Warhead On Legs

Ow. I went to bed last night, didn't quite fall asleep as quickly as I wanted to thanks to an excess of blankets overheating me but, eh, close enough to on time. Had a long and involved and very vivid dream that was basically the plot of Nerd Girls Save The World and woke up absolutely knackered. As tends to happen when I have vivid dreams but okay, okay already, brain. I get the point.

Extra bonus ow because although I decided what the hell I'm going to start doing the scene by scene at work today, work decided it was going to pile everything on today so I had wholesale orders, a pile of regular mail orders, hey I guess the slump time is over! Augh. Argh. Brain. Hurty. So tired. Don't want to capoeira just because it may involve games and require brain. I could do drills, but one-on-one? Ahahahah fuck that. (Though really if there's a new student one-on-one will only require lizard-brain of 'shit a thing is coming at my head get out of the way' rather than strategic chess playing game so that wouldn't be awful.)

Wednesday Reads. I finished Monkey, an English version of the Journey to the West stories with a focus on the Monkey by David Kherdian. It was all right, I didn't read it for enjoyment but if you like folk tales it's a good translation (I can't vouch for the accuracy) and easy to read. I started The Curse of the Mistwraith finally, rolling around in some nostalgia reading. It's more complex language than I remember but the imagery and characterisation hold up so far. And now I remember why I was obsessed with Arithon and Lysaer, heh. We'll see if that continues when I pick up the rest of the books that I didn't get into.

I also picked up two books from the library that I need to get through relatively soon, one called The Runaway Universe about space science developments and The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings by Thich Nhat Hanh which I read a long time ago, I think it was my mother's copy, and recent events (Dingbat Foccacia) have caused me to think of it again, so I figured I'd pick it up to read it. It might also help me rebalance after the first two months of the year were so fraught. Although I am feeling better now, after a week or two of distance from various forms of argh. Day by day, as nothing chaotic or awful happens, and with lots of sleep and attention to myself.

So, last night I go to swab Cassius and he was hissing at Barton, which I'm not sure what to make of that. Any time Barton came close to Cassius on the perch he was hissed or yowled at. My hindbrain is screeching rabies this is a sign of rabies unnatural behavior unnatural behavior but Cassius would also let me pet him and snuggle him and kiss his forehead and doctor his foot with no problem, although he didn't want to eat the treats (I think he did later). So... pfff. But he did eat with an appetite this morning. I'm not sure, maybe they had a fight? (Since it happened on Valentine's Day Anna decided it was a lover's quarrel.) They've always been cozy and bumped heads and nuzzled, though. It makes me a bit worried. But Cassius remains friendly and free of other symptoms, and I'm not entirely even sure it is a bite and not just a really bad gouge or abrasion, so my hindbrain can just shut up.

I have solved the mystery of the weirdass oranges the boy got me, which were too light colored for blood oranges and did not taste like grapefruit in an orange shell. Turns out they're Cara Cara oranges, which are hardy and nutritious and tasty. And container growable, and hardy to zone 8 which, oranges, what? I'm sorely tempted to get a plant and try growing it. They're pink. It's very weird. But they taste very good.

Last night's lecture turned out to be more of a lecture plus singing, which is fine it was on the murder death love ballads so we got some good singing. I took notes that were mostly names and keywords, but I also learned that the two sisters song I've always had a weird fascination for dates back to the Viking invasions of England. There's no reason I should be surprised by that, but I kind of was.

Despite complaining that I had no idea how to get between the major beats of the short story I'm working on I somehow accidentally a foreshadowing and provided myself with what might be enough material to get between the major beats and tie it all in to the characters' first appearance in a novel already draft. So. Go me? As per usual I'm trying to get this all written and sorted or at least all of the ticky boxes on my Habitica checked off except maybe evening stretches, before I go to capoeira. Which I will be surprised if I get through that and manage to stay awake long enough to stuff food in my gob before I pass out. I've been really tired at least since Friday. I'm not sure if it's insufficient recovery time or spell backlash from Sunday or all the cleaning I did Sunday or the political stress or IDEK there are so many stressors. How do I choose some. This weekend I am once again curling up in my damn house and not leaving it (aside from capoeira) and reading and sleeping. A lot. Outside world be damned.

I have little else oh. I did read all three of Stephen Blackmoore's Eric Carter books last weekend, and by last weekend I mean mostly last Saturday. Because yes they are that good to keep my attention and have me shrieking at them for an entire day. Highly recommend. And now I'm on Delilah Devlin's urban fantasy Shattered Souls which is not bad so far. I'm on a mission for 100 books mainly from my backlog this year. So far so good!

Well, that was one of the dumber things I've done in a while. Capoeira today was Groot has become lamed by his own ridiculousness, which is to say he broke his foot trying to get logging done (as he's in the middle of a bunch of work projects, and his work is metal sculpture as tall as he is, and there's a REASON I call him Groot), I was inexplicably dizzy and I still have not accounted for it and I am SO CRANKY that I'm still having to be this careful. And then there was Puck, who was actually healthy but said I looked like he felt last night so, um. And then there was a new guy. So we only did movement exercises for about forty five minutes, so I figured eh it's just forty five, I'll take it easy, I'll be FINE.

If any of you are ever in my vicinity, physically, when I'm at a capoeira practice or doing exercise, and I tell you I'll take it easy? Do me a favor and sit on my legs until I agree to take a couple pre-emptive puffs on my inhaler.

So, you can guess what happened. Full on coughing wheezing coughing up goop because when I wheeze hard enough my body mistakes it for dry heaves asthma attack. So, yes. That was one of the dumber things I've done in a while. Four inhaler puffs and end of class later I'm fine again. Except for the vertigo, which, what the fuck, and also ARRRGH.

ANYWAY. So I guess this is a combination Wednesday Reads/bitch about my malfunctioning body post.

untonuggan kindly reminded me that Manners and Mutiny, the last of the Finishing School series was out, so I grabbed and devoured that. And now I have to go back and read her read on it. I'm... something. I'm not sure if it's been so long since I've read the rest that the enthusiasm doesn't have the first churn through the series momentum, or if it really was as disjointed in some aspects as it seemed? I'm trying to figure out how to describe what nagged at me, but I'm not sure how to except, the transitions between major scenes seemed either too long or too jarring in tone. Despite that, though, I did enjoy it quite a bit.

And then, having found my missing book I sorted out all the Phrynes, and read through 3-5 in short order. (Murder on the Ballarat Train, Death at Victoria Dock, The Green Mill Murder). They're murder mysteries, so obviously they're samey samey in the way of genre series with strict convention, I add this caveat mostly because in the last couple years I ran into a friend who *gasp, clutch pearls* doesn't like police procedurals. Look, I watched Criminal Minds up through season five? six? Whenever the bizarre Irish Mafia plotline started getting going, so I LOVE procedurals. So in our conversations about television I ended up saying a lot, well, I liked this, but probably BECAUSE it was a procedural so you probably wouldn't. So here I say, it is a murder mystery, with all of the prerequisites of murder mysteries checked off, and that tends to be a very identical checklist from book to book.

That said, I do like Kerry Greenwood's style of writing, the books are different from the TV show but I like them almost as much. (Look, I'm a sucker for the Nathan Page-Essie Davis chemistry, that's pretty much the big thing in the TV show's favor.) I did, coming to it from the TV show, have one moment of realization of holy shit these books are way darker and several people are way more hateful than they were in the show. Like, there's unexpected incest and a whole plot that was mostly about a family misunderstanding each other in the TV show turns out to be an evil mother trying to play her sons against each other so she inherits everything holy shit. Wow. But again, not detracting from the enjoyment! Just a surprise.

Um. What else. I am further into Karen Memory than a couple of pages! And while Elizabeth Bear's dialect for the book is incredibly strong (was Blood and Iron like this? I didn't get very far into it because the Kindle formatting for it at the time SUCKED and was very hard to read) I'm finding it kind of intriguing. There are a few phrases here and there that, I don't know if it's the narrating character's attitude that throws me out or the turn of phrase or both. It's not as relaxing rest sit back and devour as, say, a Phryne mystery, but it's fun. I'm enjoying it, I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing. If it helps, so far it reminds me of a lighthearted steampunk Deadwood. Yes, I just said a lighthearted Deadwood.

Oh, and I read Saga vol 5, which I think is the most recent volume so I think I'm current on that. Still enjoying it! Rather cranky about one character death, though. I liked her, dammit. ... actually that volume made me cranky in a couple of BUT YOU WERE DOING SO WELL/I LIKED HER DAMMIT ways. Still going to keep reading though, still enjoying.

I may, however, have to give up on Trailer Park Fae. The whole thing is ornate as hell without having any kind of underlying structure to support the ornateness, not in terms of overall plot so much as in terms of meat on the bones of each scene. Or maybe I mean tendons. There's actions, and there's ornate words to describe it, but it's hard to find the connection between the two. Plus I find myself just entirely apathetic about everyone and everything that's going on in it, which, usually urban fantasy is my thing. This, not so much. I may go back and finish it later, but right now I'm glad I only paid 2$ for this.

In the meantime I have a bunch of Trigun to read, Karen Memory to finish. and then either more Kerry Greenwood to get or other people's Wednesday Reads lists to peruse to look for recs. Either one. Oh, and I'm looking at reading Borderline and Company Town next, anyone have anything to say about those?

Wednesday Reads! Finally.

It's not nearly as exciting as the degree to which I've been putting it off makes it sound. I've come to the conclusion that Kevin Hearne, while he is an adorable man, is not as good at writing immortals as I would want him to be. Or at least at writing immortals who make what I consider smart decisions, which is not always the same thing. But the number of times I have screeched at the book because yes you had relations with the Morrigan in what realm did you think that would end well or yes in fact there are people who are trying to kill you, the [redacted description] is also, in fact, a target, are you so bad at emotions that you didn't figure this out?. And so on. But I'm picking up Hammered, which is the third book in the series, and I don't regret spending the money, so eh. That's a win for books.

Meanwhile I mainlined both Chuck Wendig's Atlanta Burns and The Hunt because she's in a way like me in that I gravitated towards the ones who didn't quite fit in. Inasmuch as you had those at my school. And also because she hits me at a point in my life where "But why can't I just punch it" is something I at least feel often, even if I don't say it because I know the answer.

And Seanan McGuire's Indexing and Reflections, which was a hell of a lot of fun for not so strangely similar reasons. Sloane is a woman after my own heart. I, too, would like to scream at story until it goes away. Also with all the makeup I've been putting on I kind of feel like a goth princess, except that her wardrobe is probably not my wardrobe. And, ironically, I'm wearing almost no makeup today. Tinted moisturizer but.

Currently I'm starting Hammered, I really need to start Karen Memory because I keep meaning to, and I really really need to get through Skull Wars because it's due back at the library in a few weeks and I've already renewed it once. So that'll be a thing I probably do tonight, go to bed shortly after I get home so I can both crash the hell out after capoeira and spend what time I have before that reading Skull Wars. And then tomorrow getting up into bed an hour early for more Skull Wars, and then maybe I can finish it over the weekend. After Skull Wars I need to mainline the NSA Codebreakers book so I can send that up to the next reader (after which one of the uncles is interested in reading it what have I done) and after that... I have no idea.

Welp. Because getting lightly (not grabbed, just circled) accosted by a random person on the street a block from work and outside of a police station and yelled abuse at was exactly what the day needed.

I have taken aspirin for the headache, I was going to report it to the police but there were no police in the station, presumably out on patrol (it's a very small, sort of satellite office thing) and having reported it to the garage security worker who was there, and since I have no major day jobligations I am going to do my Wednesday Reads posts before I start writing because that's what I want to do.

Pretty much I only read two (three) authors, Tanya Huff's Fifth Quarter and No Quarter, which were enjoyable even if I did want to punch some people. And even if I think one of the characters in the book got off relatively lightly. Still enjoyable! And towards the end some of the characters in the first book made an appearance too, so that was fun.

And then, because Amazon had the other two books for $2 and I wanted to see if I wanted them, I started Angelfall by Susan Ee and it is first person present tense, which is jarring sometimes, and her writing grace fails her sometimes, but ahahahahah oh god the story and the characters are engaging and fun. It's a YA trilogy, the second and third are World After and End of Days and there's some fast and loose with the mythology in ways that don't entirely hang together/seem like they're fast and loose so the plot can move along and the characters can do cool shit, and I don't care because the whole thing amused me. The two main characters spend their entire courtship insulting each other in the insecure annoyed I'm-cranky-and-rattled-and-nitpicking ways. It's awesome. I enjoyed it.

The third author is Eric Foner because I'm still reading Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad only I'm reading it in chunks before bed.

And I've started on Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series, which is not bad! I do not at all regret buying them, although oh my god the first book does suffer from beginning novelist syndrome don't put your entire exposition within the space of ten fucking pages dude. I don't care how much you spackle it over with "but tell me how you" no! No no no. You are not good enough to do ten solid pages of straight exposition. No. Bad. Other than that though, I'm enjoying. And I need to finish Kate Elliott's Jaran, but I haven't been taking as much straight time out for reading lately. Should fix that.

I may have committed an evil when I mentioned that there was yarn to be had on the seconds list. More colors of inexpensive Brown Sheep Lanaloft for basically 30% of usual retail cost. Om nom nom. So, yeah, eventually I will have All Of The Yarn coming, some of it to go up north for a late birthday present and some of it to stay with me and keep me warm all winter. Because why not.

I haven't done a Wednesday Reads post in a while, so let's go with that. I don't think I'm going to make my goal of 100 books in a year, but I've definitely topped 50 and I should be able to add some onto that over the next month and a half.

Mad Madame LaLaurie by Victoria Cosner Love and Lorelei Shannon is a very account-based story of Madame LaLaurie of New Orleans infamy, thus it's also a lot dryer than most lurid true crime books. I enjoyed it, though. It cited a lot of source material that might still be available for looking up and researching today, if one were so inclined, and it also referenced a number of legends and traced back possible paths to the source of those legends. So that was fun.

Still working on Women of the Golden Dawn and at the moment I've switched to Return of the Black Death by Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan, because of source material for my Nanonovel. And my Kindle tells me I have three or four other books that I've almost finished, so I can knock those two off my list. At least one of them was a Phryne, not sure why I never finished that. Maybe I got distracted? And a Wild Cards, and I remember not finishing THAT because I was traveling from DragonCon and fell asleep. So. But I think for the next while I'm going to be gnawing through my collection of non-fiction, unless there's some YA/shorter fiction to read.

And knitting. Endless, endless knitting.

Capoeira days are so long. Sooo long. I can't really regret it, I am enjoying it and how it makes me feel (and apparently how it makes me look?) but long days are long. Especially when it's summer and 80+ and I'm going to be walking around in it before I go. C'est la vie. Besides, I always feel better and more energized when I come back from it.

And also also also. There were women there today! For almost three weeks I've been the only woman and now there were other women! Three of them! Which meant we outnumbered the guy students, although not the guys in general. Still, it's not like I'm asking for an even balance, just a less awkward ratio. I don't know how many of them are going to stick around, some of them mentioned leaving town soon for temporary or permanent, but I hope some of them do. If only to enlargen the class size some.

And my lunapads came! Which means I might want to check my spam folder for a shipping notification I never got, but oh well! I'll have luna pads for next week, and that will make me so much happier. I also suspect I might want some of their regular pads for the one heavy day of the cycle but still, I'll try these out, I'll bet they're so much more comfortable. I was fine with commercial disposables for a while, but I seem to be getting less tolerant of them as I get older. Or maybe I just prefer pantyliners unless there's a dire need for the Hoover Dam, hell if I know.

So, yeah, I came home from capoeira, ate healthy dinner, and then promptly made myself a mug brownie. Which is probably going to undo a lot of the good of capoeira but fuckit, if I can't have a mug brownie in the middle of PMS what is PMS, recipes, and cocoa powder for. Besides, if I'm not too sore tomorrow (and I should remember to take the damn painkillers tonight before bed, because they are also muscle relaxants, self, there is no shame in either taking painkillers or muscle relaxants as necessary) I have a tentative new exercise plan. Involving first plies and arabesques as warmups, followed by push-ups, ugh, and balancing in between push-ups rather than kicks. Which is going to take some getting used to. Then the rabo de raia / negativa combination. Also the Portuguese or at least capoeira r is pronounced more like an h than anything and this is going to annoy me. But. Yes. There will be exercises. There should probably be also walking crab-like on my hands and feet facing upwards like I'm about to spin my head and Poltergeist, if I can stand it.

Wednesday Reads! I've somehow started reading Terry Pratchett (may his memory be a blessing) again, and rather than take them in order I'm hitting the ones I haven't read first, in rough numerical order as I have them. So first it was Sourcery, and now it's Pyramids, and I'm really loving it. I missed it, how relaxing it is.

I'm also still slogging through Kevin J Anderson's Hugo nominated thing but I think... I don't know, I'm just going to bump it down on the voting, I can't keep pushing this. I should definitely start reading the shorter works, too, probably tomorrow. And vote ASAP.

Novel writing comes apace. And is somewhat less fraught now that I've fixed the equations on my spreadsheet. Yes, I know the Camp Nano site gives you your words per aday, average words per day, etc, but I like my spreadsheet too. And now it's working properly, and I can add it all up plus whatever other projects I'm working on. Though there might not be so many of those with the way the Nanonovel took an abrupt right turn somewhere. I'd had some plot beats and antagonists and maneuvers set up, and now it looks like there's a whole other antagonist I hadn't anticipated, possibly more than one, and a whole other set of plot beats. Okay, fine. At least it's still a novel length story. Just a slightly different novel than I'd planned on.

At any rate. I have two hours till bedtime and a shitload of stuff to get done. Though right now I'm also wondering if maybe I don't want to go to bed early or sleep in late the next day, after evening capoeira. Given muscles, exhausting, likely to be a while, and I nap on Saturdays anyway. Hurm.

Weekly Word Count: 17,860
Khan Academy:

There's about 1/4 of an ounce of blue felting wool on my desk. Bright blue, like Cookie Monster. I have no idea what it's doing there.

So, okay, I did not get as much sleep as I wanted to last night, thanks to a 4 am sneezing fit, but I did manage to roll over and get back to sleep relatively quickly. The end result being while I don't feel as rested as I like, my traitorous brain is not attempting to convince me I'm unwanted, unintelligent, or fat. Which is kind of a feat considering I bolted down two slices of pizza for lunch, which should have made me feel fat but instead made me feel like I could haul around 25lb boxes of basket supplies. (And then again I was hauling around 50lb bags of manure this weekend with surprisingly little difficulty except that they're very big and I am very small. So maybe it's less made me feel and more gave me energy to. Something.)

The upside to this is that even if I didn't get as much sleep, I was still up at about six after some weirdass vivid dream I don't remember but there was action, and I was able to get a good almost 600 words written before I went to work. And then another 400 at work and after a bit of a struggle I'm finishing out the week at 7,040, which is just on target. And then I need to finish out the month at least even, but that's 5k over the next three days, that's way do-able.

I also may have inadvertently started another story in a whole fucking separate world, and I have no idea what that's about. Something to do with an Archer and a Magician who end up in a relationship, both of them men, the Archer was hired to protect the Magician and something else is going on under that that I don't have the energy to untangle tonight. Hell with that.

So, Wednesday Reads is a bit sparse this week, I finished the first Ransome book and am on the second, while someone *cough*lireavue*cough* read ahead of me and devoured the whole thing. Not that I can really blame her, but still! ;) So hopefully over the next week I can finish that and maybe read a couple of these books of folklore that I have. Most of the folklore should hopefully be quick.

Exercise is going well, making me routinely sweaty and achy and exhausted, which is a good sign that I'm working the muscles and not just going through the motions. I do need to put in a couple extra exercises because at least one of the ab exercises I put in wasn't doing so well. And remember my stretches. Better the last night than the last several weeks? But still. Other than that... no, that's pretty much it, I think.

Okay, judging by the fallout just on Twitter, I'm rather glad I've had my head under a pile of work for the last few days with regard to this Daily Show and now Patton Oswalt kerfuffle. I have no idea what happened apart from a comedian tweeted a number of stupid, hurtful things that he may or may not have grown and changed for the better from a while back? And said comedian is now going to host the Daily Show where at least he won't write his own material, which is not to say he won't have to occasionally ad lib. And somehow Patton Oswalt is involved.

... the part that's lodging itself most in my head about this is, 1/53? Did he actually type that rant up, break it up into twitter chunks and COUNT how many tweets he would need? Seriously? That's way more effort than I would have put into it.

I did sadly discover that no, the Khan Academy notes and the edX physics notes are not compatible in the long term, mostly because the edX physics notes were much more algebra heavy and less concept heavy, and there's no good way for me to integrate them in any kind of orderly fashion. And it has to be an orderly fashion otherwise my brain goes nuts trying to make sense of the data. So, cutting those pages out of the notebook and starting fresh it is. Not that that's a hardship, just where do I find the time.

She said, while eyeballing the chemistry lessons and pondering starting that up. Heh. At least there's no deadline here. At any rate, more notebooks. The frugal, careful courtesan in me is suggesting ways to pretty up my cheap composition books in which I'm taking my notes. The shiny fucking magpie is going get all new notebooks if you're going to start fresh, you deserve it. I think what I really need is spangly blue contact paper, in the end. Because I'm a ravenclaw, I demand blue for my schoolwork.

I will treat myself to maybe a new set of pens, though. The boyfriend keeps stealing mine.

Wednesday Reads

I still haven't finished or even much gone back to The Anteater of Death, which is sad because I think it'd be a quick read once I do. But first I have a pack of library books to get through. This weekend was more home improvement than library books, though. Also crawling my way through a new laptop and a pile of sleep deprivation for no apparent reason. But I did finally finish Shadow Gate by Kate Elliott, yes, still working my way through her back catalog, and all I can say is NOOOOOOOO YOU KILLED [REDACTED] YOU HEARTLESS WENCH. I liked that snarky fucker. Poop.

Project Paint the Bedroom is not going nearly as fast as anyone had hoped, mostly because the paint over wallpaper over god knows what is slow as fuck to peel off. Unlike in the craft room and the downstairs where it was coming off in strips. And after that comes the sanding and the replastering and then we can paint, and we only really have time to do it on the weekends and ugh. So much ugh. Alternate weekends, mind, because the boy works nights. Oh well. Once we get it done, it'll be done, and then we can put color up and forget about it for the next twenty years or however long it took Mom to repaint my bedroom. Though that was probably because I'd painted it black-with-skeletons, red, and white-with-multiple-graffiti. I'm not even kidding, she let me write all over the walls, and at one point I distinctly remember because I had Christmas lights permanently strung on my room, we had one graffito with an arrow pointing to one of the light bulbs and the words "that light is a sub-standard marine." No, I do not know. No, we were not drunk. Just very, very punchy.

Anyway. And writing continues apace, and so does editing really, but this week's word count is 8,969. So, damn. Thank you, Camp Nanowrimo? Now I just have to keep up that pace.

So, okay, despite yesterday being an incredibly sleepy day, what the hell self. The sleeping in made sense given that near hour long spate of wakefulness in the middle of the fucking night, but then there was the drowsing on the couch in the middle of the day, followed by the two hour nap, on a day when I was supposed to be getting things done despite not going into work. Ugh.

Despite all that, today I managed to get the shipping backlog dealt with, a couple outstanding emails dealt with which is harder than it sounds because each of those required digging and research and looking at things and ugh. Stuff was checked in, the store was minded, I even got some friendship bracelets worked on, I got caught up on my Memrise and my Duolingo, I got close to 2k words written which given this week's total is nothing to sneeze at, and I got dinner made and inks ordered and advertised myself on Twitter, which took no small feat of nerves. Did my exercises, did the daily house chores of plant watering and cat caring for. Did Japanese, did a bit of Arabic because why not. (Realized the Arabic letters book of a more advanced kind was out of my price range for the next two weeks. Gnashed teeth. $45 for a textbook isn't that bad, granted, and that's only new because I want the DVD that comes with, I might cave and go for a used version. But still and fucking nonetheless.)

Tomorrow, more edits, maybe more working on the same strange things, and definitely needing to make some more progress on other projects and write some damn promo copy. Finish edits on Beauty Kincaid like I meant to and haven't done yet, and do up a cover for that, hopefully get that set up for publication. Which would mean, in fact, that I get another dime novel published this month! So see, self, you haven't been horribly neglectful of everything. And at some point I should put more fiction up on my web page and format those for people to download to their e-readers. If I haven't already. Ugh, more for the to-do list.

Weekly Word Count: is 4,190 because I took the weekend off for reading books and things. Superhero training is coming apace, I do think I need to just up the times I hold poses rather than change that up just yet, but I'm not sure about ballet exercises. I need to change something. I'm just not sure what or how.

Oh! Wednesday Reads
Okay, I'm going to admit it here because I don't think anyone's going to dogpile me and shake me and bounce all around me about it, but I finished the last two Raven Cycle books by Maggie Stiefvater. And I did love them! Even if I want to shake everyone for being reckless with greater magics. And my god they are so fucked right now. SO FUCKED. Which, to the author's credit, has more to do with them having wandered into deeper waters than they expected, rather than their inherent teenage stupidity.

I also read David Eddings' The Dreamers, first in his Elder Gods series, and my god that man has not had an original story since his first one. I liked it well enough but I don't think I'll pick up the rest, I think I'll stick with reading the things that have nostalgia value for me, because it's becoming increasingly clearer.

Still working on a Kate Elliott book, and Sanctum which at some point I should get back to. It's all right, it's just... very young in places. Most of the places. And I have that Women of the Golden Dawn book I need to get through and get back to the library. So it goes.