Week in review: Week to 17 January

Back to work this week, but it's been fairly quiet.

I've been seeking distraction from an ongoing situation that I'm not going to talk about here, so I've listened to a lot of podcasts (nearly caught up on Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics) and got a lot of reading done (see separate post). Immersing myself in a computer game would be nice, but I haven't been able to make up my mind to try anything new, so I've mostly been occasionally trying XCOM 2 again and finding that I'm not in the right frame of mind to do well at it.

Movie reaction videos have been a useful distraction in the past, but I seem to have reached a saturation point with those: there's a limited number of movies that are popular to react to and that I know well enough to get something from watching people react to them, and I've watched enough reactions to them for the time being. I'm still watching some TV series reactions, including Sesska's Doctor Who reactions (which reached their final episode this week) and yet another run through Babylon 5.

I've been watching a bit of actual TV, too, mostly The Traitors, which has been quite dramatic this season. And Jet Lag, which worked its way northward this week and, despite my prediction last week, actually crossed the border into Scotland at the end.

Rehearsals continue, and have been a useful way to get away from things and enjoy myself for an hour every few days.

The weekly board game meet was also a nice break. We played another mission in Leviathan Wilds, and a few rounds of Coup: Rebellion G54.

Book Chain 2026: Week 3

#4: A book published at least five years before the previous book

Attempt 1: Twenty-Two Goblins by Arthur W. Ryder, a translation/retelling of "Vetala Panchavimshati", a Sanskrit cycle of folk tales.

In the frame story, a king encounters a goblin (properly a vetāla) who tells him a series of stories involving magic and supernatural creatures. ( Read more... )

Attempt 2: Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster.

I decided that what I needed was a book in which nobody was getting horribly murdered. ( Read more... )

#5: A book with the same spine colour as the previous book

Here's a conundrum: What colour is the spine of an ebook?

Well, in this case there's an answer: PG's edition-with-images of Daddy-Long-Legs includes not only the internal illustrations and a picture of the front cover but also a picture of the spine, which has a nice floral decorative element on it. The spine is green.

The Project Gutenberg edition-with-images of the sequel only has the front cover and not the spine (insufficiently decorative, one presumes), but if the spine is the same colour as the front cover then it is also green. Therefore:

Dear Enemy by Jean Webster.

A young woman is charged with running an orphanage in need of reform, with the assistance of, among others, a taciturn doctor with whom she immediately fails to get on (and we all know what that means). ( Read more... )

Other reading in Week 3

January: Title containing "Before" or "After"

I have a couple of options on hold at the library, but they're still a few weeks away from coming in. If necessary, I can opt for Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife, but apart from the question of whether subtitles count I'm not sure it's a topic I'm in the mood for at the moment.


StoryGraph Onboarding Challenge: A book one of your friends gave 4 stars out of 5

I'm about halfway through The Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Hornung, the first in a series of books detailing the exploits of the sporting gentleman A.J. Raffles, an excellent amateur cricketer and equally excellent amateur burglar and jewel thief. ( Read more... )

Miscellaneous

Han Solo at Stars' End by Brian Daley.

One of the very earliest Star Wars tie-in novels, written back when "Star Wars" was just one movie, and well before the formation of the set of shared assumptions that informed the tie-ins from 1987 on. ( Read more... )

Water Weed by Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel, et al. A collected story arc from the comic book spun off from Aaronovitch's Rivers of London novels. ( Read more... )