Phantoms in the Dark

Reading: scruloose and I finished listening to All Systems Red and are now maybe a third of the way into Artificial Condition.

Yesterday I finished The Hands of the Emperor, which I think I read some of every day and still took me something like a week and a half even though I continued to really enjoy it all the way through. (I did find myself wishing that some of the emotional arc with Kip and his family had been shorter; [ROT13] uvf pbzcyvpngrq srryvatf nobhg uvf snzvyl abg ng nyy tenfcvat jub ur jnf be jung ur npghnyyl qvq jrer inyvq, ohg gung jnf n YBG bs cntrf qribgrq gb znal vafgnaprf va n ebj bs ehaavat vagb lrg nabgure crefba jub qvqa'g trg vg naq jnf qvfzvffvir be vafhygvat, be fbzrbar jub QVQ xabj jub ur jnf naq univat na vagrenpgvba, naq va rvgure pnfr gurer jnf gura lrg nabgure yratgul qryvirel bs rkcynangvba, naq vg jnf whfg...n ybg.

After finishing that last night, I completely at random started reading We'll Prescribe You a Cat (Syou Ishida), about which I have no particular feelings at this time.

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Eating/baking: ( fruit, baking, salad (HelloFresh), sadness about still not liking tomatoes )

We didn't decide before going to bed last night whether we'd get up and head straight for the market (not helped by going to bed at different times), and before getting up we halfheartedly opted against it so as not to be rushing around. (This was influenced by knowing that scruloose won't be at work next week and will almost certainly have to grab a car and go acquire odds and ends for the household project, which means swinging by local-produce places will be easier than usual.) Naturally, now I'm having regrets. But hopefully sometime this week I'll get my hands on my first peaches of the season.

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Reading: scruloose and I are soooo close to done with the audiobook of All Systems Red (which is good, since it's due tomorrow). We listened to chunks of it over supper for the last couple of nights, but their regular Friday-night video chat meant we had a cutoff time last night, so we still have about half an hour left. (Potentially dangerous, this realization that we can maybe listen to audiobooks while eating if the meal isn't "TVable", as I say.) We have Artificial Condition checked out now, too; I remembered to snag it before the month ended (since Hoopla seems to only allow five loans a month? Or does that depend on its deal with specific library systems?).

As for fiction in print, I finished E.K. Johnston's Sky on Fire, which is not set nearly as far after Aetherbound as I initially thought, but also smoothly wove in reminders to key my memory of how that book played out, so all was well. I really enjoyed this. ^_^

Then I read The Butcher of the Forest, which was my first Premee Mohamed work. As with most novellas, it didn't sink its hooks into me, but I liked it and get the feeling I may do well with her novels.

And now I'm reading my first Victoria Goddard book, The Hands of the Emperor, which is a TOME (I think the print edition is 900 pages) but a pretty quick read; I think I'm approaching halfway through? Really enjoying this, too.

On the non-fiction side, I'm leafing through The Afrominimalist's Guide to Living with Less (Christine Platt), which I picked up on a whim at some point. Not very far into it yet, I don't think. (Really what I should do is figure out which decluttering book I read years ago that resonated with me and reread that in hopes of having the same feeling from it and maybe actually taking action this time. It's genuinely awkward that scruloose and I both tend to hang onto things too much but for completely different reasons. ^^;)

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Watching: I think we're three episodes into The Summer Hikaru Died now? (I think episode 5 comes out today?) Creepy and weird. I'm not sure I'm bonding, but I'm interested.

I'm not at all clear on how it's August. Time, what is, etc. But word has it that Canada's getting Z1L's Dongji Rescue this month, so that's something to look forward to--assuming we get local showtimes. (I'm haunting the Cineplex site.) Having gotten to see both Lost in the Stars and Land of Broken Hearts in theatres makes me optimistic about this one being my third in-theatre experience since covid arrived.

(We won't dwell on not having gotten Long-ge's Only the River Flows, which I still haven't seen. >.< It seemed like that one mainly/only got film fest sorts of releases. In theory it's had an official English-subbed DVD release, but Amazon has three different listings, all from third-party sources, and I'm not at all sure which, if any, is the legit one.)

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scruloose is taking a bit of vacation time to try to get a long-delayed household project done. The clowder won't enjoy the upheaval, and neither will I, but it needs doing (and I was the one who was like, "Hey, were you still thinking of taking time off for that this year?", so I have no one to blame but myself).

And now a three-day weekend. I don't know if I'll be able to get my next rewrite fully polished and turned in, but at least I'm going into the weekend with a draft of it, so I should be able to read and maybe start in on the next rewrite.