silveradept: Domo-kun, wearing glass and a blue suit with a white shirt and red tie, sitting at a table. (Domokun Anchor)
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Let us begin with the fact that Reading Rainbow, a staple of many a young child of previous decades, mixing in library promotion, books, reading, and activities, is getting a new season with a new host, Mychal the Librarian. Someone who has already proven that he's perfect for the job on social media as a librarian, and who has already been working with PBS as their resident librarian for at least a year. Which continues with the way that Reading Rainbow has shows us a well-known Black man being excited about books, libraries, and exceling at things outside what certain people believe he should be good at.

Eastman Kodak is once again selling still picture film stock, but this time it will be selling directly to film distributors, who will likely be more than happy to have Kodak film camera rolls for their photography buffs.

If you are not already aware, Archive.Today is one of the more popular ways for people to get content as it appears on a website, but without any of the login walls and demands for support. It will not last forever, and it's worth supporting local and independent journalism with your currency, but there are quite a few places that believe you should have to pay up significantly just for a single article to look at.

At the end of that particular piece, there's talk about sharing the already wall-leapt version of the thing instead of the original. While the site does offer the original URL for what it has scraped, my citation scholarship kicks in and says that I should offer the original place, even if the way to read the same content is through archive.today or some other paywall jumper.

Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, primatologist, animal rights advocate, and generally good sport, now gets to explore the secrets of the universe at 91 years of age. We know, thanks to her, that "tool-using animal" is a bigger catgegory than just homo sapiens, and much more about the lives of chimpanzees. My first exposure to Dr. Goodall, however, was the introduction she wrote to one of the Far Side comic book compilations, where she talked about having been the subject of one of the comics and how she found it an absolute delight to have been part of humor, even with other people who wanted to take offense on her behalf. (Including the insitute that she's founded, taking offense to the doctor being called a "tramp" by a chimpanzee in one of the comics.) Her serious work with apes and chimps and such is also entirely notable, but the Far Side introduction is just a nice reminder to us that even scientsists have a sense of humor. (And, in fact, they often have a very sharp sense of humor.)

Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, who gained a certain amount of fame as the chaplain of the men's basketball team for Loyola Chicago during an unprecedented NCAA tournament run, passed into the hands of her god at 106 years of age. 106 is an excellent innings, and from the report on her, it seems that she was someone who spent that time in the service that she dedicated herself to for her life.

Ninety-five years after the completion of her thesis, Oxford University awarded a posthumous Master's of Philosophy to the first Māori scholar they had admitted to their ranks. From the excerpts of her diary that one of her descendants shared, she seems to have been an excellent person full of an interesting life.

The online academic article and scholarly research repository JSTOR has opened their doors to non-institutional researchers, allowing a limited number of article viewings per month to registered users who are not affiliated with institutional subscribers.

There's always more inside, from bad decisions to kidnapping squads and the use of truly shady surveillance software )

Last out, suggestions on where to go to get good programming and intersting shows if you've decided that you want less corporate oligarchy in your life. If you are thinking about taking up embroidery, there's a stitch bank that may be able to help you find and practice new techniques.

A prescient delineation between what the purpose of the library and the librarian is when it comes to a person's relation to information, and what the purpose of the ad company with a search engine or the LLM with inexhaustible confidence and (at best) an approximate knowledge of some things is for the same. Those who have lived through this era will not be surprised to find that the purpose of the LLM and the ad company is not to help you understand what you actually want and get you relevant resources, but instead to show you ads.

And finally, a searchable index of verious symbols that, when clicked upon, will copy the correct Unicode code point to your computer clipboard for easy pasting.

(Materials via [personal profile] adrian_turtle, [personal profile] azurelunatic, [personal profile] boxofdelights, [personal profile] cmcmck, [personal profile] conuly, [personal profile] cosmolinguist, [personal profile] elf, [personal profile] finch, [personal profile] firecat, [personal profile] jadelennox, [personal profile] jenett, [personal profile] jjhunter, [personal profile] kaberett, [personal profile] lilysea, [personal profile] oursin, [personal profile] rydra_wong, [personal profile] snowynight, [personal profile] sonia, [personal profile] the_future_modernes, [personal profile] thewayne, [personal profile] umadoshi, [personal profile] vass, the [community profile] meta_warehouse community, [community profile] little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

Review: Fall Baking

Oct. 14th, 2025 10:05 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] books
Taste of Home Fall Baking: 275+ Breads, Pies, Cookies and More!
Paperback – September 13, 2022
by Taste of Home (Editor)

Read more... )

Sanders' High School Reader

Oct. 12th, 2025 11:49 pm
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
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Sanders' High School Reader by Charles Walton Sanders

The final reading program with more elocution exercises. The standards by which the choices were made are laid out in the preface.

So again the interesting thing to the modern reader is probably the choices. Scientific, religious, political, historical -- poems, speeches, essays --

The religious is sometimes generically theistic, sometimes Christian, sometimes specifically Protestant (in a passage where it is explicitly stated that the contemplative vocation is non-existent).

Recent Reading: The Originalism Trap

Oct. 12th, 2025 05:19 pm
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This one is not likely to be of much interest to non-Americans. This weekend I blew through The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People can Take it Back by Madiba K. Dennie. This book delves into the originalism theory of constitutional interpretation, why it's far more ahistorical than its adherents want you to believe, and some tracks we could take to counter it.

If you aren't familiar, "originalism" is a theory of constitutional interpretation that says in order to understand the Constitution, we must interpret it as closely as we can to how the original writers would have interpreted it. It posits itself as the most true-to-history and unbiased way to interpret the Constitution. It was also a fringe theory for decades, until relatively recent political winds brought it to the forefront.

Originalism traps us in the mindset of 18th century wealthy white men and refuses to let us progress any further. Originalism says if we didn't have the right then, we can't have it now. Originalism cherry-picks its history to conveniently arrive at a conservative goalpost no matter what the real story is. I wrote an essay in grad school on why originalism is horseshit, so this book was of particular interest to me.

Dennie does a great job making this book accessible to everyone. I would strongly recommend this as a read for any one in the legal or legal-adjacent professions, but I think anyone can read and pick up what Dennie is laying down here. She summarizes the history of originalism as well as deep-diving into its most recent developments (this book was published in 2024, so it's quite recent).

Originalism has a way of making itself seem inevitable, but Dennie reveals with researched ease how untrue that is; she shows the hypocrisy and insincerity of the theory over and over. 

Dennie doesn't stop at "here's what's wrong" either--she has proposal and suggestions for how to counter the outsized influence of this once-disfavored theory and what we as citizens can do to push back against it. On the whole, while there is obviously anger and frustration in this book--feelings I share!--there is also a lot of hope and optimism. Dennie calls herself an optimist at heart, and it shows. This is not a doom-and-gloom book foreseeing an indefinite miserable political future for liberals and anyone who wants to expand rather than contract the depth and breadth of our rights. It is a justified call-out to political opportunists seeking to dress their partisanship up as rationalism, but it is also an essay on how it doesn't have to be this way.

At a brief 218 pages (plus bibliography), The Originalism Trap is easy to recommend to any fellow Americans, both as a way to understand where we're at, and a way forward, hopefully out of this extremist quagmire. Dennie can occasionally be irreverent in a way I feel detracts rather than adds to her argument, but she is also dealing with incredibly dry material that the average reader will probably struggle to stay engaged with, so I can forgive it. Very glad I picked this one up and I left feeling hopeful that there is an achievable alternative to where we are now.

LGBT Rainbow Promo.

Oct. 12th, 2025 08:37 pm
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Join LGBT Rainbow, a rainbow pass-it-on icon challenge focused on LGBTQ+ characters from any media.

[community profile] lgbtrainbow
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
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The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine, Vol. 5 by Grrr

Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes.

Read more... )

Recent Reading: Sharp Objects

Oct. 10th, 2025 02:11 pm
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I picked this out of the free book box and October seemed like a good time to buckle down with a gruesome murder mystery, so I started into Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (if you recognize her name, it's probably because she also wrote Gone Girl). This book is about a newspaper reporter, Camille, who returns to her tiny, rural Midwest hometown of Wind Gap to investigate a missing girl.

What to say about this one? I'm struggling. It wasn't great, it wasn't terrible. I was engaged enough to finish it, but I also dropped it back in the free book box right after finishing it. I don't feel like I wasted my time, but I also don't feel inspired to read more of Flynn's work.

The book definitely goes hard on portraying women with capital I Issues, as well as the effects of generational trauma, be it from bad parenting, mental health problems, or misogyny. The toxicity of life in a small town is also a strong element, and the claustrophobia the protagonist Camille feels being back there, seeing all these teenage girls who seem doomed to follow the same dour, unhappy paths their predecessors did. The misery that these unhappy girls and women inflict on each other, perhaps in absence of a healthier outlet, also features prominently and heartbreakingly.

Camille herself I didn't care for. She's aggravatingly passive for most of the book and her own emotional distance (as well as perhaps the writing) keep the reader at arms' length from everything that's happening. Hated her love interest too; exactly the kind of arrogant, presumptuous type I can't stand. I kept hoping she'd tell him to fuck off, but regrettably she found him charming.

Flynn's writing style was fine, although I didn't always love her choppy sentences.

The crimes in the book are quite dark, but held up against the smaller instances of violence, physical and emotional, being perpetrated in this small town day after day, the reader is left to wonder how much difference there really is between them. 

Flynn shows well how the toxicity of Wind Gap impacted Camille, but I felt that not enough attention was paid to Amma, and why she alone among the family turned to such glee over violence and cruelty as an outlet for her trauma. This is one colossally fucked-up 13-year-old and I think the narrative would have benefited from more time in her head. 

On the whole: idk. It was fine? Flynn obviously had things to say about life as a girl in a small town, and I think she said a lot of that effectively, but as for the enjoyability of the book? Eh.
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] books
The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine, Vol. 4 by Grrr

Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes.

Read more... )

Villains Are Destined to Die

Oct. 9th, 2025 12:11 am
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] books
Villains Are Destined to Die, Vol. 1 by Gwon Gyeoeul

The original novel.

Read more... )

Sanders' Union Speaker

Oct. 7th, 2025 02:06 pm
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
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Sanders' Union Speaker: Containing a Great Variety of Exercises for Declamation, Both in Prose and Verse by Charles Walton Sanders

Another collection of extracts for the scholar. This differs from his Union Readers and New Readers in that it is, overtly, aimed at performance before crowds. Some have directions on how they are to be staged, down to the observation that the poem about being a man is more comic when told by a young boy than an older one.

Many more comic pieces. Also, the time of publication is clear, since many pieces directly address the war. More speeches and poems and fewer essays. But its selection does cast quite a light on the times.

Recent Reading: One Dark Window

Oct. 7th, 2025 08:54 am
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Minor spoilers below for One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig

I didn't pick this book up so much as had it breathlessly thrust into my arms (along with the sequel) by a dear friend who I couldn't disappoint by refusing. I swore to give it a real chance, despite the fact that she and I frequently disagree about what is quality writing, and initially I was able to sink into the conceits of the story. I enjoyed the Nightmare and his relationship with Elspeth (although I suspected I would be disappointed that he did not end up being the love interest, and I was right about that), the general mystery of Blunder, and the way even the characters themselves seem to know little about how the magic of their world works.

The initial set-up chapters were the most enjoyable; once the real plot reared its head, the book started falling apart for me.

A significant part of that is the romance, which had me rolling my eyes at various points. You could make a drinking game out of how often Raven--sorry, Ravyn--is referred to as "the captain of the destriers" instead of his name. I don't mind that Elspeth and Ravyn's romance is telegraphed early and clear--sometimes you're into someone from the get-go--but as a love interest, Ravyn is a surly, controlling killjoy who believes he has the right to demand other people behave the way he wants them to. He intentionally keeps information from Elspeth and then gets angry with her for acting without that knowledge. Then again, maybe they fit, since they both seem to immediately dislike most other people around them.

The book wants Ravyn to be sexy with his competency and knowledge, but he often comes off as infuriatingly patronizing and Elspeth embarrassingly infantile. The hissy fit she throws when he doesn't want to pretend to be courting her was cringe-inducing. Girl maybe it's just not about you, a woman this guy has known for less than 48 hours.

The writing itself quickly becomes repetitive, and the author lives in terror we might forget a single character's eye color. The rhymes which begin each chapter get old, as they themselves are internally repetitive, and not very clever.

None of the characters are ever allowed to do anything embarrassing, because that might render them marginally less sexy. Elspeth is, as are so many female main characters in romance novels, a klutz, which gives her plenty of opportunity to be cutely embarrassed over absolutely nothing without doing anything that might actually be embarrassing. 

Blunder is a mishmash of European cultures and time periods without taking clear inspiration from any of them, which I could almost let pass, except that at any of the times which lend inspiration to Blunder, Elspeth would have scandalized by repeatedly and openly spending time alone with single adult men and no chaperone. The book clearly takes vibes inspiration only.

At the halfway mark where I ended my journey through Blunder, our little gaggle of card thieves does not seem particularly competent, and I can't say I have any interest in how their adventures resolve. I'll have to tell my friend they're just not for me.

characters20in20 Round 19

Oct. 7th, 2025 10:30 am
reeby10: grey scale voldemort from shoulders up with a crown doodle above his head (harry potter)
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Link: Round 19 Sign Ups | Round 19 Themes

Description: [community profile] characters20in20 is a 20in20 community dedicated to making icons of characters from movies and tv shows. You have 20 days to make 20 icons about a character of your choice, based on a set of themes for the round.

Schedule: Round 19 sign ups are open NOW. Icons are due October 27, 2025.
labingi: (Default)
[personal profile] labingi posting in [community profile] books
Continuing the Mabinogion Tetrology discussion started here.

Walton's adaptation of the Fourth Branch of the Welsh Mabinogi is her first major book, written in the 1930s, and this may be why it's a bit rough. It also inherits an oddly structured, complex story and navigates it faithfully. It's an ambitious attempt at adding modern psychological depth and realism to this tale, and it's a great idea but not successfully executed, in my opinion. For me as a non-Welsh, lay reader, this is an endeavor that deserves to be redone. The potential is there, but the story falters for two main reasons: too much telling vs. showing and the fact that it's just hard to write a compelling story about unlikable characters.

See my previous post for a spoilery summary. Spoilery thoughts follow... Read more... )
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] books
The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine, Vol. 3 by Grrr

Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes.

Read more... )

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