Tag: 2024

2024 Reading in Review

On By MaryIn RandomLeave a comment

All right, so similar to how I wrote a short synopsis of the books I read in 2023 to test my memory, I’m doing the same thing again. Although it occurs to me it would be more of a challenge if I attempted 2023 now, and then saved 2024 for next year. Then I really won’t remember what the hell I read at all. My memory is woefully short. As before, loads of spoilers for what I do remember, and also a fair warning that it may all be wildly inaccurate owing to my fucked memory.

I also realize while looking over my list of reads that I did not read the 4th Harry Potter book. I had planned to read one a year every year until I finished the series, and I just… forgot.

Did I mention the woefully short memory thing yet?

Well, without further ado:

I did finish Loop, which I ended with last year. Can’t remember if I said very much about it. I vaguely remember it twisting the story from Ring and Spiral and making the events of those books part of a virtual world simulation. Sadako becomes a virus that infects the world because of how she proliferates by the end of the second book, and somehow her virtual “cancerization” of the simulation spreads into the real world and causes an untreatable and quickly spreading cancer that threatens the entire world. The main character (who’s name I can’t now remember) goes on a journey to find the origin and the cure, and ends up having to sacrifice himself. It also turns out that he’s basically Ryoji from the previous books. All of the Ring books were a bit harder for me to read – in fact, I kind of found that many of my re-reads were a bit of a slog for me. I don’t know if that means I have changing tastes or what?

The next book I read was part of the Sidequests, if I remember right. I asked a friend for a sci fi story recommendation and read the first book of the Expeditionary Forces series. Earth is taken over by aliens, who basically pull us into an intergalactic war that’s been ongoing for a long time. I remembered thinking it was kind of Mass Effect’y in some ways. Skippy is an AI that pops up halfway through the book and mostly drives the story from that point. It was fun and I might get around to the rest of the story at some point.

A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor was next. It is the follow up book to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing that I read in 2023. I remember it being not quite as good as the first book – it was still an examination of political divides and the way fame effects people, this time spread across more of the main character’s friends instead of focusing just on her (which makes sense because she’s assumed dead the first part of the book). It’s worth reading to finish out the story from the first book and have an actual conclusion that feels like a conclusion, though at this point I don’t remember too much from it. Rivalry alien intelligences, one trying to help humans and one trying to destroy us because of the events of the first book? Something like that?

I read Birthday next. It’s related to the Ring series as well. It contains a set of 3 shorter novella sized stories all set in The Ring universe, and all surrounding the theme of birth with central female characters. I think one story is set around Sadako’s viewpoint, though I don’t remember it. One is set around the death of the girl that rebirths Sadako in the second book, and shows her thoughts right before she dies. And the third is the love interest of the main character of Loop, who gets to briefly see her lover in the scene that ends out that book. It’s worth it if you’re dedicated to seeing everything related to the Ring.

And similarly, while trying to get that book I also found out there was a newer related book to the series by Koji Suzuki called S – in this book, the main character specializes in CGI and is tasked with determining whether a video that shows a man committing suicide is real or not. I really don’t remember very much of this one? I know it involved Sadako spreading herself again, in a newer fashion. The man has a girlfriend who is pregnant and is being threatened in some way by all of this. I think it follows up the main character from Loop trying to reverse the Sadako cancerization of the simulated world since he lives in it now? But from the point of view of a new character trying to figure out what’s going on.

I also spent some time on some art history. While visiting a Van Gogh virtual exhibit in Tulsa, I picked up Vincent Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings. It was 700’ish pages discussing Van Gogh’s life and works, but I did read it all and found it intriguing. I would have liked it better if the paintings they were discussing were placed closer to the pages that were discussing them – I had to flip around a lot to find the painting in question. I did have a smaller book, so I don’t know if there is a version that aligns it better. I liked the formatting of the book from Taschen, so I looked into some of their other art books and also picked up HR Giger. It was a shorter read, and had the same sections repeated in a few different languages. Less comprehensive than the Vincent Van Gogh book, but there were lovely full page spreads of Giger’s art, which I enjoy.

The next book I read was FantasticLand. I read something somewhere that compared it to Lord of the Flies set in a theme park that’s been isolated due to a severe hurricane, told in a World War Z fashion of an interviewer compiling the events from different POVs. Wow, that sounds great. But the result was a kind of chaotic slog that never really grips the way that either Lord of the Flies or World War Z does. It lacked the shock and violence that makes Lord of the Flies question human decency, and it lacked the pathos and humanity that World War Z manages. It might be interesting to someone, but I disliked reading it.

Next was one of my BOTM picks. I’ve been holding off on reading them because I want to hit 30 books for their reading challenge this coming year, so I’ve been building a backlog. But I figured I would go ahead and read Annie Bot anyways. A little high brow so if that’s not your thing you can skip it, but I found it fascinating. Annie is a robot, and as she becomes more aware and learns more about herself and the world around her, she becomes more uncomfortable in her position and her relationship with her owner/boyfriend. And the more realistic and personlike she becomes, the less her owner seems to really enjoy her. It’s an interesting examination of power dynamics and relationship ideals. I remember really liking it, and it wasn’t very long so it was a quick read.

Next I read Shit My Dad Says. You remember the early days of twitter when someone would post some short funny thing that went viral and eventually they got book deals and TV shows and such? Shit My Dad Says was basically a twitter feed that blew up. The book tells different stories from the author’s life in regards to his relationship with his dad, mostly funny, and then kind of attempts a poignant end to wrap things up. It’s a fun read at least, especially if you ever enjoyed that twitter feed. But if you did, you’re very old by now. You’re welcome.

After that, I decided to give in and read one of the romance fantasy novels that are so popular lately. I started with Fourth Wing. The writing style was very easy to read. While it was a fantasy world, a lot of their speech and other things had a very modern manner, so it’s not quite hardcore fantasy – it’s like fantasy-lite, which makes it very accessible for people that aren’t super into fantasy novels. There were a few things that seemed kind of silly, but it wasn’t bad and I do plan to read the other books eventually. The main character, Violet, is forced to enroll to become a dragon rider, which is a school/life path that is considered especially dangerous and results in the most deaths/failures, despite having spent most of her life preparing for a different path. She stubbornly insists on completing and manages to win 2 dragons. There’s a love triangle and a kind of enemies to lovers thing. The book has very sexually open minded characters but there’s only one spicy scene, which was a bit disappointing since the entire sell is that these are supposed to be smutty? (Is it me? Am I the perv?)

I read another BOTM pick after that, The Husbands. This one was a lot of fun. The main character is a single woman who comes home after a bachelorette party with her friend only to find a stranger in her house who claims to be her husband. As she adjusts to finding out that she’s apparently married and that her house and everything in her world reflects that as a truth, he goes into the attic for something and then another man comes down. After that, she goes through a series of husbands, her home and her life changing each time to reflect the differences in each life. Every time a husband goes into the attic, a different husband comes down, and it’s like she ends up in a different universe. She eventually meets a man who has been going through a similar thing – when he locks himself into a space, he comes out to find he’s married to a different person (male or female, he’s bi). They decide they’re not for each other and continue to search for a perfect spouse separately. It’s a story that makes you think about all the possibilties and life choices that we make and where they lead us.

In the end, she realizes she becomes too obsessed with finding perfection and realizes that pattern has to stop. After confirming that certain things that she can’t lose in her life are present (her niblings, her sister being safe, and that she’s not in an abusive relationship), she sends her husband on an errand out of the house before she can see him and make any snap judgements about him, and then she burns down the flat so that she can proceed with living her life. It was an interesting way to finish the book – she has to live with the choices, and can no longer keep slipping in and out of husbands and different lives. I liked it quite a lot. It was also well written and despite the subject doesn’t come across as high brow at all.

Speaking of high brow, I read Roundabout next. There were a few bits that made me laugh out loud. The entire novel skirts around using the letter E at all, which allowed for some creativity but also made it very strained and obvious what it was doing in some parts. I could read some bits quite quickly, and then the rest was kind of a slog.

I re-read House of Leaves. It’s an interesting experimental novel that tells a couple of different stories, although the one that always sticks with me is the haunted house portion. There’s also a frame story about a drug addict obsessing over the story as it was “researched” by an old man that had recently died. It’s not as scary as they say – there are a lot of hidden messages, most of which I have never bothered to hunt down myself although I notice the patterns enough to tell they’re there. It runs a bit overlong to me in some places and can be easy to put down, but what it attempts is very impressive and I do kind of love it.

I also decided to re-read the Animorphs books, but only got through the first 7. In the Invasion, the group of kids meet an Andalite who gives them the ability to change into different animals if they manage to touch them. They’re given this ability so they can attempt to stop the secret invasion of Earth by an alien parisitic species called Yeerks, which are slugs that take over and control bodies. In The Visitor, they investigate one of the Yeerks they know about to try to continue their mission, by using their morph ability to sneak into their Assisstant Principal’s house. I can’t quite remember the Encounter – I think it involved them finding where one of the Yeerk ships source their fresh water from, and they try to infiltrate that ship. Then in The Message, they have a shared dream that leads them to finding the last living Andalite on Earth and rescuing him, only to find that he’s a kid that’s as lost as they are. In The Predator, Marco almost quits (again) until he finds out his Mom (disappeared presumed dead) is actually alive in space as one of the Yeerk leaders. The Capture involves Jake almost being caught by a Yeerk, but his friends manage to starve it out of him – it turns out it’s the same one that inhabited his brother previously as well. The Stranger introduces the Elimist, if I remember right?

In general, the kids are fighting a guerilla war, attempting missions with very little resources or information or back up. They often aren’t fully successful, only managing to be nuisances to the Yeerks, and suffering from PTSD as a result of a lot of the things they go through.

I actually really loved reading the books as a kid, and only finished collecting the entire series as an adult. I’ll probably read them a bit between BOTM books next year.

After that, I re-read The Hobbit, for Hobbit Day. It always surprises me how much I forget from that book, but it is a classic. Very much a child’s introduction to the world that Tolkien created, but still quite fun to read.

Another BOTM pick was The Boyfriend by Freida McFadden. I didn’t really care for the characters that much, and at first it seemed the story would be pretty basic, but the end twist was really well handled and turned around what I felt about the book. Which is what a thriller should do, generally. It was a pretty quick read as well.

The next BOTM pick that I decided to read before 2025 was Again and Again. It was a little hard for me to tell whether I hated or loved this one – it is poignant, a bit on the high brow side. I liked parts of it, and there were parts that didn’t quite make sense for me. When the character finally comes clean and tells the true story of his life, it feels so tragic and empty, and when he finds out what legacy he has left behind, it doesn’t feel full so much as like more tragedy. There is still a bit of a sense of hope to it, I guess. It was a good read, but I could see it being hard to get through for some.

After that, I got sucked into the Dungeon Crawler Carl books by Matt Dinnaman. So far I like them quite a lot. They blend humor and drama well, and the two main characters are a lot of fun. The world is taken over by aliens who are there to harvest a certain element from it, most of humanity is killed and the remainder is offered a chance to enter a dungeon. This dungeon is set up and run like a game show where people across the galaxy watch the participants on a live feed. Carl ends up in the dungeon with his ex girlfriend’s cat, who ends up becoming sentient and acknowledged as a fellow crawler. Together, they’re attempting to survive the dungeon. Donut the cat is fun and smart allecky, and Carl has plenty of attitude as well. I’ve finished the first 6 books and I’m working on the 7th right now. They have just entered the 9th floor, out of a possible total of 18(?) floors. Each floor has a different challenge and environment. The entire game is run by an AI system that is becoming more aware and belligerent (and really into Carl’s feet) as it develops.

Although there are fantasy elements because of the dungeon environment, there is a heavy sci fi undertone. In each book, you learn more and more about the reasons why Earth was harvested/targeted and how the galaxy is run and some of the inequities of the system in place in the outside world. So far, I’m really enjoying this series, and I’ll definitely pick up each book as soon as it’s immediately available.

Which catches me up on 2024.

And into 2025.

Happy New Year!

Sidequests for December Part 2

On By MaryIn SidequestsLeave a comment

There are mostly fails, though some things are resulting in plans for the next few months. The ones that will eventually get done include playing a board game (my boyfriend is curious about the big Descent box I’ve got sitting with my game stuff, and I’ve never really played it either, so we may break it out and try it soon), working out (owing to the revolving door nature of the most stereotypical New Year’s Resolution, and an ongoing gym membership I haven’t been utilizing), cleaning out my car (keep telling myself I will, but lazy and it’s cold out), and visiting a local museum (less than local, but I’ve been wanting to check out the museum of osteology in OKC).

There were a few that I might have done but I didn’t really pick out one particular moment or instance for it. One card said to put on my favorite outfit. I don’t really have a particular favorite, but I do have some clothes I tend to gravitate to, and I’ve worn those multiple times this month. One involves doing something kind that my future self will appreciate. I’m sure I’ve done something or other at some point or other.

Then there were simpler creative ones that I could say I definitely did. One included building a Lego set (or doing a puzzle) and I had actually bought some Lego sunflowers a few months ago. So I finally sat myself down and put them together. The other included making or crafting something by hand, and quite similarly I had bought a Woobles kit months ago and never gotten to it. So I did that. The end result is cute but also kinda not and crocheting just really cramps my hands. I don’t think I’ll ever get into it.

But sometimes you don’t know what sorts of things you’ll enjoy until you try them.

The last two are basically the same thing. One is to write a poem, and the other is to write a poem or song about something I experience that day. I don’t mind writing poems, but have been feeling fairly uninspired, so despite them seeming like simple ones to complete I’ve saved them very last minute.

I suppose it would be cheating to do one and say it counts for both? So how about two very off-the-cuff haiku.

Quick one about something that happened today:

You are a grown man
Talk on your own damn cellphone
What in the fuck, dude

First customer I helped today called his doctor’s office and then proceeded to hold up his phone so I could talk to them for him. I don’t mind when someone presents with an issue and talking directly to the doctor’s office will help solve it (usually in that case I’m dialing the doc myself). But this was someone calling for refills. I already sent a request for that as well. After I make the verbal request for him because he had shoved his phone up to my face to speak for him, he asked the office staff, “so can you just tell the pharmacy to fill it for me?” and was told that the doctor would have to review it and send the refill later. This is pretty standard for most doctor offices, but completely boggled him, and he seemed to think it was stupid that he’d have to wait.

Next quicky haiku:

quick, eager, happy
a morning smile to greet me
on this lazy day

I will try to make up for lazy poetry’ness in April. We are doing a more laid back April Poetry Month, updating either Tuesday or Wednesday every week. Since there are 5 of those in April, there will be 5 weekly poems that month. I will also be updating tomorrow with the new conditions for the 2025 Writing Challenge my friend and I will be doing, and I will update later tonight with my reading list for 2024.

As far as the Sidequests go, I think they were pretty fun, even though I mostly failed or lazied out of a lot of it. None of them were too hard or impossible, and for some that might be difficult they provide alternatives. There are some cards that don’t take a situation into consideration (farmer’s markets aren’t daily, so that would have to be a repull if you got it on a non-farmer’s market day, and depending on the weather I might not want to complete a few of the things). I might randomly pull cards on the occasional bored day off for ideas in the future. Compared to some other challenge cards and books I’ve seen, none of these were out to push you too far out of your boundaries. I definitely recommend them.

Sidequests Week 38 and 39

On By MaryIn SidequestsLeave a comment

I decided to tackle two weeks worth of sidequests this week. They incldued taking a walk, going out to see a movie or watching a favorite at home, stretching for 10 minutes, practicing mindfulness or a meditation exercise, cleaning a room in my home, and trying a new restaurant or recipe.

I stayed fairly busy through the weekend. Our town has an International Festival annually this time of year so I went to go check that out, and counted that toward my walk. I was planning to eat at a new pizza place in town for the new restaurant, but they were closed on Sundays, which is when my friends and I had arranged to have lunch. Instead, we decided to try the Junction Remix. The Junction is a Korean restaurant that is a local favorite and has been around for years. Junction Remix is their new location on the other side of town that also serves as a breakfast/brunch spot. They have the usual brunch favorites of pancakes and waffles, but also serve the Junction’s original bulgogi recipe and a few fusion foods that looked interesting. I really wanted to try their breakfast kimbap as soon as I saw it on the menu, because my mom makes her Americanized kimbap very similarly. My mom uses hotdogs, carrots, and eggs in hers – theirs had spam for the meat instead, and included spinach and radish. It was very good.

Sunday was also National Coffee Day, so after lunch, my friend and I went to Starbucks and got ourselves some drinks.

As mentioned before, I clean every week, so I cleaned every room in the house pretty good this weekend. I also washed all the blankets and bought some clips to hold the fitted sheet in place because it always pops off lately. So that was an easy task to complete for me as well.

After the day of lunching/coffeeing with friends, and cleaning, I had to attend a work meeting. I came home and relaxed by decided to watch the original 1986 Day of the Dead. I love zombie movies, and I revisit that entire series quite often.

For the stretching, I did some basic physical activity that I felt counted, and for the meditation I used the Headspace app again. Admittedly, I haven’t used it much through this year, so I needed to get a bit more out of the subscription.

And in doing all of that I completed two weeks worth of sidequests and made up for my earlier indicretion! Now to stay on top of it through the rest of the year!

Roadblock

On By MaryIn Prompts, WritingLeave a comment

The prompts for this week are “the road is closed” and “flirt.” This was the first scene that I came up with, but it’s really super problematic. For one, it feels more like an opening to a story rather than a full story. For another, the main character doesn’t really do anything that seems to earn her the outcome (that being said, realistically, do any of us?) I suppose if extended out into a full scenario it could work, but I’d get bored of it quick. There’s a lot of stories like this.

Also, apologies if the flirtations are not flirty enough, I don’t know how to flirt.

          Alice groaned as she approached the large, orange dividers blocking off access to the road. She had seen the reflective panels right after she had made the turn onto the road and had hoped that the road was open. But now she was close enough to see that she might have to turn around and take a different way home. She rolled to a stop as she eyed the street past the dividers – it didn’t look like there was any construction being done, nothing looked new or changed or wet. There were no people that she could see. This was her shortest route home and she was tempted to drive around the blocks and keep going.

          She gasped at the sharp rap against her window, her head swinging towards the man standing there. She hadn’t seen anyone on her approach, but now a cop wearing a reflective vest stood at her driver side door, looking annoyed. He made a motion for her to roll her window down, and she complied. Her instinct when dealing with most policemen was to turn up the charm in the hopes that she could be let off the hook for whatever minor traffic infraction she had been caught doing.

          Alice smiled wide as she leaned to look up at the man through her lashes, and asked, “I’m sorry, officer. I didn’t realize the road was closed. Is there some kind of accident ahead?”

          He stared at her for a beat too long, shining a light directly into her face so that she couldn’t see him. She wondered if he hadn’t heard her. For a moment, she almost felt stupid, holding her smile in place too long. Then he finally spoke. “There was one.”

          “Was,” Alice pressed, batting her eyelashes and doing her best to look and sound concerned. “I hope no one was hurt.”

          “It was bad, but it should be cleared up by now.”

          Alice internally cheered at her timing. Maybe the cop had been out here to remove the dividers. She smiled at him pleadingly, leaning herself forward in the hopes that her cleavage really popped. “Would it be possible for me to drive around the divider then? This is my shortest route home. I’ve had a long day and it would mean so much…”  He paused again, and it was hard to see against the light he was still infuriatingly shining at her, but she had the victorious impression that his gaze flicked down.

          “Give me a moment and I’ll have it out of the way.” The man walked over to the divider, shifting it aside to give her enough room to drive by. He waved her through, and she waved back at him happily as she drove forward. She couldn’t believe her luck.

But then she glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that he was replacing the divider, moving it back toward the center of the road. A strange sinking feeling caused her stomach to dip, but she ignored it and continued driving. Just don’t stop for anything, she thought to herself resolutely as she rolled her window back up. She gripped the steering wheel. She kept her eyes wide as she continued, looking for any signs of danger around her or on the road. She thought she caught the faintest glimmer of metal in the headlights, then heard a strangely loud sound. The steering wheel dragged hard to the right, and she gasped as the car slipped beyond her control – a tree loomed ahead – a cacophonous sound of metal crunching, air bag gas hissing, and glass shattering –

“She seems kind of weak. Do you really think she’ll make good game?”

Alice felt dizzy and nauseous, pressing her eyes closed tight as she became aware of the sounds around her. The words were alarming, but she could barely focus on them.

“Pretty though. Sometimes the weak looking ones surprise us too.”

“She’s already pretty injured. Gotta be a concussion. Hunting her isn’t going to be any fun if she’s already concussed.” The voice paused, and she felt a finger push against her head. An eruption of searing pain caused her to see lights behind her closed eyes and she gasped.

“Well, then what she would do?”

Sidequests Week 20

On By MaryIn SidequestsLeave a comment

The sidequests for this week included going for a walk around the neighborhood, selling or donating something I don’t use anymore, and reading a chapter form a new book.

The book one was a little hard in interpreting – does the book only need to be new to me? Or new as in just recently published? But since I’ve still got my BOTM subscription, I decided to read my book from the previous month, so that would make it both new to me and a book published in April of this year. I started reading The Husbands by Holly Gramazio, and finished reading it by Wednesday night. I enjoyed it a lot, but we’ll see what I still remember when I do my reading write up at the beginning of next year.

I finally decided to put my treadmill on facebook’s marketplace. Mostly I had been putting it off because I dislike interacting with people, but I haven’t used the treadmill in over a year and I don’t keep myself on it for any significant amount of time when I do use it. I have better luck just going to a gym. (although admittedly, I haven’t done that in a long while either)

It was only up for a few days, with a couple of people expressing interest, but mostly they just kept asking me to bring the price down. Finally found a person that seemed interested in looking at it in person and said that he didn’t intend to ask for me to reduce the price, but when I went to eat with my parents for Sunday, they offered to buy it instead. I apologized to the guy, collected the money from my parents, and then helped Dad get it into and out of his truck and situated at their house. Then I showed them how to use it. My Dad kept saying he felt more comfortable having it because Mom likes to go for walks, which made him worry. Lots of people in our town own dogs that they don’t keep very well contained, so it’s not unusual to see some happy-go-lucky fucker waltzing around enjoying some freedom. Most times they’re friendly, and it’s not like dog attacks are common place. But I have seen a few while living here, and Dad has had to fend off an aggressive dog on his walks before, hence his apprehension.

Don’t know if it will get much more use, but Mom does like to walk.

I also did sort through a few drawers and come up with some more clothes to donate, though I haven’t taken them to Goodwill yet.

And then the last one – for for a walk around the neighborhood. Rather than going around the neighborhood, I decided to walk down to a neighborhood feature I never realized was there before. On my drive to work, there is a park that is tucked in behind some houses. I only started using this route to drive to work once I moved into my current home, so I was unaware that the park existed. It’s usually abandoned, though still semi-maintained with the grass being mown regularly. It’s actually very expansive too – when I started walking along its length, I realized that it actually extended all the way back up towards my house. It kind of awkwardly looks into a lot of people’s backyards, and the entrances to the park are very narrow. There are a lot of places were water obviously stands after it rains.

And despite the regular grass cutting, the actual equipment isn’t maintained. The benches rusting, and the playground equipment looked like it was rusting as well, even though I think it had been plastic at one point. The swings were pretty good though. A bit further back was a tennis court, but the metal fencing on one end was completely absent, and there was no net. Even further back was some more tall metal fencing, but I couldn’t tell the purpose – maybe at one point it had been part of a baseball field? Closer to the ditch, set under some trees was some concrete. I think maybe a picnic bench may have sat there before, but now it was just a random patch of concrete in the shade. I didn’t see anyone else, just a rabbit and dogs in their back yards.

I suppose there would almost be some temptation to blame the condition on kids not wanting to go outside anymore, but in this case I think it was purely poor positioning. The park is tucked so awkwardly behind people’s houses that you feel a little like you’re out of place or invading privacy. I’ve lived near this neighborhood since I was a kid and didn’t even know the park was back there. Despite the size of the grounds, there’s zero parking available. And there’s plenty of other play options in our neighborhood, which has two elementary schools. So it just sits back, out of sight, out of mind.

The week was fairly quiet otherwise – due to work scheduling, it ended up being a 6 day work week, and I spent the day off cleaning. I did get a response from my penpal and have already mailed a reply.