Sherlock Holmes: The Case Of The Stolen Doctor by Flawedamythyst
Nov. 9th, 2025 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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fancakeFandom: Sherlock Holmes (books)
Pairings/Characters: Holmes/Watson
Rating: T
Length: 47,061 words
Creator Links: Flawedamythyst
Theme: Mystery & Suspense, casefic
Summary: Moriarty kidnaps Watson.
Reccer's Notes: Watson is kidnapped by Moriarty. The story cycles between two POVs, Watson's and Holmes'. We follow Holmes as he does everything he can to find Watson, and Watson as he tries his best to survive as a prisoner. I will say Moriarty was actually menacing in this story, not watered down like some portrayals, and there is a lot suspense about if Holmes will be able to rescue Watson in time before something terrible occurs.
Fanwork Links: AO3
Pairings/Characters: Holmes/Watson
Rating: T
Length: 47,061 words
Creator Links: Flawedamythyst
Theme: Mystery & Suspense, casefic
Summary: Moriarty kidnaps Watson.
Reccer's Notes: Watson is kidnapped by Moriarty. The story cycles between two POVs, Watson's and Holmes'. We follow Holmes as he does everything he can to find Watson, and Watson as he tries his best to survive as a prisoner. I will say Moriarty was actually menacing in this story, not watered down like some portrayals, and there is a lot suspense about if Holmes will be able to rescue Watson in time before something terrible occurs.
Fanwork Links: AO3
SGA: In Heaven and Earth by Sholio
Nov. 10th, 2025 12:02 ammific posting in fancakeFandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Rating: G
Length: 1800
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: Sholio on AO3, Sholio's old SGA website
Themes: Mystery and suspense, Genfic, Ghosts
Summary: It gets bloody creepy here at night.
Reccer's Notes: This is an interesting story about Atlantis remembering her dead, and indeed those still living, in a somewhat troubling way. At first it's unclear how it's happening, but gradually John figures out it's just the city, haunted, and haunting them. Nicely creepy.
Fanwork Links: In Heaven and Earth
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Rating: G
Length: 1800
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: Sholio on AO3, Sholio's old SGA website
Themes: Mystery and suspense, Genfic, Ghosts
Summary: It gets bloody creepy here at night.
Reccer's Notes: This is an interesting story about Atlantis remembering her dead, and indeed those still living, in a somewhat troubling way. At first it's unclear how it's happening, but gradually John figures out it's just the city, haunted, and haunting them. Nicely creepy.
Fanwork Links: In Heaven and Earth
Culinary
Nov. 9th, 2025 08:32 pmoursinThis week's bread: Dove's Farm Organic Seedhouse Bread flour, nice.
Saturday breakfast rolls: brown toasted pinenut with Marriage's Light Spelt - perhaps was a bit too sparing with the pinenuts after the excess of last time?
Today's lunch: pheasant breasts flattened a little and rubbed with coriander seeds and juniper berries crushed with salt and 5-pepper blend, panfried in butter and deglazed with madeira, perhaps slightly overdone; served with kasha, garlic-roasted purple sprouting tenderstem broccoli and 'baby' (adolescent) leeks halved and healthy grilled and dressed with a grain mustard vinaigrette.
Strange Houses, by Uketsu
Nov. 9th, 2025 10:25 amrachelmanija
This is such a fun, unique book. The opening grabs you immediately: Uketsu shows an architect friend the floor plan of a house that his friends are considering buying. The architect spots a number of odd elements that aren't just bad planning, but suggest a very carefully planned and bizarre MURDER HOUSE!
The floor plan of that house and two more come into play repeatedly as Uketsu and his friend investigate, unraveling a truly weird and sometimes spooky mystery via a series of interviews. This book breaks all sorts of rules - it's entirely told rather than shown, a lot of it is exposition, the author appears as a character, and that's not even mentioning the very large role that floor plans play - and I could not put it down.
Is the solution to the mystery absolutely nuts? Sure. Is the book a whole lot of fun to read? Absolutely. Will I recommend it to my customers? You bet!
Translated from the Japanese by Jim Rion, who has a nice afterword about translating it.
Apparently Uketsu is a Japanese YouTuber who only appears wearing a mask, like Chuck Tingle if his thing was drawings and creepy mysteries rather than horror and getting pounded in the butt. I can't wait to read Uketsu's other book, Strange Pictures.
A pulp adventure
Nov. 9th, 2025 09:07 amjames_davis_nicollI'm working my way through Outgunned: Adventure. Pulp adventure. Indiana Jones stuff.
So I have an idea for an adventure, in which our brave action archaeologists try to locate and retrieve certain invaluable historical relics so they can be preserved and studied in proper museums.
Not only are the locals curiously reluctant to let the adventurers do this, even though they cannot possibly understand the artifacts on as many levels as civilized people, post-WWIII US is a dangerous place what with the unstable ruins, ancient unstable warheads, and radiation.
But if anyone can find the secret vaults containing the lost Smithsonian loot, dissuade the locals from objecting, get the goods across a hostile continent, and off to Kuching, it's the heroes.
So I have an idea for an adventure, in which our brave action archaeologists try to locate and retrieve certain invaluable historical relics so they can be preserved and studied in proper museums.
Not only are the locals curiously reluctant to let the adventurers do this, even though they cannot possibly understand the artifacts on as many levels as civilized people, post-WWIII US is a dangerous place what with the unstable ruins, ancient unstable warheads, and radiation.
But if anyone can find the secret vaults containing the lost Smithsonian loot, dissuade the locals from objecting, get the goods across a hostile continent, and off to Kuching, it's the heroes.
The Gods of Mars (Barsoom, volume 2) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Nov. 9th, 2025 08:51 amjames_davis_nicoll
John Carter of Mars returns... to the valley of no return!
The Gods of Mars (Barsoom, volume 2) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Reading/Watching
Nov. 9th, 2025 12:17 pmantisoppistI had to read 19 books to judge a translation prize and I'm not allowed to talk about those yet but I am finally released to read other things so these are them:
A Well Full of Leaves by Elizabeth Myers (Persephone). ( Read more )The author's letters to Eleanor Farjeon at the end are great. I'd have read a whole book of those.
Gulity by Definition by Susie Dent. She definitely likes words and the workplace aspect of how people work at a dictionary was really interesting in a way like Murder must Advertise though they don't seem to do very much apart from solve cryptic clues to a 10 year-old disappearance. ( Read more... )
Diplomatic Baggage by Brigid Keenan (charity shop). I thought she was one of the diplomatic wives interviewed in Daughters of Britannia so picked it up because one of my complaints about that is that I want to read longer chunks by each of the diplomatic wives through history, not what each of them thought across time about food or whatever. I also assumed from the cover (heels and miniskirt) that it was written in the 1970s but no it was 2007. I suppose that is still quite a while ago now (ouch) and it's a look back from Kazakhstan at how she ended up being a diplomatic wife and running through all the postings from the 1970s. It is funny but you can have too many funny stories about dinner parties and being a ditzy fashion journalist and not being able to communicate with local staff*. Daughters of Britannia turns out to be a better approach to the topic.
Crooked Cross by Sally Carson (Persephone). Written in 1934 about a happy German family living in Bavaria with a daughter engaged to a lovely doctor chap who happens to have a Jewish surname. Yeah. Compelling, all the more so as the author died in 1941. Like The Chalet School in Exile, a fictionalised account of what was happening on the ground written at the time. Except this one is for grown-ups.
I would like to read something more cheerful next.
Accidental cinema. Frankenstein
Youngest was going to a theatre thing which turned out to be inaccessible by public transport so I had to be transport and decided that instead of sitting in a pub or walking the rainy streets, I would see what was on at the cinema. I didn't want to watch Bruce Springsteen so Frankenstein it was. Normally I would not go near anything that could be supernatural or horror but I have read the book (a very long time ago) and had seen a review complaining it wasn't horrific enough, which made me feel I might be able to cope. Also I went to the Everyman so if it got too gory, I could concentrate on eating chips.
( Frankenstein )
I should go to the cinema more often. The problem is that our nearest one, which I want to support, only has one screen so tends to only show the big films that will bring in lots of people (although everytime we go there's only been about 6 people in it) and otherwise it's a long drive to the Odeon in a retail park by the motorway.
*I did see a review saying "why didn't she just learn Russian before she went?" which is fair comment but I'm not sure of the date when she arrived in Kazakhstan and I remember my mother trying to learn Russian from a BBC course in the 1970s but then Russia invaded Afghanistan and the course got moved later and later in the evenings and then she gave up. It's not like there was Duolingo, or even possibly the internet.
A Well Full of Leaves by Elizabeth Myers (Persephone). ( Read more )The author's letters to Eleanor Farjeon at the end are great. I'd have read a whole book of those.
Gulity by Definition by Susie Dent. She definitely likes words and the workplace aspect of how people work at a dictionary was really interesting in a way like Murder must Advertise though they don't seem to do very much apart from solve cryptic clues to a 10 year-old disappearance. ( Read more... )
Diplomatic Baggage by Brigid Keenan (charity shop). I thought she was one of the diplomatic wives interviewed in Daughters of Britannia so picked it up because one of my complaints about that is that I want to read longer chunks by each of the diplomatic wives through history, not what each of them thought across time about food or whatever. I also assumed from the cover (heels and miniskirt) that it was written in the 1970s but no it was 2007. I suppose that is still quite a while ago now (ouch) and it's a look back from Kazakhstan at how she ended up being a diplomatic wife and running through all the postings from the 1970s. It is funny but you can have too many funny stories about dinner parties and being a ditzy fashion journalist and not being able to communicate with local staff*. Daughters of Britannia turns out to be a better approach to the topic.
Crooked Cross by Sally Carson (Persephone). Written in 1934 about a happy German family living in Bavaria with a daughter engaged to a lovely doctor chap who happens to have a Jewish surname. Yeah. Compelling, all the more so as the author died in 1941. Like The Chalet School in Exile, a fictionalised account of what was happening on the ground written at the time. Except this one is for grown-ups.
I would like to read something more cheerful next.
Accidental cinema. Frankenstein
Youngest was going to a theatre thing which turned out to be inaccessible by public transport so I had to be transport and decided that instead of sitting in a pub or walking the rainy streets, I would see what was on at the cinema. I didn't want to watch Bruce Springsteen so Frankenstein it was. Normally I would not go near anything that could be supernatural or horror but I have read the book (a very long time ago) and had seen a review complaining it wasn't horrific enough, which made me feel I might be able to cope. Also I went to the Everyman so if it got too gory, I could concentrate on eating chips.
( Frankenstein )
I should go to the cinema more often. The problem is that our nearest one, which I want to support, only has one screen so tends to only show the big films that will bring in lots of people (although everytime we go there's only been about 6 people in it) and otherwise it's a long drive to the Odeon in a retail park by the motorway.
*I did see a review saying "why didn't she just learn Russian before she went?" which is fair comment but I'm not sure of the date when she arrived in Kazakhstan and I remember my mother trying to learn Russian from a BBC course in the 1970s but then Russia invaded Afghanistan and the course got moved later and later in the evenings and then she gave up. It's not like there was Duolingo, or even possibly the internet.
I've got such a wonderful pear
Nov. 9th, 2025 09:32 amnineveh_ukIt's been a fabulous season for pears. I assume that this is to do with the weather (drought-stressed trees giving their all for fruit?), but week after week even the most average bag from the supermarket has delivered fragrant, juicy pears that ripen and then do not immediately rot. I had some gorgeous Comice pears from the market last week that were enormous.
Anyway, I can't find the link that I had wanted to give and which the post title references* - all knowledge not contained on the internet shock! - so have the Eddie Izzard sketch.
*It was a music hall(?) song from the days in which there were "comediennes", sung by a woman who was probably not Joyce Grenfell, in which she declaims at length how she has such a wonderful pair of eyes. They don't make 'em like that any more...
Anyway, I can't find the link that I had wanted to give and which the post title references* - all knowledge not contained on the internet shock! - so have the Eddie Izzard sketch.
*It was a music hall(?) song from the days in which there were "comediennes", sung by a woman who was probably not Joyce Grenfell, in which she declaims at length how she has such a wonderful pair of eyes. They don't make 'em like that any more...
Orsinian Tales by Ursula K. Le Guin (1976)
Nov. 8th, 2025 06:29 pmpauraqueThis is a collection of short stories set in the fictional Central European country Orsinia. Most of the stories are new for the book, though a couple were published previously, and the invention of the country itself was one of Le Guin's first creative writing projects. It's basically an alt-history Czechia or Hungary, borrowing from real wars and political events; stories set in the Cold War era show Orsinia as a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Aside from the alternate history, the stories have no speculative elements.
I hadn't read this before because it didn't sound like it was up my alley. But it was next up in my chronological read of Le Guin's books, so I gave it a chance, and guess what? It wasn't up my alley!
I freely admit that a big part of the issue is that I'm the wrong audience for what she was trying to do here. A number of the stories are the sort of litfic where the entire plot is family/relationship drama and everyone is miserable, which is a genre that I find deadly dull even if Ursula Le Guin writes it. But I also don't think the prose is up to her usual standard. It's more reminiscent of her early work, and some of it openly is early work! But even the stories dated 1976 read like revisions of something pulled from the previous decade's drawer.
What surprised me the most is how generic I found the worldbuilding to be. It comes off like she wanted to write about Central Europe but didn't have the depth of knowledge to write about any specific country, so instead we have this Ruritanian stand-in that does not have any real weight to it or any distinctive qualities or culture. The stories I enjoyed the most were the ones set prior to the 20th century, which at least took me to an interesting time if not to an especially compelling place.
So yeah, this wasn't for me. Oh well, at least it was short.
I hadn't read this before because it didn't sound like it was up my alley. But it was next up in my chronological read of Le Guin's books, so I gave it a chance, and guess what? It wasn't up my alley!
I freely admit that a big part of the issue is that I'm the wrong audience for what she was trying to do here. A number of the stories are the sort of litfic where the entire plot is family/relationship drama and everyone is miserable, which is a genre that I find deadly dull even if Ursula Le Guin writes it. But I also don't think the prose is up to her usual standard. It's more reminiscent of her early work, and some of it openly is early work! But even the stories dated 1976 read like revisions of something pulled from the previous decade's drawer.
What surprised me the most is how generic I found the worldbuilding to be. It comes off like she wanted to write about Central Europe but didn't have the depth of knowledge to write about any specific country, so instead we have this Ruritanian stand-in that does not have any real weight to it or any distinctive qualities or culture. The stories I enjoyed the most were the ones set prior to the 20th century, which at least took me to an interesting time if not to an especially compelling place.
So yeah, this wasn't for me. Oh well, at least it was short.
Enemies With Benefits.
Nov. 8th, 2025 05:16 pmrionaleonhartFor each of my major fandoms, I do a short writeup talking about how it fits into my fandom history. A fandom qualifies as 'major' if I've written five fics for it, or ten thousand words across at least three fics.
My Yugamu/Takumi 'uh-oh, there's only one bed, better cut my own arms off' fic means that The Hundred Line now qualifies!
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy
Kodaka and Uchikoshi have worked, separately and together, on a lot of stupid videogames I've really enjoyed (Danganronpa, Zero Escape, Somnium Files, Master Detective Archives), so I've eyed The Hundred Line with interest since it was first announced. From the announcement trailer, it looked promisingly full of teenagers suffering, but I was a little uncertain about whether I'd get along with the combat; I often don't have the patience for strategy games.
A demo came out before release day, so I gave it a try. It was absolutely stupid, which was exactly what I wanted from this game, and my fears that I'd find the combat tedious turned out to be unfounded. I was sold. I picked it up as soon as it released.
I played The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy at the age of thirty-six. Or, to be more accurate, I started playing it at the age of thirty-six. Six months and one birthday later, I am still playing it. I'm at a hundred and ninety hours of gameplay, despite skipping most of the battles. This game is ludicrously huge.
The Hundred Line absolutely delivers on its twin promises of a) containing a lot of teenagers suffering and b) being extremely stupid, so I'm having a good time! In many ways, it feels like an effort to create a game and then cram all the possible fanfiction for that game into the game itself. I feel slightly redundant as a fanfiction writer, but apparently that's not going to keep me from writing.
Although I've written a handful of fics for The Hundred Line, I haven't really immersed myself in the fandom. That said, I do poke through the 'yugamu omokage' tag on Tumblr every so often, looking for fanart depicting Yugamu as the wonderful weirdo he is.
Favourite character: I ship a lot of pairings in which one character murders the other, and a fair amount of my fanfiction explores violence and/or murder in a romantic or erotic light, so I'm delighted by the existence of Yugamu Omokage, whose entire character revolves around how horny for murder he is.
Favourite pairing: Yugamu/Takumi. Yugamu's so flirty and creepy; Takumi's unsettled but also genuinely cares about Yugamu as a person; it's a really fun dynamic!
Number of words written: 10,562
Snippet: Most of the time I'm digging up unfinished snippets from years ago for these posts, but here's one I actually scribbled down today! NB: this contains major spoilers for the 2nd Scenario ending.
( The Hundred Line unfinished snippet, Takumi, 2025. )
My Yugamu/Takumi 'uh-oh, there's only one bed, better cut my own arms off' fic means that The Hundred Line now qualifies!
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy
Kodaka and Uchikoshi have worked, separately and together, on a lot of stupid videogames I've really enjoyed (Danganronpa, Zero Escape, Somnium Files, Master Detective Archives), so I've eyed The Hundred Line with interest since it was first announced. From the announcement trailer, it looked promisingly full of teenagers suffering, but I was a little uncertain about whether I'd get along with the combat; I often don't have the patience for strategy games.
A demo came out before release day, so I gave it a try. It was absolutely stupid, which was exactly what I wanted from this game, and my fears that I'd find the combat tedious turned out to be unfounded. I was sold. I picked it up as soon as it released.
I played The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy at the age of thirty-six. Or, to be more accurate, I started playing it at the age of thirty-six. Six months and one birthday later, I am still playing it. I'm at a hundred and ninety hours of gameplay, despite skipping most of the battles. This game is ludicrously huge.
The Hundred Line absolutely delivers on its twin promises of a) containing a lot of teenagers suffering and b) being extremely stupid, so I'm having a good time! In many ways, it feels like an effort to create a game and then cram all the possible fanfiction for that game into the game itself. I feel slightly redundant as a fanfiction writer, but apparently that's not going to keep me from writing.
Although I've written a handful of fics for The Hundred Line, I haven't really immersed myself in the fandom. That said, I do poke through the 'yugamu omokage' tag on Tumblr every so often, looking for fanart depicting Yugamu as the wonderful weirdo he is.
Favourite character: I ship a lot of pairings in which one character murders the other, and a fair amount of my fanfiction explores violence and/or murder in a romantic or erotic light, so I'm delighted by the existence of Yugamu Omokage, whose entire character revolves around how horny for murder he is.
Favourite pairing: Yugamu/Takumi. Yugamu's so flirty and creepy; Takumi's unsettled but also genuinely cares about Yugamu as a person; it's a really fun dynamic!
Number of words written: 10,562
Snippet: Most of the time I'm digging up unfinished snippets from years ago for these posts, but here's one I actually scribbled down today! NB: this contains major spoilers for the 2nd Scenario ending.
( The Hundred Line unfinished snippet, Takumi, 2025. )
Misc things
Nov. 8th, 2025 04:41 pmoursinI am not encouraged to read the actual book, but this is amazing BURN:
beneath the carapace of difficult writing and literary allusion, there’s the gratifying gooey centre of a blockbuster PG western, with limited nudity, violent scenes and oddly simple moral choices.
Am now wondering how many pretentiously lit'ry tomes there are of which this could be said....
***
I was thinking that surely there is a class factor involved here, i.e. parents who can actually afford to be this over-involved in their offspring? When Helicopter Parents Touch Down—At College. Okay, am of generation which is quite aghast at this - I bopped off to New York for a summer during my uni years when making a phone call would have been prohibitively expensive.
***
Like I am always going on, 'exotic' ingredients have a long history in global circulation, c.f. lates from the Recipes Project: Globalising Early Modern Recipes
***
This is amazing and fascinating: The most widely used writing system in pre-colonial Africa was the ʿAjamī script - so widespread.
***
Lost grave of daughter of Black abolitionist Olaudah Equiano found by A-level student:
Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), also known as Gustavus Vassa, escaped enslavement to become a celebrated author and campaigner in Georgian England. His memoir, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, was a bestseller.
His book tour brought him to Cambridgeshire, where he would marry and have two children with Susannah Cullen, an Englishwoman from Ely. They settled in Soham, supported by a local network including abolitionist friends, safe at a time when reactionary “church and king” mobs were targeting reformers.
***
Myths about people debunked:
‘Heroic actions are a natural tendency’: why bystander apathy is a myth Modern research shows the public work together selflessly in an emergency, motivated by a strong impulse to help
Debunking “When Prophecy Fails”
In 1954, Dorothy Martin predicted an apocalyptic flood and promised her followers rescue by flying saucers. When neither arrived, she recanted, her group dissolved, and efforts to proselytize ceased. But When Prophecy Fails (1956), the now-canonical account of the event, claimed the opposite: that the group doubled down on its beliefs and began recruiting—evidence, the authors argued, of a new psychological mechanism, cognitive dissonance. Drawing on newly unsealed archival material, this article demonstrates that the book's central claims are false, and that the authors knew they were false.
Tags:
Books Received, [strike] October 1 — October 7[/strike] November 1 - November 7
Nov. 8th, 2025 09:44 amjames_davis_nicoll
Six books new to me: two fantasy, one science fiction, one that seems to be a mix of both, one horror, and one non-fiction.
Books Received, November 1 - November 7
How is it November already?
Poll #33815 Rings of Fate by Melissa de la Cruz (January 2026)
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 40
Which of these (mostly upcoming) book look interesting?
View Answers
Rings of Fate by Melissa de la Cruz (January 2026)
6 (15.0%)
Foundling Fathers by Meg Elison (June 2026)
15 (37.5%)
Letters From an Imaginary Country by Theodora Goss (November 2025)
19 (47.5%)
The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale by Joe R. Lansdale (October 2025)
7 (17.5%)
Fallen Gods by Rachel van Dyken (December 2025)
9 (22.5%)
The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes by Conevery Bolton Valencius (May 2024)
24 (60.0%)
Some other option (see comments)
1 (2.5%)
Cats!
29 (72.5%)