Lake of Souls

Lake of Souls, 2024 collection of Ann Leckie's short fiction from the past twenty-ish years. Some of these I remembered, from Strange Horizons or various other magazines, some I had never seen before. One is new, the eponymous novelette "Lake of Souls", a first-contact story with some interesting aliens and a direct nod to Le Guin's "Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction". Definitely recommended and very likely one of my nominees next year (next month, whatever). Also of note, "Another Word for World", a vaguely Enemy Mine situation with a discovery of some limits of automatic translation, and "Saving Bacon", a delightful Jeeves and Wooster homage set in the Raven Tower world. Reading all the Raven Tower universe stories made me want to reread Raven Tower itself... which I don't really have time to do... that was the worst thing about this book. :/

today is Disadvent 19

It's the 19th and I last posted on Disadvent 12, having skipped 9, 10, and 11. So, uh, not a huge amount of momentum at this time. I have done some disadventing here and there - I delivered some gifts, I dropped off an Amazon return, I took some clothes to textile recycling and to the library kid-stuff resale shop, and I took a couple of carloads to the storage unit, which continues to not exactly be disadvent but to overlap significantly. Like, packing basement books and CDs means actually starting to reduce some of the mountain of boxes I've been accumulating for this purpose. *Feels* disadventy.

I've also identified a few more books to suggest for discard instead of packing - stuff that's still in print and doesn't have sentimental associations. I think Jb is a little bit like "why these and not others, why bother if it's just a few here and there and not a substantial reduction", but my feeling is that even if we only get rid of one in twenty, or one in fifty, or one in a hundred, that's still something, like, every book we don't have to pack is something? But it's also much faster just to pack things than to think about them, or to set aside to ask Jb about. Although I can skip that last part by just focusing on culling my own books. But I still have to do my own emotional processing there. It's probably time for another reduction of stuff from college, like, a) if I ever was going to want to reread the Nicomachean Ethics or Communist Manifesto or whatever, I would probably read it online or in a nice library ebook rather than in my old paper copy with my old highlighting and margin notes, and b) realistically, am I ever going to reread the Nicomachean Ethics? Of all the thousands of books in the world that I might like to read, I don't think that is where I would turn for comfort or guidance or inspiration, much less entertainment? So, I guess that's the biggest disadventure I've been on, working through those feelings and getting ready to make more progress there.