Voting Day and the Existential Dread of the 21st Century

It’s voting day, and as a Texan I am trying not to think about that. I always vote early, because this state likes to make doing your societal duties as difficult as possible, and Tuesdays are currently already the most exhausting day of the week for me. I could go on a WHOLE ASS rant about this, but we’ll spare the outrage for now.

HOLY SHIT TEXAS WE DID IT NOW LETS GO OUST SOME FASCISTS

Not been a stellar week so far. I have been reading, but it’s mostly rereading stuff, and bouncing between titles. I had a bunch of library books that I had meant to read, but my schedule was still a little jacked up last week, and I simply did not have the energy to venture into new territory, as it were.

There is an exception to this rule, of course; the last of K.L. Noone’s Kitten and Witch series, which had been delayed, finally came out, and I cannot tell you how long I have been waiting for it. Port in a Storm was one of the first K.L. Noone books I read. I remember at the time I really enjoyed the anthropomorphization of the setting, even though it didn’t quite stick the landing plot-wise, so I was pleased when the second installment, Fire and Ink, had a little more going in that area. There were two more stories since then, both featuring different characters: The Arch Mage’s Firebird, which is more along the lines Port in A Storm, a sweet but relatively rote rescue narrative; and Primrose Magic, which is also a rescue narrative, but a more internal style of such, and Noone utilizes present tense instead of past tense, something I don’t recall seeing in her work before. It worked well to create the feeling of immediacy the story needed, and I’m not one of those people who automatically hates the present tense style; as with every style, it’s the quality of the writing that counts, and Noone does have a deft hand with emotional narrative.

But I was still glad that The Warlock Affair fell more on the plotty side. Noone’s work shines best when she delves into the story more deeply; Character Bleed is a wonderful example of this.

I also read Carrie, by Stephen King, after listening to an interesting video about all its various adaptations. You can tell he still had editorial oversight back then. XD

Some of the library books I did manage to get to since my last post:

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve – an extremely compelling story, the premise should make it too weird to work, but somehow Reeve’s brisk prose and deft grasp of character just does.

BLAME! Volume 1, by Tsutomu Nihei – I read this in scanlations ages ago and the story still holds up.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Volumes 2-5 – Not entirely sure how I feel about this. As an adventure, it’s pretty mediocre, and I don’t feel the translator and publisher did the best job getting the cultural nuance across, and as a queer romance, it’s pretty fucking bad, especially once they get the smut scenes, which were TRULY atrocious, shades of those Problematic Yaoi manga that were so popular in the 2010s. I’m planning to do a longer critique of the series, so I’ll just leave it at that for now.

Some library DNFs:

Witch Hat Atelier, by Kamome Shirahama – this was partly a DNF because the library doesn’t have permission to allow local downloads onto devices, only on a web interface, which makes it too annoying to read anywhere that doesn’t have reliable internet. Like, you know. My house. The story does intrigue me, and the art is pretty, so I might try again at some point.

Angels Before Man by rafael nicolás – Not really sure how this is so popular, honestly. Doesn’t have a lot of substance aside from the subtext. Maybe it would have picked up, but I wasn’t interested enough to continue.

 

 

trying to get back into blogging

but it’s way easier when you have things to talk about. I literally never do anything!

That’s not technically, true, of course, I’ve been pretty busy. Planted 25 different cacti seeds, seven different succulent seeds, some dwarf tomato plants, took cuttings from some native lantana and passion flower vine, plus a random lantana camara, a non-native species listed as invasive (that one will be staying in a pot and dead-headed to prevent contamination with the native), planted some seeds for bonsai (albizia, redbud, foothills palo verde). I only did three of each of the future bonsai because it’s getting a little late in the year for it.

I noticed the hackberry trees around here have begun to show seeds, so I should collect some of those. While I want to plant some traditional Japanese varieties of bonsai, I also want to do some Texas natives in the style. (Note to self, look up mesquite seed germination; can you imagine a mesquite bonsai?)

I have also ACTUALLY read some books, it’s been really hard for me to get back into reading since the whole Medication Roulette From Hell of 2023-2025. I still can’t do audiobooks yet, my brain simply refuses to focus, so I’ll zone out thinking about something and realize I’ve missed a whole chunk of the story. Very frustrating, since I used to rely on audiobooks so I could get things done while indulging my voracious book appetite.

I was inspired by a friend to switch from Goodreads to Library Thing, which is a much less commercial garbage platform, and does not seem to cultivate much in the way of drama. It really feels more like a book catalogue site than a a social media death-pit, and the interface makes me nostalgic for my Livejournal days. Over the last week or so I’ve read three books: The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, Death in the Spires by KJ Charles, The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu; DNFed one: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn; and read two manga: Chainsaw Man Volume One by Tatsuki Fujimoto, and BLAME! Master Edition Volume One by Tsutomu Nihei. I might get around to writing more comprehensive reviews about them here at some point, if I have the time. I do have an unreasonable number of library books out right now, and a ton of stuff to do, so we’ll see.