all mirth and no matter

Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder, by Asako Yuzuki, trans. Polly Barton: A journalist gets a bit too involved in the worldview of a woman who has been jailed for allegedly killing her boyfriends, and who has garnered the hatred of the public for unapologetically prioritizing herself and being fat.
- The weight stuff was unexpectedly hard to read...
- The lesbian undertones were interestingly obscured by the protag's view, but also really pragmatically stated; in her world, going to a girl's school meant she was cast / cast herself as a prince character to the other girls.
- The food descriptions are quite good; I really wanted rice with butter and soy sauce after.
- Either journalistic standards in Japan must be very different or the protag must not be a very good journalist.
Didn't quite come together for me, the subtle commentary not quite refined enough -- like, it felt like it was trying to say stuff subtly, but did it really say anything in the end... I did like parts of it though, and it was a very distinct voice.

Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu: Asian American studies 101. Not in a bad way necessarily, but not sure I came out if it having felt the content was new; however, the structure was very creative. I expected a little bit more oompf from the ending though. Still, a propulsive read.

The Hidden Palace: A Novel of the Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker: Sequel to The Golem and the Jinni. Vibe is more of the same, and it doesn't really do a ton that was novel. None of the new characters were quite as good as the OGs. I enjoyed reading this, but it isn't a must read IMO.

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, by Henry Grabar: As the tin says. Some interesting case studies, nothing especially novel in the overarching argument, but ties it together. I didn't feel like the thesis was especially strong (seems that writing it during the pandemic should have changed said thesis more than it did).

In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden: A successful professional woman leaves her high status, respected position in London to join a cloistered Benedictine monastery. When Providence is part of the premise, it does Watsonionally explain a lot of "and then the protag was a great friend of someone random that solves their problem." I largely enjoyed this, the focus on living in community, the head hopping style as we learn about the nuns and their stories.

The Doors of Eden, by Adrian Tchaikovsky: A world much like our own is actually part of a series of parallel universes with different sentient creatures and a misfit group must save the world. I guess it being not actually our world might explain things like the UK having an SSN, but that was pretty weird. The cultures and worlds all had a sameyness and the characters, both human and non, felt quite thin. (It very definitely suffers from the 'whole world is just one culture!' trap.) It was a fine romp, but despite all the talk about Tchaikovsky having 'weird aliens,' I wasn't impressed.

Killingly, by Katharine Beutner: Based on the 1897 real-life disappearance of a Mount Holyoke student and telling a story of what might have happened and the people that might have been around her. [Rot13] V qba'g guvax n qbez sheanpr va 1897 jbhyq or ubg rabhtu gb perzngr n obql naq guvf vf npghnyyl rkgerzryl cybg pevgvpny? But otherwise what it says on the tin, though a bit thin and the ending is very pat. I liked the college students and their descriptions best, but otherwise, I would only recommend it to people who do like that kind of historical fiction.

https://368chickens.com/: I played across my phone and computer, so I dug into the code to check how many tries it took me -- 32 for the first win, then I think I got a method that worked. It does make me feel like a game theorist could come up with some interesting principles about winning based on the random chicken selector...

Jiang Ziya (2020) (DNF): Part two of the animated Ne Zha series. The fight scenes are pretty tedious, so I DNF'd in the end.

Ancient Detective (2020) (DNF): I don't think I'll ever come back to this, and I did follow the group watch until ep 16 / verdict was that it wasn't really worth finishing, so I guess I might as well boot this out of my drafts. It's a detective story, but in that boring way where it follows the standard detecting case solving storylines in terms of beats -- lots of talking over clues / people around to be witness, arguments about who is accused etc with everyone in the case standing around, then smaller discussions with a Watson. Finally, the killer admits to it after being confronted and explains his motivations, and the recap of how the crime happened is extremely lengthy. The medicine was bad (blowing on an open wound! Dry finger bones being attached to each other!) and the sound mixing was extremely bad. However, there were fun moments! The distinctive weapons were nice, and there were some genuinely funny scenes (the character that records all the happenings triggered some as that premise might suggest, and my notes say something about a sad poetry recitation being really funny, though it's been... over a year, so not funny enough for me to remember it that long afterwards).

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, by Mary Beard (DNF): This was very much pop history, with minimal citation, and I didn't feel like it was scaffolding me enough for me to retain any of the info.

I have ALSO skimmed a number of sleep training books, but they are all useless.