Xi'an's Og

Read R.F. Kuang’s Babel. (Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution.) With a nice (magical) premise, some forays into linguistics, but fairly lazy in sticking so much to actual 19th Century Victorian history despite the fantasy openings of this alternate history, and in over-(over-)indulging (as in many college-life novels) into the perks of college life at the University of Oxford, plus glaring coherence gaps in the story and in the character construction, along with a simplistic writing style. The last part is particularly painful (in its suspension of belief) and the “necessity of violence” quite readily embraced by the main characters, with poor ethical arguments. Which makes the 2022 Blackwell’s Book of the Year for Fiction Award and 2023 Nebula Award for Best Book of the Year somewhat of a surprise. (While her exclusion from the 2023 Hugo Award list as ineligible was both a scandal and an argument for not holding book awards in dictatures.)

Made Sonoran tortillas (half-wheat & half-rye) to handle a large batch of home made pulled pork, which lasted for an entire week meal-wise! Justifying the 2½ hours and 4 steps they require .

Watched The Gentlemen Netflix series, a British comedy which I found terribly cliché and prejudiced against disadvantaged social groups, e.g., Irish travellers or Mancunian working class gangsters, despite its advertised pretence at aiming primarily at the British aristocracy, “the original gangsters [with] William the Conqueror worse than Al Capone“. And increasingly boring since realism gets out of the window from the very beginning. Loads of potential references to spot though, like a Ian Rankin’s gangster citing the Bible or (very obviously) Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s lover.