"I'm a leaf on the wind...

How is it a year since I last posted here? Time is just barrelling away from me. Worse yet, I'm pretty much exactly where I was last time I updated: absolutely crushed in the middle-aged sandwich (work, parent, kid), and as I sometimes joke, "having it all but wanting to put some of it back!"

(Tiberius is APPLYING TO COLLEGE this fall - what is even happening????)

That said, due to that and some other imminent life changes, I'm beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel. In NYC, our regular fan meetup has started up again and that's a happy thing. I'm working on an awesome sekret project with some of the the usual suspects from the AO3 days that you'll hear much more about soon. I've got another fan studies aca-project in progress and I'm also noodling some non-fannish writing that I keep not having any time to work on. But I live in hopes.

(I'm still young(ish)! I'm moisturizing like whoa and doing yoga! All the vitamins! So I'm not dead yet - do you hear me, lovely kids who give me feedback on the AO3 and assume based on the story dates that I am dead or the cryptkeeper - AO3 KIDS, I AM STILL SO YOUNG AND CUTE JUST SHUT UP.)

Do three things still make a post? I haven't seen shit, really, in terms of fandom stuff - (not even Heated Rivalry! No time! I would kill someone for six hours of TV time!) - but I still read when I can. So here's 3 recs:

1) you should totally read Cory Doctorow's Enshittification if you haven't. I was also super taken with Yanis Varoufakis's Technofeudalism, which is two years old now but I think totally also nails this current moment--like with Cory's book, I couldn't see the world any other way after reading it.

2) I went through a mystery reading juggernaut and read all the Anthony Horowitz books and a bunch of Jacqueline Winspear and Janice Hallett - there were things to like about all of them? Unlike apparently everyone else in the world, I bounced off Thursday Murder Club but I was charmed by the TV show--but you know, that cast could do practically anything and I'd be there for it.

3) A book I really enjoyed that kind of came out of nowhere for me (I think it was an NYPL pick of the day? and I thought, hey, that sounds like my jam and it was?) is Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's Mutual Interest - sort of historical and slashy and dishy - just very very entertaining. I wish I'd written it. (I should do that as a post - that's a different list, books I wish I'd written vs. books I enjoyed reading.) 

Oh, and hey, bonus rec - I also really enjoyed H.G. Parry's The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.  I mean, a book that features five Mr. Darcys just really can't go wrong! :D  Fantastical and playful and literary - also the audiobook is a great listen if you like audiobooks.