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.

waiting for august to end

muggy swelteringness

and 

pervasive stickiness

'nuff said.

new favorite hangout

... the car mechanic's!

as of last count we must qualify for preferred customer status of the revolving door variety. the old volvo has a new engine mount new radiator belt new fan yada yada and will soon have an overhauled gear box. 

we've come a long way, this car and us. and it is practically a new car again too.

national bird

spotted at alexandra village. one of an entire tribe.

us chinese souls look at the free ranging birds and wonder why we cannot eat some of them.

the rainfall market - you yeong-gwang (2024)

dystopian premise rendered in child-friendly prose and just vaguely reminiscent of enid blyton's magic faraway tree which nevertheless succeeds in warming the cockles of the reader's heart. i suspect it is the kitten motif.

tech help

today HOM and i are haunted by an old chinese melody that we both recognize and that we both cannot identify and that shazam gives up at as well. but the google app allows me to hum the melody and ta-dah! the song is 母亲你在何方. how we ever did things before the modern age i do not know.