fine, with some very fun parts.

Well, of course you’ll be Team Narwhal because, well, they’re awesome!

Nora
Glad you are employed. The whole last minute/new company/accept in a few hours on a holiday or else sounds teeth grindingly irritating. I'm keeping you in my thoughts for a job shift right up your alley, meanwhile here's some energy for enduring the status quo.

14. GLOW vs the Star Primas written by Tini Howard, illustrated by Hannah Templer

The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling have lost a couple advertisers and need some cash, so their director Sam signs them up for a wrestling festival a few hours away. After some shenanigans on their travels, the troupe arrives to find out that the organizers didn’t want to have two female wrestling acts, so instead of wrestling each other, GLOW will be wrestling the Star Primas. They’re unchoreographed and don’t do costumes or gimmicks or rehearsals, so the two groups struggle to work together.

This is a very fun collection, and the 4 issues are well-structured. It takes place approximately after season 1 of the TV show (or maybe during?) which was a little awkward since it was published after season 3, but it was nice to see my TV friends again anyway. The story feels pretty juvenile considering it’s a continuation of a TV show that begins with a full-frontal sex scene, but that seems to correlate with the direction of the show as well. I’m disappointed there seems to be another series but I can't find it anywhere.

The art is perfect - it takes a particular kind of skill to draw comic book characters that are real, recognizable people, and Templer does a fantastic job.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ (4/5)

15. It Gets Better … Except When It Gets Worse {audiobook} by Nicole Maines, narrated by Nicole Maines

Nicole Maines has known she was a girl since she was three years old. When she was a young child, her parents sued the state of Maine for her harassment and discrimination at elementary school, and the book Becoming Nicole was written about her family during her transition. To escape the harassment she and her mother and her identical twin brother had to move to a new city, leaving her father behind due to his work. The summer before college she had gender reassignment surgery, which was botched and left her in psychological and physical pain (thankfully later fixed). She left college to continue acting, first in small roles and then joining the main cast of the TV show Supergirl, where she played the first canonically trans superhero. She loved the character so much that after the show ended in 2021 she started writing comics.

This memoir is Nicole’s story in her own(-ish, shout out to ghostwriters) words. She talks a bit about the events of her young childhood just to set the stage, but it’s mostly about her feelings about her transition, her feelings about her family (especially her identical twin brother, about whom she feels a lot of guilt for making his life difficult), and young adulthood. It felt a little bloated with lectures about trans rights that were preaching to the choir, but I understand the need for padding out the book a bit since she’s very young and there’s already an existing book about the minutiae of her young childhood. I really enjoyed the details of working on Supergirl (she says everyone on set was extremely kind and supportive) and accidentally becoming a comic book writer (she had to stop reading other comics because every time she read about a superhero she would want her character to have those powers too). Particularly insightful were her thoughts on having a romantic life while hating her body, and the hypocrisy of media fans who reject real queer actors and characters in favor of their particular non-canonical queer pairings of straight characters. Worth a read if it sounds interesting to you but I’m not sure it’s got universal appeal.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ (4/5)

16. Boyfriend Material {audiobook} by Alexis Hall, narrated by Joe Jameson

Luc is the son of two rockstars so everyone assumes he’s a drug-addicted fuckboy like his dad. Due to his reputation, one of the few places he can get a job is at a weird non-profit, but even that starts to fall through when donors drop out after Luc’s picture is in a tabloid. For some reason all of his friends and colleagues are sure that the solution is for him to get a “presentable” boyfriend, so he goes out with his friend’s friend Oliver, a defense lawyer, whom Luc once unsuccessfully hit on at a party and called “very boring”. They agree to fake date for a couple months so that Luc can mend his reputation and Oliver can have a date to his parents’ anniversary party. It goes exactly like you’d expect.

This was a mixed bag, as I really really loved Oliver and really did not care for Luc. He’s horrible to everyone, from his dumb but kind posh coworkers (he starts every workday trying to tell them a joke for no reason but to show that they are too dumb to understand basic jokes) to his large diverse group-text who drop everything anytime he needs the slightest thing while he complains that he doesn’t have any friends. He gets gently called out for his awful behavior a few times but not enough, imo. That does make his dynamic with Oliver interesting, since Oliver has been into him forever but understandably assumed that the man who called him “very boring” to his face did not want to be with him. Can’t blame him for being reserved.
I really enjoy the fake dating trope generally but the biggest hurdle it faces is the initiation - why, in the modern day, would anyone need to fake date? This one definitely does not pass. The donors to the non-profit are homophobic so Luc needs to date a “presentable” gay, but Oliver isn’t a celebrity or anything so why would the donors know or care what “kind” of gay he is? Luc hadn’t actually been doing anything scandalous, the tabloids were just making shit up, so why would they suddenly change their tune because he’s dating a rando? Also most of their dating activities are in private, which defeats the purpose.
Oliver’s seriousness and sensitivity and adherence to his values were very charming so I don’t regret reading it. Joe Jameson is a great audiobook narrator and though some plot-unnecessary scenes go on very long, that was the distraction I needed in the moment. I don’t think I’ll continue this series but I will probably read more by Alexis Hall.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ♥ (3.5/5)

17. The Invasion (Animorphs, book 1) by K. A. Applegate

It’s the 1990s and normal teens Jake, Cassie, Rachel, Tobias, and Marco are doing normal 90s teen things like playing arcade games at the mall and cutting through abandoned construction sites when they see an actual space ship and meet an actual alien. With its dying breaths the alien tells them the truth - Earth is already being taken over by Yeerks, parasitic slugs that enter people’s ears and take over their brains. Anyone could already be infected. To help the teens fight the invasion, the alien gives them the power to change into any animal they touch. Luckily Cassie’s parents are veterinarians (and also the local zoo seems to have zero security whatsoever, not even, uh, locks). Their first step in the resistance they are now waging, alone, as children, is to find out what people they thought they could trust are already infected - a teacher? A parent? A police officer?

With the obvious caveat that it’s a 30-year-old middle-grade book, this still hits so hard. Those poor kids are all alone trying to fight a fascist takeover! The animal anatomy & facts are pretty good, zoo procedures aside, and I loved the graphic descriptions of human bodies changing into animal ones. The descriptions of the different kinds of aliens are great, too, if you don’t question how a 12-foot-long giant centipede got to the middle of town undetected.

I kind of want to reread more of them, especially since I didn’t read them in order as a kid, but the middle-grade writing is very grating. It’s so passive and full of filler words. Maybe audiobooks?

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ (4/5)

18. She-Hulk (2022) #15 by Rainbow Rowell, illustrated by Andres Genolet

She-Hulk returns to Earth from her hot date with The Scoundrel to dismantle the bomb he planted in Manhattan and help the rest of the superheroes fight off the alien invasion. Jack returns at the last minute to save the day and kiss the girl.

An enjoyable issue. Good as the ending to this story arc but frustrating as the ending of the series. Who was the alien who hired The Scoundrel to bomb Manhattan? Why? Can Jack ever come back permanently? Will he and Jen make it work? The series “rebrands” and continues under a new name, but knowing now that it’s only 10 issues long I don’t have high hopes.

For the series overall I enjoyed the art and the vibes were fun but the plot was just so slow compared to something like The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl which has way more going on per issue.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ (5/5)

19. Pretties {audiobook} by Scott Westerfeld, narrated by Emily Tremaine

SPOILER WARNING for Uglies
Now a Pretty, Tally Youngblood joins a clique called the Crims, who spend their time with daredevilry and pranks. With quite a reputation from her time on the run (which she doesn’t really remember), Tally rises fast. She’s reconnected with her childhood friends Peris and Shay, and has a boyfriend named Zane. They live a mostly unexamined life, but do try to stay “Bubbly”, the Pretty term for thinking hard and paying attention. One night after a party Tally sees a message that only she could understand, which puts her back into contact with the Ugly outlaws. They show her the consent video she made before she was captured, and give her the cure. She doesn’t want to be cured alone, so she takes one of the pills herself and gives the other to Zane, who believes everything she tells him about the Pretty operation. They use the Crims to come up with an elaborate plan to get them out of New Pretty Town and back to the wilderness.

A huge flop, even by middle-book-of-a-trilogy standards. The plot is essentially the same as the first book - Tally does some daring feats, has a revelation, escapes, survives on her own for a while, someone betrays the group without meaning to, the Specials show up. And in the end she finds out Shay has had surgery to become a Special and then Tally does too. The new revelation in this book is Tally didn’t take the actual cure so she’s only “cured” through will-power, which contradicts everything we learned in the first book. Could they at least check her brain to see if she still has lesions?? If the Pretty operation doesn’t need to be medically reversed then what are we even doing here?? Tally and Shay were the best relationship in the first book and they barely see each other in this one. Zane is just as uninteresting as Michael and their love triangle has legs made of spaghetti.
There are now 8 books in this series so I assume Westerfeld has a lot more to say and I’ll keep reading, but this one could have been skipped entirely.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ♥ (2.5/5)

20. Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann, translated by Anthea Bell

A flock of sheep in an Irish village come across a gruesome scene - their own shepherd, dead with a spade in his chest. The other townspeople are acting strange, and the sheep don’t really understand what humans are talking about or what death is,, so they decide to solve the mystery themselves. Sheep aren’t generally known for being smart, but George used to read them detective stories and their investigation is led by the cleverest sheep in the flock - Miss Maple.

A murder mystery as solved by sheep is a very interesting idea, and I appreciate the effort, but I didn’t love it. I think it could have worked better if it was shorter, but being inside the heads of a bunch of sheep was grating after a while. It also somehow managed to be mildly sexist, with most of the ewes besides Miss Maple being sidelined or unnamed while 4/5 of the main character sheep are male. Miss Maple is a cute name and a cute idea. There are probably references to Miss Marple in the book but I’m not familiar enough to get them. The ending was headed toward being perfectly fine, but then took a turn to one of my least-favorite tropes: (seriously this is a huge spoiler for the last couple pages of the book, do NOT click on it) suicide victim is able to micromanage the narrative around their own death. I wasn’t expecting it and I didn’t care for it.
The translation from German to English by Anthea Bell is perfectly fine. There were some unfamiliar words but it’s hard to say if that was translation or just my unfamiliarity with Irish things. Most likely the latter.

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ♥ (3.5/5)

>203 norabelle414: Interesting coincidence: the fiber guild I belong to did a "book review" program on Wednesday, where a few members shared fiber-related books, both nonfiction and fiction. This was one of them and while I don't normally enjoy crime-solving animals, I was mildly interested. Now, after the points you made, maybe less so. BTW, I understand the book is being made into a movie starring Hugh Jackman and Emma Thompson.

>195 drneutron: Definitely still headed in that direction! I'll post my full bracket here as soon as I finish. (It's always the little ones that trip me up. How am I supposed to know who will win between a northern flying squirrel and a flying frog??)

>196 elorin: Thanks so much, Robyn. I appreciate it.

>204 lauralkeet: It's not too bad, I just had a lot of small dings against it, many of which are personal preference (disliking the ending, for example). The sheep in question are wool sheep (they're very prejudiced against meat sheep) but there isn't really any discussion of shearing or what happens to their wool. The sheep like humans who wear wool and are suspicious of humans who don't, but that's as far as it goes.

Thanks Nora, I appreciate your perspective.

Hi Nora -- I'm glad you're still employed with a better salary, but what an absolutely ridiculous roller coaster you've been on to get to this point. I'm sorry for the stress and I hope things improve.

February in Review (yoinked from Katie, thank you)
(Numbers in parentheses are YTD)

Books Read: 11 (21)
Pages Read: 926 (2,480)
Time listened: 48:04:24 (81:35:15)

Mine: 3 (5)
Library: 7 (15)
Borrowed: 1 (1)

Male authors: 3 (7)
Female authors: 7 (13)
Non-Binary: 1 (1)

New-to-me authors: 5 (10)
Authors of Color: 1 (2)
Queer Authors: 4 (6)
US/UK authors: 10 (19)
Other: 1 - Germany (2 - Japan, Germany)

Print-Prose: 9 (9)
Print-Comics: 2 (3)
Print-Picture: 1 (1)
Audio: 5 (8)

Fiction: 10 (18)
Nonfiction: 1 (3)

Publication years:
2024
2023
2020
2019
2018
2016
2015
2008
2005
1996

Re-reads: 2 (3)

Best of the month: The Nickel Boys
Worst of the month: Pretties

Happy to be yoinked 😁

For what it's worth, I enjoyed the second She-Hulk arc, but I think I liked this series more than you overall.

Happy weekend, and nice reading stats for February!

Glad you're employed, sorry for the continuing stress and frustration with changes to the job. The whole situation really sucks, and all I can do is offer my sympathy. My middle sister has had to go in-person now for a job that regularly gave a work-from-home option even pre-Covid, and my youngest sister was telling me that everyone having to be in-person there our sister works means that something like 18,000 people are now vying for 5,000 parking spots. Just ridiculous all around.

Anyway, hope you're able to find joy in other things this weekend, reading among them.

Happy weekend, Nora! I am so glad to hear that you did get to keep your job, though I hate that you had to go through all that stress! I'm sorry that the job tweaks aren't great, and that it's not what you would really like to be doing in general. Here's hoping that something you like better comes up for you.

I'll second what >211 bell7: said, I hope you can find joy in other things this weekend!

>207 curioussquared: Thanks Natalie! That's one hurdle down, probably many more to go.

>209 katiekrug: title of your sex tape!

>210 MickyFine: I didn't really dislike anything in this run of She-Hulk, I just found the pacing inconsistent and I thought it spent a lot of time repeating things we already knew and not enough on the interesting side-events (the law firm, superhero fight club, etc.)

>211 bell7: Ah yeah, my best friend works at the same site as your sister A, and lives out by her too. Thankfully public transit is working out ok for him. He was concerned that there would not be anywhere for him to sit because technically his employer is in South Carolina but he's assigned to a project up here, but that seems to have been solved.

>212 atozgrl: Thanks Irene! It's been frustrating for sure.

>213 norabelle414: - Snerk.

It's Monday.

Did not really do anything I needed to do last week or this weekend. No laundry (still not urgent), no grocery store (this is now urgent), a little bit of company onboarding but I still have a lot left, no March Mammal Madness bracket.

Friday I returned library books and checked out new ones.
Saturday morning I had an in-person zoo meeting, which was mostly good but did get derailed quite a bit by volunteers complaining about parking and car traffic. We're a very urban campus located a few blocks from 3 metro stations, with a bus stop right out front. Not sure why people feel so entitled to free on-site parking with no wait or walk.
Sunday I went out to get Korean barbecue with some friends for one friend's birthday. This was my first time having Korean barbecue since I got extremely bad food poisoning from a different KBBQ restaurant last March (I just looked this up and it was actually 2 years ago! time flies) so I was worried I would have a bit of psychological aversion, but it went fine.

I'm in the office today. My day-to-day work has now become almost entirely dealing with the repercussions of the daily edicts. Today I'm drafting 4 different budgets based on 4 potential policy changes in an effort to find 8% savings off an already austere budget. There are so many things I could be doing instead. Meanwhile my boss's boss is presenting to his boss's boss about why our contract should not be canceled.

After work today I MUST go to the grocery store. I'm also going to watch a webinar about street art at 8pm. And hopefully work on my March Mammal Madness bracket.
This week I'll be babysitting after work on Wednesday AND Thursday. Saturday I have another zoo meeting.

Currently reading:
I finished Three Bags Full and Real Tigers. Started The Bedwetter on audio, Piranesi at home, and Walking with Gorillas in my backpack. The later is going really well, she's very pragmatic and clear-eyed about colonialism and post-colonial politics in Africa (her father was likely killed by Idi Amin, and she was not allowed to work with the same gorillas on the Rwandan side of the border because the Ugandan government was feuding with Rwanda). It would be a perfect pick for one of those global reading challenges.
March plans: Spider-Gwen #1, The Bedwetter, Walking with Gorillas, Piranesi
Reviews behind: 1
Consecutive reading days: 60

Currently playing:
Spending a lot of time on replaying games I don't particularly like just because they are something my brain is willing to focus on.

Currently crafting:
Finished my second mend with the darning loom and it was much easier and came out much better! Only 4 ends to weave in!
..

Currently watching:
Caught up on most things, and currently rewatching season 1 of Wolf Hall. I still find it quite boring (the book was an extremely rare DNF from me) but literally everyone is in this production and they all look like babies. I'm behind on Severance but hoping to watch today.

The last 5-10 years of my career were spent engaged in annual cost-cutting exercises. These were often due to a divestiture, as a once-Fortune 10 company became a shell of its former self. It was completely demoralizing and the primary reason for my retirement. It was also nowhere near what's happening to you and so many others right now. But I can sympathize with how much your work sucks right now.

I'm intrigued by your MMM bracket and will follow with interest. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology used to do March Migration Madness with birds, and that was really fun.

It's Tuesday

Yesterday I did go to the grocery store but they were out of half the stuff on my list. My usual frozen breakfast sandwiches, cans of chickpeas (I wonder if this is because of the run on eggs? Everyone wants the aquafaba?), and cat food (the cat food is typical, they only stock 2 of the big packs at a time so I always have lots of extra and check back frequently). Milk was the most urgent and I did get that. In hindsight maybe I should have gotten 2, but I'll have to go back to the store soon anyway. I also got a packaged salad for dinner which was labeled as quinoa and kale but when I ate it there was no quinoa, it was just kale (plus all the other toppings). Wtf?

In the evening I attended the street art webinar, and it was FANTASTIC. Very empowering. It was so much more popular than she expected so she's doing it again in 2 weeks. If you're interested in stickers in public, particularly science-y ones, DM me and I'll send you the link (I'm serious about this...I would just post the link here but this is a little too public).

In the office today. It's crisis after crisis here. I had to table all work on the multiple budgets because I found out this morning that one of the government-owned platforms we use for data management and communication with stakeholders is being shutdown at the end of the month so we need to move everything off of it and notify all of our users. Let alone come up with a replacement. Then my team lead decided that we need to spread out our office attendance instead of all being in-office on the same days (as we were previously instructed to do) so he wants us to all change our days in the office AGAIN. And then he decided he might set up a coverage system where if we're not going to be in the office, whether we're on work travel or sick, we have to find someone to cover for us if we're in the office. Like we're children instead of high-level professionals who successfully worked from home for years. This isn't even something our director is requiring, it's just something the team lead came up with to anticipate something that might be asked about at some point. Honestly I'd rather just come into the office every day than get jerked around all the time. I would do it happily if my commute weren't over an hour each way.

After work today I MUST submit my health insurance forms, and hopefully work on my March Mammal Madness bracket and watch Severance and the White Lotus. Wednesday and Thursday I'm babysitting after work.

Currently reading:
The bus home has been playing conservative talk radio again, which is exactly as bad as you would expect in the current moment, so I've been listening to podcasts on the way home. but getting some good reading in Walking with Gorillas in the mornings.
March plans: Spider-Gwen #1, The Bedwetter, Walking with Gorillas, Piranesi
Reviews behind: 1
Consecutive reading days: 61

Currently playing:
The new Two Point Museum is out today but I probably won't have time to play until Friday.

Currently watching:
Nothing

>200 norabelle414: ohhhhhh THE FLASHBACK you just gave me!
These books were one of the first major series I went back and read in middle school (when I finally got my handle on reading). I read so many but never finished the series.
Maybe I should. Hmmm...
(P.S: did you know they attempted a TV show for this? On a budget worse than Xena, lol).

And I'm sorry to hear about things at work. That all sounds so chaotic and miserable. I hope you can hang in there.

>218 Ravenwoodwitch: I'm not totally sure I had actually read the first book before, because I read such a smattering of them growing up, but it definitely had a lot of nostalgia. I've heard the TV show was not bad! Someone currently has the rights to make another show but I don't see any evidence it's going anywhere.