sequestering carbon, one Christmas at a time XIII

His'n'hers Christmas presents (including a DVD, for a change)

looks more like ginger

After our previous successes with our potato harvest, we planted some to have home-grown new potatoes at Christmas.  I don't think we are going to have home-grown new potatoes at Christmas.

Fortunately, when Christmas was delivered earlier today by Tesco's (a so-called "small" turkey now taking up a surprising amount of space in the fridge), it included sufficient non-home-grown potatoes to cover us over the festive period.

Next year, we will try planting a little earlier...

tree time

Christmas has officially begun.

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CLVI

The latest batch, before the Christmas batch arrives.

book review: Gideon the Ninth

Tamsyn Muir.
Gideon the Ninth.
Tor. 2019

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Gideon Nav, bonded servant, and Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Daughter of the House, are the only members of their generation in the Ninth House, and have hated each other since birth. Which is a pity, as the Emperor has summoned representatives from each House, and they must go as Necromancer and Cavalier, and work together, or die.

This is difficult to classify. After a few grim chapters in the fantastical Ninth House, the pair travel off-world to a 10,000 year old decaying palace, where they meet the representatives of the other Houses, and are set a task. The old palace is extraordinarily atmospheric, and the tale changes to exploration of a decayed technological civilisation, then becomes a murder mystery, then a monster fight, then… Well, there’s a lot going on.

I was bored to start, then swept up in the old palace, then confused, then struggling to follow the mystery, then excited by the monsters, then… Well, it twists and turns a lot.

When I finished it, I thought “that was interesting, I think I enjoyed that, and I never want to read anything in that universe ever again”, and then went and bought the sequel immediately. Yes, it’s confusing.

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For all my book reviews, see my main website

portmanteau

We thought we'd made up a new word yesterday.  My other half was describing the weather, dull, dismal, drizzling, and accidentally munged together the last two, to say "drizzmal".

Turns out, he wasn't the first.

But we'll use it from now.

ooo?

We went to see Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out #3) in the cinema today.  It's only on for a week, because it is a Netflix film.  They need a cinematic release for it to be considered for awards, but want to minimise the time, so people will pay for it on Netflix.  We missed Glass Onion for this reason, and didn't want to miss out again.  (We don't do Netflix.)

It was excellent.  If you enjoyed the complexity, clues, and red herrings in Knives Out, this is just more so.

In the cinema foyer, there was an advert for Zootropolis 2 (the UK name for Zootopia 2).  The name caught my eye.  It seems to be a back formation from "metropolis".  But that is a combination of "metro" and "polis".  So really it should be Zoopolis 2?  But for a moment I thought the suffix was actually "opolis", in which case it would be Zooopolis 2.  I'm willing to believe this is the case, just to have a word with three consecutive "o"s.