December 2023 Books and Reading Notes

Despite my best efforts, I didn’t manage to read more books than I acquired this year. But my acquiring was wonderful, and so was the reading.

Acquisitions

Reading material acquired in December 2023

  1. New Edge Sword and Sorcery Magazine 1.1 (Fall 2023) [2023.12.06] – Excellent magazine from a Kickstarter I backed a while ago. I am really looking forward to reading this.
  2. New Edge Sword and Sorcery Magazine 1.2 (Fall 2023) [2023.12.06]
  3. Manya Wilkinson, Lublin (And Other Stories) [2023.12.18]
  4. Jonathan Maberry (editor), The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny (Outland Entertainment) [2023.12.20]
  5. Valya Dudycz Lupescu, Olha Brylova, Iryna Pasko (editors), Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction from Ukraine & the Diaspora (Atthis Arts) [2023.12.21]

Reading List

Books

What I read in December 2023

  1. Antonio Machado, Fields of Castile [2023.12.12]
  2. Min Jin Lee, Pachinko [2023.12.16]

Weekly Round-up, December 9, 2023

Hello. This is me trying to get back into the habit of weekly blog posts about goings-on in my life. We will see how long it lasts, and how my intentions endure the slings and arrows of *gestures at everything*.

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I have been thinking about Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety, and also about Frank Wilhoit’s quote about capitalism.

Ashby’s law states, more or less, that in any control system, the control apparatus must be able to account for (e.g. be as complex as) all possible variants in the system being controlled.

Wilhoit’s quote is as follows: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

There is some resonance between these ideas which I have been exploring in my (almost non-existent) downtime, and I will post updates to these thoughts as they crystalize.

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Now that NaNoWriMo is over, and I have logged my eighth win out of eleven attempts, I feel like I have the energy to continue writing. In past years that has not been the case for many and varied reasons, but this year, though I am well into my mid fifties, I have energy reserves which were simply not there in years past. So I will take advantage of that.

Writing, be it creative, work-related, keeping a journal, or blogging, is a habit which requires practice and maintenance. And when pulling out of a slump, there are two parts to restarting the practice: getting out of the habit of not doing the thing, and getting into the habit of doing the thing.

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Currently reading: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, Fields of Castile by Antonio Machado, Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

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The writing prompt for the past week was:

Subject: Undead, Addiction
Setting: Ship
Genre: Magic Realism

I didn’t do much with this one, other than to come up with a few interesting scenarios during my walks to and from work.

The writing prompt for the next week is:

Subject: Addiction, Artificial Intelligence
Setting: Border Town
Genre: War

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Random links for the week: