Reading Wednesday

Finished reading: Exoplanets: Hidden Worlds and the Quest for Extraterrestrial Life by Donald Goldsmith. This book is pretty basic on the subject, but even so, a lot of it was a bit advanced for me - I'm not well-versed in astronomy and physics and so on. Still, interesting stuff.

There was a bit toward the end where there's a lot of discussion about sending probes to the nearest stars in order to study exoplanets - teeny tiny nanoprobes that would basically get yeeted all the way to Proxima Centauri. We don't have the technology for that now (and funding's a whole other kettle of fish) but by the way they described it, it doesn't seem totally out of the question as a project for 40 years from now, 50 years from now....

Currently reading: Tokyo Redux by David Peace. Murder mystery/thriller set in Japan during the American occupation. This is actually part of a trilogy, but I hadn't realized until I took it home. My library doesn't have the other two, but the summary was so compelling, I decided to take the plunge. This one's actually about a real incident, the unresolved death of the president of the national railway, which is a case I'd never heard of until now.

Anyway, I did find the plot compelling, but what's more interesting about this book is the style - No punctuation, lots of repetition, and it gives a very suffocating effect, which I think is intentional. I like it a lot; it's very rhythmic, repetitive, but sparse with vocabulary - the writing has kind of a gritty texture. A lot of people would find it a turnoff, but I sure do love this kind of writing, though I wouldn't want it all the time.

Reading next: Uhhh... [/looks at stack of library books] I'll get back to you on that one.

Want to read: The Amber Crown by Jacey Bedford. It's fantasy set in an alternate-universe version of Livonia/Poland/The areas around the Baltic in general. I was scrolling through my feeds list, passed this post on Scalzi's blog about it, saw that image of winged hussars and then scrolled right back up to the top of that post because yes, you have my attention. ...Anyway, my library doesn't have a copy of this, so it'll be a while before I get around to reading it.

(no subject)

Ugh, I've been so totally exhausted lately, and I don't know why. Maybe I need to go to bed earlier? Not like, super early, just like... 15 minutes earlier, maybe. I dunno, something's up.

Or maybe I'm just sick of winter. (Too bad, we still have several months to go....)

My nail polish has been chipping like hell lately. I got some new basecoat/topcoat for xmas, and I was looking forward to trying it, but it totally sucks! Which is surprising, because I usually do well with this brand. It's OPI - usually my favourite. But this isn't the regular formula; it's the Infinte Shine stuff, which is supposed to last a week. I've been using it with the regular formula nail polish, since I don't have any Infinite Shine. Hmm.

I normally get ~5 days of wear out of my regular polish, so having stuff get chippy on the second day (on more than one try) really grates my cheese.

I do have a polish order on the way to me, and along with the regular stuff I did find one IS on discount. So... we'll see. If it's a non-matching formula issue, then I'll just use that base/top with this specific one until they all run out, and that'll be that. But if it continues to perform like crap, into the bin it goes.