spankulert

Reading: I eked it out for fully half of the year, but a couple nights ago I finished reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, which was wonderful.

Watching: scruloose and I watched the first episode of Widow's Bay, and I sure hope I'm not supposed to find anyone likeable so far. ("Likeable characters" is not a requirement for me to enjoy a show, but it sure does help.) We know the new season of Silo has started up, so hopefully we'll get to the season premiere sometime this coming week.

Weathering: The heat wave seems to have broken here. It's still hot in the forecast, but much more reasonably so.

Eating: It was a couple weeks ago now, but we ordered from bb.q Chicken again with Kas and I need to report that the "Cheesling" chicken (which the website just describes as "Dusted in a rich medley of sweet cheeses", but I think the order link mentioned mascarpone and cheddar) and it was so good.

More recently, we tried haskap berries for the first time! This particular pint of them, at least, were a lot like significantly-tart blueberries; I don't feel a burning need to have them again when I could just get blueberries, but I enjoyed them.

Yesterday we bought a pint of Shaker Lemon ice cream made by a local creamery and ate it with the strawberries we brought home. (I had to look up what "Shaker Lemon" actually means, and the first hits I saw were all about pie, but I assume it's the same principle of "made with entire lemons, other than the seeds".) (Also, I know we had this ice cream once before, in a summer when we got both it and the lemon ice cream on offer from another local creamery, but all I could remember was that the two were very different, and this one was available, so we clearly had to retry it For Science.)

Reading: I'm currently between novels, but since my last reading post I've finished The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (which I enjoyed quite a bit, and didn't realize was Natasha Pulley's debut novel until I was at the end) and both Carl's Doomsday Scenario and The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook (Matt Dinniman), the latter of which I finished last night.

I decided to read some more of Dungeon Crawler Carl after several people mentioned they liked it better after the first installment, and after I said that to Kas and he then kept reading and said that was his experience too. (I think he's on the second-more-recent book now.) So I put a hold on the second book, which finally came in a week or a week and a half ago, and when I finished reading that, the third book was immediately available, so I kept going. Now, naturally, there's something like a theoretical twelve-week wait (IIRC) for the fourth book, while the fifth is available right now. What a strange pattern.

Anyway, I did like these two books a lot more than the first one and (as you can guess from the above) I figure I'll keep going. I don't remember being as appalled about the lack of copyediting on the first book as on the next two, but maybe I was distracted by the level of gore? (I've taken a quick look around online for info about the series' publication history, and if Dinniman has retained the ebook rights [?], I guess the ebooks aren't/haven't been subject to the same editing pass that it sounds like the newer print edition has had? Or are there different English ebook editions as well?) ( a gross example )

Meanwhile, in "extremely random cookbook reading", last night I started reading For the Love of Kewpie (The Kewpie Mayo Cookbook): A Cookbook and Celebration.

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Watching: scruloose and I finished Justice in the Dark! I don't remember enough about the actual plot (other than the relationship aspect, from which the romantic/sexual aspect was ostensibly excised) from back when I read the novel to comment on it as an adaptation on that level. The main cast is fantastic. I think this is the first drama I've seen after reading the source material, and I'm really impressed by that element. (And of course, unsurprisingly, once again sad about Guardian's lack of budget.)

I think this season of Witch Hat Atelier has finished? We watched an episode last night and I think have two remaining, if so. I did see that season 2 has been announced. (Anyone know offhand how much of the manga season 1 covers?)