hot chocolate on thursday - michiko aoyama (2026)

delightfully gentle sweetly unexpected and wound through with rainbow skeins of connectivity that surprise you to the last.

michiko aoyama is getting better and better at this.

and after you finish the book you find yourself thinking thru the interconnections and enjoying them again, which is the mark of a really good story.

managing expectations 2

J2 to A: what will you do in singapore?

A: eat gorgonzola! (with interpretation from J2)

without interpretation, she could be saying, take a bus!

she's home!

the geriatric volvo, i mean. from the gearbox overhaul.

HOM and i survive a sweltering week on public transport by limiting our excursions. we welcome back our independence with much heartfelt relief and many overdue errands. 

time was when we zipped around town on buses without missing a beat. 

managing expectations

A and E visit us soon.

J2 asks A: where are you going?

A: singapore!

J2: what will you do there?

A: take a bus!

J2: and what else?

A: take a bus!

really, if that is all she wants to do, we can stop agonizing over when the volvo is coming home, i tell HOM.

sunday

time was when the weekly activities reached gasp-worthy levels over the weekend and we collapsed into bed on sunday nights in mindless relief tinged with a little gnawing fear of some nameless unfinished business.

HOM and i reflect today that we are grateful for almost complete shutdown once church is done. blinds drawn a/c on and bed covers down. interrupted only by the need to pee and poop E the dog.

grateful.

the convenience store woman - sayaka murata (2016)

highly rated and unfinishable. perhaps because i come to this right after the happy healing hippo of hinode park and find myself slowly being sucked into the stoically impassive thoughts of a neurodivergent woman trying to mask on a daily basis.

i abandon this just as it appears the tension is going to build up some more. because one should not read in order to get exhausted.

the blurb says haunting, dark, and often hilarious. bah.

 

in the shadow of agatha christie

omnibus of crime fiction by female writers from 1850 to 1917. when one is reduced to this you can tell one is a little bit stir crazy and desperate. 

the short stories themselves are surprisingly palatable although they lack the plot lines and build-up of bodies and clues i am used to after half a life-time's diet of actual agatha christie garnished with j.d. robb. the convoluted sentences are correctly fashionable unexpectedly comprehensible and a welcome change from the short fragments favored by ai-generated prose. the editing's a bit shoddy though which is a pity.

excuse me while i return to actual agatha christie.