Finished reading The City & the City by China Miéville. This was one where I enjoyed having my misapprehension corrected partway into the book; it’s a murder mystery set in a pair of overlapping/intertwined cities, with none of the overt supernatural of the other Miéville books I’ve read.

Tonight’s patio victory: grilled corn on the cob, to celebrate the dude getting his braces off.

The juncos have left the nest.

This makes me realize that some of the plot (including some characters’ actions), especially at the start of the book, felt like RPG sessions. The characters themselves are well-conceived and -drawn, but most of them seemed pretty blasé about the supernatural.

Really, Lovecraft Country just makes me want to run a Harlem Unbound game of Call of Cthulhu.

Finished reading Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, described as a novel but really a set of closely-connected short stories. As reviewers have said, the racism is far more scary than the horror, though the second half of the book does bring nice bits of the Lovecraftian “sure, magic is evil, but maaayyybe just this once?”.

Watched Die Hard with the dude this weekend. He thought it was really good even though it had a ridiculous premise.

Finished reading This Is How You Lose the Time War, a novella by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Well, wasn’t this a delightful read. If you like letters, time travel, and/or love, you’ll be delighted too.

Meghan and the bambina are camping for the weekend. The dude suggested we go have dinner with my mom.

Finished reading TARDIS Eruditorum, Volume 7: The Sylvester McCoy Years by Elizabeth Sandifer, part of a series of critical surveys of Doctor Who. Though a fan of the show, I’ve never seen a single episode of this era, much less read any of the novels, so I expected to skip my way through this volume. But Sandifer always had something interesting to say, and I found myself reading cover to cover.

Tonight’s kitchen victory: strawberry fool for dessert.

Baby juncos have hatched in the nest in the carport.

Set aside The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty about halfway through. I’m frankly a little baffled by the good reviews; I’m not sure I was even reading the same book. Maybe you’ll like it — obviously plenty of people do — but it’s not for me.

Finished reading Subcutanean by Aaron A. Reed, a horror novel with twinned premises: It involves parallel universes, and each copy of the book is uniquely generated. (Mine was seed 40105.) Very effective as horror, and successful (as far as I could tell) in how it was generated, though of course I’m very curious what another version would be like.

Finished reading A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, a short novel. Charming and cozy, as one expects from Chambers. About half the book resonated with me in a perfect, clear note, and I recognized the half that didn’t even though it wasn’t speaking to me.