Read to learn

* Project Hail Mary - There is going to be an extra meeting of my book club sometime this fall for it, but I wanted to read it early because some people were disappointed by how much was revealed in the trailer. So, I finished it last night and then finally saw the trailer. I am glad I read the book cold, not so much because of the obvious reveal, but more the smaller details. If you want to read the book before the film and have seen the trailer, maybe try to avoid watch it again.

I enjoyed it. For most of the book the way the science information was slowly built upon and discovered was really great, kind of felt like a really good video essay at times? But then there was a point where I really wanted the author to stop explaining experiments and just say the results. There is a whole section where most of what made the science bits work is just missing. It's not one element that's missing, it's several. This happens late in the book when there is a very small number of possible endings. I think a few 'amazingly, got the results that first time' instead of 'let me detail doing this same experiments six times' would really have helped.

I read it as an audiobook, but that format works really well for a couple of reasons. It's all first person POV of the main character.

( Mild spoilers, barely any if you have seen the trailer )

I have one big note about the overall plot( and it's a spoiler for the very last part of the book ) Okay maybe more than one note.

* What Moves The Dead - Finally got his read! It's also the next horror book club pick so I am somewhat on top of my book club reading. Really looking forward to the next book and also the upcoming book which I assume is the final one in the series? But, I am going to hold off until after book club. Her writing is really great. I definitely have some gender notes about this book and, uh I have an awkward feeling based on talk about it in book club discord that we might need to have a talk about the MC, pronouns and how Alex actually self ID's.

* Six of Crows - My reading of this was broken up by a few things including needing to power-read a book for book club. I am going to take a bit of a break between this book and Crooked Kingdom as these books are long and also I want to be able to focus on reading it unrushed and without pauses. Some aspects of the con/grist/heist stuff that was going on were very clear and well done, and making that all so clear is very tricky. But the physical aspects involving buildings... she kinda lost me there, but it might be due to reading it in chunks. I'll have to evaluate that on a re-read. Her character writing and some of the twists were amazing.

This book had a lot of reminders of how young some of these characters are, and also how young some of the characters in Shadow and Bone were supposed to be. I get it, these were written for the YA market, but at times it's like... really? For some of them, it tracks, for others?

* The Death of Jane Lawrence - Enjoyed it! The world building was tight and very interesting. I picked up on all of it despite consuming it as an audiobook. The print version uses formatting and a few other things to help clarify what's going on, but using my book club as a sample: some people who were audio-only got was going on and some people who read the print version didn't even notice things like sections without capitalization. The author was surprised that some of the people who read the physical version didn't even pick up on it.

I really enjoyed the author's skill in having such a shifting world/situation/etc, but it wasn't exactly my overall vibe. I will read some more by her

* My TBR shortlist right now is
- Ocean's Godori: I can't make the bookclub meeting for it, but I still want to read along
- A Dark And Drowning Tide: I don't typically like the romantasy club picks, but this interested me
- Jade City
- Deadly Education
- Left Hand of Darkness

Currently reading - The Shots You Take: It's the one Rachel Reid book I haven't read yet.

Horrible POS Matt Rife has *not* bought the Conjuring House. Lots of new sites are making mistakes because they are not familiar with the world of paranormal investigation.

The actual story is much worse. He, with a business partner, have bought The Warren's home and museum that contain the artifacts and allegedly haunted items that the Warrens collected over the years. (The Warrens were the exorcists in the 'true stories' of The Conjuring House and Annabelle films) He is now the 'legal guardian' of Annabelle. All the artifacts are in his care. he plans to open it to tours and overnight stays. Link.

So sleepover party with the real Annabelle anyone?

(Warrens were pieces of shit scammers with the best PR ever in the form of their books and those movies. But there are people within the paranormal space who think that the Annabelle doll is haunted, but not by a demon and the ghost had been stuck being treated like a demon since the Warrens intervened. There is a whole 'Free Anabelle' contingent.)

The whole cottage industry around paranormal investigations and renting locations seemingly being a booming industry remains interesting to me.

I thought that going to Labubu Fest would be fun and I'd get some cute pictures. Oh dear god.... it was so crowded I literally gave up and pushed through some people to see more than one booth. There was lines 15-20 deep just to *look* at some booths and if you tried to sneak a peek to even see what they sold, people were not chill.

Also, when I left I walked by a guy in silver pants, a white tank top, a giant purse with a whole colony of Labubu on it, power walking towards the fest and puffing on a vape as hard as he could.

Anyway, I typically would not post pics like this from events, I don't post pics of just what people sell I try to have that not be the focus on a shot, but I did snipe a picture of the samples at the tattoo booth and also I went around the back of the tooth gems booth to see a Labubu being worked on:





I had planned to do a do a youtube short. I had hopes of cute pictures I could give captions to. That is not how the day went. The Labubu crowd is feral.

Then I went up to the Fremont Fair, which was a neighborhood street fair with 150 vendors. It was cute.

On my way home I hit up some stores I'd been meaning to hit, and also went to the Portland Aquarium. The Portland Aquarium is small, unremarkable, but I'd always meant to drop by:

Saw a shark:




I liked the glowy sea spider:


And I got some very Portlandy stickers and a pin:


The back of the souvenir guidebook has a timeline of Mike Bennet's careers from his days of 'guy who makes random art' to Crypto-Zoo which was a covid-safe project during lockdown where he made a walk-through 'A-Zoo' of cryptids in North Portland to give kids an activity to do, and then shows his other projects since then including Wonderwood Springs, Dinolandia and now an aquarium that benefits conservation efforts. Amusingly, some of my pictures of his work pre-date what's in the guide in the back.