Waiting impatiently for my print copy of Ngozi Ukazu's Flip to arrive, I went back and reread Check, Please and then kept reading a few other hockey stories - some fanfic, including No Matter How Small by cytryna, and the wonderful for all of the perfect things that i doubt cycle by idrilka, but I also put The Trade Deadline by A.L. Heard and E.L. Massey's Like Real People Do on the TBR. I've had Pucking Strong in the physical TBR pile for a while too.
Anyway on to things I've actually read/done instead of things I'm re-reading or just adding to the neverending tbr...
Planted some new lavenders in the front garden with a deeper purple flower than the others I already have. Read Kirstin Noreen's "The splendori celesti of the San Sisto icon" from the Memoirs of the AAR (available as Open Access). I can't stop watching Billy & Dom Eat the World - and now I want gyoza.
By the way, you should subscribe to John Rich and the Big Picture, which Ngozi is serialising after giving the first half of the story an airing on ao3 (now taken down). Everything Ngozi Ukazu does is worth reading, can't wait to see what she does next! (Solar Trials, pls pls pls...)
A lazy start to the week. Following a chain of unrelated references, I eventually read about the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate. Who knew the state of California went that far north? Certainly not me. Somebody recommended a book of Gunnhild Øyehaug's short stories, translated as Knots, but I'm having trouble finding a copy through the libraries I belong to. I tried reading Hart's Chain of Fire but the prose itched my brain the wrong way, so I put it down after 50 or so pages.
I enjoyed Jake Latham's 'Re-defining aristocratic distinction...' from the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome (available in Open Access). The paper details the fall from privilege of the cult of Magna Mater in aristocratic circles during the fourth century, leveraging the evidence of Latin invective verses (which, honestly, I have never bothered with) to identify the "[creation of] an amosphere in which traditional religious patronage was no longer judged respectable" (p.264). And yeah, I realise how dull that sounds; but it really isn't.
Dropping in to say Isaac Newton was (unexpectedly) my flavour of the day today. I revisited Westfall's abridged biography of Newton which I've started reading, and abandoned, several times over the years. I made progress on Greene's Fabric of the Cosmos which of course makes necessary reference to Newton, and dipped my toe into Priest of Nature, but that's not going onto the TBR (at least, not yet).
(If you want some fun mathematics/physics-connected podcasts, check out Living Proof from the INI and the Plus.Maths listings.)
Leaning into the old adage that something is better than nothing, here is the first of a weekly digest of stuff. Alexis Hall recently revealed that Father Material now has both a confirmed release date and a cover (here). I had conniptions. I cannot wait. June 2026, here we come.
I went a bit mad with book orders this week, adding Peter Wilson's Holy Roman Empire (2017), DuVal's Native Nations, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Wiemer's Theoderic the Great in translation, to the tbr. I have no time to read these, yet here we are.
I spent some time reading the Wikipedia entry on Jean-Paul Marat, inspired by the publication announcement of Keith Michael Baker's upcoming biography (University of Chicago Press, November 2025).
The Blues Brothers (1980) was on tv the other night, and I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the Cab Calloway sequence (also, young Dan Aykroyd - woof). The Rawhide sequence is great too. Also the mall chase. Actually - just watch the whole movie.
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