Month: January 2026

Pushing Daisy was a decent sequel to Daisy’s Run, but honestly I enjoyed the first book more and I don’t feel inclined to read the rest of the series.

Song of the Dryads was recommended to me but… sorry, absolutely not. My first DNF of 2026. I don’t like the writing style at all, it’s badly in need of an editor, better characterization, and it gives me the feeling of maybe being partially AI generated. It’s just not a well-told story. At approximately halfway through the short book, there is just no sense of what the main character wants, any sort of conflict or plot, nor much differentiation between the other characters. Nobody seems to have any agency and things just happen at random. It’s a fever dream.

I started Martha Wells’ The Wizard Hunters and I’m not into it yet either. I really liked her Murderbot books, and the couple of fantasy stories of hers were pretty well done, but this is supposed to be the first book of its series but it reads like a book 3 without any sort of catch-up. But I’ll keep going for a while and give it a chance, I guess.

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The New Gender Synthesis: To be only masculine or only feminine is to be half a human being

This is actually not as much about being nonbinary or trans, as it is the toxic performative hypermasculine/hyperfeminine “reactionary camp” of the right wing in recent years. It’s quite a read.

We had a good New Year visit with my in-laws. The drives there and back weren’t bad at all; we listened to the “We Fix Space Junk” audio drama, which is hilarious, kept me alert and made the time pass quickly, and the available episodes were almost the perfect length for the trip. I slept fine, and in fact slept in later than usual most mornings and took naps as well. Their dog Benny is super friendly, about the same size and somewhat similar looks to Lady. It’s always fun hanging out with the young nephew, who’s quite smart. There was no super uncomfortable political discussion (although I mostly avoided being in the room with national TV news going). And I ate way too many sweets.

By whatever coincidence, none of the gifts I got this Christmas were books or bookstore gift certificates — but I don’t lack for either nice gifts or reading material regardless. I expanded my book wishlists quite a lot by looking for stuff on science, nature, the ancient world, wonder in general, of course more fantasy and SF and a few more bits of LGBTQ+ fiction. Most of that now lives in my bookshop.org wishlist, with the Amazon one nearly emptied — of course in most cases I’m going to check libraries first. Once I finish Pushing Daisy (the sequel to Daisy’s Run), I’ve got a couple other books downloaded and a couple on my Open Library list.

I’m… aware of the thing that this administration did in Venezuela. I’m not following the news closely but the announcement was being televised while we stopped for lunch on our way back yesterday. Shame on the belligerent yet cowardly criminals behind it, and all the other politicians and pundits willing to swallow the flimsy justifications and give their support, their tacit approval, or their useless “strongly worded letters” of no consequence.

Mental health has been… okay, considering. If asked today whether the meds are helping I’d say yes, but I do want to try a higher dose.