Mauri > Recent Status Updates

Parenthood has been WAY more "you can lead a horse to water..." than I expected, but I'm...like, vaguely trying to set Pip up to like (some) poetry a little sooner than I did? Anyway, all of these poems are 100% 1920s Pip, which is hilarious to me, but he lacks the self-awareness and historical context to get it.

Why do these magic schools never have ethics classes?

Ah, jeez: I put this down a few days ago and picked it up this evening to find an appearance from ICE in this chapter. A character wonders if ICE agents even carry guns. Shows you how fast things can change, even in just the 4-5 years since this was written.

Star Trek (TNG mainly) was the first media property where I really got into behind the scenes stuff, so I’m aware of a lot of the names that are coming up, but this is the first time seeing a lot of photos. Nobody mentioned that Bill Theiss looked about 12 when he started designing costumes for TOS!

100% picked this up because of my crush on Claire Foy.

Some of this should have been in the previous book.

Oh my goodness, the following chapter of bureaucratic and logistical fallout over Mr. Honey's actions is the best.

This was sort of plodding along semi-enjoyably when the main character did something totally unexpected to the other characters, but so well set up by the author that I laughed aloud. Go Mr. Honey!

Me: Oh I hope this book doesn’t do the thing with a child that some books seem to think is appropriate-
Book: *does the thing*
Me: Argh.

"Looking just at kids between the ages of 6 and 15, Oslo has had zero road deaths for at least the last 20 years." Great example of how someone else's good news can depress you.

I am trying to give this book the benefit of the doubt that I give every book more than 15 minutes old that's about technology, but it is a hard read to take seriously after...well, you know, the Meta sexbots chatting up kids and ChatGPT blithely enabling teen suicide.

Lol, why does this edition's cover have the Delicate Arch from a US national park, when the whole story takes place in Australia?

An odd error in the translator’s note: Carpenter says Ichi’s home island of Iojima is “known as Iwo Jima in the West.” But Iwo Jima is nearly 1000 miles from the novel’s setting of southern Kyushu - how could Ichi’s dirt poor father afford to travel there? And Shokkichi, in town every couple of months to sell cows? Pretty sure it’s actually the Iōjima (硫黄島) just off the coast of Kyushu.

Normally I try to give nonfiction about technology a pass when it comes to "oops, written four years ago and basically out of date" but I'm reading this for actual tips...? Also the author's tone is super smug. At least it's short.

So far this is the sort of book where the plot summary is "a baby is found just before Christmas" and the baby has yet to make an appearance a third of the way in.

Also, very unfortunate, the “Why is Gamora?” exchange from Infinity War runs through my head every time I read this title.

I’m sure that it’s more likely than I think that someone would publish a book about the unsung workers of the US federal government the same month the administration started blowing up that self-same government, but I’m betting Lewis spent at least a few days in March hyperventilating.

This is clearly Noble's PHD thesis with a pop science cover slapped on and I'm trying not to hold that against it.

Reading cookbooks in early pregnancy is a bad idea - I'm famished or nauseated every other recipe.

(I want some little whole fish on the grill, though. Like, now.)

I know Green has talked about this himself, but oof: writing this book and going through the editing process and prepping for publication, only to watch USAID get torched the month before, must have been gutting.

Whaaaaaaat did I just read?

Already a bit ??? about Judt's grasp of infectious disease - he mentions "the Asian 'flu that swept through Europe in the wake of the First World War," presumably this is the so-called "Spanish Flu" of 1918, which was not contemporarily or in 2005 supposed to have Asian origins. Similarly, he attributes a high incidence of trachoma (a bacterial infection of the eye) to "acute vitamin deficiency." No?

I am still not used to memoirists reminiscing about the songs of their youth and realizing I know all of the songs and artists because I was a youth at the same time.

I couldn’t remember why I never got around to reading this one, but I just did - sad cat death. Skimming the rest.

17 chapters in and our young protagonist brings her family in on the situation, lowering my stress levels immensely.

I have no memory of reading the last four volumes of this series, so I'm quite startled to find that I've rated them here on Goodreads. None of this is familiar.

In my bird-watching era.

I’m reading along peacefully and almost spit out my drink at this page - this book takes place in Hakodate, a city in Japan I used to live near, and a character just received a postcard sent from the small city in the US where I was born (and left before I was six months old)!

Some wordless commentary - a small child has taken a bite out of the cover of my copy.