S.N. Arly > Recent Status Updates

Continuing to love this.

This is delightful, I just keep getting interrupted while I'm reading. I love the puns and plays off the fantasy tropes.

So far I'm greatly enjoying the continued tales of the Old Kingdom. Garth Nix is expanding the development of this world through the Nomads and their magics. Consistent, but different. Very cool.

I'm rereading Clariel with my eldest (age 16) while catching up on the books I'd missed.

So far another delightful installment of the series. The anime definitely captured the flavor of the manga.

There are a few darker moments that are left more open-ended or are excluded entirely in the anime, and it's good to see theme here as they better define the character and the world.

Garth Nix continues to prove that he is a first rate world builder, and that he can't write a story without cramming in as much world (and where appropriate magic or mythology) development as possible.

As expected, each story has been delightful so far, though I do have my favorites. The title story was a really interesting look into the lives of regular folk in the Old Kingdom. Vampire Weather provided an intriguing world. Just finished A Handful of Ashes, which is not your usual magical boarding school tale.

Another book I thought I'd finished in the past but realized (thanks to the bookmark) when I went to reshelve it, that I still had some reading to do.

I'm a huge fan of fairy and folk tales, and it's nice to see a collection of the brave and resourceful girls and women who are often left out of collections of popular stories. Some of these are familiar (such as Clever Gretchen and Molly Whuppie) but others are new to me.

I thought I'd read this in its entirety in the past, but I was MISTAKEN. I am rectifying that now, and it turns out I'd missed some of the coolest stories on my previous read. I particularly like the continued adventure of Mead Mistdaughter (I'd read the first one and had no idea there were other connected stories).

Interesting worlds and magic + engaging characters = delightful reading experience.

Delightful and intriguing. Like Legends of Darkstalker, this is also told from multiple viewpoints.

It's fun getting the history of hobbits.

We'll be celebrating Jolabokaflod this year. It's the Icelandic tradition of giving and reading books while enjoying chocolate on December 24. Picked up a few books to gift the kids yesterday, and contemplating my options - how many books can I read from my to-read shelf, if I have a whole day set aside for it?

I've had this sitting on my shelf waiting to be read for probably a decade. It's decent, but sadly my love of all things Buffy has faded in the wake of the reveal that Joss Whedon is a complete dumpster fire of a person.

Back in a familiar world but at an earlier time when things aren't going smoothly. Interesting political situation.

I don't like the main character much. I don't mind her being "a singleton" (the world's equivalent to aromantic asexual). But she feels so terribly self centered. And she's currently doing something phenomenally stupid (that two paragraphs earlier she realized was stupid and had discarded).

I'm reading this aloud to my son, as he had a lot of trouble reading the Caribbean dialect in his head. It's an excellent book so far, with intriguing characters and engaging plot.

If you've always been given more grammatically academically accurate books to read and are having trouble with this one, I recommend trying to read it aloud, have someone read it aloud to you, or find an audio book version.

Missed several days of reading and it's a lot to absorb, so it's good to have something else to alternate with.

I just learned about making soap - thinking this would be a great activity for the kids this summer. Science (chemistry) plus potentially useful survival skill = win.

I've made it through rebooting our food and textile capabilities. Next up will be substances.

I continue to find this relaxing and hopeful in this time of stress and fear.

Frankly, the various monarchies in this world are terrifying. These nightwings are not healthy.

On to food preservation. As canning is a hobby of mine, this topic is of especial interest to me.

On to agriculture. As an avid gardener I'm familiar with the basics on this front, so there aren't many surprises here so far. The back-breaking manual labor of full scale farming, and the finicky nature of so many of our food crops would be stumbling blocks. While heirloom plants are an obvious choice, in many cases (tomatoes in particular) hybrids exist because of disease and fragility in earlier cultivars.

I've finished the first book in this collection, The Tail of Emily Windsnap. It was a delightful read, wrapping up with some nice action and Emily getting to prove herself.