Birthday Season!

Well, Texas happened -- my poor mother was left without power for long enough for her and her pipes to get very cold. Power came back, but the pipes didn't recover. Instead the broke and sprayed the bathroom, the closet, and the dining room.

Poor mom is currently holed up in a hotel and waiting for repairs. Sadly the insurance representative is not that great at communication. Happily she is great about getting stuff done, so people came out to chop out wet drywall and set up blowers (surprising my mom, who hadn't known they were on the way -- luckily she had dropped by the house to restock her clothes), and now they are agreeing to pay the guy we hired to fix the water even though we probably didn't follow all the guidelines for doing that (since mom couldn't reach the claims person to get a sense of what those guidelines were). Anyway, I guess I'm giving Safeco a B+. But poor mom had some very stressful nights in there. Here's hoping she gets home sometime this week, and then we can convince her to move closer to her kids!

We are well into the swing of Birthday Season here, so I baked a cake for my sister to welcome her home from vacation. Just to show off I made the icing instead of using store-bought. She and I both approved of my efforts, although my nephew turns up his nose at my unhard hard sauce. (Hard sauce is supposed to be made with booze, but we learned the recipe when we were tiny, so we make it with vanilla. Still tasty!) We are twins until my birthday! My older brother had his birthday yesterday, so we celebrated with him on the Family Zoom call. I'm glad that has lasted throughout the Pandemic, and I hope we keep it up even when we can visit each other again.

I managed to cook twice last week, which was a bit of a surprise. I made turkey burgers one night, which came out tasty. I attempted ciabatta bread, but got confused on the instructions and shaped them completely wrong. But now I understand and might try again. Luckily I knew myself well enough to have bought some hamburger rolls as a back-up. The sides were baked fries (both regular potatoes and sweet potato) with lots of flavors -- tasty. And then on Friday I made pizza dough from scratch and tried out my pizza stone. I only had to text my pizza profession son a few times for advice. This also came out pretty good -- the dough was good, the sauce was good, and the toppings were good -- one was a leftover turkey burger that I crumbled and the green chiles and other stuff I had mixed it went really well as a topping. 

I caught up with WandaVision -- this week we found lots of answers, such as why these are all sitcoms. It's fun having Alexander texting away -- he knows when to expect a Stark Missile to land in the living room. I'm really looking forward to the last one later this week. I skipped laundry most days so poor Tuvok is still trying to take care of the kids in episode 2.20 ("Innocence"). He's not doing too well, so I hope he isn't projecting his kids onto the orphans he is failing to protect. 

My currently reading is down to 22, which is still crazy but gives me hope of getting onto a single 20-line page soon.

The Book Date does a weekly roundup of what people are reading, want to read, or have read each week called "It's Monday! What Are You Reading" and I'm going to go sign up. Ditto for the children's lit version at either Teach Mentor Texts or Unleashing Readers. 

Started

The Fold, Peter Clines. The February Sword and Laser pick.

Swordheart, T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon). This is the Cloudy pick for this month.

Mira's Last Dance, Lois McMaster Bujold. More Penric!

Winter's Orbit, Everina Maxwell. I read this in an early form, and now I read the real thing!

Completed

Penric's Mission, Lois McMaster Bujold. I'm enjoying the audios. It's interesting reading this after seeing the new one explore more of how Penric left his first patron. It makes the flinches Penric has around medical magic even more expressive, and I can see how he's almost as eager to follow his medical adventure as the cute sister. At first -- fairly soon those priorities are reversed. Also how Penric really doesn't like to fail, even when he knows it is very possible. That understanding of failure is still fairly raw for him.

Midnight Sun, Stephanie Meyer. Well, this is very long for what it does, but I made it through. Edward is not nearly as smart or perceptive as he thinks he is, as is shown over and over, but his sturdy confidence never wavers, which is charmingly common for seventeen year olds. So the idea that he is an immortal teenager really works here. Bella also is very passionate about odd things. I get how Edward loves her -- she smells really good and is constantly interesting because he can't read her. She's interesting because he gets to constantly pit his moral strength against the urge to snack on her. (I'm not sure this is good for their future immortality together, but she'll always have the inscrutability thing going.) My favorite part was that Edward doesn't really seem to figure out that he's terrible at reading people the way everyone else does; since he's been able to read minds he's never had to figure out things like fake smiles. 

The Fold, Peter Clines. The February Sword and Laser pick. Yay -- I finished it before the local meetup, before the episode came out even! I really enjoyed the memory and the ants stuff; that was fascinating and made the strengths and weaknesses of perfect memory interesting. The science stuff was very visual, which is a bit of a pain for me because that's not my reading strength, so a lot of time he was explaining the setting or something and I'd just be zoning out, and then of course it would turn out to matter. Oops. I found the love story very unconvincing -- if it were that easy for him, why was he still single in Maine? But it did highlight the relationship problems with swapping universes with an alternate self. Makes me wonder if the book ended up in the same universe where it started, but you'd think the memory thing would make our protagonist aware.

Mira's Last Dance, Lois McMaster Bujold. This one is always a delight, because love stories are hilarious. I don't think it's just "men in women's clothes are funny!" It's Penric acknowledging who is is with his demon. And how much he is willing to share his body, not only when convenient but also to be fair. One thing I noticed this time was how young Penric looked as Mira. She's retiring, and Mira herself died in middle age, but of course Penric's rendition of her puts her in maybe her early twenties? Which I guess is a good time to retire from the carte blanche business. But wow. This put a different spin on the general's wild passion for her. I still like how Penric respects the man he's deceiving, even when it complicates his attempts to woo Nikys. And Adelis is convincing shown not as his best self -- he's like a wounded bear. On the the next!

Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky. Well, I kept getting distracted, but I did enjoy the book, especially the planet based parts. It was very episodic -- the human guy kept going into cold sleep, so there were big jumps between his sections, and each time we'd get a new set of characters on the planet, although the author gave them all the same names so we'd have some sense of continuity. But it did mean that I kept finishing a section and then I'd put the book down and not need to pick it up for a while. It was deeply cynical about humanity, so the human characters were rather grim. Our viewpoint guy was just there to watch the others do stuff, which made the human parts of the book less gripping. I got to feel clever to figuring out the final twist. Hey, is it just me, or was this kind of Clan of the Cave Bear in space, but with the Neanderthals doing much better?

Winter's Orbit, Everina Maxwell. I read this on AO3 as it was written, so my memory is a bit blurred, but I can see how she's shifted some of the style of fanfiction to professional writing. I like both, so I'm happy -- I liked the shift of emphasis to more action and letting us appreciate the angst that way and I liked the new ending. Some of the change is going from a serial to a complete book, and I liked seeing how that worked. So I enjoyed the story -- the world building is a lot of fun, the mysteries worked for me, and the characters were fun to spend time with and I liked seeing them change a bit. The arranged marriage thing is also a special joy for me. I hope there is more to come as I'm interested in how the politics will work out.

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

My wall of currently-reading books is slightly less massive! It is now a box.

Uncompromising Honor 51/??, David Weber. Baen Free Radio Hour's serial. OK, I managed to pull down 50 and my phone dropped 51. Grr.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James. Sword and Laser pick. Nothing.

A Long Time Until Now, Michael Z Williamson. Made some progress! 

The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein, Farah Mendelson. Hugo finalist. Made progress!

The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton. Made progress!

Someplace To Be Flying, Charles de Lint. Didn't touch it.

The Bourne Supremacy, Robert Ludlum. Didn't touch it.

The Wine-Dark Sea, Patrick O'Brien.  Didn't touch it.

An Extraordinary Union, Alyssa Cole. Didn't touch it.

Sucker Punch, Laurell K. Hamilton. The ending is always hard because it's all for nothing.

Seven Sisters, Lucinda Riley. The ebook is arriving soon! And I won't have time to touch it...

Flight 3, Kazu Kibuishi (editor). Cybils finalist. Wow, these stories are grim. Girl is teased by her classmates, and then everybody dies. Including her. 

Picture Books / Short Stories:

King and Kayla and the Case of the Mysterious Mouse, Dori Hillestad Butler. I like these two, and it's nice to learn they live next to Harry Dresden. I mean, I assume that's who Mouse's person is. 

King and Kayla and the Case of the Lost Tooth, Dori Hillestad Butler. Another fine read, but I want more mystery solving with wits! Either Kayla's or Kings. King just brute forced this one.

Shampoodle, Joan Holub. 2009 Cybils Early Reader finalist. A good pick for someone who liked dogs and chaos. This describes the vast majority of young children, of course. A good choice for shared-reading, with a varied vocabulary and a lot of details in the illustrations.

Palate Cleansers

These books I'm barely reading; I use them as palate cleansers between books I'm actually reading.

The Educated Child, William Bennett. 

Wool, Hugh Howey. 

Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho. 

Under the Eye of the Storm, John Hersey. Things have gotten awkward out at sea, what with the affairs and all. Also, the boat has a weak middle plank thing, which is probably bad.

Dates From Hell, Kim Harrison & others. 

Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vaca. 

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2020. Nothing.
2. Cybils 2019. Nothing
3. Cybils 2018. None.
4. Cybils 2017. None.
5. Early Cybils: Read an early reader and I'm working on a graphic novel.
6. KCLS 10 To Try: 2/10. Nothing. Although I'm counting the entire Penric series as my reread and I'm still working on that.
7. Reading My Library. Nothing. Well, my library is closed.
8. Where Am I Reading 2021: 1/51 states. 3 Country. I mean, I have more, but I'm still behind on updating my books.

I'm putting this at the end because I suspect it's complete fiction, but I feel I should attempt some structure.

I am reading: 

• Book I own: Long Time Until Now Next: Somewhere to Be Flying.
• Library Book: Sucker Punch. Next: Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows
• Ebook I own: Swordheart.  Up Next: Paladin's Strength
• Library Ebook:  Luminaries. Next: Elatsoe
• Book Club Book: Climate Change book.  Next: Elatsoe
• Tuesday Book Club Book:  Somewhere To Be Flying. Still haven't finished Wine Dark Sea. 
• Review Book: None. Up Next: Blood and Germs.
• Hugo Book: The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein. Next: Joanna Russ.
• Rereading: Swordheart.
• Audio: The library seems to have all the Penrics on audio. I'm up to Prisoner of Limmos.