Yuletart

What I've recently finished reading:

Heartstone by C. J. Sansom, the fifth Shardlake book. Looking back at my reviews, I think the author must have got his feet under him better as he went on, or else he just shifted to things more to my taste, because I had said the fourth was my favorite so far, but I think I liked this one even better! This story is set mostly distant from court intrigue, though it comes in at the end; Matthew is given a legal case by Queen Catherine Parr, and it intertwines with his own interest in the situation that led to Ellen Fettiplace's commitment to Bedlam. I'm not going to mention my favorite thing about this book, because it is a spoiler, but - this book contains one of my favorite things. :-) Also I like the way the various plots and sub-plots wind around each other: the legal case, Ellen's history, Barak's relationship with his wife Tamasin (complicated by her pregnancy), Matthew's problematic new steward. Okay, I lied, this book contains two of my favorite things, and the other one is a fascinating and detailed endnote about the real historical events that this book is built around. I loved this in Bernard Cornwell's Last Kingdom books, and I love it here.

The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko, which is related to the Raybearer series, and which several people in my circle read and enjoyed, so I got it from the library despite my having been disappointed in the series. And as the other reviews said, it was rather heavy-handed issuefic (so was the Raybearer series), but also had clever worldbuilding, charming characters and, I thought, better pacing than the series. (Also was in past rather than present tense, which I prefer.) However, will someone please tell Ifueko that "monotone" is NOT A SPEECH VERB DAMN IT?!?!

What I'm watching now:

We've got three episodes left to go of Andor S2, and gosh isn't it ironic to be watching

Spoiler you can probably guess if you have seen the show

a manufactured riot as pretext for government crackdown while a riot is being manufactured as pretext for government crackdown

I did read the interview with the showrunner about how no, he wasn't inspired by current events (that is, recent events, obviously the show was written well before current events!) but it's definitely inspired by historical fascist governments and fights against them, and wow, we are just proving that what goes around comes around, that human foibles are universal, etc etc, but still, holy shit, right? Yeah.

But as I have said before, this is the wonderful thing about SF, that it can recast real issues in ways that make them easier to understand than when you are right in the middle of them argh.

Paul Krugman talks with Ada Palmer about her new (nonfiction) book Inventing the Renaissance. I came at this from the Krugman side (he's a Nobel-winning economist who used to write for the NYT, and I subscribe to his substack) but I figured some of you would be interested from the Palmer side (I never got into Terra Ignota, though). I found it really interesting! I read the transcript, but there's a link to the video conversation as well.

Speaking of Nobelists, a v. v. srs study found that countries with greater per capita chocolate consumption produce more Nobel laureates - so eating chocolate makes you smarter, right? :-)