Clockwork118

There is a finite amount of memory on any given device.

No matter how good your game is, players will want memory for other things on their devices.

Marguerite Henriette Mahood, 1901-1989

If you don't already know you have issues doing so, squat down real quick. Bend your knees all the way and touch the floor. Just make sure you can do it. Okay? For me? And then stand up all the way and make sure you can balance on one foot.

If there was ever a tumblr post worth sending to your mom, it's this one.

Books of 2026: May Wrap-Up.

Ha!!! I finally read More Fiction!! It's only taken me *checks egg timer* three (3) months,

Anyway! This was the Month of Bot, and also the Month of Read As Many Of My AAPI Authors As Possible, and I finished three (3) tricky scenes of my revision project (with a jumpstart on a fourth!) and wrote some sanity-saving side quest material! Good birthday month, I think :)

Reviews linked!:

THE MURDERBOT DIARIES + PLATFORM DECAY ★★★★★ Best beloved series! I was delighted that PLATFORM DECAY narrowed the scope back down from A Planet to a micro-subset of #MyHumans. I cackled. A Lot. Liked this one more than SYSTEM COLLAPSE (not as much as NETWORK EFFECT)(NE is my Very Favorite).

THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS ★★★★ Loved Huang's first novella enough to preorder subsequent releases, started here because aliens and language and translation and spies. Very good. If you liked the idea of Kuang's BABEL but thought the treatment was lackluster, try this instead. (If you enjoyed BABEL, as I did, definitely try this!)

HAIR ON FIRE ★★★★ Afghan women poets for this month's Poetry Quest installment! Very much poetry in exile; appreciated the introduction for context (other volumes in this series haven't had intros lol). Favorites were Mahbouba Ibrahmi, Mariam Meetra, and Nadia Anjuman.

THE WATER OUTLAWS ★★★½ I was daisychaining my Huangs, yes. Genderbent queer-friendly wuxia retelling of an old Chinese novel. Started kind of slow, picked way the heck up.

THE CHOSEN AND THE BEAUTIFUL ★★★★ Daisy(ahaha)chaining my retellings, too, apparently. Gatsby! Jordan Baker style! Immigrant! Queer! Fantasy! Vo nails the atmosphere and the vibe--the source material absolutely could have benefited from literal magic, yeah.

THE KILLING SPELL ★★★★ One of my bonus side quests this year is Try To Read New Things As They Enter My House Ish, and I've had this one on preorder for a while! More language magic! Hawaiian this time! Vaguely post-apoc. Was pleased by the bonus Russian.

PITCH CRAFT ★★★★★ Impulse grab at the library, AKA the best place to impulse grab things. Goode is hilarious and All Writers Are Just Like That™, I Guess. Was not expecting to cry at the end of a writing/business book, but here we are. (Books that make me cry get 5 stars almost automatically.)

THE HAUNTED BOOKSTORE ★★★½ Cute! Fun! Just enough heart crimes to keep me engaged! I don't usually read manga (so please don't take this as a qualified stamp of approval lol, I don't go here), but I liked these a lot. Perfect for writing project vibes, too :)

ANNA AKHMATOVA - 117/942 pages read. Made it through Evening! Scribbled a bunch of fragments in my notebook (short example: "Getting drunk on the sound of a voice/That resembles yours" (96) like ma'am please--). I do appreciate how massive the text in this book is, that makes it much less daunting.

I'm...about a month behind where I hoped to be for Revisions (I can't decide if it is Helpful or Maladaptive that I have month benchmarks flagged on my scene card whiteboard; I definitely finished "April" earlier last week), and I'm back to a Big Stretch Where Everything Needs To Be Rewritten lol. Also! Turns out! I gotta have my submission for critique put together and sent by the end of July, which. Does somewhat accelerate pieces of my timeline, yes. (Oops.) I have knitted so little this year, you have no idea. However! We persevere!! If you hear a writer howling in the distance, don't worry about it, they're just time-crunched and resenting the time-suck of the dayjob.

Under the Cut: How I Conceptualize ~*★Stars★*~

I read seven books in May, totaling 2,926 pages. I feel like this is pretty good given that one of them was Rhythm of War, which was 1,200 pages and took me most of two weeks to read. You might also notice that Dawnshard was an audiobook; I listened to it in the car while my partner and I went on some birthday adventures.

Because I knew Rhythm of War was going to be a major read this month, I tried to pepper the rest of the month with books that weren't necessarily epic fantasy. The Raven Scholar was a crossover from April, but otherwise, I tried to make the only fantasy of the month Cosmere books.

As a result, my feelings about the books were pretty mixed. I enjoyed Shark Heart a lot, as well as Yellowface; but was underwhelmed by This Thing Between Us and downright disliked Stonefish. (I also really liked The Raven Scholar.)

Next month, I am tackling the final book in Stormlight Archives*, Wind and Truth, which is even longer, so I expect it to take up much of the month. What I'll get up to otherwise is anybody's guess.

🌷 May Reading Wrap Up 🌷

Wave farewell to Spring and contemplate all you read in the last month. And within this you may welcome in the first month of summer. In May I read 11 books, and my Top 3 had to be “Trans Liberation” by Leslie Feinberg; “Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara” by James Gurney; and “49 Days” by Agnes Lee.

🌷 “Dragons of Light” edited by Orson Scott Card

🌷 “49 Days” by Agnes Lee

🌷 “Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara” by James Gurney

🌷”Tales of Pan” by Mordicai Gerstein

🌷 “Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue” by Leslie Feinberg

🌷 “Frog in the House” by David Mather & Stephanie Mirocha

🌷 “Evidence: Poems” by Mary Oliver

🌷 “The Faeries Pop-Up Book” by Brian Froud and Alan Lee

🌷 “Dog Show: Poems” by Billy Collins & Pamela Sztybel

🌷”Dove Isabeau” by Jane Yolen & Dennis Nolan

🌷 “Stupid Emilien” by S.T. Mendelson