26oct2026

Well, hello there, we're having beautiful autumn weather, so I thought I might make a post:)

One of the weird ways I've been wasting my time since failing to re-install my usual approaches—Instagram being at the top of the heap—I've been trawling best-of lists to find some books to read. It's been...semi-successful, eventually I just reverted to re-reading Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series, much heartened by not only the lessening of the sexism, especially the homophobia centered around lesbian characters, but its active reversal. Yay, now I can read these again.

Anyway.

This is more the, oh, yeah, I did read that before list than an actual review, but hey, whatevs, as Abigail would say:)

So here's my brief reactions to recent reading, mostly stuff I found off various NPR best-of lists:

• G.S. Denning, Warlock Holmes: A Study in Brimstone —the conceit for this parody is Watson is the bright detective, Holmes is some sort of sorcerer trying to conceal the weird about his person. I kinda bounced, but if you enjoy full-throated parodies & are familiar with the source material, this strikes me as reasonably well-done—just not my taste, at least at the moment. One of the few on this list I stumbled across at our local little free library.
• O'Donnell, Padraic, The House on Vesper Sands and its sequel, The Naming of the Birds. The recce was actually for the second book, but I thought the first was better, honestly—creepy and reasonably well balanced between the three leads, with a nice touch of the supernatural, featuring the irascible Inspector Cutter, failed (by lack of funds) divinity student Gideon Bliss, and plucky reporter Octavia Hillingdon: I use the cliches deliberately, but at least we do have an active female protag. Like the Denning, these books owe their setting—Victorian London in the 1890s—and to some extent the detective characters, to Doyle.
• Though imperfect—I couldn't follow Bliss’ detective leaps at all (which mebbe was the point?) and I wished Hillingdon's storylines had intersected more robustly with the men's—by book II the supernatural had receded, as had Bliss’ otherworldly deductions, and the Hillingdon had just flattened into the background as the super-researcher who never fails. Like most other reviewers (at least on Goodreads) I found the horrific prologue the most compelling, but it does mean there's not only no supernatural, there's no mystery either, and the substitution of Cutter's past was not especially compelling.
• Tasha Edwards, And Only to Deceive (Lady Emily Mysteries) I think I spent more time trying to re-find the title and author to this one (after I'd returned it to the library & then found it on a pile next to my computer, siiiiiighhh) than I did actually reading the novel before giving up on it. Last in my trio of Victorian/Holmes era collection it was, for me, by far the least successful, as I got so bored with the irritating female protag, who married her sweet, academically minded and classically trained spouse solely for convenience and had no idea he loved her till after he was dead, that I skipped the bulk of the present day narrative only to read the excerpts of his journals.
• Mind you, the fellow was also a big game hunter & an avid collector of Greek antiquities, which along with his widow's unconsidered appropriation of his fortune was just incredibly grating—there was just no class consciousness, awareness of colonialism, nor even a living male love interest who wasn't tiresomely sexist.
• About the kindest thing I can say is that I did feel the designer, that is, the person responsible for laying out the interior, picking out fonts & choosing some quite nice ancient-greek-themed patterns, Deborah Kerner, did a really nice job. (And while at least the fi's were properly ligatured, wouldn't’ve been fantastic to have properly doubled up letters, such tt, ff and ll's? Alas, the font companies are really screwing publishing houses over, or so I understand...)
• Needless to say Lady Emily gives up on her avowed determination to remain single & eventually marries the guy, who does become less of an asshat, so I guess if you can ignore assorted subtexts, it's a popular series?

And then we have some odds and, heh, ends:

• Alyssa Cole, One of Us Knows, another thriller. I've read Cole before, with perhaps the historical romance featuring the Black woman doing reconnaissance and white Union soldier during the Civil War being the most memorable. She writes perfectly decent romances, and was one of the earlier mainstream romance authors to do PoC historicals; I like her stuff, but not enough for comfort re-reads, which to be honest was sort of what I was looking for here. If you like her stuff, you'll like this, though there's not much romance, and some of the plot resolutions could've stood to have been set up a touch better. I did think the main character(s), a System who suffers DID (dissociative identity disorder) were pretty cool, & unlike the previous book, why yes, the impacts of race (& class) absolutely had an impact, being treated in a very matter-of-fact way); plus of course being a sucker for an archivist protag.
• Arizona O'Neill, Opioids & Orchids Organs (Jeez, my brain is turning to swiss cheeze...) Class is front and center in this full-colour graphic memoir by a Canadian woman whose rage is directed at her country's health care system that wasted no time harvesting her father's organs after he died, but couldn't be bothered to treat his addiction to drugs while he was alive. In it, she cleverly uses the alter egos of a gila monster and Frankenstein's Monster to work through her grief and loss. The library was featuring it for October, and the cover is both beautiful and beautifully macabre, my choice reinforced by the librarian's accolade as I snagged it; highly recommended.
• T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea. My other highly recommended item—I'd seen recces for this before, but hadn't managed to check it out, but this time, I lucked out & the library had it waiting for me:) Very much in the style of British children's fantastical stories such as Narnia stories, The Secret of Platform 13 and Roald Dahl, excepting the main protagonist is a 40 something man who's lived an absolutely colourless life as a cog in a bureaucracy for 17 years, specifically, the agency tasked with inspecting various orphanages responsible for housing unwanted magical children—until his spotless record means he's tasked with checking out an orphanage with the most daunting inmate ever: the Antichrist. Naturally, our hero's superiors have got the willies over this kid. Off he goes, discovering romance love in assorted forms , courage, personal growth, and joys of found family. The depiction of his dreary circs at the beginning of the book is worth the price of admission alone.
• And, finally, to end (heh) things, Anders Nilsen's The End, his memoir/journal in graphic novel form, of the year he spends recovering from the death of his beloved. The Ignatz award winning work notes that it's ‘assembled’ from the creator's sketchbooks, which no doubt explains the scratchouts in some of the word balloon. It's a quiet, personal exploration; I found the maze like graphic designs contrasted vividly with spare outlines used to depict the humans, as empty as the void Nilsen feels. Again, recommended.

Bonus: I didn't bother finishing the Lady Emily mystery because it hardly seemed worth my time, but I felt bad about doing the same to The Bruising of Qilwa, a ‘medical fantasy’ in the words of its author Naseem Jamnia. I mean, this had everything to be rejiquar catnip (or roses): a fantasy set in a cool place, a nonbinary protag (with a trans sib, no less), a gifted apprentice with a kindly master doing magical medicine, who moreover comes from a downtrodden (magical blood using) people, likely to be blamed for a frightening ‘blood bruising’ disease sweeping the city.

Written by a Persian (Chicagoian), the problem was, this author felt compelled to wrestle with the idea that her people were both oppressors (once upon a time) and now oppressed; there are no easy resolutions or fabulous (nor even mundane) triumphs here. Fans of Shannon Chakraborty's City of Brass (another book I really, really wanted to like but couldn't finish) might like this, but aside from the lack of the easy sort-of believable faery tale HEAs I wuz looking for, I just couldn't get into the main character Firuz-e Jafari, who seemed to spend most of their time feeling guilty that they couldn't help everyone, right now, (in a free clinic for the poor!) most especially their trans brother, who wanted his top and bottom surgery, um, re-alignment, right now, and damn the incredibly dangerous consequences, Firuz's other obligations or anything else. The main character was noble, exhausted and flat, the sibs demanding and whiny and seemingly completely unwilling to concede that the resources to improve their lives simply weren't there. It was just...dreary.

The vivid orange and purple cover, beautifully decorated with Middle-Eastern inspired curliques, definitely inspired me to give the book a try, and is gorgeous; I sincerely hope the publisher continues to put some effort into this first time novelist, because the themes were great, I just felt the characters needed to be more vivid.

Oh, and speaking of colourful, here's a favourite mouse, which, spoiler alert, is no longer mine.

26sep2026

I kinda like those sort-of bilateral dates (i.e. 26sep26), so here's a bonus post on one, albeit not a very exciting one.

So here's a couple of cool linkies, the “new” (to western science, that is, not the locals living with them) tiger cat species plus Audobon's splendid collection of a hundred photos submitted to their 2026 challenge —seeing all these wonderful bird pix makes my heart happy, but the ongoing theme in the photographers’ comments (which I find adds to the interest) is ‘please, we must protect this disappearing species, this shrinking habitat’ —which gets no argument from me.

Or you can check out this very mid doodle;)

25sep2026

I happen[ed] to be coming home from a somewhat stressful meeting with X, who was deeply amused by some hapless crittur that attached itself to the windshield of the car. I felt sorry for it as we accelerated, afraid its wings would get bent out of shape; but it its feet gripped the glass securely, even allowing it to rotate to a more comfortable position to protect its wings. I explained to my friend that I thought perhaps van der Waals forces were involved in its adhesion, since I'd heard of the classic example (gecko feet); a few minutes of putzing around n the intertubes, ahem, additional research suggests that insects also use mechanical means: thousands of tiny hairs hooking into microscopic irregularities in the glass, of which a windshield, constantly battered, would have plenty.

When we next stopped, our passenger took the opportunity to fly away, unharmed; of such tiny events do I daily give gratitude—it's not enough to balance the many insects sacrificed to windshields, nor the many mammals hit by cars, but this one escaped. So do I give thanks every time my foot or bicycle wheel avoids crushing a harmless worm or insect (to be sure, I am not so noble as to spare [perceived] enemies, such as the unfortunate species like mosquitoes or lanternflies).

So this photo, which I happened to stumble upon shortly after, of a similar insect, is a sort of thank-you/follow-up to the convo I had with X; other artists, have, however, contributed to science just by the power of their observation alone; the linked article mentions one of my very favourite flower painters, Rachel Ruysch, though I'd like to push back a tiny bit on the “amusing mistake” of choosing a showy butterfly instead of the pollinating fly that would have actually been attracted to a carrion flower that Ruysch would've been lucky to see alive in botanical gardens, let alone in its natural habitat. This the Science News article author also notes, and the scientist she cites says one way of sorting accurate observations from artistic fancies is to see if given motifs (i.e. swallowtail butterflies on all different kinds of plants, not just their hosts) recur; my point is that, in absence of scientific data you might as well sub in something that makes the client happy, and Ruysch was an extremely successful painter who undoubtedly knew that her client would appreciate a) the latest large, exotic showy flower discovered by Dutch science and b) a large, showy butterfly. (Indeed, if I hadn't guessed, the museum exhibit of her work made a point of this. In fact the entire bouquet is a fantasy, as the flowers in Ruysch's bouquets were nearly always from differing seasons.) She knew this.

The butterfly was not a mistake, and not sloppiness, but a conscious choice by a meticulous botanical artist.

(IOW, the rules for botanical illustration in the 1600s were different than they are today, and it pays to keep that in mind;)

And of course, ordinary people make all kinds of cool scientific discoveries, as with the high school students who discovered urban raccoons are morphologically diverging from their country cousins. There are even apps where you can upload sightings of various plants and animals:) (which data said students, above, used to make their determinations.)

So here we go, a little art ref of the natural world. Enjoy.

23sep2026

O hai, I wanted to post on the Equinox, and I did at least start this yesterday, but I was having some issues, some of which even resolved (I feel the IRS gets dumped on so hard that I should point out that my interactions with them—both on the phone, yesterday, and in person, today—were speedy, pleasant & polite, so far as I can tell, have finally resolved the issue I've been going back and forth in snail mail for the last 3 or 4 months: I really kind of feel for them, what with so many positions cut, and it's not, after all, their fault you have to pay taxes—the blame lays squarely on Congress, to whom your ire should properly be directed. [Not that my ire isn't considerably greater for the other two branches of government, but that's a rant for another day. In the meantime, I find the mantra, ‘You're not paying taxes, you're buying civilization’ very helpful.] But I did have to assemble a lot of documentation.)

So! Happy Equinox, a day late. My desktop is back together and functioning, and the wizard is working with a will on the website updates—those will take a bit longer.

In the meantime, have a humourous photo of a day in the life of an outdoor artist;)

18sep2026

So there have been a couple of changes to the site over the summer, one major, the other minor. Minor is that the fan on my “desktop” (which is actually a box about 5x5x2" screwed onto the side of the desk) finally died, but during this process my access to things was sort of limited; because the wizard is awesome, he found a slightly larger box (say, 6x6x3") to take its place until a replacement fan shows up. Yay, I can answer email and browse the web. Oh, and make web pages again.

Much bigger is that after 15 or 20 years my old hosting service could no longer, and the new one is a) more expensive and b) has significantly less storage, which means that the large images are currently unavailable. I hope to have a page (when you click to get full-size) explaining this shortly, and perhaps some sort of login scheme for people wanting to access the more detailed images at some point in the future; in the meantime, please contact me for access.

Perhaps this will finally inspire me to revamp the site from its 90s design, make it a bit more phone friendly & easier to search...we'll see. In the meantime, to celebrate our return from Killbear, here's a sketch I did there last year.

Enjoy.

6sep2026

Well, I seem to have recovered from the head cold (& jet lag) following my return home, so I thought I'd post something:) To go with the nature theme, a link about the ability of a plant, B. trifoliata, to do complex mimicry of other plants leaves. I had read about this incredible ability before, but no-one had any idea how the vine achieved this; well, now some experiments have shown that the plant basically detects on some visual level its surroundings, which I find absolutely fascinating.

Possibly less so, a watercolour postcard from Japan. Enjoy.