Today‘s ZAO FAN recipe is miancha, or millet porridge with sweet sesame. It‘s possibly the fattiest breakfast ever with 50g of sesame paste + 2tbsp of sesame oil, but it sure does taste good.

Please note, also, my fabulous new espresso cup by Lac Sul First Nation artist Storm Angeconeb. The foxes frolick all the way around.

I intended to take just a teensy poke at SHADOW BARON before bed last night, then ended up devouring 17%. The onemorechapterness is real.

Now I‘m gonna dive into another big chunk while wee Geo and I wait for his mom to get home from her vacation. We‘re trying to enjoy this precious snuggle time instead of focusing on how basically everything in this picture is in greyscale. My kingdom for a colour ereader to showcase this vibrant cover.

I finished my awesome puzzle yesterday afternoon, and Cherie Dimaline and I are back on track with her Secret Garden remix! The original is one of those books Tiny Me drifted away from so I can‘t claim to know the source material well, but from a pure storytelling perspective I love everything Dimaline‘s doing here. #audiopuzzling

I decided to pause and try something from my freebies stash before I continue with the Burnished City. THE IRISH COTTAGE‘s pacing put me off at first, but I mostly like the characters and it‘s got great foreigner-in-Ireland vibes so I‘ve stuck with it and I‘m really enjoying it.

ALSO, I stopped at Michael‘s to get out of the rain and found some excellent Hallowe‘en clearance. I shall paint it black and orange.

I found this very cool offering in a local free puzzle library (!!!) and did most of it while I listened to FUNERAL SONGS FOR DYING GIRLS. Alas, it‘s the first Cherie Dimaline novel I‘ve disliked. It offers up some intriguing threads, but the story as a whole fails to satisfying and the prose is so performatively purple that it shut me out of the emotions instead of placing me inside them. Sigh. #audiopuzzling

I did the coffee & comics thing earlier with Hiromu Arakawa‘s latest series, which is great so far. She‘s always so good at introducing nuance and complexity; a valuable reminder that no one is ever defined by just one thing.

That said, I‘m pretty sure all the adults are more Bad News than not and the kids oughta ditch both sides and find their own path. We‘ll see whether they also come to that conclusion as things progress.

I started rereading NOTORIOUS SORCERER this afternoon ahead of the third book in the series, and I‘m shocked it doesn‘t have more Litsy love. This is great stuff, people! Grab it if you want a queer fantasy with excellent characters, inventive magic, and tons of genuinely interesting politicking.

I shall read more while I drink this mead, about which I have too many comments for Litsy‘s character limit.

Friends, RUNNING CLOSE TO THE WIND is an absolute delight! Such manic energy! Such entertaining characters! Such a preponderance of genuinely funny sex jokes (and non-sex jokes besides)! I‘m having the time of my frickin life over here.

I shall drink this Pink Boots Pilsner while I read on. It‘s made with a malt that helps support a scholarship for women and nonbinary folks who want to start out as brewers.

Wow, y‘all. I keep reading books with SUPER RELEVANT dedications. (Minus my last read, which was “for my mother.” Touching and all, but… yeah.)

I chose RUNNING CLOSE TO THE WIND for tonight because I‘m determined to enjoy as many things as possible for as long as possible, and because I‘m very, very angry with the people who want me not to do that.

I‘m glad I took a break from THE GENERAL‘S MISTRESS instead of bailing on it. Now that I‘ve settled into its rhythm, it‘s exactly what I feel like! Even though it got marketed as general fiction instead of fantasy, it really leans into Elza‘s past lives as it builds steam, too. I wish I‘d read it right after the earlier books in the series so I could be sure which of these characters corresponds to which reincarnated companion.

I have to take stealth shots of Penny with books, because when I come closer she tries to sniff the book, my phone, and me, all at once.

She did snuggle up nicely with me while I read this excellent comic. Once again, Spillet and Donovan offer up an affecting look at how Indigenous youth navigate life. This time, they cope with rage and grief over residential “schools” through intense, healing work that always feels organic, not prescriptive.

ZAO FAN and I are back in business now I‘ve made re gan mian, or Wuhan hot dry noodles. I think I added too much wei shui (the spiced broth you blend with the sesame paste), but the flavour was still great, especially after I added the chili crisp I forgot to pop into the bowl before I took the picture. I used mustard tubers as toppings, too, and I‘m now in love with them. SO GOOD.

If I‘d started BLACK ICE in the morning instead of the evening yesterday, I‘d have finished it already. Thomas King might‘ve given up hope for humans, but he sure does write some great human interactions.

Gonna see if I can concentrate on some Thomas King tonight. He goes straight for the jugular with this dedication.

I waited ages to get my hands on another volume from Graham‘s Numinous World series, where we follow a friend-group of souls through many lifetimes, but I dunno if I‘ve clicked with it. Is it the book? Or is it because it‘s tough to concentrate when you know the majority of voters in the large, powerful country to the south either actively want you in a concentration camp or are willing to allow it because of, like, economics or some shit?

This book helped me a lot yesterday. You want to look for it on December 3rd if you, too, could use a sapphic ghostie-timeslip romance with a theatrical setting, an awesome dog, emerging friendships, and a whole lot of 1920s style.

It‘s great stuff. The old theatre‘s fascinating. The friendships ring true. The mystery unfolds at a good pace. The ghost-rules push the plot in interesting directions. The dog is a delight.

Definitely recommended.

I made sheng jian bao today, and they‘re the first dish from ZAO FAN that I ain‘t wild about. The vinegar I dipped them in was the best part. The filling needed more salt and maybe some white pepper. Boo.

Also, I had to step away for a moment when it came time to pry them out of the pan, which may‘ve been less about the stick (it was fine! Totally fixable!) than about the Other Stuff I‘ve been trying not to focus on all day.

After lots of placement tests, I decided to put the Read Queer Books sticker I bought at the horror store on the inside cover of my Kindle case so it‘s visible while I‘m reading. I use my Kindle for ARCs, which are awkward to load onto my Kobo, and almost all of the ones I get are queer.

Like this ghostie-timeslip sapphic romance set in a theatre! With a dog! I made a small dent in it this morning and it‘s off to a very promising start.

My mum‘s a huge Recipe Tin Eats fan, so I borrowed Nagi‘s first cookbook for her and figured I‘d give it a flip-through myself. Last night I tried the crispy garlic chicken thighs, and wow! Mine didn‘t go especially crispy and they were a wildly different colour from Nagi‘s (I suspect some heavy filtering was involved with the official picture), but the flavour‘s awesome. I‘m glad I‘ve got three thighs left for tonight.

Today I installed atmospheric lighting while I listened to a goodly chunk of DEACON KING KONG. It‘s way more entertaining than I expected from a book where the inciting incident is a (non-fatal) shooting. I‘m absolutely delighted with and invested in this community and its inhabitants.

The lights hang off of my bookshelves and my desk, and they can turn fourteen different colours. I‘m delighted with them, too. #audiodecorating

Yesterday evening I made an enjoyable 50-page start on the last Nero Wolfe book in my stack while Saki and I sat at the dining room table together. Little dude loves sitting in chairs. Today I‘ll finish it as pain day reading while he curls up in one of the kitchen chairs and perhaps ambles over for a cheek-skritch or two.

Tonight I drank this excellent beer and finished my first novel-length Nero Wolfe mystery. It‘s from 1939, so expect some sexism & racial slurs, but the character dynamics are tops and the narrative voice is gold. I love how Archie Goodwin notices people‘s clothes, too. Suits are important.

Also of note: Rex Stout waged a personal campaign against Nazism during the war, and you can see the seeds of that here with how he handles the German agent.

I ate an enormous bowl of poke while I started A BÁNH MÌ FOR TWO, and now I never want to eat anything again—except all the Vietnamese foods in this book sound so durned good that I‘ll probably crack and eat something else, someday. We‘ll see.

I also redeemed some free fries today and the girl got confused and gave me two, so I brought one serving home and turned it into cheese fries with spicy mayo. It went down a little on the crunchy side while I read the first two stories in THE LAST SÉANCE. I remembered both, though not in great detail, and they left me excited to carry on with this deep dive into Dame Agatha‘s short horror. #deweyoct #readathon

Hopefully Litsy will let me tell you I‘m about to settle in for another chunk of ALL THE HIDDEN PATHS. (Earlier, it got grumpy when I tried to tell y‘all about how I reread THE MARROW THIEVES on audio and finished SPY X FAMILY VOL 12 while I ate a free sandwich I won on a free sandwich and which gave me ANOTHER free sandwich.)

Anyways, it‘s so damned moreish. I dunno if I‘ll finish it tonight after all, but I‘m gonna try. #deweyoct #readathon

I finally finished THE STORY OF THE STONE this morning! It was great (aside from the bit at the end maligning the women, who‘re the book‘s main focus despite Bao-Yu‘s central character status), and the last five pages took me half a frickin‘ hour to read because of this adorable red menace. Argh. #deweyoct #readathon

1. Middle of Canada.
2. I‘m excited to finish ALL THE HIDDEN PATHS by Foz Meadows.
3. Reese‘s Puffs bars!
4. It‘s my 33rd consecutive Readathon. I haven‘t missed one since September 2008. Feels different now, but I don‘t wanna lose my streak.
5. Finish a couple things. Read for long stretches.
6. My daily short story, from the tagged collection.
7. I recently got a standing desk and it brings me a ridiculous amount of joy.

#readathon #deweyoct

I meant to save SAGA VOL 11 for the Readathon tomorrow, but I started it while I doggiesat these three tonight and that was it. No pausing possible.

It‘s nice to see Vaughan and Staples are still aggressively committed to their attempt to kill me. The hits, they just keep on a-comin‘ with this series.

Also, I always seem to look after these guys on their birthdays. Cooper, the curly one in the middle, is now three!

This week‘s library haul. The tagged book contains mostly stuff I‘ve already read, albeit a loooooong time ago, but there‘s one story that wasn‘t anthologized until 2018. I‘m excited! New-to-me Agatha Christie!

From today‘s Outdoor Reading With Schnauzers session. I think novella-length is my sweet spot with Yukio Mishima. I got tired of SPRING SNOW, a novel, a fair ways before it ended and none of the shorter pieces in this collection wowed me, but I really enjoyed both the novellas included here.

I did the Sunday afternoon book & beer thing, with strange lighting effects and two schnauzers who I just barely managed to keep from sampling the beer. (It was a very nice witbier. I might‘ve drunk it too quickly.)

I‘m now in the home stretch with THE STORY OF THE STONE! Unless I get distracted, I should know all the sordid details of the Jia family‘s sad fate by the end of the week.

I always seem to read crime fiction while I‘m with the Warring Schnauzers. (They got the fight out of their systems right after this picture was taken. It moved too fast for my camera to catch.) This time I polished off another Nero Wolfe novella.

Did some breakfast reading with Ivy the Sleeping Beauty. She got grumpy right after this because I woke her up and made her take a walk, but we mended fences with a post-exercise treat.

I like DEFYING THE EARL just fine so far, but it hasn‘t sparked for me like some of Erica Ridley‘s others. I‘m hoping I find the love as she digs deeper into the ways her characters‘ past traumas help them connect emotionally.

Casey got a haircut. I miss his wild scruffiness, but now he looks like a puppy and that‘s also adorable.

I hope to finish rereading A STRANGE AND STUBBORN ENDURANCE today, possibly while I snuggle a dog. It definitely hit me harder the first time through, but it‘s still been good to revisit it before I dive into the sequel.

I can‘t seem to sit down and read with my eyeballs this week, but I made it through some audio material while I did stuff like transform this boring little Ikea table into an interesting nightstand!

A friend discovered WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU? by chance last week, loved it, and recced it to me. Now we‘re both running around telling people they‘ve gotta read it. It‘s illuminating for anyone who wants to better understand society. #audiocrafting

Ah, friends, I‘ve just endured a spotty reading week where I got stuck on a sports romance, then fought my way through to the end of SPRING SNOW. It was good enough that I wanted to finish it, but not so gripping that I wanted to read it straight through, so I read another chunk every time I finished something else. I‘d say it‘s worth reading on the whole, but the last 75 pages were a real slog and I dunno if I‘ll continue the quartet.

I passed by my local indie this morning and went in to use some more of my birthday gift card! Now I can give veteran writer Julie E. Czerneda a try while I gaze at my adorable horror sticker and my fabulous new keychain by Bella Bella artist Ben Houstie.

I woke up with something that isn‘t Covid but might be a small flu. Blah.

At least it‘s nice enough to read outside this afternoon. Gonna dig into Cat Sebastian‘s sports romance and wish I hadn‘t drunk this mango-flavoured Island Soda. It was tasty, but it didn‘t interact well with the maybe-flu.

Tonight‘s supper & book. It‘s been 19 years since I last read MEMNOCH THE DEVIL, and I‘m delighted out of my mind because THAT‘S LONG ENOUGH THAT I‘VE FORGOTTEN STUFF! I used to reread this whole series every April, and I thought I‘d have it memorized forever. Yay! Surprises!

I‘m loving it so far, but one thing I do remember is that I always love New York and the art and the ghost, but I zonk out once Memnoch starts talking. We‘ll see.

The sweetest little spirit I know has volunteered his services as reading buddy while I hunker down with MEAN SPIRIT. It‘s a fictionalized take on the events everyone now knows from KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, written by a Chickasaw woman, and it‘s excellent so far. I hope I can scrounge lots of time with it tonight.

Todays library haul includes a Korean fantasy that caught my eye on Kobo, a poetry collection from 1984 for my years challenge, Cat Sebastian‘s latest, and a short fiction collection by a Japanese writer whose work I discovered in a Little Free Library.

Turns out it‘s been three whole years since I last read any Diana Wynne Jones and a whopping FOURTEEN YEARS since I devoured FIRE AND HEMLOCK in a single, rainy night in Taupo. Revisiting it now was the right choice. I may not finish it tonight, but it‘s gonna suck up a good chunk of my evening with its twisty, story-mad excellence.

I‘ll just try to ignore the cover, which has gotta rank as one of the worst on record. Who authorized it?

Todays recipe from ZAO FAN is hua juan, or flower buns. As I cut them, I realized I forgot to add the green onions on top of the meat paste before I rolled them up to go in the steamer, and I think that would‘ve added a good visual and textural component. Still, these are chewy and meaty and moreish. I‘m glad I‘ve got eight more to stick in the freezer for future breakfasts.

It‘s been years and years and YEARS since I made out so well at the Children‘s Hospital Book Market! I shelled out $46.50 for every volume of SKIP BEAT! I was missing, every Nero Wolfe mystery priced at $1, the last two in Charles Stross‘s Merchant Princes series, two harmonica books, two volumes of sheet music, a volume of modern (to 1963) African poetry, a Mexican cookbook, and Nigella‘s Christmas cookbook.

I‘m happy.

I‘m doing the get-book-read-book thing with SPRING SNOW, which I found in a Little Free Library yesterday. It‘s off to a great start. Lots of immersive emotions and subtle details that bring this moment in time to life.

I bought the beer because I loved another rice lager earlier this year, but alas, it‘s WAY too mint-forward. Oh well. Someday, somehow, I‘ll find another rice lager to adore

The cover blurb promises DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY has “the grace of Jane Austen [and] the pace of a thriller,” but as of page 70 it‘s mostly just got the verbosity of Jane Austen with the pace of same. I don‘t dislike it, but I ain‘t gripped, either, and the long paragraphs make it tough to go back in when you‘ve gotta pause and, say, rescue the cat from under the deck.

I might drift away from it. I dunno.

I don‘t have any cherry pie to pair with this book, but it‘s far less of a theme than the title implies so I think Jackie Lau‘ll forgive me for eating marble loaf instead.

The book‘s excellent; punchy and highly readable, with a lot of publishing realism in the mix. I can‘t claim I‘m super invested in the romance, but I do love Emily and I want great things for her. If she decides a future with Mark is a great thing, I‘m cool with it.

I gave Casey a tummy-rub while I entered the homestretch with the 30-years-delayed sequel to THE MUMMY! I‘m loving it. Lots of interesting mythology expansions and some seemingly simple revelations that turn out to be anything but.

I also got desperate enough to uninstall & reinstall Litsy, which helped with some of the post-iOS-update problems. It‘s still not perfect, but it‘s far more usable now.

THE PASSION has a couple of solid insights, like the quote above, but I found Henri‘s bits beyond dull. I came THIS CLOSE to bailing about five times over the first fifty pages, but I figured it was short enough that I should at least give Villanelle‘s POV a go. She interested me enough that I did finish the book, but it‘ll stick with me for the dullness (and the comma splices; UGH) more than anything else.

Definitely not recommended.

Here I am, trying Litsy‘s web option to show you the third wooden puzzle I did while I listened to THE WAY OF KINGS. This one‘s destined for my dad, who collects small vehicles. He doesn‘t have a balloon yet.

The browser option IS clunkier than the app, especially for photo editing. Please release an iOS 18-compatible update soon, Litsy!