I work at a restaurant and nothing will ever beat the time this woman threw an absolute hissy fit at brunch because we ran out of home fries and all we had were french fries, she yelled at me, she demanded to speak to my manager, and when she’s in the middle of complaining, my manager just stopped her and went “hey do you want a hug?” and this woman went “what?” and my manager was like “you just seem super upset about the shape of these potatoes and I thought maybe you needed a hug” fucking hysterical, I got to watch a human blue screen in real life, absolutely the best way to shame someone for their nonsense I’ve ever seen
When you are sick, or a household member is, and you make the choice to go into work or be in the world or god forbid on a plane unmasked, you are making a choice for dozens of other people who you do not know about whether they are capable of surviving the illness you have.
You don’t know, and can’t know, what strangers can survive. Or what their infant or grandmother at home can survive. You don’t know whether they’ve had Covid-19 before, once, or twice. And you don’t know, because no one yet knows, whether this next infection will be the one to push their bodies into disabling Long Covid.
And do not come near people unmasked with the sad excuse of “but i’m sure it’s not covid” if you haven’t tested with more than just a single rapid test. No one wants your strep throat or nasty cold either! People with autoimmune issues will get taken out by the cold that’s bothering you. Consider this a winter PSA!
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is just as enchanting on reread. I watched the film and then dove into this reread, which was the perfect order. It’s a marvelous adaptation—while Miyazaki has to make some things a bit vague and mix some things up a bit to make the plot work for him, he captures all the best parts in many ways, and portrays all the characters just about right.
Most of all he captures the tone of it all, which you can then carry into the book, where Howl is five times as insufferable and as much of a drama queen, where there’s no war and he just kind of doesn’t want to do things. The book has the story of Sophie’s sisters, it has more coincidences and little twists, and it has a lot more magic at Sophie’s hands. Always delightful.
I have been haunted by headaches recently and to cheer myself up, decided to finally reread This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. It was even better than I remembered—a smart, funny, glorious love story.
My blurb, from a review I wrote of this book for Booklist, is on the back cover of the paperback edition. In it, I describe “a twisting, sapphic time travel fantasy love story that never stops surprising.” In the full starred review, I call it “the ultimate in enemies-to-lovers romance.” And finally, again as quoted in my blurb, I say that “Readers will reach the end and want to turn back to the start.” I stand by that, because I’ve wanted to reread it since I first read it.
Now that I’ve reread it, I can confidently name this as one of my favorite books. Between the purple prose, the imaginative and incredibly visual forms of the letters, the creativity of the braid of time woven by the two authors, and the well-sold chemistry of a rivals-to-lovers romance full of miscommunication, disaster, and discovery—it’s everything I love to read. Content warnings for suicidal ideation, violence.
Powell’s: aka 1 million books, all in the same place. The selection was awesome, and it was dreamy how it just kept going. Books and books forever.
Plus, did you know that Powell’s was founded by a UChicago grad student? Another bookstore was then founded by his father in Portland, which is the famous store we all know and love. The Powell’s in Hyde Park, Chicago, I believe is now independently owned, but it is cool to visit and see the never-ending shelves of books, and feel the connection to my own neighborhood. Chicago pride!
The Language of The Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction contains fascinating literary criticism from Ursula K. Le Guin, compiled and edited by Susan Wood.
The collection brings together writings by Le Guin defending SFF from its skeptics and defining and shaping the genre. She also defends the imagination, writes about why America and the Western world at large have a pronounced skepticism of the fantastic, and discusses shadows and how good art helps us to acknowledge and confront evil. She writes about the difficulty of writing, and of writing about writing, of how her stories come to her more like discoveries than inventions, of gender and feminism in her novels, and much, much more. Her sarcastic wit and excellent analysis results in some of the best writing we have about SFF and imagination. Fans of Neil Gaiman’s nonfiction will likely love Le Guin’s as well.
I will say that at times, a certain genre snobbery comes out: as part of her defense of science fiction and fantasy being dismissed and labeled as escapism, she recasts pop fiction as actually dismissible escapism. She makes a real argument for it, and defines SFF as ‘real art’ that deals in truth. Her quotes on escapism are commonly used to defend escapism of all kinds, and so I found it jarring to realize that actually, she still does condemn escapism into things like comic books or romance that she finds to be flat, while defending ‘escapism’ into genres that deal with truth, into novels that deal with character and issues of freedom. (I’ll add that nine times of ten, I found Wood’s section introductions unnecessary and skippable.)
Overall, Le Guin is a powerhouse and an icon, and it’s a joy to read nonfiction where her anticapitalist, sarcastic, witty self shines through alongside her usual great writing.
Enjoyed a walk among weathered tomes and retro editions on Sunday at the Kanda Furuhon (Used Book) Matsuri, taking place on the streets around Kanda-Jimbocho, Tokyo’s “book town.”
Hard to believe it’s been nearly three years since having conversations with strangers became a public health risk. Humans of New York changed a lot during those years. The element of randomness was removed. The stories became more in-depth, and carefully structured. Often I’d work on a single story for weeks, and unspool it over the course of an entire day. The process was very rewarding in a ‘writerly’ sort of way, but these past few weeks I’ve been getting back to my roots: walking all over the city, stopping strangers. I’ve realized how much I missed it: the physicality of the work, the spontaneity, the city itself. But mainly the endless, small moments of connection. There’s something about sharing the same space with people: hearing the same sounds, breathing the same air. There’s a magic that can’t be transmitted through a computer screen. It’s bringing me a lot of joy, so I’m going to keep doing it. For the foreseeable future, Humans of New York is going back to what it used to be: random conversations on the streets of New York City. Hopefully you’ll enjoy meeting these people as much as I have.
You do not have to earn the right to be alive or safe or comfortable. Or at least, you shouldn’t have to. It’s a bit cruel to sum up what so many of us are feeling as burnout, as though we just pushed ourselves too hard, didn’t eat enough kale or do enough yoga.
What we are is exhausted and grieving in a world that tells us it is lazy and entitled to take time to heal. That human lives are less important than the bottom line. That we’re just a collection of siloed off individuals who don’t have to care for or protect those around us.
Everything about this societal machine that chews us up and spits us out day after day after day is contrary to our most central nature: that we are fragile, living beings that need each other, that need space to think and time to love.
A world that values these truths above all else should not exist only in works of fiction. It makes me angry that it does. It is my hope that one day, people won’t have to be angry about that any more.”
—Becky Chambers in her acceptance speech after winning the Hugo Award for Best Novella for A Psalm for the Wild-Built. Speech was read in-person by host Annalee Newitz.
Don’t comment on weight. Just don’t. You never know what journey the person has gone through. I’ve known countless people who have recovered, with a lot of trouble, from disordered eating or mental illness, only to be given shit for gaining weight because people assume that more weight means better health. It really doesn’t.
And yes, even if it’s a ‘compliment.’ I’ve known countless people who lost a lot of weight due to being seriously ill and then got compliments for looking so “healthy” or “skinny.” During the worst anxiety month of my life, I lost way too much weight because I more or less wasn’t eating. The number of compliments I got! People thought I looked great. But I was having panic attacks once a day, minimum, while not eating and working out twice a day.
One of the most searing comments I’ve ever received are from people who think they’re complimenting me by reassuring me that I’m not fat. was when I asked for a seatbelt extension on an international flight—if it was domestic I might have sucked it up, but it was 6 hours, so I wasn’t about to suffer. She looked at me and said “You can’t need one.” Or when a nurse asked me to tell her my weight (I now tell them that I don’t want to know the number), and when I read it out to her, she said, “That can’t be right. Really?“
Bottom line, you can’t know someone’s story, or their body, and our society’s image of 200 pounds is deeply warped, their idea of what health looks like is so warped. So avoid commenting on it as if you can.
