A-conventioning I go

October 8, 2023

This weekend I went to the National Irish SF Convention, Octocon, for the first time in *years*. Since 2017, I’m pretty sure. It was lovely to see everyone. I wasn’t sure until Friday that I was going at all, so I didn’t mention it to anybody except one friend, so people were Very Surprised Indeed to see me, and almost immediately upon arrival I was invited to do a panel, which was both flattering and funny. Furthermore, to my delight, the panel was with my friend, the magnificently talented Sarah…

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Recent Reads: Starbridge

September 7, 2023

Recent Reads: Starbridge, AC Crispin (amazon affiliate) This is one of my favorite books. It’s a first contact story, led by a teenage girl, and I was the same age as the protagonist when I first read it, which probably helped cement its place near and dear to my heart. :) Mahree Burroughs (I only noticed the nod to Edgar Rice there in this reading!) is a human from an Earth colony, on her way to Earth for the first time to go to college. Their ship, captained by her…

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Recent Reads: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

August 31, 2023

This is one of many books I’ve bought because someone on Twitter (in this case, fantasy novelist Stephanie Burgis) recommended it. For a platform notorious for Not Selling Books, I gotta say, I’ve bought an awful lot of books because of it. RIP Twitter. Anyway. IRREGULAR WITCHES is a contemporary rrrrromantic fantasy, I guess, because there is a romance storyline of some importance, but it’s really about Found Family, and like a lot of what I’ve been reading lately, it was a balm to my weary soul. It’s the story…

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The 1980something cover of THE WESTING GAME, featuring chess pieces on a puzzle with missing sections, beneath one of which is Uncle Sam in a casket.

Recent Reads: The Westing Game

August 24, 2023

I first read Ellen Raskin’s THE WESTING GAME (affiliate link) when I was about eleven. It was the first, and I believe remains the only, book that I have ever finished reading, stared at a moment, and then gone back to the beginning to read again immediately. I then read it again many, many times in my tween and early teen years, but I don’t remember re-reading it for…well, a very long time. But it came up again recently, possibly in context of Ellen Raskin as a cover designer, and…

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prawn-fried noodles in a takeaway carton, with chopsticks sticking into them

NOODLES!!!!

August 20, 2023

oh my GOD the noodle place is back at the Temple Bar Market!!!! Honestly I can’t tell you how happy I am about this. It’s a little food booth at the Temple Bar Saturday market in Meeting House Square, and I always used to order prawn fried noodles even when they weren’t technically on the menu. (Prawn skewers were, and othermeat-fried noodles were, just not prawn fried noodles. BUT GUESS WHAT’S ON THE MENU NOW!!!!!) The guy always remembered my order, because it was different. He used to give me…

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