Tag: admin1 reading

Book read by Admin1

Welcome Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS)

Another marvel from the Dwarf Mini; captured by A1 in the wee small hours in a gap between trees.
More info on Roast with a bonus North America Nebula. Update: Here’s a better photo, taken the next morning:
Our bathroom book is The Single Helix 100 short science essays by Steve Jones, which has well-timed chapters: one for a no.1, two for a no.2.

Critter of the Day: Tit

A little bird sitting on the weather station.
A1 is reading The Bells of Westminster* by Leonora Nattrass. A2 is reading Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood. I don’t generally like reframings of well-known works of literature but Atwood’s reprise of The Tempest as an avant-garde production in a prison with the producer hell-bent on revenge was a joy and an education.

Happy International Women’s Day, Ladies!

Here’s a delicious cherry bakewell cake to celebrate, after the main dish of pork in cider and before we scored 12 on the GSQ.
A1 is reading Quantum of Menace* by Vaseem Khan, who should stick with Indian detectives rather than pseudo-American thrillers and (as here) feeble James Bond tie-ins.
A2 is reading The Bells of Westminster* by Leonora Nattrass.

Booktally Day

It’s Booktally Day! Since we started counting we have read 3390 books; a mere 240 up on last year, but many of them were enormous, eg IT, ICE and assorted Neal Stephensons.
Out today is Nonesuch by Francis Spufford (see above) which A2 is about to read. A1 has just started rereading House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds so he’ll have to wait his turn.

Happy Pancake Day, Ramadan, Chinese New Year and Birthday Bob!

So much to celebrate! We had more food than you can shake a chopstick at, followed by A1’s sublime chocolate cake with 10 candles and 10 Lego minifigures sunk knee-deep in ganache.
A1 is reading HHhH by Laurent Binet. A2 is rereading Valis by Philip K Dick. We scored a most excellent 11 on the GSQ.

Critter of the Day: Goldcrest

Regulus regulus, so good they named it twice. We have never spotted this King of the Birds before but it’s easily overlooked, being barely bigger than a bumblebee.
A1 is rereading Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds. According to our records, I originally read this on 5 Sep 2021. But I have absolutely no memory of it at all — and I would have remembered it, as it’s a much-anticipated continuation of AR’s Revelation Space sequence, with many recurring characters. Excellent, though the ending is a bit of a cop-out.
A2 is reading HHhH by Laurent Binet, an absolutely brilliant non-fiction novel about the attempt to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, documenting the writer’s struggles with his subject and including many encomia to Prague, which A1 and A2 also love.

Chicken Tonight

Another family dinner. A1 roasted a delicious chicken with roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, carrots and broccoli and A2 made a wobbly trifle. We did this week’s and last week’s GSQs and scored 10 on the first and 10.5 on the second.
A1 is reading It’s Not a Cult by Joey Batey, a debut horror/fantasy novel about an alt-folk band in northern England who manage to conjure up a legion of Solkats — small gods of trivial things like empty glasses and bruises. JB (day job: actor) claims to have been writing for years without getting published, and you can perhaps see why: it’s horribly over-written. Some interesting ideas and touches of humour, but he’s clearly been paying obeisance to the Solkat of purple prose.
A2 is reading Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds.

Pigeon Pie

Back in 2020 we had an unexpected visitor: a sparrowhawk feasting on its prey in our back garden. The picture in the linked post was a still from a rather poor video, which we’ve now improved somewhat:

We thought the prey was a magpie originally, due to the racket being made by a flock mischief of them which attracted our attention. But now it’s looking more like it was a pigeon.
Thanks to the very powerful software ffmpeg, the video has been stabilised, sharpened and colour balanced.
A1 is reading Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds — thanks A2! AR likes incorporating both noir and detective elements in his SF (cf the terrific Century Rain and the Prefect Dreyfus novels), and here we’ve got Yuri Gagarin — well, sort of — as a mean-streets PI on a generation starship. There are touches of humour, and some Dickian nods in this tale: the sorrowfully forgetful robot, and the excessively polite one as it chucks our hero overboard. It all hangs together though, and a return to form.
A2 is rereading Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood.

Winter Blooms

18 months or so ago we took pictures of the weathered logs blocking the entrances to Scott Hall Playing Fields. Whether it is the age of the logs or the time of year, they are all now blooming with magnificent structures. Here are a few:A1 is reading Wild Animal* by Joel Dicker, a typically convoluted thriller, with two pretty loathsome intertwined families and a jewellery heist.

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever

Props to A1 for this lovely photo: shadow of the chimney in the fog.
A1 is reading Labyrinth* by Kate Mosse. A1 usually enjoys loopy conspiracy thrillers, full of secret histories, shadowy organisations and ancient artefacts. This is a Grail quest set in the 12th (the Albigensian Crusade) and 21st centuries, and given the novel’s reputation I was expecting writing, if not of David Mitchell quality, at least a step up from Dan Brown. But … oh dear. It’s not a patch on Neville’s The Eight,  Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land, Gentle’s Ash — plotting is all over the place, characterisation non-existent (all are pretty indistinguishable, apart from good/bad), and the writing, while not quite down to Dan Brown level, is at best workmanlike. Very disappointing.
There’s a section about the siege of Carcassonne which was a bit weird. It reminded me very strongly of the Battle of Helm’s Deep as portrayed in The Two Towers film — there are a number of coincidences of events and speech. So much so that A1 is now rewatching The Lord of the Rings films. I’m not alleging plagiarism (both could be based on earlier, similar sources, and there’s only so many ways to lay a siege), but the similarities were striking.
A2’s bathroom read is I Think You’ll Find It’s A Bit More Complicated Than That; Ben Goldacre’s self-described toilet book.

Blackbird

It’s the Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend and our entry, if we submit it (which we didn’t because the website took us round and round in circles till the crows came home), is 2 pigeons, 3 blackbirds, 2 blue tits, a red kite and a million starlings.
A1 is rereading Reconstruction by Mick Herron. A2 is rereading The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood.