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Leisure on the road
Aug. 26th, 2025 08:54 pmMuch traveling is happening so I'm getting some leisure time. Sat down and read Taltos during a long flight. It felt a lot like a return to the pace and tone of the first book, which I enjoyed, but I think I liked Teckla better because it was pushing further in terms of what it was trying to think about. Taltos feels much more straightforward in comparison. The little bits of young Vlad were great, and the background on how he got in with Castle Black was a tidy little adventure.
I continue to enjoy the tone of the books, which are sort of equal parts nonchalance about very serious matters, and boiling rage over what is effectively racial injustice. The later part in particular I think is better done than most approaches to fantasy racism, which is usually lacking nuance and addressed from the perspective of the perpetrator. The issue of racism in Taltos isn't exactly meant to be a rumination on the very concept of racism or anything like that, but simply feels like realistic depiction of the effect that prejudice has on the way someone who has been victimized by it sees the world. Maybe I said something like this about the first book, but since this is an "origin story" in some sense it is particularly evident here.
I also had to drive cross country and had a total of over 24 hours of listening time to fill, so I queued up a whole bunch of episodes of Madame Magenta, which was recommended during the Snowflake Challenge. It was very entertaining and certainly kept me awake. The premise is a charlatan psychic who does still actually have the ability to commune with the spirits among other things is dictating a memoir that she wrote some years back. So there is the memoir story itself, and then there are her quips about it and her commenting about what she's reading with her husband, with a bonus cocktail of the day and letters from readers and so on. So far in the plot Magenta is being harassed by her dead ex-husband to retrieve some valuables he stole and donate them so he can get afterworld brownie points.
I'm not sure how to describe the humor. It's a little crass, a little maybe from the Monty Python tradition of absurdity, a little bit of Madame Magenta being very OTT. It's pretty British I guess, or maybe it's just supposed to be, I'm not British nor a Britaboo so I have no ear for it. A lot of focus is on ridiculous characters being silly. At the end there are also ads for a litany of other podcasts in the same network and they all sound so damn boring lol. But I am enjoying this one, and maybe will listen to more in my next long ass trip, which is 10 hours of train riding round trip in the next few days. In other words this has literally been a month of Trains, Planes, and Automobiles for me.
On that note I was around Denver recently and had a bit of time between engagements, so I stopped by a place called Wings over the Rockies. There's a main museum with a bunch of different vehicles, but I went to a little Annex, which didn't have many planes, but did have a bunch of flight training equipment that guests were allowed to try out. So I sat in a simulated cockpit and got to kind of fly a Cessna under the instruction of an older commercial pilot. According to him I did a great job landing but was not used to the foot breaks, which are just like articulated parts of what are otherwise steering pedals, and veered right into the grass at the very end. So I would probably not kill absolutely everyone if forced to land a plane, but maybe, like, a lot of people one one side. I'll do better next time.
I continue to enjoy the tone of the books, which are sort of equal parts nonchalance about very serious matters, and boiling rage over what is effectively racial injustice. The later part in particular I think is better done than most approaches to fantasy racism, which is usually lacking nuance and addressed from the perspective of the perpetrator. The issue of racism in Taltos isn't exactly meant to be a rumination on the very concept of racism or anything like that, but simply feels like realistic depiction of the effect that prejudice has on the way someone who has been victimized by it sees the world. Maybe I said something like this about the first book, but since this is an "origin story" in some sense it is particularly evident here.
I also had to drive cross country and had a total of over 24 hours of listening time to fill, so I queued up a whole bunch of episodes of Madame Magenta, which was recommended during the Snowflake Challenge. It was very entertaining and certainly kept me awake. The premise is a charlatan psychic who does still actually have the ability to commune with the spirits among other things is dictating a memoir that she wrote some years back. So there is the memoir story itself, and then there are her quips about it and her commenting about what she's reading with her husband, with a bonus cocktail of the day and letters from readers and so on. So far in the plot Magenta is being harassed by her dead ex-husband to retrieve some valuables he stole and donate them so he can get afterworld brownie points.
I'm not sure how to describe the humor. It's a little crass, a little maybe from the Monty Python tradition of absurdity, a little bit of Madame Magenta being very OTT. It's pretty British I guess, or maybe it's just supposed to be, I'm not British nor a Britaboo so I have no ear for it. A lot of focus is on ridiculous characters being silly. At the end there are also ads for a litany of other podcasts in the same network and they all sound so damn boring lol. But I am enjoying this one, and maybe will listen to more in my next long ass trip, which is 10 hours of train riding round trip in the next few days. In other words this has literally been a month of Trains, Planes, and Automobiles for me.
On that note I was around Denver recently and had a bit of time between engagements, so I stopped by a place called Wings over the Rockies. There's a main museum with a bunch of different vehicles, but I went to a little Annex, which didn't have many planes, but did have a bunch of flight training equipment that guests were allowed to try out. So I sat in a simulated cockpit and got to kind of fly a Cessna under the instruction of an older commercial pilot. According to him I did a great job landing but was not used to the foot breaks, which are just like articulated parts of what are otherwise steering pedals, and veered right into the grass at the very end. So I would probably not kill absolutely everyone if forced to land a plane, but maybe, like, a lot of people one one side. I'll do better next time.
