Stepping out of the house for a short walk around the neighborhood, I discovered that a friend had sent me a surprise gift in the mail and that between their post office and my doorstep it had been stolen. I received a gutted envelope slit down the side containing brown paper from which the gift had been shaken out. The stiff paper of the accompanying note had wedged hard enough into the envelope that after some stricken searching it was still in there; the handmade buttons and the picture were not. I assume the thief was looking for checks or more conventionally defined valuables, but it seems unspeakably cruel to let the envelope continue on its way and arrive to tell me what kindness I had been robbed of. I still have the note. The kindness itself did travel the distance. But I still want the thief to fall in front of a freight express.
1. What are you currently reading?
- Don't You Like Me vol. 1 by Lv Tian Yi: it's fine but it's on hold because...
- The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter vol. 3 by Yatsuki Wakatsu: yeah, volume 3. I might be mainlining this light novel juuuuust a little.
- 盗墓笔记 vol. 2 by 南派三叔
2. What have you recently finished reading?
- Into the Split by Tris Lawrence: I don't usually count work reading for these but I just reread the entire novel in 3 days to do my final "clean-up" edit and damn it, I'm counting that. (reread)
- The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter vol. 1 and 2 by Yatsuki Wakatsu: yeah I read two novels in four days, which is a lot for me. Vol. 1 is already covered by what I'd seen of the anime, vol. 2 focuses on the church stuff, and there's nothing deep going on here but, much like the anime, I'm just enjoying it. It's like eating candy, if by candy we mean mlm fuck-or-die fantasy isekai.
- Apple and Honey vol. 1 by Hideyoshico: I'd accidentally already read vol. 2 a while ago and I liked it so here we are. It was fine, I liked the parts about the same characters, the side story was okay but more bittersweet than I was in the mood for.
- Vampeerz vol. 1 by Akili: wlw with an interesting premise, but a lot's unanswered in this volume, and idk, the vibes felt off but I can't put my finger on why.
- My New Boss is Goofy vol. 1 by Dan Ichikawa: I'd heard people talk about this as BL-adjacent so I wanted to check it out. I'd also seen a chunk of the anime (including everything in this vol. 1). And yeah, it's cute, with definite BL vibes without actually being BL.
- The Way of the Househusband vol. 15 by Kousuke Oono
- Kiss the Abyss by Mu Huo Ran: I wanted to reread this so I mainlined the entire series while on the way home from visiting my mom in NYC (we took the train home) (reread)
- Moriarty the Patriot vol. 1 - 3 by Ryosuke Takeuchi: so while I was in NYC, mom decided to go with me to Kinokuniya, and she spotted this on the shelf, heard I'd liked it, and decided she wanted to read it, so she bought the first three volumes. It's been 2 years since I read them, so I reread 'um real quick before we left. It's really interesting to reread for me, because I really didn't like them the first time and was very skeptical, I didn't warm to the series until like vol. 5 or 6. But this time I loved them, now that I know what's going on. (reread)
- Murderous Lewellyn's Candelit Dinner vol. 1 - 6 by Sumnagi: mom gave me a budget of $100 at Kinokuniya. I spent half of it on the first three volumes of this, promptly reread them, then finished the rest of the series. (reread)
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime vol. 8 by Fuse
3. What will you read next?
Novels: I got the next volume of Apothecary Diaries on Libby, so that'll be in the mix somewhere, otherwise mostly finishing my reads-in-progress.
Graphic Novels (Physical): I still haven't read any more of my borrows from the library, oops.
Graphic Novels (Libby): I did give up on Firefly Wedding, I just couldn't muster the interest to read the second volume. Stuff due before next Wednesday is next - Northranger by Rey Terciero and How Do We Relationship? volume 2 by Tamifull
In the wake of the blizzard, the temperature rose a degree above freezing in the blue-and-white brilliance of sun and the local topography of snow-walls to shoulder-height compressed and calved like ice shelves. I had the impulse to visit the Robbins Cemetery on Mass. Ave. while out running errands and was prevented by absolutely nobody having shoveled within a block of the gates. I took a picture of a leftover slam-dunk of snow instead.
Tickets have hiked considerably in price since the last production of theirs I attended, but I am intrigued that the Apollinaire Theatre Company is currently doing Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge—I assume it was proposed last season because of the topical-political of the undocumented immigrant angle which has only gone Mach 10 in relevance since. I have never seen the play; I read it in 2016 because Van Heflin originated the role of Eddie Carbone in the original 1955 one-act version. I am wondering how I convince their box office that I am actively pursuing a professional arts career.
Tickets have hiked considerably in price since the last production of theirs I attended, but I am intrigued that the Apollinaire Theatre Company is currently doing Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge—I assume it was proposed last season because of the topical-political of the undocumented immigrant angle which has only gone Mach 10 in relevance since. I have never seen the play; I read it in 2016 because Van Heflin originated the role of Eddie Carbone in the original 1955 one-act version. I am wondering how I convince their box office that I am actively pursuing a professional arts career.
The snow has plastered our windows like blinds. This morning it scudded so thickly down our street that the air itself couldn't have been any clearer: it made walls instead of veils of the late streetlight. The yew trees look like calcified humps of stalagmite. It's still blowing around out there, bending the whippier evergreens of the neighbors' yard like a wind sock. I can hear a commuter train whistling dimly from over Route 16. I am informed we have broken the previous state record for snowfall in a day set by the 1997 April Fool's Day Blizzard which had itself surpassed the Blizzard of '78. Our porch is drifted ankle-deep.
(![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
duckprintspress Feb. 23rd, 2026 11:56 am)
duckprintspress Feb. 23rd, 2026 11:56 am)
The last day of February, Saturday the 28th, come find us and 50+ other upstate New York authors, comic makers, indie publishers, and more at The Shirt Factory in Glens Falls! This awesome event is organized by Black Walnut Books and Beldame Books. You can shop the local small businesses in the building, and find all of us at our tables throughout the hallways. It’s gonna be a great time.
(and I promise I’m not gonna get sick this time if I can possibly help it. 
)
Tags:
I spent much of yesterday running pre-blizzard errands, but the local state of the parking spots is the truest gauge of the meteorology about to go down.
I have not yet managed to get hold of her memoir, but I deeply appreciate being notified of the existence of E. M. Barraud, who identified herself with chalk-cut hill figures, candidly described her relationship status as "technically single, but 'married' in a permanent homosexual relationship with another woman," published under her assigned initials and was known in Little Eversden where she worked for the Women's Land Army as John. She gave her wartime responses for Mass-Observation as both a man and a woman: "People are people, not specifics of a gender." I had never even encountered her poetry.
I have not yet managed to get hold of her memoir, but I deeply appreciate being notified of the existence of E. M. Barraud, who identified herself with chalk-cut hill figures, candidly described her relationship status as "technically single, but 'married' in a permanent homosexual relationship with another woman," published under her assigned initials and was known in Little Eversden where she worked for the Women's Land Army as John. She gave her wartime responses for Mass-Observation as both a man and a woman: "People are people, not specifics of a gender." I had never even encountered her poetry.
Ever wondered how Duck Prints Press picks the themes for our anthologies?
Well, it goes like this:
- Every month, we hold meetings on the Press’s private Discord (not to be confused with our public Discord) that anyone involved with the Press (staff, editors, authors, artists, backers on Patreon, and the like) can attend. During these meetings, we go, “hey, we’re thinking about themes for our next anthology! What would you like?” and I take notes of everything that folks suggest.
- I take the compiled list of suggestions and share it with staff during our monthly staff meetings. We discuss the options in light of what we had in mind, add some ideas of our own, take away some other ideas, poke and prod at it, and ultimately end up with a short list (generally under ten) of the ideas we like best.
- Staff (which includes editors, graphic designers, and others who are involved with higher-end tasks in Duck Prints Press, and who aren’t paid as staff but are for the work they do, and who help me make decisions) then votes on that list, and based on their votes we narrow things down to four to five choices.
- And then the fun part starts…
Our backers on Patreon pick the final theme from a short list of options we’ve selected!
Right now, our Patrons are voting on the theme for our next Queer Fanworks Inspired By… anthology. This will be the fifth anthology in this series. Three are already out (featuring works inspired by Much Ado About Nothing, The Three Musketeers, and Pride and Prejudice) and we are in the home stretch on the fourth (featuring works inspired by folklore and fairy tales). The choices that Patrons are voting on for the next one are:
- Queer Fanworks Inspired by the Artwork of Vincent Van Gogh
- Queer Fanworks Inspired by the Story of Robin Hood
- Queer Fanworks Inspired by Dracula by Bram Stoker
- Queer Fanworks Inspired by The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer
- Queer Fanworks Inspired by King Arthur lore/Arthuriana
Ready to have your say? Become a backer of our Patreon at any level and place your vote! The voting ends on Monday, February 23rd.
Patrons get lots of other awesome benefits too – coupons for use in our webstore, access to our Discord, exclusive sneak peeks and previews, free stories… and that’s just for folks at the $3/month level! And support of our Patreon helps keep the lights on at Duck Prints Press, ensuring we have a steady and reliable income stream to plan around. To those who already support us, thank you!!, and if you’ve read this far, I truly hope you’ll consider it. For the price of a single cup of coffee each month, you can help an indie publisher keep amplifying queer stories and art.
I am operating at about sixteen percent of a person thanks to medical needlessness and it puts me at something of a disadvantage in reacting to the ending of Susan Cooper's J. B. Priestley: Portrait of an Author (1970) with anything more critically incisive than profanity.
To rewind a hot semi-linear second, I had just meant to complain that it feels almost superfluous for Cooper's The Grey King (1975) and Alan Garner's The Owl Service (1967) to be geographically as well as mythologically neighbors. Given their mutual setting in the valleys of North Wales, it finally occurred to me to check when a location in one novel turned up in the production history of the television version of the other. As anyone from the area could have told me, Tal-y-llyn and Llanymawddwy are about half an hour's drive from one another. As I noticed a couple of years ago, The Grey King is the only one of its sequence whose mortal and mythical layers are rigorously double-tracked instead of sewn back and forth through the great doors of Time: thanks to the machinations of the Light and the woman who hinges them as if fixed within a pattern of her own, the royal and terrible truth of Bran's parentage cannot be uncovered without simultaneously drawing out the tragedy of the previous generation in the present day, a sadder, messier, only locally legendary triangle whose fallout has nonetheless marked the valley as indelibly as the Arthurian stamp of Cader Idris. "I wanted to keep you free of it. It was over, it was gone, I wanted to keep you away from the past. Ah, we never should have stayed here. I should have moved away from the valley at the beginning." But the past is an event horizon, there's no escaping it in three days or fifteen centuries or eleven years, and when the power of the Brenin Llwyd has been broken and a human mind with it and the milgwn have all drowned themselves in a headlong rush of ghosts—when the Dark has given up the valley—the haunting of its human grief and loss remains. "Then the mist closed over Llyn Mwyngil, the lake in the pleasant retreat, and there was a cold silence through all the valley save for the distant bleat, sometimes, of a mountain sheep, like the echo of a man's voice calling a girl's name, far away." You see how dangerously a narrative imprints itself on a landscape. I discover that a person can go up the Dysynni Valley and stay in an Airbnb called the Shepherd's Hut and my first thought is that I don't care how nice a view it has of Craig yr Aderyn, I am not interested in tripping over a warestone while glamping.
Cooper's nonfiction came into it when I was thinking about the centrality of time to her work and Garner's, specifically the tradition of ancient and simultaneous ages in the land. It had made dawn-over-Marblehead sense when I finally learned that the "J. B." and "Jacquetta" to whom she dedicated The Grey King were Priestley and Hawkes. I had never gotten around to reading her biography of the former and was immediately distracted by it. As a portrait, it is analytical and awed by turns; she calls its subject a "Time-haunted man" and supports her argument with reference to his novels, plays, and nonfiction as well as the ghost-history that she differentiates from nostalgia for some idealized pre-WWI Eden overlapping the end of his adolescence, identifying it instead as a bitterly vivid awareness of all the possibilities smashed by the war onto the rails of the twentieth century we actually got. He sounds more than slightly Viktor Frankl about it, which I am guessing accounts for the parallel evolution with Emeric Pressburger. I was never able to figure out if it was plausible for the nine-year-old Cooper to have seen A Canterbury Tale (1944), but she wouldn't have needed to if she had the vector of Priestley. "And because there was enchantment in the life it offered, the hideous transformation scene that took place when the enchantment vanished in a cloud of black smoke, and came out grimed and different on the other side, was enough to leave a young man of the time very vulnerable to visions of a lost Atlantis—especially a young man who was to become gradually more and more involved, as he grew older, in theories of a continuum of Time in which nothing is really past, but everything which has ever been is still there . . . If there is, in effect, a fifth dimension from which one can observe not only the present moment but also everything which runs before it and behind—then things which seem lost have never really been lost at all." By the time she got around to writing the Lost Land of Silver on the Tree (1977), she would be able to explain it more poetically: "For Time does not die, Time has neither beginning nor end, and so nothing can end or die that has once had a place in Time." In terms of lineage, I can also get mildly feral when she discusses his wartime broadcasts which relied again, not on the wistfulness for an unmarred past, but the determination to build something stronger on the scars. Describing one in which he imagined himself explicitly choosing the second, harder work when offered the choice by the thought experiment of a great magician, the assertion that "the thing which is pure Priestley is the implication of an almost Arthurian destiny . . . and the vision it offers is one not of a misty Avalon but of a better Camelot" naturally makes me think "For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you." I keep finding reasons to argue with the last decision of The Dark Is Rising Sequence and yet another would be that it is demonstrably difficult to build a workable future on a past that's been erased. In fairness, she would get the balance right in Seaward (1983). I didn't react to the final pages of Cooper's biography of Priestley, however, because of any dot-to-dots I could draw from them to her own prose. They make a book-ending "picture" of the Omnibus programme which aired in 1969 as a tribute to Priestley on his seventy-fifth birthday, wrapping up what Cooper had until then considered a pretty marginal viewing experience with:
a condensed version of the last act of Johnson Over Jordan; and again there was an awkwardness, for this more than any of his plays translates badly to the medium of television, needing the depths of a craftily-lit stage to suggest the immensities of spaceless time in which it takes place.
But then, like the moment Priestley once celebrated 'when suddenly and softly the orchestra creeps in to accompany the piano', the magic that one had been hoping for all along suddenly came filtering through this television programme; for the part of Robert Johnson was being played here by the man for whom it had been written some thirty years before, Ralph Richardson, and Richardson and Priestley between them, actor and dramatist, magicians both, wrought a spell that produced, despite all handicaps, the real thing. Time had made one of those curious spiralling turns, for Richardson had grown older to meet the play, and fitted easily now into the role for which he had once had to draw in an extra couple of decades on his face; he played it without a false move or a marred inflection, and by the time he turned to walk into infinity, Everyman in a bowler hat, leaving one dimension for another unknown, I had forgotten the deficiencies of the small screen and could indeed hardly perceive its outlines at all. I had never seen Johnson Over Jordan in the theatre, but it had always moved me even as a written play, and I had never expected to have the chance of seeing Richardson act the part which had been so subtly tailored to his talent and voice. Now, however inferior his surroundings, I had. I blew my nose rather hard, and glanced across at Priestley.
I don't know what I expected him to offer us: a non-committal snort, perhaps; a rumble of technical criticism; at the most, a bit of knowledgeable praise for Richardson. But Priestley sat silent for a moment, gazing into space, looking unusually small in a very large armchair; and then he rubbed his eyes. 'I shed tears,' he said, rather gruff and low, 'not for what I have seen, but for what I have been remembering.' Then he hoisted himself up, and was his proper height again.
For a moment, he had been caught by a spell himself; caught by Time, by his own magic, and by that of his friend, and transported on to that other dimension where still there is playing the first production and every production of Johnson Over Jordan—and of As You Like It and The Cherry Orchard and Arms and the Man and all the rest—and where a younger Richardson is turning to walk not into the shadow of a cramped television studio but into the glitter of stars and the blue-dark cosmic depths that Basil Dean had created on a great stage, while Benjamin Britten's triumphant finale sounded out over the audience. Priestley wasn't really remembering, not really looking back; he was looking outward, into the level of Time where there is no forward or backward, no youth or age, no beginning or end. Like all the great enchanters, he has always seen it plainer than the rest of us yet can.
Obviously, I assumed at once that Richardson's televised performance survived only in the residually haunted sense that the space-time continuum never forgets a face, even one whose owner once unfavorably compared it to a hot cross bun; it would have been ironically on theme and characteristic of the BBC. To my surprise, the programme does seem to exist in some archivally inaccessible fashion and I could theoretically experience its time travel through the ordinary machinery of a telerecording, which would make a change from just about everything else Richardson was stage-famous for. I wouldn't be sitting next to Susan Cooper or J. B. Priestley, but the thing about art its that its audience is not bound by time any more than its maker. The author's bio for J. B. Priestley: Portrait of an Author identifies Cooper as the writer of Mandrake (1964), Behind the Golden Curtain (1965), and "two novels for children," which by publication dates must be Over Sea, Under Stone (1965) and Dawn of Fear (1970). She has not yet begun work on The Dark Is Rising (1973). She is not yet known herself as a magician of time. By my childhood she was firmly established as one and I checked out this book because I was interested in her stratigraphy as much as its subject and was so struck to find her interpreting him in the same language which I would use to discuss her, which Priestley had died before anyone coined as hauntology, although I am not sure from this portrait that he would concede that a future which had failed to materialize was existentially lost. By that logic, the profanity being all inside my head may or may not prevent it from reaching the genizah of time.
To rewind a hot semi-linear second, I had just meant to complain that it feels almost superfluous for Cooper's The Grey King (1975) and Alan Garner's The Owl Service (1967) to be geographically as well as mythologically neighbors. Given their mutual setting in the valleys of North Wales, it finally occurred to me to check when a location in one novel turned up in the production history of the television version of the other. As anyone from the area could have told me, Tal-y-llyn and Llanymawddwy are about half an hour's drive from one another. As I noticed a couple of years ago, The Grey King is the only one of its sequence whose mortal and mythical layers are rigorously double-tracked instead of sewn back and forth through the great doors of Time: thanks to the machinations of the Light and the woman who hinges them as if fixed within a pattern of her own, the royal and terrible truth of Bran's parentage cannot be uncovered without simultaneously drawing out the tragedy of the previous generation in the present day, a sadder, messier, only locally legendary triangle whose fallout has nonetheless marked the valley as indelibly as the Arthurian stamp of Cader Idris. "I wanted to keep you free of it. It was over, it was gone, I wanted to keep you away from the past. Ah, we never should have stayed here. I should have moved away from the valley at the beginning." But the past is an event horizon, there's no escaping it in three days or fifteen centuries or eleven years, and when the power of the Brenin Llwyd has been broken and a human mind with it and the milgwn have all drowned themselves in a headlong rush of ghosts—when the Dark has given up the valley—the haunting of its human grief and loss remains. "Then the mist closed over Llyn Mwyngil, the lake in the pleasant retreat, and there was a cold silence through all the valley save for the distant bleat, sometimes, of a mountain sheep, like the echo of a man's voice calling a girl's name, far away." You see how dangerously a narrative imprints itself on a landscape. I discover that a person can go up the Dysynni Valley and stay in an Airbnb called the Shepherd's Hut and my first thought is that I don't care how nice a view it has of Craig yr Aderyn, I am not interested in tripping over a warestone while glamping.
Cooper's nonfiction came into it when I was thinking about the centrality of time to her work and Garner's, specifically the tradition of ancient and simultaneous ages in the land. It had made dawn-over-Marblehead sense when I finally learned that the "J. B." and "Jacquetta" to whom she dedicated The Grey King were Priestley and Hawkes. I had never gotten around to reading her biography of the former and was immediately distracted by it. As a portrait, it is analytical and awed by turns; she calls its subject a "Time-haunted man" and supports her argument with reference to his novels, plays, and nonfiction as well as the ghost-history that she differentiates from nostalgia for some idealized pre-WWI Eden overlapping the end of his adolescence, identifying it instead as a bitterly vivid awareness of all the possibilities smashed by the war onto the rails of the twentieth century we actually got. He sounds more than slightly Viktor Frankl about it, which I am guessing accounts for the parallel evolution with Emeric Pressburger. I was never able to figure out if it was plausible for the nine-year-old Cooper to have seen A Canterbury Tale (1944), but she wouldn't have needed to if she had the vector of Priestley. "And because there was enchantment in the life it offered, the hideous transformation scene that took place when the enchantment vanished in a cloud of black smoke, and came out grimed and different on the other side, was enough to leave a young man of the time very vulnerable to visions of a lost Atlantis—especially a young man who was to become gradually more and more involved, as he grew older, in theories of a continuum of Time in which nothing is really past, but everything which has ever been is still there . . . If there is, in effect, a fifth dimension from which one can observe not only the present moment but also everything which runs before it and behind—then things which seem lost have never really been lost at all." By the time she got around to writing the Lost Land of Silver on the Tree (1977), she would be able to explain it more poetically: "For Time does not die, Time has neither beginning nor end, and so nothing can end or die that has once had a place in Time." In terms of lineage, I can also get mildly feral when she discusses his wartime broadcasts which relied again, not on the wistfulness for an unmarred past, but the determination to build something stronger on the scars. Describing one in which he imagined himself explicitly choosing the second, harder work when offered the choice by the thought experiment of a great magician, the assertion that "the thing which is pure Priestley is the implication of an almost Arthurian destiny . . . and the vision it offers is one not of a misty Avalon but of a better Camelot" naturally makes me think "For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you." I keep finding reasons to argue with the last decision of The Dark Is Rising Sequence and yet another would be that it is demonstrably difficult to build a workable future on a past that's been erased. In fairness, she would get the balance right in Seaward (1983). I didn't react to the final pages of Cooper's biography of Priestley, however, because of any dot-to-dots I could draw from them to her own prose. They make a book-ending "picture" of the Omnibus programme which aired in 1969 as a tribute to Priestley on his seventy-fifth birthday, wrapping up what Cooper had until then considered a pretty marginal viewing experience with:
a condensed version of the last act of Johnson Over Jordan; and again there was an awkwardness, for this more than any of his plays translates badly to the medium of television, needing the depths of a craftily-lit stage to suggest the immensities of spaceless time in which it takes place.
But then, like the moment Priestley once celebrated 'when suddenly and softly the orchestra creeps in to accompany the piano', the magic that one had been hoping for all along suddenly came filtering through this television programme; for the part of Robert Johnson was being played here by the man for whom it had been written some thirty years before, Ralph Richardson, and Richardson and Priestley between them, actor and dramatist, magicians both, wrought a spell that produced, despite all handicaps, the real thing. Time had made one of those curious spiralling turns, for Richardson had grown older to meet the play, and fitted easily now into the role for which he had once had to draw in an extra couple of decades on his face; he played it without a false move or a marred inflection, and by the time he turned to walk into infinity, Everyman in a bowler hat, leaving one dimension for another unknown, I had forgotten the deficiencies of the small screen and could indeed hardly perceive its outlines at all. I had never seen Johnson Over Jordan in the theatre, but it had always moved me even as a written play, and I had never expected to have the chance of seeing Richardson act the part which had been so subtly tailored to his talent and voice. Now, however inferior his surroundings, I had. I blew my nose rather hard, and glanced across at Priestley.
I don't know what I expected him to offer us: a non-committal snort, perhaps; a rumble of technical criticism; at the most, a bit of knowledgeable praise for Richardson. But Priestley sat silent for a moment, gazing into space, looking unusually small in a very large armchair; and then he rubbed his eyes. 'I shed tears,' he said, rather gruff and low, 'not for what I have seen, but for what I have been remembering.' Then he hoisted himself up, and was his proper height again.
For a moment, he had been caught by a spell himself; caught by Time, by his own magic, and by that of his friend, and transported on to that other dimension where still there is playing the first production and every production of Johnson Over Jordan—and of As You Like It and The Cherry Orchard and Arms and the Man and all the rest—and where a younger Richardson is turning to walk not into the shadow of a cramped television studio but into the glitter of stars and the blue-dark cosmic depths that Basil Dean had created on a great stage, while Benjamin Britten's triumphant finale sounded out over the audience. Priestley wasn't really remembering, not really looking back; he was looking outward, into the level of Time where there is no forward or backward, no youth or age, no beginning or end. Like all the great enchanters, he has always seen it plainer than the rest of us yet can.
Obviously, I assumed at once that Richardson's televised performance survived only in the residually haunted sense that the space-time continuum never forgets a face, even one whose owner once unfavorably compared it to a hot cross bun; it would have been ironically on theme and characteristic of the BBC. To my surprise, the programme does seem to exist in some archivally inaccessible fashion and I could theoretically experience its time travel through the ordinary machinery of a telerecording, which would make a change from just about everything else Richardson was stage-famous for. I wouldn't be sitting next to Susan Cooper or J. B. Priestley, but the thing about art its that its audience is not bound by time any more than its maker. The author's bio for J. B. Priestley: Portrait of an Author identifies Cooper as the writer of Mandrake (1964), Behind the Golden Curtain (1965), and "two novels for children," which by publication dates must be Over Sea, Under Stone (1965) and Dawn of Fear (1970). She has not yet begun work on The Dark Is Rising (1973). She is not yet known herself as a magician of time. By my childhood she was firmly established as one and I checked out this book because I was interested in her stratigraphy as much as its subject and was so struck to find her interpreting him in the same language which I would use to discuss her, which Priestley had died before anyone coined as hauntology, although I am not sure from this portrait that he would concede that a future which had failed to materialize was existentially lost. By that logic, the profanity being all inside my head may or may not prevent it from reaching the genizah of time.
A week and a half ago, we posted about our favorite sports books with queer characters. When we were collecting the recommendations for that post, we got so many recommendations for hockey books that we decided to break them out into their own post! Today, we bring that post to you, in celebration of the Olympic men’s hockey semi-finals taking place today (game one started just a few minutes before I started this post, in fact). Most of these are m/m, which wasn’t intentional, but here we are I suppose.
The contributors to the list are: Sanne, Nina Waters, JD Rivers, Cedar, Tris Lawrence, Terra P. Waters, E. C.
Hockey Bois by A.L. Heard
Nick Porter has always loved hockey. Ever since he can remember, it’s been his favorite thing in the world. It’s too bad he never learned to play, he’d tell himself, but it was too late to do it now. Adults don’t just magically learn to skate and join a hockey team. That’d be ridiculous.
Except maybe they do? On a whim, he decides to sign-up for an adult beginner’s class. He learns to skate, joins a team, and meets a really hot teammate… and it’s pretty much a disaster from there on out.
Between the Pipes by J.J. Mulder
Nico Mackenzie is angry and argumentative—in every way, he is the exact opposite of NHL goaltender Anthony Lawson. Thrown together for a summer of coaching college hockey at South Carolina University, Anthony makes every effort to be friendly; Nico, on the other hand, seems intent on being infuriating and keeping the other man at arm’s length.
When a causal relationship forms between the pair, they form an unsteady truce. The summer is finite, however, and when it comes to an end a decision has to be made: do they end things as they are or try for more?
The Game Changers series by Rachel Reid
New York Admirals captain Scott Hunter takes his pregame rituals very seriously. When a particular smoothie precedes Scott’s breaking his on-ice slump, he’s desperate to recreate the magic… and to get to know the sexy, funny guy behind the counter.
Kip Grady knew there was more to Scott’s frequent visits than blended fruit, but he never let himself imagine being invited back to Scott’s penthouse. Or kissed with reckless abandon—and more. What goes on between them is hot, incredible and frequent… but also only on Scott’s terms and always behind his closed apartment doors.
Scott needs Kip in his life, but with playoff season approaching, the spotlight on him is suddenly brighter than ever. He can’t afford to do anything that might derail his career or the public’s image of what a hockey captain should be. Kip is ready to go all in with Scott—but how much longer will he have to remain a secret?
Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu
Eric Bittle may be a former junior figure skating champion, vlogger extraordinaire, and very talented amateur patissier, but being a freshman on the Samwell University hockey team is a whole new challenge. It is nothing like co-ed club hockey back in Georgia. First of all? There’s checking (anything that hinders the player with possession of the puck, ranging from a stick check all the way to a physical sweep). And then, there is Jack–his very attractive but moody captain.
A collection of the first half, freshmen and sophomore year, of the megapopular webcomic series of the same name, Check, Please : #Hockey is the first book of a hilarious and stirring two-volume coming-of-age story about hockey, bros, and trying to find yourself during the best four years of your life.
This book includes updated art and a hilarious, curated selection of Bitty’s beloved tweets.
The Breakaway series by E.L. Massey
Sometimes love is a slow burn. Sometimes it’s a dumpster fire.
Nineteen-year-old hockey phenom Alexander Price is the youngest-ever captain in the NHL. With a polarizing social media presence and a predilection for dirty play, he typifies the stereotype of young, out-of-control athlete. But away from the cameras, Alex is a kid with an anxiety disorder and the expectations of an expansion franchise on his shoulders. And maybe he tries too hard to fit the part of asshole playboy, but it’s better than the alternative; in his line of work, gay is the punchline of an insult, not something he can be.
Eighteen-year-old vlogger Elijah Rodriguez is a freshman in college recovering from an injury that derailed his Olympic figure-skating dreams. Mixed-race, disabled, and out of the closet since he was fourteen, Eli is unapologetically himself. He has no qualms about voicing his disapproval of celebrity jocks who make homophobic jokes on Twitter and park their flashy cars in the handicapped spaces outside of ice rinks.
After an antagonistic introduction, Alex and Eli’s inexplicable friendship both baffles and charms the internet. But navigating relationships is hard enough for normal teenagers. It’s a lot harder when the world—much of it disapproving—is watching you fall in love with your best friend.
Icebreaker by A.L. Graziadei
Seventeen-year-old Mickey James III is a college freshman, a brother to five sisters, and a hockey legacy. With a father and a grandfather who have gone down in NHL history, Mickey is almost guaranteed the league’s top draft spot.
The only person standing in his way is Jaysen Caulfield, a contender for the #1 spot and Mickey’s infuriating (and infuriatingly attractive) teammate. When rivalry turns to something more, Mickey will have to decide what he really wants, and what he’s willing to risk for it.
This is a story about falling in love, finding your team (on and off the ice), and choosing your own path.
The Hat Trick series by Samantha Wayland
Savannah Morrison is the new athletic trainer for the Moncton Ice Cats, a professional hockey team in the wilds of New Brunswick. It’s a good thing she’s got plenty of knowledge and grit, because as the only woman trainer in the league, she has to work twice as hard to win the players’ respect. The last thing on earth she would do is date one of them. Twelve-year hockey veteran Garrick LeBlanc isn’t ready to hang up his skates, particularly since he hasn’t figured out what the hell he’s planning to do next. He needs the new trainer to keep him fit to play, and she’s got the skills to do it. Too bad he lost his mind and hit on her the day they met. Now she hates his guts and he’s made an art of ignoring her. When the team is put up for sale, Garrick and Savannah have to work together to save their jobs and their team. Somewhere along the way, they discover Garrick isn’t just a hockey player, Savannah isn’t only passionate about her work, and just maybe they’ve got more in common than they thought.
The Trade Deadline by A.L. Heard
After a fleeting encounter when they’re in Juniors, Ryan “RJ” Russell and Lars Nilsson find themselves thrown back together years later when they end up on the same NHL team. Being friendly to a new teammate just got way more complicated. It’s one thing to have a one night stand with someone from another country; it’s a whole other mess to sleep with your teammate. Neither of them can afford to make waves, not when Ryan needs a new contract and Lars is already escaping a scandal. If sparks fly again, can they resist temptation?
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The pattern of my days has tended toward craptastic, but theseatheseatheopensea has been writing incredible fills for prompts that I left in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
threesentenceficathon, most recently the one I threw out originally for an episode of TNG I hadn't seen since childhood. The latest pebble rushthatspeaks has brought me from the internet is a black cat Tarot whose particular standout is the Hanged Man. fleurdelis41 sent me Jewish dance cards and ashlyme a suite of Stanley Myers' The Martian Chronicles (1980). spatch introduced me to Beans. I have been re-reading Robin Scott Wilson's Those Who Can: A Science Fiction Reader (1973), the anthology in which Le Guin explains how her brain plotted out the characterization of her novelette "Nine Lives" (1969) without bothering to let her know in advance:
Together with this glimpse of the situation, the character of Owen Pugh presented itself, complete and unquestionable, and indeed, at that very point, pretty enigmatic. Having a character really is very like having a baby, sometimes, except that there's a lot less warning, and babies don't arrive full-grown. But one has the same sense of pleased bewilderment. For instance, why was this man short and thin? Why was he honest, disorderly, nervous, and warmhearted? Why on earth was he Welsh? I had no idea at the time. There he was. And his name was Owen Pugh, to be sure. It was up to me to do right by him. All he offered (just like a baby) was his existence. Any assurance that this highly individualized, peculiar, intransigent person really was somehow related to my theme had to be taken on trust. A writer must trust the unconscious, even when it produces unexpected Welshmen.
I don't think anyone has ever made a Morden-and-the-Shadows vid to the Pack a.d.'s "Cardinal Rule" (2011) and it's a crying shame.
theseatheseatheopensea has been writing incredible fills for prompts that I left in threesentenceficathon, most recently the one I threw out originally for an episode of TNG I hadn't seen since childhood. The latest pebble rushthatspeaks has brought me from the internet is a black cat Tarot whose particular standout is the Hanged Man. fleurdelis41 sent me Jewish dance cards and ashlyme a suite of Stanley Myers' The Martian Chronicles (1980). spatch introduced me to Beans. I have been re-reading Robin Scott Wilson's Those Who Can: A Science Fiction Reader (1973), the anthology in which Le Guin explains how her brain plotted out the characterization of her novelette "Nine Lives" (1969) without bothering to let her know in advance:Together with this glimpse of the situation, the character of Owen Pugh presented itself, complete and unquestionable, and indeed, at that very point, pretty enigmatic. Having a character really is very like having a baby, sometimes, except that there's a lot less warning, and babies don't arrive full-grown. But one has the same sense of pleased bewilderment. For instance, why was this man short and thin? Why was he honest, disorderly, nervous, and warmhearted? Why on earth was he Welsh? I had no idea at the time. There he was. And his name was Owen Pugh, to be sure. It was up to me to do right by him. All he offered (just like a baby) was his existence. Any assurance that this highly individualized, peculiar, intransigent person really was somehow related to my theme had to be taken on trust. A writer must trust the unconscious, even when it produces unexpected Welshmen.
I don't think anyone has ever made a Morden-and-the-Shadows vid to the Pack a.d.'s "Cardinal Rule" (2011) and it's a crying shame.
Time for another serving of Thursday Recs!
Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!
Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!
Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!
Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!
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Today was a nice day!
Tuesday and I played quite a bit of Cadence of Hyrule, which was extremely enjoyable to do. I love Crypt of the Necrodancer very much, and I like playing video games with other people, so this was a good combo. It's exciting to me to get to be the better player at a game, because that is not generally the case. Not that I was doing a flawless job or anything, Tuesday is also very good at games, but I have played a staggering amount of Necrodance over the years, and I'm sure I was extremely charmingly irritating about all the parts where I was like "oh yeah, I know exactly how that mechanic works".
At lunchtime, we swung by the local little Japanese place, and got an assortment of things. Some of it was excellent (their little friend sesame balls were exemplary) and some of it was merely acceptable, which is still a nice situation restaurant-wise. Foolishly of Tuesday, I now know this is quite close and may drag us there on future visits as well.
More video games, then being floppy in bed and doing some parallel play, and finally it was dinner time and we settled in to watch Everything Everywhere All At Once, which I had never seen. We'd specifically been trying to find a time to watch it when we could watch it on Tuesday's properly big television (rather than laptop screens or something else inadequate) and I do think it was worth it.
The movie is absolutely as splendid as everyone said. Some of it was extremely predictable, but in the way that felt right. It felt like the joy of storytelling, the hope of seeing everything come round the way it ought to, while still being beautiful and joyous and just an absolute delight. And the actual visuals of it are astoundingly well done! There was a moment where I realized I want to do the double feature of this with Wizard of Speed and Time. Specific theme: it would be good to watch this on a device capable of going frame-by-frame when necessary.
(I should make sure I've shown Tuesday WoSaT at some point, because if I haven't, that _really_ needs to be rectified. I think she would find it Good.)
Tomorrow we get more being floppy and goofy together. Probably more video games. Certainly more being very much in love. Eventually I get on a train and head back to Somerville (in time for dance, even.)
As long as I ignore the fact that I need to work on grading at some point, I am having a lovely vacation!
~Sor
MOOP!
Tuesday and I played quite a bit of Cadence of Hyrule, which was extremely enjoyable to do. I love Crypt of the Necrodancer very much, and I like playing video games with other people, so this was a good combo. It's exciting to me to get to be the better player at a game, because that is not generally the case. Not that I was doing a flawless job or anything, Tuesday is also very good at games, but I have played a staggering amount of Necrodance over the years, and I'm sure I was extremely charmingly irritating about all the parts where I was like "oh yeah, I know exactly how that mechanic works".
At lunchtime, we swung by the local little Japanese place, and got an assortment of things. Some of it was excellent (their little friend sesame balls were exemplary) and some of it was merely acceptable, which is still a nice situation restaurant-wise. Foolishly of Tuesday, I now know this is quite close and may drag us there on future visits as well.
More video games, then being floppy in bed and doing some parallel play, and finally it was dinner time and we settled in to watch Everything Everywhere All At Once, which I had never seen. We'd specifically been trying to find a time to watch it when we could watch it on Tuesday's properly big television (rather than laptop screens or something else inadequate) and I do think it was worth it.
The movie is absolutely as splendid as everyone said. Some of it was extremely predictable, but in the way that felt right. It felt like the joy of storytelling, the hope of seeing everything come round the way it ought to, while still being beautiful and joyous and just an absolute delight. And the actual visuals of it are astoundingly well done! There was a moment where I realized I want to do the double feature of this with Wizard of Speed and Time. Specific theme: it would be good to watch this on a device capable of going frame-by-frame when necessary.
(I should make sure I've shown Tuesday WoSaT at some point, because if I haven't, that _really_ needs to be rectified. I think she would find it Good.)
Tomorrow we get more being floppy and goofy together. Probably more video games. Certainly more being very much in love. Eventually I get on a train and head back to Somerville (in time for dance, even.)
As long as I ignore the fact that I need to work on grading at some point, I am having a lovely vacation!
~Sor
MOOP!
Happy Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week! We’re stoked to be celebrating this awesome week for the fourth time with some great aro book recommendations! You can also find our previous rec lists here: 2023, 2024, 2025. The contributors to this list are: Mikki Madison, Rascal Hartley, Puck, JD Rivers, Tris Lawrence, Linnea Peterson, Nina Waters.
Not Your Backup by C.B. Lee
Emma Robledo has a few more responsibilities that the usual high school senior, but then again, she and her friends have left school to lead a fractured Resistance movement against a corrupt Heroes League of Heroes. Emma is the only member of a supercharged team without powers, she isnt always taken seriously. A natural leader, Emma is determined to win this battle, and when thats done, get back to school. As the Resistance moves to challenge the League, Emma realizes where her place is in this fight: at the front.
Dear Stupid Penpal by Rascal Hartley
Atticus “Finch” Davani does not want to be an astronaut. He hates space, he hates the ship, and he strongly dislikes his fellow crew members. He makes that painfully clear in his letters to Aku, his corporate-assigned penpal back on Earth.
Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace
Wasp’s job is simple. Hunt ghosts. And every year she has to fight to remain Archivist. Desperate and alone, she strikes a bargain with the ghost of a supersoldier. She will go with him on his underworld hunt for the long-long ghost of his partner and in exchange she will find out more about his pre-apocalyptic world than any Archivist before her. And there is much to know. After all, Archivists are marked from birth to do the holy work of a goddess. They’re chosen. They’re special. Or so they’ve been told for four hundred years.
Archivist Wasp fears she is not the chosen one, that she won’t survive the trip to the underworld, that the brutal life she has escaped might be better than where she is going. There is only one way to find out.
Awakenings by Claudie Arseneault
As the city’s eternal apprentice, Horace has never found a clan to belong to. E has joined Trenaze’s guards with hopes to finally earn eir place during eir trial day at the Great Market—that is, until the glowing shards haunting the world break through the city’s protective dome. Armed with a sword and too little training, Horace doubts in eir ability to defend the market-goers. But eir last stand is interrupted by a mysterious elven figure who can dissipate the shards with a single, strange sentence: your story is my story.
From the moment it is uttered, Horace knows the sentences holds true for em, too—and when the elf collapses in the middle of the market, e carries them to safety. After an afternoon of board games in their quiet, sharp-witted company, Horace is ready to follow this elf as they seek the forest that haunts their dreams, and answers to the confounding events at the Market. Their story is eir story, and e is willing to confront the dangers of the road to hear their laugh again and finally feel like e belongs.
Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao
Sophie Chi is in her first year at Wellesley College (despite her parents’ wishes that she attend a “real” university, rather than a liberal arts school) and has long accepted her aromantic and asexual identities. Despite knowing she’ll never fall in love, she enjoys running an Instagram account that offers relationship advice to students at Wellesley. No one except her roommate knows that she’s behind the incredibly popular “Dear Wendy” account.
When Joanna “Jo” Ephron―also a first-year student at Wellesley―created their “Sincerely Wanda” account, it wasn’t at all meant to be serious or take off like it does―not like Dear Wendy’s. But now they might have a rivalry of sorts with Dear Wendy? Oops. As if Jo’s not busy enough having existential crises over gender, the fact that she’ll never truly be loved or be enough, or her few friends finding The One and forgetting her!
While tensions are rising online, Sophie and Jo are getting closer in real life, bonding over their shared aroace identities. As their friendship develops and they work together to start a campus organization for other a-spec students, can their growing bond survive if they learn just who’s behind the Wendy and Wanda accounts?
The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee
A year after an accidentally whirlwind grand tour with her brother Monty, Felicity Montague has returned to England with two goals in mind–avoid the marriage proposal of a lovestruck suitor from Edinburgh and enroll in medical school. However, her intellect and passion will never be enough in the eyes of the administrators, who see men as the sole guardians of science.
But then a window of opportunity opens–a doctor she idolizes is marrying an old friend of hers in Germany. Felicity believes if she could meet this man he could change her future, but she has no money of her own to make the trip. Luckily, a mysterious young woman is willing to pay Felicity’s way, so long as she’s allowed to travel with Felicity disguised as her maid.
In spite of her suspicions, Felicity agrees, but once the girl’s true motives are revealed, Felicity becomes part of a perilous quest that leads them from the German countryside to the promenades of Zurich to secrets lurking beneath the Atlantic.
If It Makes You Happy by Claire Kann
Winnie is living her best fat girl life and is on her way to the best place on earth. No, not Disneyland–her Granny’s diner, Goldeen’s, in the small town of Misty Haven. While there, she works in her fabulous 50’s inspired uniform, twirling around the diner floor and earning an obscene amount of tips. With her family and ungirlfriend at her side, she has everything she needs for one last perfect summer before starting college in the fall.
…until she becomes Misty Haven’s Summer Queen in a highly anticipated matchmaking tradition that she wants absolutely nothing to do with.
Newly crowned, Winnie is forced to take center stage in photoshoots and a never-ending list of community royal engagements. Almost immediately, she discovers that she’s deathly afraid of it all: the spotlight, the obligations, and the way her Merry Haven Summer King, wears his heart, humor, and honesty on his sleeve.
Stripped of Goldeen’s protective bubble, to salvage her summer Winnie must conquer her fears, defy expectations, and be the best Winnie she knows she can be–regardless of what anyone else thinks of her.
Devil Venerable Also Wants To Know by Cyan Wings
In a Mary-Sue novel, the readers all liked the Devil Venerable, the second male lead who devoted himself whole-heartedly to the female lead. However the female lead only loved the male lead who abused her physically and mentally.
Readers: Why doesn’t the female lead like the Devil Venerable?!
Devil Venerable: This Venerable also wants to know. But what I really want to know is why I even like the female lead at all.
In order to understand why the female lead wasn’t attracted to him, the self-conscious Devil Venerable brutally interrogated the entire cast of characters from the novel.
Background characters: I have so many things I want to say but I don’t dare to say it to his face!
After obtaining the book, the Devil Venerable discovered that the book described the world he lived in. This book said that after he sacrificed himself for the female lead, the fourth male lead, his silent and loyal subordinate Yin Hanjiang, blackened and attempted to kill her as a sacrificial offering for his lord.
Devil Venerable Wenren E: Yin Hanjiang, this Venerable wants to know why you wanted to kill the female lead.
Yin Hanjiang was silent.
Wenren E: If you refuse to speak, this Venerable will cut out your tongue and drink it with alcohol!
Yin Hanjiang: …
Wenren E: What the hell are you blushing for?!
The Murderbot Diaries Series by Martha Wells
In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.
But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.
On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid — a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.
But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.
Once, she was the Justice of Toren — a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.
Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.
Find these and other books on our Goodreads book shelf or buy them through the Duck Prints Press Bookshop.org affiliate page. Also available as a list on Pagebound.co.
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1. What are you currently reading?
- Don't You Like Me vol. 1 by Lv Tian Yi: this is a kinda odd modern BL that started looking like it'd be fairly standard high school rivals to lovers "omg they are boarding school roommates" kinda stuff........ and then 25 pages in the mc's grandfather dies and passes on the ability to see ghosts. And the mc is phobic of ghosts. And the only way to not see the ghosts is to interact with someone with very high yang energy, such as... the rival roommate ml. And mc needs to touch the ml every five minutes to not see ghosts. Oh and the ghostsight also prevents him from just talking about why he needs to do this. So needless to say lines of consent are batshit in this, and it's kinda a mess (and it's very weird that a couple reviews are like "damn ml is a sexual predator wtf" as if mc didn't go from "ugh I hate that guy" it sleeping in his bed without permission in the space of like a day after getting these abilities. But obviously it's all ml's fault for not reading mc's mind or something idefk.) Anyway. Weird book. MC is pretty tsundere, I hope he gets that out of his system soon, lol. I'm a bit over halfway done with vol. 1 (of 2)
- made a little progress on Daomu Biji. I'm traveling almost all week and didn't want to carry it with me, so that's meant not much reading, sigh.
2. What have you recently finished reading?
- The World We Make by N. K. Jemisin: well. I finished it. That's something right? The pacing on this is just a disaster. I'm sorry to say that about such a powerful writer but oof, what a mess.
- SHWD episode 2 by sono.N: maybe slightly better than vol. 1? Less dwelling on gender in the workplace, more about the relationship, but the mc has gone zero to 60 in their devotion to ml and I don't get why at all.
- Kase-San and Cherry Blossoms (Kase-san and... vol. 5) by Hiromi Takashima: easily the best in the series imo.
- Dandadan vol. 10 to 12 by Yukinobu Tatsu
- Planeta by Ana Oncina: sci-fi GL. A mindfuck and a half. Very interesting book.
- Sakamoto Days vol. 19 by Yuto Suzuki
- Kaiju No. 8: B-Side vol. 2 by Naoya Matsumoto and Keiji Ando: interesting to get Narumi's backstory.
- A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow vol. 5 by Makoto Hagino: probably the slowest pace volume yet in a stupidly slow-paced series. I'm this close to dropping it tbh.
- My Adorable Betrothed by Dokueki: modern BL. The most PWP single-volume thing I have ever read. Not bad for that, I guess, but if I just want PWP I've got AO3 for that so whatever.
3. What will you read next?
Novels: I'll finish Don't You Like Me vol. 1 and 2
Physical Graphic novels (library and otherwise): I've been traveling 5 of 7 days since last Wednesday, so I wasn't able to read any library books, so idk, whatever I said last week is still true. For others... I'm visiting my mom rn, which always means a trip to Kinokuniya and some gifted money for me to spend there, so I grabbed my own copies of the first three books of Murderous Lewellyn's Candlelit Dinner so I'll reread those probably. And mom went with me and bought herself the first three volumes of Moriarty the Patriot so probably that too, if I can swing (re)reading them before I leave tomorrow afternoon.
Graphic novels on Libby: Firefly Wedding vol. 2 by Oreco Tachibana is due in 3 days; I'm gonna get through it but given unenthusiastic I'm feeling, I'll probably drop the series; That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime vol. 8 by Fuse is due in six days, so also that.
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I am visiting Tuesday! Which is a very good thing <3
Today was the mostly mellow day, since she was working from home. Tomorrow and Thursday she has off --I'm here basically as long as I can be before rushing off to run dance Thursday night. (I'm debating whether I spend more time on trains and come visit more on some other times this break, but my timing is a little weird for it)
While she did work, I played Stardew Valley, but then we had a nice evening of playing Bomb Corp with Charis and going off to obtain a pizza. We ate the pizza while watching Middleman, which was especially good because she was at my _favourite episode_. Gods, I love this show so much. I am definitely due looking at my calendar and picking a weekend for a Middleman sleepover watch party again. Watch from like, 8pm-11pm on Friday night, then make pancakes in the morning and watch from 11am-8pm or so. End with the live table read of the episode 13 comic, and probably with some kind of reading of the episode 14 script (did that ever get table read? I might actually have never read the 14th episode, and I should do that!)
If this sounds deeply exciting to you, you should let me know and I'll put you on the list for it. Also mannn, I need to get back into the swing of dragging Scoop over to my place for DnD and watching Middleman with him afterwards. That was a good run of weeks when we managed it!
I don't know if Tues and I have any specific plans for tomorrow, beyond being cute and sweet at each other. Sleeping in, a thing I don't do often enough! That part's good.
I hope you are happy.
~Sor
MOOP!
Today was the mostly mellow day, since she was working from home. Tomorrow and Thursday she has off --I'm here basically as long as I can be before rushing off to run dance Thursday night. (I'm debating whether I spend more time on trains and come visit more on some other times this break, but my timing is a little weird for it)
While she did work, I played Stardew Valley, but then we had a nice evening of playing Bomb Corp with Charis and going off to obtain a pizza. We ate the pizza while watching Middleman, which was especially good because she was at my _favourite episode_. Gods, I love this show so much. I am definitely due looking at my calendar and picking a weekend for a Middleman sleepover watch party again. Watch from like, 8pm-11pm on Friday night, then make pancakes in the morning and watch from 11am-8pm or so. End with the live table read of the episode 13 comic, and probably with some kind of reading of the episode 14 script (did that ever get table read? I might actually have never read the 14th episode, and I should do that!)
If this sounds deeply exciting to you, you should let me know and I'll put you on the list for it. Also mannn, I need to get back into the swing of dragging Scoop over to my place for DnD and watching Middleman with him afterwards. That was a good run of weeks when we managed it!
I don't know if Tues and I have any specific plans for tomorrow, beyond being cute and sweet at each other. Sleeping in, a thing I don't do often enough! That part's good.
I hope you are happy.
~Sor
MOOP!
I did not end up accompanying rushthatspeaks and his child to the zoo this morning because I crashed so hard last night that I slept ten to eleven hours and am having difficulty remembering the day of the week, but he just dropped by with a nineweaving in the car and brought me my Christmas present of a sweater in the pattern of the Minoan octopus flask from Palaikastro and the cup with the scale motif from Archanes: it's spectacular. I was able to give him the collected cartoons and comics and poems of Le Guin's Book of Cats (2025). I got to see photographs of Artic and fennec foxes, flamingos and peccaries, sloth and snow leopard, porcupine and poison dart frog. Having spent the prior portion of my afternoon in the excitement of calling doctors and paying bills, my evening's plans involve couch and books.
rushthatspeaks and his child to the zoo this morning because I crashed so hard last night that I slept ten to eleven hours and am having difficulty remembering the day of the week, but he just dropped by with a nineweaving in the car and brought me my Christmas present of a sweater in the pattern of the Minoan octopus flask from Palaikastro and the cup with the scale motif from Archanes: it's spectacular. I was able to give him the collected cartoons and comics and poems of Le Guin's Book of Cats (2025). I got to see photographs of Artic and fennec foxes, flamingos and peccaries, sloth and snow leopard, porcupine and poison dart frog. Having spent the prior portion of my afternoon in the excitement of calling doctors and paying bills, my evening's plans involve couch and books.(duckprintspress Feb. 17th, 2026 08:13 am)
duckprintspress Feb. 17th, 2026 08:13 am)
Happy Chinese New Year everyone! We picked our brains to think of queer books in which horses play a prominent role, and we were honestly shocked by how much trouble we had thinking of any, but we managed a list of five! It’s a little astonishing to us, collectively, how many of us were horse girls and now a. can’t think of any books with horses we’ve read recently and b. aren’t girls. ANYWAY. This is our third Chinese New Year list; you can also check out our list of books for the Year of the Dragon (2024) and for the Year of the Snake (2025).
The contributors to the list are: jumblejen, Cedar, Shea Sullivan, Linnea Peterson, Shadaras.
Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire
“Welcome to the Hooflands. We’re happy to have you, even if you being here means something’s coming.”
Regan loves, and is loved, though her school-friend situation has become complicated, of late.
When she suddenly finds herself thrust through a doorway that asks her to “Be Sure” before swallowing her whole, Regan must learn to live in a world filled with centaurs, kelpies, and other magical equines―a world that expects its human visitors to step up and be heroes.
But after embracing her time with the herd, Regan discovers that not all forms of heroism are equal, and not all quests are as they seem…
Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst
Betrothed since childhood to the prince of Mynaria, Princess Dennaleia has always known what her future holds. Her marriage will seal the alliance between Mynaria and her homeland, protecting her people from other hostile lands. But Denna has a secret. She possesses an Affinity for fire—a dangerous gift for the future queen of a kingdom where magic is forbidden.
Now, Denna must learn the ways of her new home while trying to hide her growing magic. To make matters worse, she must learn to ride Mynaria’s formidable warhorses—and her teacher is the person who intimidates her most, the prickly and unconventional Princess Amaranthine—called Mare—the sister of her betrothed.
When a shocking assassination leaves the kingdom reeling, Mare and Denna reluctantly join forces to search for the culprit. As the two become closer, Mare is surprised by Denna’s intelligence and bravery, while Denna is drawn to Mare’s independent streak. And soon their friendship is threatening to blossom into something more.
But with dangerous conflict brewing that makes the alliance more important than ever, acting on their feelings could be deadly. Forced to choose between their duty and their hearts, Mare and Denna must find a way to save their kingdoms—and each other.
Valdemar: The Last Herald-Mage Series by Mercedes Lackey
Though Vanyel has been born with near-legendary abilities to work both Herald and Mage magic, he wants no part of such things. Nor does he seek a warrior’s path, wishing instead to become a Bard. Yet such talent as his if left untrained may prove a menace not only to Vanyel but to others as well. So he is sent to be fostered with his aunt, Savil, one of the famed Herald-Mages of Valdemar.
But, strong-willed and self-centered, Vanyel is a challenge which even Savil can not master alone. For soon he will become the focus of frightening forces, lending his raw magic to a spell that unleashes terrifying wyr-hunters on the land. And by the time Savil seeks the assistance of a Shin’a’in Adept, Vanyel’s wild talent may have already grown beyond anyone’s ability to contain, placing Vanyel, Savil, and Valdemar itself in desperate peril…
The Immortals Series by Tamora Pierce
Young Daine’s knack with horses gets her a job helping the royal horsemistress drive a herd of ponies to Tortall. Soon it becomes clear that Daine’s talent, as much as she struggles to hide it, is downright magical. Horses and other animals not only obey, but listen to her words. Daine, though, will have to learn to trust humans before she can come to terms with her powers, her past, and herself.
Return of the Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
Neither accepted nor beloved, Eugenides is the uneasy linchpin of a truce on the Lesser Peninsula, where he has risen to be high king of Attolia, Eddis, and Sounis. As the treacherous Baron Erondites schemes anew and a prophecy appears to foretell the death of the king, the ruthless Mede empire prepares to strike. The New York Times–bestselling Queen’s Thief novels are rich with political machinations, divine intervention, dangerous journeys, battles lost and won, power, passion, and deception.
Find these and other books on our Goodreads book shelf or buy them through the Duck Prints Press Bookshop.org affiliate page. You can also check out all of our past Chinese Zodiac recs + this one on our pagebound.co list.
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The world is complicated and there are a lot of things to have feelings about, obviously on a macro level, but for me on a more micro level as well.
But.
I spent the day with various groups of friends, and doing a bunch of knitting work and making things with my hands. And it feels very very good.
I'm happy for that. I hope you can also find things that make you happy.
~Sor
MOOP!
But.
I spent the day with various groups of friends, and doing a bunch of knitting work and making things with my hands. And it feels very very good.
I'm happy for that. I hope you can also find things that make you happy.
~Sor
MOOP!
A year ago, I proposed putting together a webring of indie presses, as part of an effort to old-school-ify navigating indie publishers for folks interested in learning more about us. I’m thrilled to share that now, with the invaluable help of Zachary from Lunaseeker Press, the webring is live!
The Indie Press Webring connects independent publishing houses! We celebrate indie publishers championing diverse voices and subjects, experimental formats, and bold literary visions.
If you’re looking for indie presses doing new, innovative things, give us a look-see. We’re small now – only four Presses at the moment – but we’re looking to grow and add folks, and we’re hoping to be a great resource for indie publishers and readers alike. You can check out our members here.
Interested in joining the webring? Learn how by visiting our webpage and filling out our interest check form!
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I have not slept in two nights as opposed to brief random hours elsewhere on the clock, but the sunlight this afternoon was gorgeous.
( I'm a little hungover and I may have to steal your soul. )
Like just about the rest of this weekend, any plans I had to attend even part of this year's sci-fi marathon at the Somerville did not survive contact with my stamina. Hestia has now broken four slats out of my blinds for a better view on Bird Theater and having tired herself out chattering at their delicious players sleeps innocently against my mermaid lamp, softly and a little snufflily breathing out a purr.
( I'm a little hungover and I may have to steal your soul. )
Like just about the rest of this weekend, any plans I had to attend even part of this year's sci-fi marathon at the Somerville did not survive contact with my stamina. Hestia has now broken four slats out of my blinds for a better view on Bird Theater and having tired herself out chattering at their delicious players sleeps innocently against my mermaid lamp, softly and a little snufflily breathing out a purr.
.