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Fiction books
(anthology). The Witch Who Came in From the Cold: Season One (e)
Ben Aaronovitch. The Masquerades of Spring (e)
Pamela Freeman. Victor's Quest
Tamora Pierce. Cold Fire (e) (re-read)
Tamora Pierce. The Fire in the Forging (e) (re-read)
Tamora Pierce. The Healing in the Vine (e) (re-read)
Tamora Pierce. The Magic in the Weaving (e) (re-read)
Tamora Pierce. Magic Steps (e) (re-read)
Tamora Pierce. The Power in the Storm (e) (re-read)
Tamora Pierce. Shatterglass (e)
Tamora Pierce. Street Magic (e) (re-read)
Rafael Sabatini. The Sword of Islam
Shelby Van Pelt. Remarkably Bright Creatures (e)
Evangeline Walton. The Island of the Mighty

In progress
Hanan al-Shayk. Women of Sand and Myrrh
Arthur Conan Doyle. The Valley of Fear (e) (re-read)

Abandoned
(anthology). Tremontaine: Season One (e)

Picture books
Lee Fox, Mitch Vane. Jasper McFlea Will Not Eat His Tea
Julia Patton. The Very Very Very Long Dog
Eve Titus, Paul Galdone. Anatole

Non-fiction books
Marc Abrahams. This Is Improbable
Andrew Ford. Try Whistling This: Writings on Music (e)
Patrick Radden Keefe. Say Nothing (e)

Non-fiction books in progress
Rosaleen Love. Reefscape

short, screen, and stage )
books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Herland
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One of the reasons why, until this month, I hadn't been to town since 2019 was a lingering fear that if I went into the crowded city I would come back with something interesting and respiratory. In a typically human display of logical thinking, however, having made up my mind to go I didn't take any serious precautions against that outcome, and went cheerfully unmasked among crowds on trains and in buses and in rooms full of boardgamers and so on and so forth.

So it wasn't entirely a surprise when it became apparent, within a week of my return, that I had in fact acquired something interesting and respiratory.

It isn't covid, or at least I've got a negative result on all the covid tests I've been taking. I even tried a brace of those fancy new ones that also test for flu and RSV, and got negative results on those as well. So I'm not quite sure what it is, except that it's definitely annoying.

It started with a general feeling of being tired that had developed by Saturday morning into enough of a something that I cancelled my social plans for the afternoon and spent most of the afternoon asleep instead. The worst of it was over within a few days, leaving just the post-nasal drip and associated cough which do not appear to be in any hurry to go away.

I've been sticking at home to be on the safe side, and skipped board game club and other social occasions. (And a committee meeting, which felt particularly weird because I don't think I've missed a meeting of that committee in years and there's a part of me that worries about what they might get up to without my eye on them.)

One of the ways I passed the time during the week was re-reading Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic tetralogy, and then the sequel tetralogy, The Circle Opens. I started reading them years ago along with the Mark Reads online book club, but for some reason I don't now recall I stopped partway through. The decision to re-read them now and finish the series was partly a choice to read something fairly undemanding that I knew I'd enjoy, and partly a deliberate attempt to manipulate my reading statistics on StoryGraph: The all-time stats page includes a top ten list of the authors a user has read the most books by, which in my case starts with Terry Pratchett at #1 and continues down through several excellent SF writers, two creators of classic detective series, and the most prolific author of Doctor Who tie-in books, to finish – now – with Tamora Pierce at #10. The previous #10 was an author who I regrettably read voraciously during my undiscerning teen years but would now rather not give any hint of endorsement to, so I'm glad to have crowbarred him off the list.

Remarkably Bright Creatures fit the themed reading challenge for November ("a book about families") and the last book of The Circle Opens fit the challenge for December ("Finish a book or series that has been lingering for a long time" – and also the alternate option, "a book about someone who is gifted"), so I've completed that set of challenges ahead of schedule. On the other hand, I'm straggling with the random book challenges: I haven't finished the October book yet (This Is Improbable is one of those books that was designed to be dipped into on odd occasions, not read in long stretches) and I haven't settled on a November book. The November challenge is to pick a book at random from the books with your favourite StoryGraph 'mood' ("adventurous", in my case); I failed to get on with my first pick, as previously detailed, and my next few attempts to re-roll the choice landed on books I wasn't in a suitable frame of mind for. Part of the trouble, I think, is that if a book with my favourite mood has been sitting on the to-read shelf for years there's probably some reason I'm not keen to read it. I'm currently having a shot at a Sabatini novel I picked up in a second-hand shop once, and being reminded that although Sabatini inspired several classic adventure movies I've never entirely got on with his books at first hand.
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. My reading lately has been tending toward the light and escapist, although even then there have been pitfalls, like the time I tried a swashbuckling Sabatini novel only to find the characters having the same kind of arguments about abuse of power and the appropriateness of violent protest that I’d been trying to distract myself from. (In retrospect, a novel set in the lead-up to the French Revolution was probably not my best choice.) I’ve been having good luck with novels that have amusing first-person narrators, like Daddy-Long-Legs and The Martian -- does anybody have any recommendations in that vein?


. I’ve only watched one more theatrical stream since last time I posted about it, which was the Shakespeare’s Globe production of The Winter’s Tale. After that I just kind of lost interest, I’m not sure why. Part of it, I think, is that once the novelty wore off the hit rate of the streams I’d watched wasn’t high enough to encourage me to persist. The Winter’s Tale was another disappointing one, solid on the comedic parts but struggling with the more dramatic parts. The rendition of King Leontes had the same problem as the Lear I posted about last time, giving a convincing account of his human frailties and no sense whatever of him as an authority figure accustomed to obedience. All the courtiers had to be weakened to avoid overpowering him (one was played by the same actor as the comic relief shepherd who shows up in the second half, with very little difference in the style of performance). And the actress in the role of Paulina played her like somebody who had been handed Hamlet’s warning against overacting and taken it for a to-do list. The actress playing Hermione was great, though, and gave much-needed emotional weight to every scene she was in.


. Or maybe it’s that any kind of theatrical production requires more emotional investment than I have spare at the moment. I haven’t watched any full-length movies lately, either. Instead I’ve fallen into a Youtube rabbit hole of people filming themselves watching famous movies for the first time and then posting highlight videos of their reactions to the big moments. In this way, I’ve had concentrated doses of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and several other favourites. I was interested to discover that the climax of Wreck-It Ralph still makes me cry even without most of the lead-up.


. Since the social distancing restrictions have been relaxed in this part of the world, I’ve had a chance to gather some friends and try out Half Truth, the game I backed on Kickstarter that got delivered when the restrictions were at their height. It’s a quiz game along broadly the same lines as Trivial Pursuit, but designed to try and avoid some of the common problems with that type of game, such as the issue of “Everyone else keeps getting asked the questions I know the answers to”. We all had a good time, and I look forward to playing it again some time.


. The Alto’s Adventure llama situation has had an important development, which I’ve mentioned on Tumblr already but not here yet -- one of the llamas has learned to snowboard:

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Fiction books
Lois McMaster Bujold. Penric's Travels (e)
Terry Pratchett. The Shepherd's Crown
Rafael Sabatini. Scaramouche (e)
Jean Webster. Daddy-Long-Legs (e)
Andy Weir. The Martian (e) (re-read)

In progress
(anthology). Batman Black and White, volume 2 (re-read)

In hiatus
Caroline Stevermer. The Glass Magician (e)

Non-fiction books
(none)

short, screen, and stage )
books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Rex Stout. Fer-de-Lance

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