This is the blog of Kelly Jennings, science fiction writer. Bibliography here: https://delagarbibliography.blogspot.com/
Advice in general:
Don't get your information about Christians from people who hate Christians.
Don't get your information about feminists from people who hate feminists.
Don't get your information about liberals/conservatives from people who hate liberals/conservatives.
Don't get your information about trans people from people who hate trans people.
And so on.
Today is the first day it's been cool enough to turn off the AC and open the doors and windows. I'm enjoying this brief bliss, since tomorrow the high is back in the 90s. UGH.
The cats are also very happy. They love being able to wander into and off of the screened porch entirely at their own will. (When it's not fall, Junti stands at the kitchen door and screams until I let her out on the porch. What about the cat door, you ask? There is indeed a cat door, but she refuses to make use of it. That is for peasants.)
Tomorrow Dr. Skull is driving up the mountain to take the kid to a medical appointment (he usually takes himself, but this one is not on the bus route). I'm teaching all day, so I'm staying here and walking to and from work.
I can do this because the new house is less than half a mile from campus. Highly recommend.
Also the high tomorrow is forecast to be 84 degrees. On October 4. Ugh.
This is the same site, and the same reviewer, who looked at Fault Lines a few weeks ago.
My favorite graph:
The novel explores what those seeking profit or advantage will do to those under them to maintain those profits and advantage, up to the use of force. This is all the richer given both Velocity and Bronte's origins with wealth and privilege in the Combines, and that conflict and dichtomy absolutely does get addressed and called out here. In a time and age as I am writing this with the Pandemic, and workers seeking better ways of working and better compensation for same, the message of In the Deep is especially powerful, and relevant.
Ted Lasso
Of course. Who isn't? My kid sent me a PM asking, why is everyone losing their shit over Ted Lasso? Isn't it just a show about a soccer coach? I sent back, Ted Lasso saved my life.
I'm not saying it will save your life. I was extremely depressed and feeling generally hopeless, and this show is about persevering in the face of that hopelessness (and about a soccer coach), as well as being about people who do the right thing. Also it's funny. Also, the actor who plays Roy Kent is extremely hot. Also, lots of accents. You know I love dialectical English.
Season Two has started to deal with some darker issues, but I'm still watching. Free on Apple TV if you have a Apple device, or you can buy the season on YouTube.
Lupin
This is a French series, in French. I heard good things about it, but mainly I am watching it to practice my French. I am up to 524 days on Duolingo, and can understand about half of what's being said on screen. (I keep the subtitles on, but only check them when I get stuck.
It's also a pretty good show, at least so far, about the son of a Senegalese immigrant whose father was wrongly convicted of theft and who is trying to clear his father's name while being himself hunted by the French police, because he also makes his living as a 'gentleman thief.' His name isn't actually Lupin; apparently that's a name he takes from a book series he read as a kid. (I'm only on episode two.)
On Netflix.
The Darkest Hour
Not the one about Churchill. This is about two young software engineers who go to Russia to pitch an app to some business there and while they are in Russia aliens made of wave-form energy invade. Basically a horror-SF movie, but I enjoyed it. Very few Russian characters for a show set in Russia, but I did like the guy living in a Faraday cage with his cat in Faraday armor, that was fun.
On Netflix.
Law & Order: UK
Copaganda. Don't waste your time unless you're really interested in English dialects.
Free on Amazon if you have Amazon Prime.
Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filgree Street, The Bedlam Stacks, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow
These are wonderful books, sort of steampunk, all sharing the same universe, in which a Japanese man, Keita Mori, can "remember" the future, or rather futures, and -- at certain junctures -- intervene to make sure one specific future occurs. When that happens, he can't remember any of the other futures, or the things he would have known in those futures. In the Watchmaker, a young British civil servant, Nathaniel Steepleton, meets him and falls in love with him. It's the 1880s, though, so homosexual love is a problem. Also, Mori is suspected of being a terrorist, since a recent bomb was set off using his specific sort of clockwork.
There is also a mechanical octopus which runs on quantum programming, and a workhouse child named Six. I love these books and I wish Pulley would write more of them very, very quickly.
Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm
I liked this a lot, though I didn't think I would, at first. It reads at first like it's going to be one of those books that labors heavily to mock people. But as we move further into the story, it stops being quite so twee in its mockery, and the book improves immensely. If you can wince your way through the opening 20 pages or so, it's worth reading. Also a good look at what people in the 1930s thought the near future would look like.
Lemony Snicket, Poison for Breakfast
My kid read all the Lemony Snicket books when he was about ten, and loved them to bits. This is the first one I have read all the way through. (I read bits to him when he was little.) It's an adult novel -- novella, really -- and has the same tone and feel as the kids' books, but is definitely aimed at adults. It's about what it says on the tin: the narrator, Lemony Snicket, finds a note saying that he's eaten poison for breakfast, and he investigates the crime. It's really, as Snicket notes about halfway through, more of a philosophical muse than a crime novel. Wonderful writing, though, and short enough that you can read it in an hour or so. Recommended for those who like this sort of thing. (I like this sort of thing.)
Looking through old photos I found this one of baby Junti:
I've signed up to do another Guest Review for Asimov's, which is why my "What I'm Reading Now" posts have been scarce -- pretty much everything I'm reading is aimed at that review.
But I am doing some non-SFF reading, so there should be another post eventually.
Previous to that post, I highly recommend Natasha Pulley's The Bedlam Stacks. Also everything else she writes. Great stuff.
...but in two days we'll be back in the 90s.
Please no more summer.
My new book has five stars on Amazon -- yay! -- but only one reviewer so far. All y'all who are reading it, you should go over there and leave a review.
...and almost cool.
Next week, we're back in the low 90s and high 80s, though.
I have hopes that we may achieve fall at some point before November.
Honest to God, if it could be less hot, I could be more happy.
It's a wonderful and very insightful review. My favorite bit:
...this is not a space opera with a ton of action scenes in it. This is a novel far more interested in the political machinations, maneuvers, conversations, revelations and negotiations than in straight up conflicts. If you prefer your space opera with more laser guns and less wrangling, this is not quite the space opera you are looking for. On the other hand, if you want deadly dances of interstellar politics, this novel, this universe, has all you could want, in spades, and will eat up what is offered here with as poon.
This is a question someone asked on Twitter. I posted it on my FB page, and the answers were interesting.
1. What did your father's father do for a living?
2. What did your father do?
3. What did your mother's mother do?
4. What did your mother do?
5. What do you do?
My answers:
1. Sold used cars
2. Chemical engineer
3. Worked in a furniture factory
4. School librarian
5. Professor
What are your answers?
