Category: Bitching

  • Mardi Gras/ What I am Reading

    Mardi Gras puts to waste a lot of plans. The annual celebration starts in January, and just kind of… goes on until Fat Tuesday. During this time, I’m busy drinking and parading and dressing like Elvis, for reasons not particularly relevant to this blog. However, it also means I am *not* doing what this blog…

  • On not Finishing a Book/”The Luminous Dead”/What I am Reading

    I want to talk a little bit about not finishing books. My last didn’t finish was “Angkor and the Khmer Empire: A History of Cambodia’s Legendary Temple Building Civilization” which wasn’t a history of anything, but rather a poorly written guidebook which looked like it had been translated via google translate. It was awful, and…

  • Dread Process/Kindle Scribe vs Kindle and Remarkable/What I am Reading.

    A little more about dread process; a quick look/review of various gadgets.  We’re going to get extra nerdy and picky here. As I have mentioned, I’m a bit of a gadget hound. It’s something I have inherited from my father, I suppose. But I have come to see the value in ‘single use’ devices; I…

  • Back at It/ “Angkor and the Khmer Empire”/ What I am Reading/ Next Entry

    I have returned from our soujourn to Thailand and Cambodia; it was a lovely trip, but this isn’t a travel blog. Unfortunately, on the way back, I had some sort of stomach issue, and so I didn’t really get much reading in. While I was there I attempted to read “Angkor and the Khmer Empire”…

  • Vacation

    Howdy. I am taking a little break to go on a vacation/enjoy things. I’ll still be reading throughout, and may update a little bit if I find myself at a loose end/have internet/think about it. Regular/organized posting will resume in late January.

  • Falling Behind/What I am Reading/Future Plans/Back on the Horse

    I have fallen behind in my reading, which happens from time to time. My band had a gig opening for surf-punks Daikaiju, which I enjoyed a great deal. The book I am reading “the most”, “Bubblegum” is kind of a weird slog– I’m enjoying it, and the story, but it seems overlong. I like long…

  • A Short Entry About Why There’s No Entry

    I got my COVID booster on Tuesday at noon, and spent the entirety of Wednesday in bed, mostly asleep, so I don’t have any Thursday entry this week– I had planned to discuss a couple of recently read Moby Dick chapters, in which the plot advances, and compare them to ones in which it does…

  • “The Loop”/Horror Endings/What I am Reading

    I read “The Loop” this week; which was… ok? It showed up in a twitter thread from a horror writer I like, and was on sale, so I gave it a whirl. I note a number of horror novels I’ve read this year have trouble sticking the landing. It seems to be an issue with…

  • 70% of “You Can’t Win”

    I’m about 70% of the way done through “You Can’t Win” and I’m not 100% sure about finishing it. Here’s the thing: it’s a well written book, and it does a good job of telling its story. But there’s an underlying problem I’ll get to in a bit.  I first heard of this book somewhere…

  • In Which the Author Stops Apologizing/What I am Reading

    One of the things I have found about writing a blog that you update frequently is that certain themes emerge whether or not you want to. For a while, I struggled with my role with the blog, eventually deciding “gee, I’m a critic”. I’ve played with the notion of “status vs. contract” novel, and described…