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Actually the one book I finished in May is going to get its own separate entry (Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer) because I've decided it's my favorite book of the entire year.

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman -- (audio) The entire Invisible Library series came up on sale as a set on Chirp, and since I'd heard interesting things about it I picked it up. I've only listened to this first volume. Although I find it interesting and imaginative, I kept not getting back to listening to it (hence it took me an entire month to finish). That's made me less interested in trying the next book in the series. I did dislike it--it just didn't grab me.

The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet by Lindz McLeod -- (text) I actually bought this one in both text and audiobook, but since I was already listening to a book of similar genre and setting (see next entry) I went for the text version to keep psychological separation. This is a sapphic Jane Austen-inspired story (as one might guess from the title). I've always felt that Mary Bennet got short shrift in the original book. This story begins well after the end of Pride and Prejudice and has paired her with the now-widowed Charlotte Collins (née Lucas). Mary has the advantage of having acquired a mentor in London who runs a not-very-covertly queer household, which eases the way for Mary and Charlotte to be able to share their attraction and provides a short-cut around the economic challenges for a female couple. I found the story cute and emotionally satisfying although Charlotte occasionally shocked me in blowing off the expected social isolation of recent widowhood.

A Rare Find by Joanna Lowell -- (audio) Another Regency-era sapphic romance, involving an amateur archaeologist and the love/hate relationship with her neighbor. Enjoyable, though a bit over-packed with subplots similarly to the previous book of hers that I've read (A Shore Thing). Lots of occasionally improbable hijinks on the quest for Viking-era artifacts and recognition. There were a few places where my historic sensibilities were trampled on. (You do not just "park" a horse and carriage overnight while you're off canoodling. I mean, maybe a groom was summoned to take care of them? But something it didn't get mentioned.) The conclusion seemed a bit contrived but overall I liked it.

Servant Mage by Kate Elliott -- (text) I have no idea how Elliott managed to pack so much plot and worldbuilding into one tiny novella! Secondary-world quest fantasy with a very relatable protagonist and lots of peril. There are unexpected and satisfying twists. I really hope this is a set-up for more fiction in this world.

The Tapestry of Time by Kate Heartfield -- (audio) Historic fantasy set during World War II focused around the war efforts of a family with various psychic powers who are connected in some way to the Bayeux Tapestry. Told through multiple viewpoints, the novel gradually builds up a fragmentary picture of how all the parts relate until it all comes together. There’s a fair amount of violence and peril, as one might expect in a wartime espionage story, but the ending is satisfying. A strongly woman-centered story with positive queer rep (and resolution). Heartfield writes dense, twisty books that can take some concentration but I’ve enjoyed every one that I’ve tackled.

Murder by Post by Rachel Ford -- (text) This fairly short story introduces the continuing detective couple, Meredith and Alec Thatch, set in the wake of World War I in England. Alec is passing as a man in order for them to marry, but is not presented as transgender as far as I can tell. This adds an extra element of risk and danger when the resident of a neighboring flat is found dead with signs of poison. This is a classic cozy-style mystery, with lots of clues and red herrings, allowing the reader to think just one step ahead of the characters. This initial story—really just a novelette—is free on the author’s website. I hope that some day she’ll decide to release the rest of the series more widely than just Kindle Unlimited. It deserves a wider audience. It's really testing my resolve not to buy Amazon-only books unless I'm committed to doing a review.

In August I started two long-term reading projects. Having enjoyed the tv adaptation of the first Murderbot book, I decided to give the series another try (after having bounced off one of the middle books). And I've been enjoying Rachel Fraimow and Emily Tesh's podcast, The Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones so much I decided to do a (possibly non-exhaustive) reading project of Jones's books. I have twelve of her books on my shelves, though I'm not entirely certain I've read all of them, and I hadn't quite connected up which ones were in series and what order they came in. Having very belatedly acquired a local library card, I've been taking advantage of Libby audiobooks to tackle these two projects, which spaces them out nicely, given wait times.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells, Artificial Condition by Martha Wells -- (audio) It's hard to evaluate the first book separate from having seen the tv series first. It was interesting both how closely the series followed the plot and the places it diverged. Having more details on all the characters (and there are a lot of them for a novella), the story began to grow on my seriously by the second book. It helped that it didn't feel like it was wall-to-wall combat scenes like my first (out of order) encounter with the series. Artificial Condition had a more mystery-like plot, which I enjoyed.

A Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones -- (audio) Young adult. This seems to be a very typical Jones set-up: a disfunctional family with the least-regarded kid as the protagonist. (That's all my notes say. I confess that some of her books have now run into each other in my memory.)

Oops, almost forgot one of my August books!

Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie -- (audio) A short fiction collection, with some stories tying in to her Imperial Radch universe and others feeling like they're part of some other connected setting. Leckie writes the most vivid and believable truly alien characters I've encountered since back when I was reading a lot of C.J. Cherryh in the '90s. The title story is a great example.

On Audiobooks

One of the things I cut back on in preparation for my retirement was my Audible subscription. (I had the three-books-a-month level.) That's changed my audiobook consumption somewhat. What I borrow from Libby is a bit random, not simply because I tend to only put one book at a time on my wait list, rather than having several lined up in Audible, but because the types of books available are different. As I've previously mentioned, I've also been buying audiobooks from Chirp, but primarily using it for random discovery within their sale books. When I decide to outright buy a audiobook these days, I'll try Apple Books first (because: Amazon). Very much like my approach to ebooks, I dislike having books on multiple platforms because I lose track of what's where. But I can't really escape that, alas.

Why do I do so much of my reading in audio? Mostly because I do so much print and e-text reading for the Lesbian Historic Motif Project. Also, between bicycling a couple hours a day and yard work, I have a lot of contexts when I can multi-task audio. Another factor is my aging eyes. When I'm focusing on something close up for an extended period of time--whether it's my LHMP reading, or needlework, or whatever, my eyes take up to an hour to recover and be able to focus at other distances properly. It's annoying. And I can't avoid it for the LHMP work. Audio avoids adding annoyance. (Unintentional alliteration.)

Anyway, enough for now. Tomorrow I'll do my Inventing the Renaissance review, which I plan to post widely. When I first started doing this catch-up book posts, I also disseminated them to several review sites, but that got a bit exhausting and awkward. (I discovered that there's a limit to how many book reviews you can post to Amazon on a single day. A good thing, probably, but hard to keep track of when I'm doing catch-up reviews.)

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/26/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-twenty-six-get-shorty/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58890

F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said that there are no second acts in American lives. This is an aphorism that is pithy and sounds smart, but isn’t true, not even for F. Scott Fitzgerald, even if his second act (the late blooming popularity of The Great Gatsby) happened after he was dead. Second acts happen all the time, primed by luck and/or talent and/or nostalgia and/or opportunity. The interesting question for me is, what do you do with that second act when the curtain comes back up.

Get Shorty is about two second acts in American lives, one that’s just starting up, and one that’s in full swing. The one that is just beginning belongs to Chili Palmer, the movie-loving loan shark who is the film’s protagonist. The one that’s in mid-swing belongs to John Travolta, who, as this film was released in 1995, was in the middle of a career renaissance that, honestly, had seemed improbable even two years before.

Chili first. He’s a mid-level guy in Miami who as the movie opens is in a bit of a spot; his boss has suddenly died, and the new guy in charge of his book hands him off to Ray “Bones” Barboni (Dennis Farina), whom Chili has recently punched in the face over a coat. Ray Bones wants him to track down money owed by a dry cleaner, who recently died in a plane crash… or did he? One thing leads to another and then Chili finds himself in Los Angeles and making the acquaintance of Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman) a producer who makes C-list horror films, but has one great script in his pocket, if he can just get the funds to get it made.

Well, Chili is a film nut, and he knows a little about getting hold of money, so he decides to stick around and see what he can do. Is this easy? Not at all, since others are circling the script, there’s problems with the Mexican cartels, Ray Bones re-enters the picture, and most of all, Chili has to convince two-time Academy Award nominee Martin Weir (Danny DeVito) to come on board a project, and Weir is, how to put this, every single cliche of an entitled movie actor in one compact package. Oh, and there’s Karen Flores (Rene Russo), who was a “scream queen” for Zimm, and who Chili, quite reasonably, takes a shine to.

This is Chili’s story of remaking himself in Hollywood, but it’s also a travelogue of, if not the underside of the film industry, then at least some of its shabbier quarters. Everyone in this film (excepting Ray Bones and the cartel guys) is on the make in one way or another, looking for more money, more status, more presence and more cool. While this is all obviously exaggerated for the story, anyone who has ever spent any time lurking about the movie industry, either as an observer or as a participant, knows about these guys. Tjey’re all just one script or one movie star attachment away from getting their own big break into the “A”-list, dreaming of clutching that golden statuette and thanking the Academy.

There’s no crime in any of that! (Well, there is crime, and lots of it, in this film, but you know what I mean.) The striving must be exhausting, though. All that smooshing your face against the glass of the hottest restaurants, waiting to get the table, in prime seating time, that’s not by the bathroom or the kitchen door. Only Chili, in this movie, seems entirely immune to all of this. It’s because he’s new and entranced by all of it, but also, it’s because, as a loan shark, he understands the psychology of people who always feel like they’re just one roll of the dice away from their big score. They’re the people who keep him in business, after all. Chili loves the movies, but he’s too cool to lose his cool about them. At least, the money part of it. The big difference between the people he collects vig from and the people making movies, is the people making movies are having a lobster cobb salad for lunch, not the Moons Over My Hammy.

It takes an extremely cool actor to play an extremely cool character, and this is where we come to John Travolta. For a relatively brief moment in the 1970s, John Travolta was the coolest actor in the world — he had landed the one-two punch of Saturday Night Fever and Grease. The first of these exploded the disco craze, was a social phenomenon and a top ten movie at the domestic box office, and garnered Travolta his first Oscar nomination. The second of these was the top grossing film of its year, was also a social phenomenon, and gave Travolta a number one Billboard hit, one of his four top ten musical hits overall. It was literally not possible to be a cooler star than John Travolta was at the end of 1978.

That level of fame is hardly sustainable, and Travolta was not the person to sustain it. After a string of less successful films, some of which were outright flops (Moment to Moment, anyone? Two of a Kind?), Travolta’s career was in a doldrum by the middle 80s. Now, let’s be clear that when I say it was in a doldrum, this is a matter of perception, not necessarily box office: in 1989, Travolta was one of the stars of Look Who’s Talking, which was the number six box office winner of its year, and which is, counting global box office, still the second highest-grossing film of his career after Grease. We should all have such profitable doldrums. But let’s not pretend that as a matter of perception, as a matter of star power, as a matter of coolness, there wasn’t a precipitate drop. When you’re playing second banana to a talking baby, you might be rich, but you’re sure as hell not cool.

Then along came Quentin Tarantino and Pulp Fiction. There are many things to say about Quentin Tarantino, not all of them great, but one thing that cannot be denied is that he does a fantastic job of resurrecting the cool factors of formerly washed-up and washed-out actors. He’s like a financial analyst seeking out value stocks, except the stocks are actors looking to get their mojo back. Tarantino saw that Travolta and his cool factor were severely undervalued, so he dropped the actor into Pulp Fiction as the likeably strung out Vincent Vega. One role, one hit and one Academy Award nomination later, it was like Travolta, and his ability to embody extreme coolness, had never gone away.

Get Shorty was Travolta’s first film after Pulp Fiction, and while Vincent Vega and Chili Palmer are superficially similar (both mid-level cogs in a much bigger crime machine), there’s no question that Chili is the cooler character. He’s smarter, he’s more ambitious and he’s more in control of himself and his fate. Vega is (probably) who a lot of mid-level criminals are; Chili is who they all wish they could be. Travolta needed Vincent Vega to get him back to the level where a character like Chili Palmer was available to him, but once he was there, Travolta showed why the character needed him to work onscreen. It’s said that Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman and Michael Keaton were all offered the role before it was given to Travolta. No offense to any of those excellent actors, but not a one of them could have pulled off this role with the same panache.

Travolta’s second act, like his first, wouldn’t last forever. Travolta pretty much put a capper on it in 1999 with a little passion project named Battlefield Earth, which is rightly considered one of the worst films ever made, a genuine turd that no amount of personal cool could ever have saved. But before that moment we got this film, Broken Arrow, Face/Off, Phenomenon and Primary Colors, among others. That’s a pretty decent stretch (after Battlefield, we got Travolta in some Look Who’s Talking-tier comedies like Wild Hogs and Old Dogs, some standard-issue thrillers and also the animated film Bolt, which is a personal favorite of mine. That’s fine! He’s doing fine). Very few people get to be cool forever. I would argue that even fewer get to be the coolest actor alive twice in their career.

This is why I really like rewatching Get Shorty; it’s a study in a movie star being such a goddamned movie star, being so very much the movie star, that everything about the movie is just that much better because he’s in it. This is not role that made Travolta a star, and it’s not the role that resurrected him. It’s not the second act in the making. It’s the role where Travolta is saying, that’s right, I’m back, now watch me own this town. And then he does just that. It’s a blast to watch.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/26/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-twenty-six-get-shorty/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58890

nnozomi posting in

guardian_learning

部首
心 part 1 xīn
心, heart; 必, must; 忆, memory ( pinyin )
https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=61

语法
2.10 A little: 一点 vs 有点
https://www.digmandarin.com/hsk-2-grammar

词汇
材料, materials; 身材, figure ( pinyin )
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-4-word-list/

Guardian:
有一个问题我必须现在就问你, there's a question I have to ask you just now
没事，就是有点难受, I'm all right, I'm just a little upset
在材料送到之前我们也是无可奈何, we're at a loss until the materials arrive

Me:
突然好想你，突然锋利的回忆🎵
那个帅哥你看到了他的身材吗？

kaberett

My mother has today loaned me some knee-high compression socks in a fun design and... the amount of presyncope I've been getting on standing up from squatting is approximately None, despite feeling while squatting like It's Gonna Be A Bad One When I Stand Up. So I'm probably going to be buying myself more of them as my mother's present to me for this winterval.

Obviously I was delighted when I got to page 7 and found the rainbow...

cyberghostface posting in

scans_daily

( You're about to view content that the poster has marked as potentially inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

thanate

Another new year of me has come around again, and I keep remembering how my best friend from middle & high school used to call me up on my birthday & refer to me as "O Ancient One" because I was about 8 months older than she was. Probably partly because of the comparisons brought up by having a nearly-teen around living her own chaotic life.

I feel like my introspections are still stuck in the projects queue; ( ongoing crap, which is the state of the world... )

Things I have been considering, & may yet do something with include:

*The Baltimore Gamer Symphony Orchestra meets... just across from where the Key Bridge *was* (but I have driven farther to get to weekly meetings before; I've just gotten lazy) and they require no auditions and even have a choir that theoretically one can manage to be part of *at the same time.* And I do miss having scheduled & group music...

*I need to *actually talk to* people about writing community, which of course I have been saying for years, & I think what I need is a general progress-sharing & brainstorming cheering section space or even just an update window on other people who are writing regularly, because it's the momentum that is hard, but I don't really know how to create that or with whom because none of the standard "writing group" models is going to recreate 2000s NaNo lj or pausing every couple hard-won paragraphs in a college paper to exchange random e-mails with a friend who's working on their own. (and both papers & NaNo ultimately got written because of deadlines, sigh.)

*I keep meaning to say to my family that I'm good for 2-3 nights of dinner plan a week, & if each of them take a day then we can declare one "seagull night" (seagull says "get yer own!") & a take-out day per week and stop having to make last-minute food decisions when we're already hungry and/or done braining until after food.

*Still working on plan: make the basement suitable for habitation &/or sudden arrivals of kids who live within walking distance. (at least the pre-Christmas clean-up has led to a slightly less problematic living room space, temporarily...)

*likewise, attempts to join/create/promote local community continue to be an unchecked ticky box.

*[complicated mutterings/rant about having a useful website] [slightly further shadowed by watching a nature writer/artist's website get devoured & replaced by the internet asbestos machine]

*wholesale deleting my phone games in the hopes of redirecting my flow-state downtime towards... something else??

The list will always be longer than I have world & time to devote to it, but we knew that already.

smartbitches_feed

Posted by SB Sarah

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2025/12/julia-quinn-launches-jq-editions-kickstarter-subscription-of-special-edition-historical-romances/

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?p=164537

Today on Instagram and Facebook, Julia Quinn announced the launch of JQ Editions, a historical romance special edition subscription service.

Per her announcement, the special editions will include “luxurious soft-touch covers, illustrated endpapers, and fabulous sprayed edges.”

(SPREDGES?! Everybody drink!)

Quinn will be selecting each title, and says in the introduction that some will be “brand new,” while others will be “recent gems, or classics of the modern genre.”

Per the caption, “Each and every title is hand-picked by Julia Quinn, and she works personally with illustrators to make sure that the art reflects the story and honors the author.”

When the Kickstarter goes live in January, folks will be able to purchase one- or two-year subscriptions, and those who are interested can sign up for the JQ Editions mailing list, or follow their social accounts on Facebook and Instagram.

I am fascinated by this announcement on several levels because it’s the full-speed collision of several major trends. There’s the Kickstarter part, the historical romance part, the special edition part – my brain is Jiffy Popping all over the place.

Let’s start with the Kickstarter of it all. Every year for the podcast Patreon, Amanda and I do predictions for the coming year, and another episode where we listen to our older predictions from the previous year to find out how accurate we were.

One of my predictions for 2026 was the continued rise of Kickstarter as as a major option for authors who are frustrated by the diminishing returns when self publishing, particularly as a platform exclusive, and by the diminishing returns of working with a publisher when shelf space continues to shrink and mass market, the format most associated with historical romance, died this year. When a publisher like Harlequin can’t meet the demand for paperbacks of Heated Rivalry, one of the greatest romance television adaptations of all time, and in the same year, “After the End,” an author collective Kickstarter, crossed $1.4 million in sales, it’s not difficult to understand the increasing appeal of Kickstarter.

As I learned in my interviews with Lucy Eden and Katee Robert (507. Romance Kickstarters) and with Oriana Leckert (620. Romance and Kickstarter) Kickstarter offers a greater percentage of money than other available options (short of setting up a mimeograph machine for publishing books, which would come with the added benefit of having That Smell we remember from school).

Oriana Leckert, who is the Head of Publishing at Kickstarter, said during our interview,

…I think two, two really, really key things that make Kickstarter very special for authors is that our cut is five percent.

Sarah: Yep.

Oriana: Five percent. Also we have Stripe, who processes our payments; they take three to four percent. Even so, you’re paying less than ten percent in fees, which is so much less than you’re paying to any other avenue through which you might sell your books

Another benefit to Kickstarter that I still think about: data. As Leckert explained it,

Kickstarter is in the business of giving you your audience…. [A]s we see the continued fracturing and dissolution of social platforms, as we watch these, like, you know, mercurial to malevolent executives with a flick of the wrist change their algorithm in a way that now that, like, you know, a hundred thousand strong audience that you’ve worked so hard for, you can no longer access, or not as effectively.

…If you run a Kickstarter campaign, first of all, during the campaign you get a tremendous amount of data about where your backers are, where they’re coming from, are they using desktop or mobile? What time of day are they backing? Which of your promotional avenues have reached them? And then afterward you get everybody’s email addresses! You get to send them surveys. You get to ask them all sorts of questions….

[H]olding onto those direct avenues to reach your readers is so much more important than ever. This is something that we can do for our authors that Amazon’s not going to give you.

Kickstarter is also an excellent way to test new ideas, as Katee Robert explained: “I’m going to be circling back to Kickstarter a lot in the future, just because it’s a very interesting platform and, and if it doesn’t fund, it doesn’t fund, and then you do something else.”

So that’s the Kickstarter part. But as I said, a subscription box of historical romance special editions is also dead center of an intersection of other major trends: special editions (obvs), Rrrrrrrromantasy market saturation, and the future of historical romance.

I’ve said many, many times, per the Bruce Springsteen Law of Publishing, “everything dies, baby, that’s a fact. But maybe everything that dies, someday comes back.” In other words, no genre ever dies. They come back in a different form. Like Pokémon. Just like how New Adult was Chick Lit re-invented for readers coming of age in a terrible economy instead of a good one, or how romantic suspense with military and law enforcement heroes, which used to be everywhere, seem to have given way to a mafia and unaffiliated special ops heroes. No genre dies, but it will evolve before it comes back.

The historical romance genre is not in terrific shape in terms of market strength, to put it mildly. But it’s not dead — the mass market paperback is dead, but not historical romance, even though it was most published in that trim size and at that price.

So how might the JQ Editions affect the state of historical romance? Could historical special editions reinvigorate the historical romance audience? Or will the audience for historical special editions be found with established historical romance readers who have deep ties to the genre, and to specific books?

Both, possibly?

First, special editions are, as the memes say, so hot right now, and have been for a few years. Moreover, readers on social media who are likely to be part of the special edition audience have been ‘rediscovering’ historical romances because the internal conflicts coupled with the external class structure produce a lot of yearning and pining. The new trend of “Who put all this pining in historical romance?” reader engagement only helps a project like JQ Editions. The same readers who adore special editions of much loved Rrrrrrrromantasy titles may also seek out special editions of historical romances that are still popular.

The thing about special editions, though: they’re more aesthetic than practical. No one is going to sit down with a special edition book with end papers, art, and spredges (drink!), and start reading while eating cheeze puffs. Cheeto dust + special edition = rage bait.

A special edition isn’t necessarily a reliable discovery mechanism, either: the goal of a special edition is to reach fans of the book with a unique artifact of that book’s popularity and virality. Which leads me back to audience.

The audience for a historical romance special edition would have to include historical romance readers, obviously. Many historical romance fans are collectors of romance as well – specific cover artists, models, or entire backlists for beloved authors. Historical romance is a older genre with books that have been favorites for literal decades. Some readers may be very excited to have unique art editions of their fave, simply because the special edition trend finally includes them.

Attaching the artistic enhancements of a special edition to a book that has been a reader favorite for most of their adult lives? I hope Quinn picks some old favorites because if she’s picking books that have Big Reader History attached, the subscription Kickstarter could do very, very well. I’ll bet folding money, as my sister says, that there will be loud and ample calls for Kleypas editions, particularly Devil in Winter.

This may be a fusspot feature of my age and perspective, but personally, I want less stuff in my house, not more. So I haven’t been in the audience for special editions, and everything I say must be taken with a Volkswagen-sized grain of salt here. But even though I am pretty selective about stuff resides in my home, I am so, so curious to see which books are selected, and what they’ll look like, and how they’ll be decorated and styled. (Lol – that’s like a whole new job category, right: “book stylist.”)

Special editions are fandom artifacts, gorgeous representations of a specific book’s popularity at a moment in time. They also assign more visual cues to a three-dimensional book than mere cover and copy: the art and motifs on the cover or the spredges (drink!) visually communicates so much more about the story. And they’re usually gorgeous! Luscious paper, textured cover treatments, art and designs in lavish colors you can see from across the room – they’re meant to appeal to our senses and our experience with that particular story. Special edition treatment for historical romance could potentially aid in the evolution of the historical romance genre, especially if the titles included mix enduring favorites with titles that are part of historical romance’s evolution in progress.

A special edition has more opportunity to signal to a reader what’s inside, and it’s usually aimed at a reader who already knows that what’s inside is special to them. I am extremely curious to see what titles are included, and what they’ll look like.

What about you? Would you be interested in special editions of historical romances? Which one?! Are you interested in JQ Editions?

A | BN | K | AB

Update: I found a mention of a potential lead title from a Bluesky post back in October.

Bookish Notes shared a cover image and a screenshot of some marketing copy from the publisher about Eloisa James’ next book, The Last Lady B.

The marketing copy includes:

POTENTIAL SUBSCRIPTION BOX PLACEMENT: THE LAST LADY B is being heavily considered to launch Bridgerton author Julia Quinn’s (IG: 520K, FB: 407K) new subscription box. This would include a beautiful, deluxe hardcover edition that would publish simultaneously with our edition! Since this would be the first book ever chosen for this new box, we would benefit from any publicity surrounding the launch in addition to our own publicity.

MODERNIZED HISTORICAL: Eloisa is modernizing herwriting to attract today's romance readers. She will be shifting her narration to first person, which is the preferred style of today's readership, and will be incorporating a gothic twist into this historical romance to give it a fresh edge.TL 50 F no do te FSTAR-STUDDED NETWORK: Eloisa is closely connectedwith Sarah MacLean, Julia Quinn, Lisa Kleypas, Evie Dunmore and many more popular romance authors. We can expect these authors to offer winning blurbs and social media support through pub day. Her many connections will also be useful in finding conversation partners for events with Eloisa.POTENTIAL SUBSCRIPTION BOX PLACEMENT: THELAST LADY B is being heavily considered to launch Bridgerton author Julia Quinn's (IG: 520K, FB: 407K) new subscription box. This would include a beautiful, deluxe hardcover edition that would publish simultaneously with our edition! Since this would be the first book ever chosen for this new box, we would benefit from any publicity surrounding the launch in addition to our own publicity. — source: bookish-notes.bluesky

The original post also notes that this is a historical romance in first person:

This is the cover, if you’re curious:

Launching with a new historical romance (in first person – that’s kind of a big deal) from a very popular author in a special edition would be an interesting strategy for the first box, and aims to capture some of the groups I mentioned above: fans of an author, fans of historical in general, and possibly potential new historical readers. I know many folks who make buying decisions based on hating first person pov, so I can only assume there are an equal or greater number of people who make buying decisions based on adoring first person pov.

Seriously, this remains so fascinating for me. It’s like a bunch of things I think about all the time colliding in front of me. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2025/12/julia-quinn-launches-jq-editions-kickstarter-subscription-of-special-edition-historical-romances/

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?p=164537

ysabetwordsmith

These are the content notes for "Genuinely Sufficient Resources."

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Current Mood: busy

kareina

Slept in, did a morning pilates session while Keldor did a kettle ball workout.

After breakfast and a game of Qwirkle we resumed work on the create an attic bedroom project, and made some good progress. Tomorrow we need to go buy more supplies.

This evening we took Daniel's things (that we are storing till we can get them to him in Kiruna) over to Bryan's house to free up space in the craft supplies room to be a second guest room for visitors during the new years party.

Then we watched the first episode of the new Ronja Rövarsdöttar while I worked on my silk bliaut short tunic. Then we joined friends in zoom for our workout session. I am so proud of Þórólfr, who is showing up and doing it, even though it is hard at his current fitness level. Hopefully this will improve that fitness level.

]

petrea_mitchell

It's gift card season and there are a couple sorts of books I would like to get with mine, but I don't even know what sorts of terms to start searching on.

1) Something about different legal systems and the philosophies that go with them. How they shape how people think about what the law is even for, and so forth. Would prefer to focus on modern systems, but historical examples are fine if they help illuminate the present. (E.g. I have come across mentions a few times that things work in such and such a way in France or its former colonies because they were shaped by the Napoleonic code.)

2) How the governments of really huge cities/metropoles work.

Blogs or newsletters are okay too. But no podcasts or YouTube series unless they're scripted, please.

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/26/new-books-and-arcs-12-26-25/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58885

It’s the final collection of new books and ARCs for 2025, and this one is a double decker! What here is something you would want to take with you into the new year? Share in the comments!

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/26/new-books-and-arcs-12-26-25/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58885

goodbyebird

+ I was going to do my yearly 5 icon slots as a gift to myself, and it turns out 550 is a hard limit and I can't have any more. No fair. I got DW money some other way but boo.

+ Fallout is apparently back! I watched both episodes yesterday and enjoyed them. We're getting more zany vault culture and I'm here for it. Also a delightful actor appearance, big plus there.

+ Absolutely fell behind on

rec_cember. My brain has been Tired from being social every day. I do have a few more planned, fingers crossed they actually happen?

+ Christmas Eve was an absolute success. The food was lovely, everyone was healthy and in good spirits, and since there were no kids we took our time and opened one package at a time. I finally have a working vacuum again \o/ A foldable foot bath, and a ginger preserve I'm quite excited to try out. Some creams, u retweet, tea, and a gift card for RITUALS. All useful things.

+ Joined my brother in picking up my dad from the airport earlier. Now to figure out what will happen for my birthday, then my friend's birthday the day after, and THEN New Year's. I'd like a nap tbh.

settiai

I've made this post a number of times without any luck, but I wanted to try again just in case I have better luck this time. Would anyone be interested in any of the following Nintendo Switch games?

Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! (example on Amazon)
Spyro Reignited Trilogy (example on Amazon)
TemTem (example on Amazon)

If you're not interested but know someone who might be, please point them my way.

For payment, I have CashApp ($Settiai), PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle (nancy.lynn.foster@gmail.com).

Current Mood: hopeful

thistleingrey

People say...

- that you could prop up a tabletop rigid heddle loom between your legs and the table's edge. Sure, but perhaps not this one, which is palm-sized.

- that you need multiple shafts to weave certain motifs. It's like saying that you need a bed frame, boxspring, and foam mattress for sleeping, or chairs with rigid frames and a table of a certain height for eating a meal. You might like having them, you might consider them status markers, your cultural expectations may've blocked off other options, but one does not need them in an absolute sense.

Here's Kyoung Ae Cho preparing to weave houndstooth using a backstrap and several sets of string heddles. A meaningful percentage of the work is completed during the warping stage.

(If her setup goes too fast in that video, try her basic setup howto. It shows the interim uses of lease sticks and which things are tied provisionally, then undone. What she does is unfamiliar to me but looks much like the setup used by a Kazakh weaver whose reels Instagram keeps tossing my way---a Kazakh weaver who's a quarter ethnic Korean by heritage, part of the Koryo-saram community. Coincidence? I've no idea.)

- that you need multiple shafts, part two: here's someone with Atelier Fagelbo (Japan) weaving basic houndstooth with a rigid heddle on a tabletop/box loom. They don't show how to dress the loom because they'd like you to buy the loom and their many photo pages of directions (no thanks), but it is proof of concept.

- that you mustn't fuss with the warp (except to repair a broken warp thread) once a loom has been dressed and weaving has begun. I've undone the basic knotted warp from the large 8-dent heddle that shipped with my 10" Beka beginner frame, rethreaded the warp through a heddle with the right size of reed (12 dent), and added a few weft rows to what was provided by Beka staff. Much better. The original plan was to use someone else's warp and not only learn but save my hands. An 8-dent heddle with what looks like #4 or #8 cotton is pretty clunky. (#10 cotton, only slightly thinner, is "bedspread cotton" for mid-C20 crochet patterns.)

anais_pf posting in

thefridayfive

1. You have the summer and plenty of money to travel abroad. Where all would you go?

2. What foods would you be sure you got to eat?

3. What landmarks would you be sure you got to see?

4. What airline would you use?

5. Would your knowledge of other languages influence where you went? (i.e., would you be more likely to go to France if you spoke French?)

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

starwatcher posting in

ebooks

Links to all platforms / booksellers.

https://www.romancebookworms.com/

As always, feel free to share.

starwatcher

Links to all platforms / booksellers.

https://www.romancebookworms.com/

As always, feel free to share.

conuly

And very heavy on the dudes. I'm not sure if women don't go into this sort of thing, or if they're just too classy when they do it, and thus don't get onto the playlist. Though I guess it would be strange for lesbians to sing an ode to Jingle Bell COCK. (Emphasis all theirs, and totally unnecessary. We know where the song was going.)

Anyway, in honor of this, I'm posting three belated Christmas videos. The last is Boynton and totally SFW.

Watch on YouTube

This one won't let me embed it.

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy and mild. It rained again last night.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few house finches and sparrows.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 12/26/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 12/26/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

.

Current Mood: busy

cyberghostface posting in

scans_daily

( Scans under the cut... )

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7	8	9	10	11	12	13
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Peg Kerr's Reading Page

Books I've Read: May, June, July, August 2025

The December Comfort Watches 2025 Day Twenty-Six: Get Shorty

第四年第三百五十二天

[embodiment] ... huh.

Everything Dead & Dying #3

another year older & deeper in debt (tho not the money kind, fortunately)

Julia Quinn Launches JQ Editions, Kickstarter Subscription of Special Edition Historical Romances

Content notes for "Genuinely Sufficient Resources"

(no subject)

Book recommendations needed

New Books and ARCs, 12/26/25

Ho ho ho

For Sale: Nintendo Switch games

debunking inklings

The Friday Five for 26 December 2025

Dec 26 only -- Free romance books

Dec 26 only -- Free romance books

Jenn's chosen playlist yesterday was gay Christmas themed

Birdfeeding

Amazing Spider-Man #18

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December 2025

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