This is another hell of a week, but at least (mostly) not for me? Thin comfort.
- The trilogy that started with Ninefox Gambit stayed mostly excellent, although I wasn’t completely enamored with the conclusion. Still, worth a read. I also read a bunch of other books too.
- Other book notes the first: I actually quite liked Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which is apparently Not The In Thing, but whatever. (I’ll freely admit that its core “schtick” is one I’ve thought a lot about, which alters my judgment.)
- Other book notes the second: Fortune Smiles is a fantastic short story collection by Adam Johnson. One of the stories is very dark, but it warns you pretty close to the start, and if you read the book in chronological order you’ll be warned earlier anyhow. This was another one of those “pick it up at random in the library” books that I almost certainly wouldn’t have ever picked on my own, so: yay library displays!
- Other book notes the third: I’m in the middle of reading Harlan Ellison’s seminal sf collection Dangerous Visions; I can see how it would have been pretty damn transgressive in the late Sixties, although with the benefit of hindsight it occasionally has a whiff of Trying Too Hard. Most of the stories are excellent, though, and as a whole it holds up impressively well. My favorite bit so far isn’t one of the stories at all, but Ellison’s introduction where he tears into the whiny Old Guard and their complaints about how the new sf just isn’t the same as the old. The fact that it could be taken almost verbatim as a tear-down of the modern “crisis” in sf that, for a while, centered around the whole Sad Puppy/Rabid Puppy/etc. thing is delightful. Everything old is new again, kids.
- Despite continuing to read at a rapid pace, I also continue to check out library books at an even more rapid rate. Half of my couch is covered in them. I have thirty-five checked out right now, many of them huge tomes full of short stories that will take me forever to finish. what am I doing
- We had an extended game night Tuesday. We played Concordia, one of my favorite games, and I did very poorly, coming in last. Part of that was an idiotic play on my part in one of the final turns that cost me something like fifteen points. I acted like a complete jerk at the end, though, so… I’m afraid I’m not a lot better about that whole situation than I was when I wrote about it last. Ugh. I’m not happy with myself about that.
- Finished up Bojack Horseman season 5, which was amazing, and Jessica Jones season 2, which was… fine… I guess. Started on Luke Cage season 2 and Orange is the New Black season 5. I may actually drop that last one, which is veering dangerously close to the sort of “everything is miserable and you get to watch” modern take on TV that I just can’t handle.
- I weighed myself on Thursday for the first time in, uh, almost a year, I guess? I’m at 271 pounds; my best guess for how much I weighed when I started on this diet in late April is somewhere between 330 and 360 pounds, so I’ve lost something in the 60-90 pound range over a bit more than five months. (In case you’re wondering, my goal weight is 180, which is technically overweight from a BMI standpoint but is actually on the line where I go from looking healthy to looking less so.) That’s pretty damn good progress, even though I’ve got a long way to go. I was also reminded that I should never, ever own a scale. They ruin my will with the irregular ups-and-downs.
- Lots of puzzles, too; I’m finally getting to a point where I’m relatively confident in my Kakuro solving, and I continue to work on several other books and magazines on a one-off basis.
- No prose, although I did finish up my Guide to the Cardpocalypse series.
- I also came up with the core idea for my NaNoWriMo novel. My current plan is to share that here as I write it (although probably not as body text, which would be overwhelming). We’ll see if I still feel that way come November.
- Mostly just the usual on the videogame front, although the launch of Hollow Knight on the PS4 made me buy it (again) and play it, since I find that sort of game way more suited to a big TV and recliner than my computer. If you like Metroidvanias, I strongly recommend it.
Well, that was excessively long, so, uh… until next time!