Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 28
June 10, 2023
How does my garden grow?
My plants survived the snowpocalypse amazingly well. Several saplings I'd planted were badly damaged, but even those are still growing so hopefully will survive, if in somewhat unusual shapes.
One tree fell, not a favorite or a particularly big one. I kept the snag as a wildlife habitat, and was pleasantly surprised that when I told that to the arborist I'd hired to remove the fallen tree, rather than arguing, he knew what I was talking about and said that he'd kept several snags on his own property for that exact reason. I had the fallen tree mulched, so now I have an enormous mulch pile taking up one of my parking spaces.
We had a very unusual amount of rain lasting well into months when it's usually dry. Last week I found a salamander under a log I picked up to do something with! The salamander was tiny and adorable, smaller than my pinky finger; I picked it up because I couldn't resist, then replaced it and the log. I guess the log will just live there now. No idea where the salamander came from as it's normally not wet enough for them. Maybe they bury themselves until there's enough moisture to emerge? It was very encouraging to see it, anyway.
After two years of scattering poppy and other native wildflower seeds to no avail, I finally got little poppy sprouts! Really hoping they'll grow up to be plants, because if I can get them to seed stage, they'll reseed themselves and I'll get them every year.
I went to two native plant sales, one at Heaps Arboretum in Skyforest (up the hill from me) and one at Claremont Botanical Gardens (down the hill). Cross your fingers those plants survive better than the last set I got from the Arboretum, which did not do well. The mountains have a lot of microclimates so there's a lot of trial and error involved in seeing what survives where.
Saplings I planted last year, all thriving: birch, scarlet oak, ginkgo, Bartlett pear (main trunk snapped off in snowmageddon, lopsided branches now propped), Satsuma plum (big branch snapped off).
Saplings I planted this year, all thriving: Rainier cherry (has green cherries!), nectarine (has tiny green nectarines!), Carpathian walnut, Honeycrisp apple, Gala apple, Bing cherry (snapped in half when tree fell on it, still growing).
Food plants I have growing now: giant Bing cherry tree (now with some limbs netted to discourage squirrels; last year they ate ALL my cherries while they were still green), corn, squash, tomatoes, kale, herbs, blueberries, raspberries, giant blackberry hedge which I have barely dealt with this year and probably won't have time to.
I have been using the Picture This app to identify plants on my property. I highly recommend it - it's by far the most accurate I've tried. Here's a non-exhaustive list of what I have growing in my yard:
Planted by me (non-native): tulips. They grow incredibly well here.
Planted by me (native): California poppies, creeping snowberry, western blue-eyed grass, blueblossom ceanothus, golden currant, salmonberry.
Already there (native): Elegant fairyfan (clarkia), small enchanter's nightshade, false mermaidweed, Humboldt's lily, miner's lettuce, thimbleberry, Pacific dogwoods, incense cedar, pine, wild plum, bracken ferns, wild strawberry, Canyon live oak (accidentally coppiced - cut down, now an enormous bush), black sage, California bay.
Already there (non-native): Lunaria (silver dollar plant/moneyplant), sweet violet, periwinkle (vinca), daffodils, chickweed, honey locust, Norway spruce, hollyhock, guelder rose, camellia, spiraea, feverfew.
The land around my house is absolutely magical in spring. It has so many different areas, all like tiny little forests and gardens. The ferny areas look like how I always imagined the forests in Narnia in spring.
comments
One tree fell, not a favorite or a particularly big one. I kept the snag as a wildlife habitat, and was pleasantly surprised that when I told that to the arborist I'd hired to remove the fallen tree, rather than arguing, he knew what I was talking about and said that he'd kept several snags on his own property for that exact reason. I had the fallen tree mulched, so now I have an enormous mulch pile taking up one of my parking spaces.
We had a very unusual amount of rain lasting well into months when it's usually dry. Last week I found a salamander under a log I picked up to do something with! The salamander was tiny and adorable, smaller than my pinky finger; I picked it up because I couldn't resist, then replaced it and the log. I guess the log will just live there now. No idea where the salamander came from as it's normally not wet enough for them. Maybe they bury themselves until there's enough moisture to emerge? It was very encouraging to see it, anyway.
After two years of scattering poppy and other native wildflower seeds to no avail, I finally got little poppy sprouts! Really hoping they'll grow up to be plants, because if I can get them to seed stage, they'll reseed themselves and I'll get them every year.
I went to two native plant sales, one at Heaps Arboretum in Skyforest (up the hill from me) and one at Claremont Botanical Gardens (down the hill). Cross your fingers those plants survive better than the last set I got from the Arboretum, which did not do well. The mountains have a lot of microclimates so there's a lot of trial and error involved in seeing what survives where.
Saplings I planted last year, all thriving: birch, scarlet oak, ginkgo, Bartlett pear (main trunk snapped off in snowmageddon, lopsided branches now propped), Satsuma plum (big branch snapped off).
Saplings I planted this year, all thriving: Rainier cherry (has green cherries!), nectarine (has tiny green nectarines!), Carpathian walnut, Honeycrisp apple, Gala apple, Bing cherry (snapped in half when tree fell on it, still growing).
Food plants I have growing now: giant Bing cherry tree (now with some limbs netted to discourage squirrels; last year they ate ALL my cherries while they were still green), corn, squash, tomatoes, kale, herbs, blueberries, raspberries, giant blackberry hedge which I have barely dealt with this year and probably won't have time to.
I have been using the Picture This app to identify plants on my property. I highly recommend it - it's by far the most accurate I've tried. Here's a non-exhaustive list of what I have growing in my yard:
Planted by me (non-native): tulips. They grow incredibly well here.
Planted by me (native): California poppies, creeping snowberry, western blue-eyed grass, blueblossom ceanothus, golden currant, salmonberry.
Already there (native): Elegant fairyfan (clarkia), small enchanter's nightshade, false mermaidweed, Humboldt's lily, miner's lettuce, thimbleberry, Pacific dogwoods, incense cedar, pine, wild plum, bracken ferns, wild strawberry, Canyon live oak (accidentally coppiced - cut down, now an enormous bush), black sage, California bay.
Already there (non-native): Lunaria (silver dollar plant/moneyplant), sweet violet, periwinkle (vinca), daffodils, chickweed, honey locust, Norway spruce, hollyhock, guelder rose, camellia, spiraea, feverfew.
The land around my house is absolutely magical in spring. It has so many different areas, all like tiny little forests and gardens. The ferny areas look like how I always imagined the forests in Narnia in spring.
comments
June 7, 2023
The 4-Hour Body: the 15-Minute Orgasm!
"You - Tim Ferriss - can do more outside the system than inside it."
- a supposed actual quote by an actual human being over an actual dinner.
I was bribed to read this book. So far I have accepted books from my wishlist, a hand-knitted winter hat, a hand-knitted scarf, and a gift sampler of assorted jerky. Bribes still accepted!
Ferriss suggests reading this book out of order and according to your interests, so I am doing so. (Obviously, I went straight for the 15-minute orgasm.) So there will be at least one more installment of this review.
I expected to hate-read this book. Instead, at least so far, I am reluctantly charmed by it. Tim Ferriss is fabulously wealthy businessbro huckster and I strongly suspect that at least 50% of everything in this book is complete bullshit, but he's also pretty funny and some of his advice is actually good. Here's a piece of actually good advice, which may seem obvious but the problem it addresses really is a major cause of failure at all sorts of things:
Take adherence seriously: will you actually stick with this change until you hit your goal?
If not, find another method, even if it's less effective and less efficient. The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.
And now for the 15-minute orgasm! This chapter is headed by a quote by Wilhelm Reich, who is called "an Austrian psychologist." This is correct, but incomplete. Wilhelm Reich was a crackpot Austrian psychologist who believed that the universe was powered by orgasms. He built boxes called orgone accumulators which were supposed to harness orgasm power. I once spent a month at the home of a Baba-lover family where the dad had an orgone machine that he tried to convince me to get in, claiming it was healthy. It was a box made of plywood. That's it. I declined.
Reich was also into UFOs. From Wikipedia: He and his son would spend their nights searching for UFOs through telescopes and binoculars, and sometimes, when they believed they had found one, they would roll out a cloudbuster to suck the energy out of it (the perceived-or imagined-UFO). Reich claimed he had shot several of them down. Armed with two cloudbusters, they fought what Reich called a "full-scale interplanetary battle" in Arizona, where he had rented a house as a base station. In Contact with Space, he wrote of the "very remote possibility" that his own father had been from outer space.
Sorry, I digress. Back to Ferriss. To learn about the female orgasm, he consulted a porn star (because they're famous for having real orgasms /s) and a "specialist in female ejaculation." Here's his big takeaway from the latter:
"For almost all women, the most sensitive part of the clit will be the upper-left-hand quadrant from their perspective, around one o' clock from the man's perspective."
I don't know about the rest of you, but my clit is the size of a pencil eraser. If you want to touch just one quadrant, you're going to need the pencil tip (dull and covered with a condom, please), a magnifying glass, and outstanding eye-hand coordination.
Ferriss learns that many women have never had an orgasm at all, and only a minority can have them solely through penis-in-vagina sex, with no stimulation other than the penis. With the help of a composite-character pre-orgasmic woman he's dating, and also a whole bunch of mostly female orgasm experts, he sets out with a magnifying glass and a blunted pencil to give pre-orgasmic women orgasms.
The porn star says the first step is to learn to masturbate to orgasm. She has pretty good advice for this: address any sexual hangups like having been taught that sex was shameful or sinful, get a multi-speed vibrator, set time aside to explore, focus on pleasure rather than coming as a goal. I have advised all of this in actual sex therapy.
She then recommends a bunch of sexual positions and techniques, which Ferriss provides with diagrams. As is typical for sex positions and techniques, a number of them look awkward or overly athletic and/or would be fun once, and all of them probably work for some people.
Use the bottom of the opening of her vagina as a fulcrum for the penis, which will act as a lever. The goal is to catapult the woman over your head.
On to the 15-minute orgasm!
As I suspect is a theme in this book, the flashy headline is not what it sounds like. It's not about having an orgasm that lasts for 15 minutes. It's not even about having an orgasm within 15 minutes. It's a 15-minute "work up to a partnered orgasm" practice technique, consisting of a kind of awkward position and instructions for 1) how to discuss doing it with your female partner 2) how to actually touch the clit (light strokes).
The "how to discuss" is generally good. It's classic sex therapy stuff: the woman is not supposed to perform pleasure, the man isn't supposed to ask if she's enjoying what he's doing (because that tends to feel pressuring and will produce a yes whether she is or not) but instead to ask neutral questions like "harder or softer? higher or lower?," the goal isn't to have an orgasm but just to see what the exercise feels like.
It's one exercise, not a magic bullet, but the concepts behind it are good: no pressure, no goal, just an exercise to see what happens. Of course in the context of the entire book there is a goal, and if it turns out that the woman doesn't like this exercise they should try again with a different technique or body part but the same framework, but all things considered, I expected something much more bullshit than this.
Next I'm going to read the chapter on gaining 34 lbs of muscle in 28 days without drugs and by going to the gym a total of 4 hours in that entire time. I expect 34 lbs of bullshit.
If you're wondering about the wow! a clitoris! tag, see The Clitoral Truth and (locked for discussion of a college class) If the class is anything like that ridiculous book, we're all gonna draw our vulvas and worship the Goddess!
[image error] [image error]
comments
- a supposed actual quote by an actual human being over an actual dinner.
I was bribed to read this book. So far I have accepted books from my wishlist, a hand-knitted winter hat, a hand-knitted scarf, and a gift sampler of assorted jerky. Bribes still accepted!
Ferriss suggests reading this book out of order and according to your interests, so I am doing so. (Obviously, I went straight for the 15-minute orgasm.) So there will be at least one more installment of this review.
I expected to hate-read this book. Instead, at least so far, I am reluctantly charmed by it. Tim Ferriss is fabulously wealthy businessbro huckster and I strongly suspect that at least 50% of everything in this book is complete bullshit, but he's also pretty funny and some of his advice is actually good. Here's a piece of actually good advice, which may seem obvious but the problem it addresses really is a major cause of failure at all sorts of things:
Take adherence seriously: will you actually stick with this change until you hit your goal?
If not, find another method, even if it's less effective and less efficient. The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.
And now for the 15-minute orgasm! This chapter is headed by a quote by Wilhelm Reich, who is called "an Austrian psychologist." This is correct, but incomplete. Wilhelm Reich was a crackpot Austrian psychologist who believed that the universe was powered by orgasms. He built boxes called orgone accumulators which were supposed to harness orgasm power. I once spent a month at the home of a Baba-lover family where the dad had an orgone machine that he tried to convince me to get in, claiming it was healthy. It was a box made of plywood. That's it. I declined.
Reich was also into UFOs. From Wikipedia: He and his son would spend their nights searching for UFOs through telescopes and binoculars, and sometimes, when they believed they had found one, they would roll out a cloudbuster to suck the energy out of it (the perceived-or imagined-UFO). Reich claimed he had shot several of them down. Armed with two cloudbusters, they fought what Reich called a "full-scale interplanetary battle" in Arizona, where he had rented a house as a base station. In Contact with Space, he wrote of the "very remote possibility" that his own father had been from outer space.
Sorry, I digress. Back to Ferriss. To learn about the female orgasm, he consulted a porn star (because they're famous for having real orgasms /s) and a "specialist in female ejaculation." Here's his big takeaway from the latter:
"For almost all women, the most sensitive part of the clit will be the upper-left-hand quadrant from their perspective, around one o' clock from the man's perspective."
I don't know about the rest of you, but my clit is the size of a pencil eraser. If you want to touch just one quadrant, you're going to need the pencil tip (dull and covered with a condom, please), a magnifying glass, and outstanding eye-hand coordination.
Ferriss learns that many women have never had an orgasm at all, and only a minority can have them solely through penis-in-vagina sex, with no stimulation other than the penis. With the help of a composite-character pre-orgasmic woman he's dating, and also a whole bunch of mostly female orgasm experts, he sets out with a magnifying glass and a blunted pencil to give pre-orgasmic women orgasms.
The porn star says the first step is to learn to masturbate to orgasm. She has pretty good advice for this: address any sexual hangups like having been taught that sex was shameful or sinful, get a multi-speed vibrator, set time aside to explore, focus on pleasure rather than coming as a goal. I have advised all of this in actual sex therapy.
She then recommends a bunch of sexual positions and techniques, which Ferriss provides with diagrams. As is typical for sex positions and techniques, a number of them look awkward or overly athletic and/or would be fun once, and all of them probably work for some people.
Use the bottom of the opening of her vagina as a fulcrum for the penis, which will act as a lever. The goal is to catapult the woman over your head.
On to the 15-minute orgasm!
As I suspect is a theme in this book, the flashy headline is not what it sounds like. It's not about having an orgasm that lasts for 15 minutes. It's not even about having an orgasm within 15 minutes. It's a 15-minute "work up to a partnered orgasm" practice technique, consisting of a kind of awkward position and instructions for 1) how to discuss doing it with your female partner 2) how to actually touch the clit (light strokes).
The "how to discuss" is generally good. It's classic sex therapy stuff: the woman is not supposed to perform pleasure, the man isn't supposed to ask if she's enjoying what he's doing (because that tends to feel pressuring and will produce a yes whether she is or not) but instead to ask neutral questions like "harder or softer? higher or lower?," the goal isn't to have an orgasm but just to see what the exercise feels like.
It's one exercise, not a magic bullet, but the concepts behind it are good: no pressure, no goal, just an exercise to see what happens. Of course in the context of the entire book there is a goal, and if it turns out that the woman doesn't like this exercise they should try again with a different technique or body part but the same framework, but all things considered, I expected something much more bullshit than this.
Next I'm going to read the chapter on gaining 34 lbs of muscle in 28 days without drugs and by going to the gym a total of 4 hours in that entire time. I expect 34 lbs of bullshit.
If you're wondering about the wow! a clitoris! tag, see The Clitoral Truth and (locked for discussion of a college class) If the class is anything like that ridiculous book, we're all gonna draw our vulvas and worship the Goddess!
[image error] [image error]
comments
June 6, 2023
Synchronic
This is a review of a truly terrible movie I watched because I loved not one, not two, but THREE movies by the same creators. I did not review the ones I loved. I will hopefully do so later. I am a bad person. SORRY Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead!
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead wrote and directed three fantastic movies, all of which are best enjoyed knowing as little as possible in advance.
The Endless is a horror/suspense/multigenre movie about two brothers who fled a UFO cult, then return for a visit as adults. The horror is of the creeping tension/appalling realizations variety; there's minimal/brief violence/gore. It's unpredictable and excellent.
[image error] [image error]
Resolution is related to The Endless. I watched it second and was very surprised to learn that it had been made first. It's about two friends in a cabin, one trying to help the other kick a nasty drug habit, and plays mostly like a naturalistic buddy comedy-drama with elements of horror/suspense. Again, extremely minimal/brief violence/gore. It's also brilliant.
[image error] [image error]
Spring is not related to the other two and is almost impossible to categorize. Half the fun is figuring out what genre it even is. IMO the best experience is to go in knowing absolutely nothing about it, except that it's about a young American man grieving the death of his mother, who goes to Italy and meets a young woman. I loved it and found it very touching. It has some violence and IIRC a cat dies.
[image error] [image error]
OKAY now let's talk about Synchronic, their shockingly terrible and accidentally hilarious movie. All I knew going in was that it was by Benson & Moorhead, was about time travel, and starred Anthony Mackie - good signs, right?
I watched it with![[personal profile]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1491408111i/22407843.png)
scioscribe
and will include some of our comments.
It opens with a man and woman in bed. There are weird noises! The room dissolves! There is a desert! The man is flying! A snake rears up between the woman's legs! She is in a swamp and a person wearing weird mask like a gas mask is gesticulating at her! Stock footage of the Milky Way! A person merges with the wall! I probably forgot some things!
Cut to paramedic Anthony Mackie and his partner, Jamie Dornan, who walk into a weird scene with heroin addicts, a dead guy stabbed with a sword, and an empty packet of a designer drug, Synchronic.
( Read more... )
Roll credits!
Written and directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
Rachel &
scioscribe
, simultaneous: HOW
I honestly don't understand how this movie happened. They made it the same year they made The Endless, which was fantastic. You can see some similar themes as in some of their other movie, but every element of this movie was bad.
Maybe they really needed to use up some stock footage of the Milky Way.
[image error] [image error]
comments
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead wrote and directed three fantastic movies, all of which are best enjoyed knowing as little as possible in advance.
The Endless is a horror/suspense/multigenre movie about two brothers who fled a UFO cult, then return for a visit as adults. The horror is of the creeping tension/appalling realizations variety; there's minimal/brief violence/gore. It's unpredictable and excellent.
[image error] [image error]
Resolution is related to The Endless. I watched it second and was very surprised to learn that it had been made first. It's about two friends in a cabin, one trying to help the other kick a nasty drug habit, and plays mostly like a naturalistic buddy comedy-drama with elements of horror/suspense. Again, extremely minimal/brief violence/gore. It's also brilliant.
[image error] [image error]
Spring is not related to the other two and is almost impossible to categorize. Half the fun is figuring out what genre it even is. IMO the best experience is to go in knowing absolutely nothing about it, except that it's about a young American man grieving the death of his mother, who goes to Italy and meets a young woman. I loved it and found it very touching. It has some violence and IIRC a cat dies.
[image error] [image error]
OKAY now let's talk about Synchronic, their shockingly terrible and accidentally hilarious movie. All I knew going in was that it was by Benson & Moorhead, was about time travel, and starred Anthony Mackie - good signs, right?
I watched it with
scioscribe
and will include some of our comments.It opens with a man and woman in bed. There are weird noises! The room dissolves! There is a desert! The man is flying! A snake rears up between the woman's legs! She is in a swamp and a person wearing weird mask like a gas mask is gesticulating at her! Stock footage of the Milky Way! A person merges with the wall! I probably forgot some things!
Cut to paramedic Anthony Mackie and his partner, Jamie Dornan, who walk into a weird scene with heroin addicts, a dead guy stabbed with a sword, and an empty packet of a designer drug, Synchronic.
( Read more... )
Roll credits!
Written and directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
Rachel &
scioscribe
, simultaneous: HOWI honestly don't understand how this movie happened. They made it the same year they made The Endless, which was fantastic. You can see some similar themes as in some of their other movie, but every element of this movie was bad.
Maybe they really needed to use up some stock footage of the Milky Way.
[image error] [image error]
comments
I got reviewed on Tor.com!
By Judy Tarr, no less. The Ultimate Bodyguard: Zoe Chant’s Defender Cave Bear.
I don't have an account or I'd explain that I'm not Elva Birch and the true mate thing is a genre convention. But it's a delightful review and she's totally right that comics were a big inspiration.
Panel: Batcat spits out the arrow-shaped stone tip of the gargoyle's tail.
Dialogue bubble: PTOOIE!
comments
I don't have an account or I'd explain that I'm not Elva Birch and the true mate thing is a genre convention. But it's a delightful review and she's totally right that comics were a big inspiration.
Panel: Batcat spits out the arrow-shaped stone tip of the gargoyle's tail.
Dialogue bubble: PTOOIE!
comments
June 1, 2023
Call for bribes is still open
I am still accepting bribes to review The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman. I have accepted offers of fanart, fancy jerky, and a hand-knitted winter cap. Can anyone offer me anything more to compensate for the 4 hours reading and reviewing this masterpiece will take off mu life?
[image error] [image error]
Is it possible to reach your genetic potential in 6 months? Sleep 2 hours per day and perform better than on 8 hours? Lose more fat than a marathoner by bingeing? Indeed, and much more.
comments
[image error] [image error]
Is it possible to reach your genetic potential in 6 months? Sleep 2 hours per day and perform better than on 8 hours? Lose more fat than a marathoner by bingeing? Indeed, and much more.
comments
Earthsea fic
I wrote an Earthsea fic, A Branch that Blossoms.
Soon after the escape from the Tombs, Tenar returns for some unfinished business.
comments
Soon after the escape from the Tombs, Tenar returns for some unfinished business.
comments
May 31, 2023
The Faces of Ceti, by Mary Caraker
Science fiction from 1991, apparently not published as YA though that's how I'd classify it. A group of colonists fleeing a dying Earth is pleasantly surprised to find not one but two habitable planets in the same system. As they've developed a huge political split during the voyage, the colonists settle on both of them.
The larger group settles on Arcadia, the larger planet which has a wide range of vegetation and animal life, including intelligent inhabitants (disparagingly called "yetis") at about a Stone Age level of technology; this group is highly patriarchal and authoritarian, and intends to subdue the inhabitants, by means of genocide if necessary. The smaller group settles on Ceti, which is in synchronous rotation and so has half the planet in permanent daylight and desert, and half in frozen night. It has very little vegetation and animal life, and apparently no intelligent life. This group of colonists is less patriarchal and authoritarian though less doesn't mean not at all.
The protagonist is Maya, a child when the colonies are founded but a teenager for most of the book. She's on the Ceti colony. Ceti runs into trouble very quickly when it turns out that the native vegetation they thought was edible isn't, and the plants and animals they brought with them do poorly. The kangaroo-esque creatures thought to be just animals may actually be intelligent and telepathic, but it's not clear so some colonists hunt them for food. Ceti is trapped between a rock and a hard place: the Arcadia colonists invite/pressure them to join up but Arcadia is basically Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale and is at constant war with the "yetis," women and older teenage girls on Ceti are socially pressured to get pregnant to maintain the colony, and their food supply is incredibly precarious.
This novel has some logic problems as well as odd pacing and is also a bit preachy, but I enjoyed it because it has such vivid, immersive worldbuilding. The Ceti colony feels like a real place and I enjoyed spending time in it, especially as there's not all that much "let's hang out on another planet" science fiction in book form right now, which is my favorite type of science fiction. (Or is there, and I'm just missing it? Feel free to rec me recent SF that's largely about a planet that's cool!)
Mary Caraker is very good at creating real-feeling alien worlds, which is why I went to quite a bit of trouble to locate a copy of this book.
( Read more... )
[image error]
comments
The larger group settles on Arcadia, the larger planet which has a wide range of vegetation and animal life, including intelligent inhabitants (disparagingly called "yetis") at about a Stone Age level of technology; this group is highly patriarchal and authoritarian, and intends to subdue the inhabitants, by means of genocide if necessary. The smaller group settles on Ceti, which is in synchronous rotation and so has half the planet in permanent daylight and desert, and half in frozen night. It has very little vegetation and animal life, and apparently no intelligent life. This group of colonists is less patriarchal and authoritarian though less doesn't mean not at all.
The protagonist is Maya, a child when the colonies are founded but a teenager for most of the book. She's on the Ceti colony. Ceti runs into trouble very quickly when it turns out that the native vegetation they thought was edible isn't, and the plants and animals they brought with them do poorly. The kangaroo-esque creatures thought to be just animals may actually be intelligent and telepathic, but it's not clear so some colonists hunt them for food. Ceti is trapped between a rock and a hard place: the Arcadia colonists invite/pressure them to join up but Arcadia is basically Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale and is at constant war with the "yetis," women and older teenage girls on Ceti are socially pressured to get pregnant to maintain the colony, and their food supply is incredibly precarious.
This novel has some logic problems as well as odd pacing and is also a bit preachy, but I enjoyed it because it has such vivid, immersive worldbuilding. The Ceti colony feels like a real place and I enjoyed spending time in it, especially as there's not all that much "let's hang out on another planet" science fiction in book form right now, which is my favorite type of science fiction. (Or is there, and I'm just missing it? Feel free to rec me recent SF that's largely about a planet that's cool!)
Mary Caraker is very good at creating real-feeling alien worlds, which is why I went to quite a bit of trouble to locate a copy of this book.
( Read more... )
[image error]
comments
May 30, 2023
Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, by Peter Attia
A New York Times nonfiction bestseller, which is not necessarily an indicator of quality.
I read this book because while looking up something else entirely, I came across a review mentioning that it concludes with a very raw and honest account of the author's mental health issues. I'm not much interested in longevity, but I'm very interested in raw and honest accounts of mental health issues. I checked out a copy intending to only read the last chapter, but after I read that (which is as described) I got curious, went back to the beginning, and read the whole thing.
Attia is a doctor with a podcast. Outlive has some interesting/useful material, but also a distinct whiff of wealthy techbro who hangs out and creates startups with other wealthy techbros. Attia mentions a friend of his in a way that made me feel certain that the friend was a deeply obnoxious wealthy techbro, so I looked up the friend and discovered that he wrote this book:
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Thousands of tests later, this book contains the answers for both men and women. It’s the wisdom Tim used to gain 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, without steroids, and in four hours of total gym time.
• How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested
• How to produce 15-minute female orgasms
• How to triple testosterone and double sperm count
How much would you guys pay me to read and review the "turn into a testosterone-fueled orgasmatron muscleman in 4 hours" book?)
Here is a short summary of Outlive: Most doctors do Medicine 2.0, which is focused on treatment. Attia advocates Medicine 3.0, which is focused on prevention. He's interested in staying healthy and happy into old age, not in old age regardless of health and happiness. If you can avoid infectious diseases and violence/accidents, most morbidity and mortality nowadays is caused by four categories of diseases: cancer, heart disease/stroke, neurodegenerative disease (like dementia), and Type 2 diabetes/metabolic issues. Mortality and morbidity from those is often preventable or delayable, though more for heart disease and diabetes than the other two.
The first part of the book is a deep dive into those four conditions and their causes. While I and probably you know the general overview, he also drops a bunch of little bits of information that I was not already aware of, and when I looked up the new bits, I found that while he has his opinions, he was not just making them up. (Just making up stuff is a significant problem in health literature.) He's not a weight loss evangelist, and he admits that there's a lot of genetic and random/unknown factors involved in these diseases, so the book came across as a bit less victim-blaming than these sorts of books usually do.
The second part of the book is his advice on how to prevent/delay those diseases, and how to live to an old age while staying healthy. Imagine whacking a pinata and having advice spray out in a mix of good, possibly good, a good idea in theory but impossible unless you are his personal patient and very wealthy and have unlimited time on your hands and no disabilities or chronic illnesses, probably batshit, and so vague as to be completely useless. So that was a wild ride.
His section on diet has some good points (different people have different dietary needs) but others that are dubious (we should cut calories but also eat WAY more protein) and his method for figuring out what your personal dietary needs are is impossible for most people (experiment with your diet and use extensive blood tests, continuous glucose monitoring, DEXA scans, and other fancy stuff to see how you react). I appreciated that he was honest about how little we really know about the relationship of diet to health, and how complex it is. He says he used to be really sold on various types of fasting but has now decided that it's mostly not worth it as you lose too much muscle mass. He's agnostic on keto.
What he's most sold on is exercise. I liked this aspect of the book, as I enjoy exercise so it was pleasing to have him tell me that regardless of my crummy genes and fondness for fresh-baked bread, I might live to a very healthy old age by doing activities I enjoy anyway. He had some specific tips on types of exercise that I will probably try out at some point. (TOE YOGA.) Finally, he suggested figuring out what physical activities you want to be able to do when you're in your 80s, and focus on maintaining the skills and strength you need for those specifically. This seems very reasonable.
However, he could not resist a long foray into "a good idea in theory but impossible for most people," which was that since aging causes a loss of physical capacity in fairly predictable ways, if you want to be strong in old age, you need to get exceptionally strong now. If you want to lift 40lbs when you're eighty and you statistically lose 50% of lifting capacity by then, you can't just work on lifting 40 lbs now, you need to work up to lifting 80lbs now.
He goes on to advocate preventing age-related decline by aiming to hit the top 10% of the capability of people 20 years younger than you, so as you age you'll be declining from a much higher point. This is a brilliant idea if you're independently wealthy, have lots of time on your hands, and also have outstanding athletic potential. Otherwise, not very practical. To say the least.
He really underestimates the issue of unpredictable injuries or illnesses. He says you can avoid training injuries by learning "stability," which is tautologically defined as the ability to exercise without injuring yourself. This is good in theory but even if you could get the training he suggests which is only via a specific and no doubt wildly expensive personal trainer, no type or amount of training is a certain preventative for injuries. To say the least. And that's not even getting into the very common wild card factor of illnesses that can affect your physical fitness.
The last chapter was about how he realized that he was a ragey asshole, was forced to address his childhood trauma, and how he uses DBT to manage his issues. It was indeed raw and honest though WOW do I feel sorry for his wife. He makes very good points on how it's pointless to be focus on physical health if you're ignoring your horrible mental health. But it also had the "impossible for most people" issue in that he did several stints of month-long voluntary inpatient treatment at a fancy private facility and has three private therapists who are all famous in their own right.
Reading the entire book, you get a real sense of him as a person: obsessive, intense, perfectionist, prone to flinging himself into a concept like keto or fasting and then abandoning it with equal fervor. DBT does seem like a good choice for him.
He's probably a good doctor for his patients, because the only people who can afford his $90,000/year fees and would find them worthwhile are the sort of people who can and would follow his advice. But the guy has absolutely no idea what it's like to not have unlimited money, time, and energy to devote to your health. Some of what he advises would be a more practical in countries other than America, but a lot of it is wildly impractical anywhere. Most people are not capable of reaching the top 10% of athleticism of people 20 years younger than them!
I'm fascinated that this is such a big bestseller, because there's such a tiny fraction of the population that could follow his regime. As far as I can tell, his ideal audience is very rich, very athletic techbros who are obsessively dedicated to hacking their health. It's a real population which includes the author, but in a global sense a very small one.
My favorite part of the book is when he tells the story of rapamycin, which I hadn't heard of before and it's WILD. It's used for various purposes, most commonly to prevent organ rejection, but may increase longevity. Attia confesses that he prescribes it off-label to himself and a few of his patients for that purpose. Good luck, medbro! Hope it doesn't give you any of the very long and scary list of side effects noted in its black box warning!
ETA: Forgot to mention that doing 30 minutes of a dry sauna four days a week reduces mortality by 65%. Being immortal is a full-time job.
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I read this book because while looking up something else entirely, I came across a review mentioning that it concludes with a very raw and honest account of the author's mental health issues. I'm not much interested in longevity, but I'm very interested in raw and honest accounts of mental health issues. I checked out a copy intending to only read the last chapter, but after I read that (which is as described) I got curious, went back to the beginning, and read the whole thing.
Attia is a doctor with a podcast. Outlive has some interesting/useful material, but also a distinct whiff of wealthy techbro who hangs out and creates startups with other wealthy techbros. Attia mentions a friend of his in a way that made me feel certain that the friend was a deeply obnoxious wealthy techbro, so I looked up the friend and discovered that he wrote this book:
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Thousands of tests later, this book contains the answers for both men and women. It’s the wisdom Tim used to gain 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, without steroids, and in four hours of total gym time.
• How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested
• How to produce 15-minute female orgasms
• How to triple testosterone and double sperm count
How much would you guys pay me to read and review the "turn into a testosterone-fueled orgasmatron muscleman in 4 hours" book?)
Here is a short summary of Outlive: Most doctors do Medicine 2.0, which is focused on treatment. Attia advocates Medicine 3.0, which is focused on prevention. He's interested in staying healthy and happy into old age, not in old age regardless of health and happiness. If you can avoid infectious diseases and violence/accidents, most morbidity and mortality nowadays is caused by four categories of diseases: cancer, heart disease/stroke, neurodegenerative disease (like dementia), and Type 2 diabetes/metabolic issues. Mortality and morbidity from those is often preventable or delayable, though more for heart disease and diabetes than the other two.
The first part of the book is a deep dive into those four conditions and their causes. While I and probably you know the general overview, he also drops a bunch of little bits of information that I was not already aware of, and when I looked up the new bits, I found that while he has his opinions, he was not just making them up. (Just making up stuff is a significant problem in health literature.) He's not a weight loss evangelist, and he admits that there's a lot of genetic and random/unknown factors involved in these diseases, so the book came across as a bit less victim-blaming than these sorts of books usually do.
The second part of the book is his advice on how to prevent/delay those diseases, and how to live to an old age while staying healthy. Imagine whacking a pinata and having advice spray out in a mix of good, possibly good, a good idea in theory but impossible unless you are his personal patient and very wealthy and have unlimited time on your hands and no disabilities or chronic illnesses, probably batshit, and so vague as to be completely useless. So that was a wild ride.
His section on diet has some good points (different people have different dietary needs) but others that are dubious (we should cut calories but also eat WAY more protein) and his method for figuring out what your personal dietary needs are is impossible for most people (experiment with your diet and use extensive blood tests, continuous glucose monitoring, DEXA scans, and other fancy stuff to see how you react). I appreciated that he was honest about how little we really know about the relationship of diet to health, and how complex it is. He says he used to be really sold on various types of fasting but has now decided that it's mostly not worth it as you lose too much muscle mass. He's agnostic on keto.
What he's most sold on is exercise. I liked this aspect of the book, as I enjoy exercise so it was pleasing to have him tell me that regardless of my crummy genes and fondness for fresh-baked bread, I might live to a very healthy old age by doing activities I enjoy anyway. He had some specific tips on types of exercise that I will probably try out at some point. (TOE YOGA.) Finally, he suggested figuring out what physical activities you want to be able to do when you're in your 80s, and focus on maintaining the skills and strength you need for those specifically. This seems very reasonable.
However, he could not resist a long foray into "a good idea in theory but impossible for most people," which was that since aging causes a loss of physical capacity in fairly predictable ways, if you want to be strong in old age, you need to get exceptionally strong now. If you want to lift 40lbs when you're eighty and you statistically lose 50% of lifting capacity by then, you can't just work on lifting 40 lbs now, you need to work up to lifting 80lbs now.
He goes on to advocate preventing age-related decline by aiming to hit the top 10% of the capability of people 20 years younger than you, so as you age you'll be declining from a much higher point. This is a brilliant idea if you're independently wealthy, have lots of time on your hands, and also have outstanding athletic potential. Otherwise, not very practical. To say the least.
He really underestimates the issue of unpredictable injuries or illnesses. He says you can avoid training injuries by learning "stability," which is tautologically defined as the ability to exercise without injuring yourself. This is good in theory but even if you could get the training he suggests which is only via a specific and no doubt wildly expensive personal trainer, no type or amount of training is a certain preventative for injuries. To say the least. And that's not even getting into the very common wild card factor of illnesses that can affect your physical fitness.
The last chapter was about how he realized that he was a ragey asshole, was forced to address his childhood trauma, and how he uses DBT to manage his issues. It was indeed raw and honest though WOW do I feel sorry for his wife. He makes very good points on how it's pointless to be focus on physical health if you're ignoring your horrible mental health. But it also had the "impossible for most people" issue in that he did several stints of month-long voluntary inpatient treatment at a fancy private facility and has three private therapists who are all famous in their own right.
Reading the entire book, you get a real sense of him as a person: obsessive, intense, perfectionist, prone to flinging himself into a concept like keto or fasting and then abandoning it with equal fervor. DBT does seem like a good choice for him.
He's probably a good doctor for his patients, because the only people who can afford his $90,000/year fees and would find them worthwhile are the sort of people who can and would follow his advice. But the guy has absolutely no idea what it's like to not have unlimited money, time, and energy to devote to your health. Some of what he advises would be a more practical in countries other than America, but a lot of it is wildly impractical anywhere. Most people are not capable of reaching the top 10% of athleticism of people 20 years younger than them!
I'm fascinated that this is such a big bestseller, because there's such a tiny fraction of the population that could follow his regime. As far as I can tell, his ideal audience is very rich, very athletic techbros who are obsessively dedicated to hacking their health. It's a real population which includes the author, but in a global sense a very small one.
My favorite part of the book is when he tells the story of rapamycin, which I hadn't heard of before and it's WILD. It's used for various purposes, most commonly to prevent organ rejection, but may increase longevity. Attia confesses that he prescribes it off-label to himself and a few of his patients for that purpose. Good luck, medbro! Hope it doesn't give you any of the very long and scary list of side effects noted in its black box warning!
ETA: Forgot to mention that doing 30 minutes of a dry sauna four days a week reduces mortality by 65%. Being immortal is a full-time job.
[image error] [image error]
comments
May 26, 2023
Race the Sands, by Sarah Beth Durst
This book has a charmingly bizarre premise. In a fantasy land, reincarnation is a fact of life, and extremely bad people are reborn as monsters called kehoks. So naturally, there is kehok racing! It's exactly like horse racing, down to betting and racing commissions, except that the animals racing are bad people reincarnated as monsters and the riders have to use willpower to psychically control them or the kehoks will kill them. (A common form of cheating is the trainer sneaking close enough to help psychically control the kehoks.) The kehok who wins the equivalent of the Grand National gets a magic token that enables it to be reincarnated as a human again; otherwise it will permanently reincarnate as a kehok.
Tamra is a former kehok rider who was forced to retire due to a disastrous race that disabled and disgraced her. She's now a small-time trainer in danger of losing her young daughter. This is because augurs, who can read auras and tell people what they'll be reincarnated as or who an animal used to be in its last life, are wealthy and respected, run augur training schools, and can grab any child whose aura is pure of heart, mandate them into augur school, force the parent to pay its exorbitant fees, and take away the child permanently if they can't afford them. Tamra's daughter was chosen by the augurs, so she has to find a winning kehok or else.
Meanwhile, the former emperor died unexpectedly, but his brother who is next in line can't ascend the throne until the augers find the former emperor's current reincarnation (assumed to be any animal but a kehok) and this is causing political problems.
Tamra finds a very unusual kehok who doesn't seem as vicious as most kehoks, and also an unusual, first-time rider who fled augur training and is being pursued by her parents who want to force her into an arranged marriage. Kehok Grand National, here we come!
This book has a lot going on (and I didn't even mention some plotlines); impressively, it is one book rather than a trilogy. The premise is extremely fun and original, though the overall shape of the story is predictable--you can probably figure out big chunks of it just from my summary of the set-up. It's written in a breezy contemporary style, with all the characters talking basically like modern Americans. It's clearly a deliberate choice and is sometimes funny, but I'd have preferred it to be either non-contemporary or else more deliberately anachronistic.
I liked it but didn't love it. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what I was missing, because it has a lot very appealing elements, but I think it was just a little too sketchy for me. The characters sound up my alley from descriptions, and they sort of were, but they needed to have hobbies or something to make them come to life. The reincarnation aspect was fascinating, but also a little sketchy.
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Tamra is a former kehok rider who was forced to retire due to a disastrous race that disabled and disgraced her. She's now a small-time trainer in danger of losing her young daughter. This is because augurs, who can read auras and tell people what they'll be reincarnated as or who an animal used to be in its last life, are wealthy and respected, run augur training schools, and can grab any child whose aura is pure of heart, mandate them into augur school, force the parent to pay its exorbitant fees, and take away the child permanently if they can't afford them. Tamra's daughter was chosen by the augurs, so she has to find a winning kehok or else.
Meanwhile, the former emperor died unexpectedly, but his brother who is next in line can't ascend the throne until the augers find the former emperor's current reincarnation (assumed to be any animal but a kehok) and this is causing political problems.
Tamra finds a very unusual kehok who doesn't seem as vicious as most kehoks, and also an unusual, first-time rider who fled augur training and is being pursued by her parents who want to force her into an arranged marriage. Kehok Grand National, here we come!
This book has a lot going on (and I didn't even mention some plotlines); impressively, it is one book rather than a trilogy. The premise is extremely fun and original, though the overall shape of the story is predictable--you can probably figure out big chunks of it just from my summary of the set-up. It's written in a breezy contemporary style, with all the characters talking basically like modern Americans. It's clearly a deliberate choice and is sometimes funny, but I'd have preferred it to be either non-contemporary or else more deliberately anachronistic.
I liked it but didn't love it. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what I was missing, because it has a lot very appealing elements, but I think it was just a little too sketchy for me. The characters sound up my alley from descriptions, and they sort of were, but they needed to have hobbies or something to make them come to life. The reincarnation aspect was fascinating, but also a little sketchy.
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comments
May 13, 2023
Flash Fire, by Caroline Cooney
The fire had miles of uninhabited acres to play with, where it could leap across bare spots and jump feet first into the fuel. It didn't need roads. It could make its own highway.
A disaster novel with a large cast in a smallish space over a very short span of time - 3:15 to 4:55 - as a brush fire engulfs a Los Angeles neighborhood on a weekday, when most of the adults are away.
Flash Fire functions as a mini-epic - Arthur Hailey in 169 pages. Most of the characters are children or teenagers plus a firefighter in his early 20s who used to live in the area, plus brief appearances by their parents, miscellaneous fire victims and firefighters, a disgruntled gate guard, and a family of tourists turned opportunistic looters.
The tight time-frame emphasizes how terrifyingly fast a fire spreads, and sections showing its progress make it feel like a character in its own right. So does the neighborhood: Pinch Canyon, a small and wealthy area in a firetrap canyon with houses clinging precariously to the sides. The main focus is on three houses that share a driveway and the people in them.
The Press House contains a teenage brother and sister plus seven rescue kittens. Danna, the younger sister, longs for excitement and makes fire contingency plans to rescue the kittens and a neighbor's two horses. This isn't random, as fires are currently engulfing other parts of LA.
Hall, the older brother, secretly wants to work with children with disabilities; this is a secret because his wealthy entertainment industry parents want their kids to be financially successful. Hall is one of exactly two people in the neighborhood who actually cares about Geoffrey, the adopted child next door.
Geoffrey lives in the Aszling House. He's a Romanian orphan with an attachment disorder whom his asshole parents adopted, regretted adopting when he wasn't sufficiently rewarding, and has dumped on poorly-paid babysitters ever since. He rarely speaks. The other current inhabitants of the house are Chiffon (not her real name), the teenage nanny who couldn't care less about Geoffrey, and Elony, the cleaner, a 17-year-old refugee who escaped horrors and is desperately trying to learn to speak and read English with no help or resources whatsoever.
The Severyn House contains Beau, a practically perfect teenage boy; Elisabeth, his eight-year-old sister who can't do anything right as far as her parents are concerned; and a box of ashes on the mantelpiece. The ashes are all that's left of their much-older half-brother Michael, who was disowned by their father for being gay and died of AIDS. They never met him, but their father ended up with his ashes, which he put in the living room and then never discussed. Beau has gotten a little obsessed with Michael, the brother he never knew. Would his father abandon him too if he stepped out of line? Does anyone but Beau care about Michael now?
This juicy cast of characters gets run through the wringer when the fire leaps to the canyon. Relationships are forged and broken, people rise to the occasion or very much don't, and not all of them survive. The looters are weird caricatures but the main cast is sharply sketched and believable. Hall loves Geoffrey when no one else does, but he barely registers that Elony exists; Beau cares about Elisabeth when no one else does, but he expresses it by trying to fix her so their parents will like it more, so she perceives him as yet another person constantly trying to mold her into someone she's not. I particularly liked Elony, who's coming from an entirely different world than the rest of them and is no stranger to death, danger, and having her life turned upside down in an instant.
While the kids are generally sympathetic, the view of the adults is bleak. Two out of three of the sets of parents are privileged, blinkered, and uncaring; one of them gets shaken out of their narcissistic pattern but there's no telling how long that will last. The one set of loving parents is so engrossed in work that they rather hilariously don't even realize their kids are in danger until it's all over.
( Read more... )
Cooney's brief was probably to be educational about wildfires, how they're fought, and how to survive them, which she absolutely is, and to tell an exciting story, which she absolutely does. I could not put this book down. It's not as good as Flight #116 is Down! but it's much better than Emergency Room. Once again: much better than it needed to be.
Content notes: Outdated information on autism/attachment disorders. Depictions of ableism and racism. Death by fire. Animals and children in danger. (The kittens survive and the horses are implied to survive.)
Only $1.99 on Kindle, and well worth it.
[image error] [image error]
comments
A disaster novel with a large cast in a smallish space over a very short span of time - 3:15 to 4:55 - as a brush fire engulfs a Los Angeles neighborhood on a weekday, when most of the adults are away.
Flash Fire functions as a mini-epic - Arthur Hailey in 169 pages. Most of the characters are children or teenagers plus a firefighter in his early 20s who used to live in the area, plus brief appearances by their parents, miscellaneous fire victims and firefighters, a disgruntled gate guard, and a family of tourists turned opportunistic looters.
The tight time-frame emphasizes how terrifyingly fast a fire spreads, and sections showing its progress make it feel like a character in its own right. So does the neighborhood: Pinch Canyon, a small and wealthy area in a firetrap canyon with houses clinging precariously to the sides. The main focus is on three houses that share a driveway and the people in them.
The Press House contains a teenage brother and sister plus seven rescue kittens. Danna, the younger sister, longs for excitement and makes fire contingency plans to rescue the kittens and a neighbor's two horses. This isn't random, as fires are currently engulfing other parts of LA.
Hall, the older brother, secretly wants to work with children with disabilities; this is a secret because his wealthy entertainment industry parents want their kids to be financially successful. Hall is one of exactly two people in the neighborhood who actually cares about Geoffrey, the adopted child next door.
Geoffrey lives in the Aszling House. He's a Romanian orphan with an attachment disorder whom his asshole parents adopted, regretted adopting when he wasn't sufficiently rewarding, and has dumped on poorly-paid babysitters ever since. He rarely speaks. The other current inhabitants of the house are Chiffon (not her real name), the teenage nanny who couldn't care less about Geoffrey, and Elony, the cleaner, a 17-year-old refugee who escaped horrors and is desperately trying to learn to speak and read English with no help or resources whatsoever.
The Severyn House contains Beau, a practically perfect teenage boy; Elisabeth, his eight-year-old sister who can't do anything right as far as her parents are concerned; and a box of ashes on the mantelpiece. The ashes are all that's left of their much-older half-brother Michael, who was disowned by their father for being gay and died of AIDS. They never met him, but their father ended up with his ashes, which he put in the living room and then never discussed. Beau has gotten a little obsessed with Michael, the brother he never knew. Would his father abandon him too if he stepped out of line? Does anyone but Beau care about Michael now?
This juicy cast of characters gets run through the wringer when the fire leaps to the canyon. Relationships are forged and broken, people rise to the occasion or very much don't, and not all of them survive. The looters are weird caricatures but the main cast is sharply sketched and believable. Hall loves Geoffrey when no one else does, but he barely registers that Elony exists; Beau cares about Elisabeth when no one else does, but he expresses it by trying to fix her so their parents will like it more, so she perceives him as yet another person constantly trying to mold her into someone she's not. I particularly liked Elony, who's coming from an entirely different world than the rest of them and is no stranger to death, danger, and having her life turned upside down in an instant.
While the kids are generally sympathetic, the view of the adults is bleak. Two out of three of the sets of parents are privileged, blinkered, and uncaring; one of them gets shaken out of their narcissistic pattern but there's no telling how long that will last. The one set of loving parents is so engrossed in work that they rather hilariously don't even realize their kids are in danger until it's all over.
( Read more... )
Cooney's brief was probably to be educational about wildfires, how they're fought, and how to survive them, which she absolutely is, and to tell an exciting story, which she absolutely does. I could not put this book down. It's not as good as Flight #116 is Down! but it's much better than Emergency Room. Once again: much better than it needed to be.
Content notes: Outdated information on autism/attachment disorders. Depictions of ableism and racism. Death by fire. Animals and children in danger. (The kittens survive and the horses are implied to survive.)
Only $1.99 on Kindle, and well worth it.
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![[image error]](https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/file/188200.jpg){kind=link}