jazzfish | Others

Posted by Amanda

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2026/02/whatcha-reading-february-2026-part-one/

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?p=166456

Cozy winter still life: cup of hot coffee and book with warm plaid on windowsill against snow landscape from outside. Welcome back and happy weekend! Here’s what we’re reading right now:

Lara: I am reading a book that I have tried to get my greedy little paws on for MONTHS and finally I HAVE IT! How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days by Sophie Irwin. ( A | BN | K | G ) It’s possible the anticipation of this release has raised my expectations unreasonably high, but I am cautiously optimistic that it’ll be great. I’m only a chapter in so far!

Elyse: I’m on a new anti seizure medication for my fibro so I’ve got some couch/acclimation time.

I watched A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms which prompted me to do a Game of Thrones ( A | BN | K | AB ) re-read.

Shana: I just finished Time Loops and Meet Cutes by Jackie Lau. ( A | BN | K | AB ) It’s always a good day to read a Jackie Lau book. Now I’m getting sucked into a non-romance, The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. ( A | BN | K | AB )

Tara: I just finished When She Flies by Lee Winter. ( A | BN | K | G ) It’s an interesting time to read a book where one of the leads is the CEO for a company that makes luxury goods for the uber wealthy, but I enjoyed it overall, including where she ends up.

Sarah: I’m deep in early-2000s paranormal romance. I gulped down Alpha & Omega by Patricia Briggs in a frantic re-read and dove straight into Cry Wolf. ( A | BN | K | AB ) I’ve never read past that book and maybe now I’ll try book 2.

So whatcha reading? Let us know in the comments!

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2026/02/whatcha-reading-february-2026-part-one/

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?p=166456

viridian5

Borrowing a disco CD from the library because it had some songs I liked on it revealed to me that there's a disco cover version of Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water." I couldn't stop giggling through it. The female backup singers popping up with an occasional "You can be the bridge!" adds to it.

When I was describing it to my dad over lunch at a diner, I instinctively started doing the Hustle's rolling hand dance.

If you're curious, it's ten minutes long and melds another song into it around the five-minute mark.

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: surprised

dine

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

ranalore

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: tgi friday (the 13th)

ysabetwordsmith

Low-Earth orbit is just 2.8 days from disaster

Low-Earth orbit is more crowded—and fragile—than it looks. Satellites constantly weave past each other, burning fuel and making dozens of evasive maneuvers every year just to stay safe. A major solar storm could disable navigation and communications, turning that careful dance into chaos. According to new calculations, it may take just days—not decades—for a catastrophic chain reaction to begin, potentially choking off humanity’s access to space for generations.

Solar storms can have various effects and follow an 11-year cycle. We are currently around the maximum, hence the aurora displays over the last year or two.

Current Mood: busy

sholio

But before I get to that, I started posting another fixit WIP over on AO3. This one will probably be about 4 chapters long, most of which is written, but it's kind of a mess so I'm posting it as I finish cleaning them up and filling in the missing parts.

The Living and the Damned - goes AU from the beginning of 5x18, rated mature because there will be tentacles, though things are a bit too dire for that yet.

And speaking of tentacles.

( More from the behind the scenes books (tentacle related) )

ysabetwordsmith

The

crowdfunding Creative Jam is now open with a theme of "Not Giving Up." Come give us prompts, or claim some for your own inspiration!

What I Have Written:

From My Prompts:

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith posting in

crowdfunding

Welcome to the 151st Crowdfunding Creative Jam! This session will run Saturday, February 14-Sunday, February 15. The theme is "Not Giving Up."

Crowdfunding Creative Jam

Everyone is eligible to post prompts, which may be words or phrases, titles, images, etc. Prompters may request a specific creator, but everyone else may still use that prompt if they wish. Prompts may specify a particular character/world/etc. but creators may use the prompt for something else anyway and post the results. Prompters are still encouraged to post mostly prompts that anyone could use anywhere, as this maximizes the chance of having creators make something based on your prompt. Please title your comment "Prompt" or "Prompts" when providing inspiration so these are easy to find.

Prompt responses may also be treated as prompts and used for further inspiration. For example, a prompt may lead to a sketch which leads to a story, and so on. This kind of cascading inspiration is one of the most fun things about a collective jam session.

Everyone is eligible to use prompts, and everyone who wants to use a given prompt may do so, for maximum flexibility of creator choice in inspiration. You do not have to post a "Claim" reply when you decide to use a prompt, but this does help indicate what is going on so that other prompters can spread out their choice of prompts if they wish.

Creators are encouraged, but not required, to post at least one item free. Likewise, sharing a private copy of material with the prompter is encouraged but not required. Creative material resulting from prompts should be indicated in a reply to the prompt, with a link to the full content elsewhere on the creator's site (if desired); a brief excerpt and/or description of the material may be included in the reply (if desired). It helps to title your comment "Prompt Filled" or something like that so these are easy to identify. There is no time limit on responding to prompts. However, creators are encouraged to post replies sooner rather than later, as the attention of prompters will be highest during and shortly after the session.

Some items created from prompts may become available for sponsorship. Some creators may offer perks for donations, linkbacks, or other activity relating to this project. Check creator comments and links for their respective offerings.

Prompters, creators, and bystanders are expected to behave in a responsible and civil manner. If the moderators have to drag someone out of the sandbox for improper behavior, we will not be amused. Please respect other people's territory and intellectual property rights, and only play with someone else's characters/setting/etc. if you have permission. (Fanfic/fanart freebies are okay.) If you want to invite folks to play with something of yours, title the comment something like "Open Playground" so it's easy to spot. This can be a good way to attract new people to a shared world or open-source project, or just have some good non-canon fun.

Boost the signal! The more people who participate, the more fun this will be. Hopefully we'll see activity from a lot of folks who regularly mention their projects in this community, but new people are always welcome. You can link to this session post or to individual items created from prompts, whatever you think is awesome enough to recommend to your friends.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

Why have many societies begun to place such a high value on emotions and being emotional?

Everyone has feelings. Feelings can be intense. That makes it a good way to distract people from actions.

Current Mood: busy

apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260213.html

Dwarf galaxies

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260213.html

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: accomplished

ysabetwordsmith

Today I picked out what I wanted from Pinetree Garden Seeds.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

torachan

1. We met our deadline for the big project, so it can move ahead on schedule! For the last couple weeks we've been pretty sure it was going to be okay (and this last week there was really no worry at all), but it was a major stressor since I joined the project last summer, and we did not make the original deadline at the end of the year so this extension was our final final deadline. It's a huge relief to have turned that in to the developers and be able to report to upper management that everything's going well.

2. This morning I was almost home from my walk when I saw a text from Carla saying she was going to get a breakfast burrito. The restaurant is not on my way, but only about a five minute walk from where I was, so I met up with her there and we split a burrito for breakfast.

3. I was looking around to see what all is near the new store when I go to help out next week and saw there's a Shake Shack in the same mall, which reminded me that we wanted to go to Shake Shack and try more of the Korean menu, so we went there tonight. It's a little longer walk than Carla was up for, so we drove, but then after dinner walked around, down to the beach and then through the Promenade.

Everything at Shake Shack was delicious. In addition to the chicken sandwich, which I'd had before, we got the spicy fries with cheese sauce. I'd had them without the cheese before and they were good, but even better with cheese. I also got the gochujang caramel shake, which was also very tasty.

We used to go down to the Promenade all the time years ago, but then just stopped, and now hardly ever go down there, and when we do it's usually just to the first block, where the Apple Store is. This time we did go to the Apple Store but also the other two blocks we don't usually check out, and I had totally forgotten there's a Barnes and Noble there again! There was a huge three story one there years ago, and then that closed (in 2018, apparently), but they opened a new smaller one about a year and a half ago. I had heard something about it, but it's not very relevant to me anymore, so I immediately forgot. We went in and checked it out, though, and it's really nice. Nowhere near as huge as the old one, but still big, and they have a second level in the basement where I bought a new puzzle.

We ended our walk with donuts from Sidecar, which is just about a block from Shake Shack. Brought the donuts home and will have them later. Overall it was a really nice night out and just the sort of thing that I want to do more of. Although there were several empty storefronts, overall the Promenade seemed pretty revitalized and there were a lot of people down there tonight. (It's one of those areas that has gone through multiple booms and busts. When I was really little, it was just called the mall, and then became the old mall when they built a new, indoor mall next to it, and it kind of died off. Then when I was a teenager it was revitalized as the Third Street Promenade, but started dying off again a while back, but seems to be having another revival now.)

4. It's the start of a three day weekend!

5. Molly!

ysabetwordsmith

Our theme this month was "Books and Literacy." I wrote from 1 PM to 12 AM, so about 1 hours, accounting for breaks. I wrote 1 poem on Tuesday plus 10 later in the week.

Participation was up, with 10 comments on LiveJournal and another 29 on Dreamwidth. A total of 15 people sent prompts. You have new prompters

gs_silva,

ionelv, and Laura G to thank for the second freebie.

Read Some Poetry!
The following poems from the February 3, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl have been posted:
"Books That Bite Back"
"The Evolution of Self-Publishing"
"Libraries from the Ashes"
"A Never Failing Spring"
"No Friend as Loyal"

"The Tranquility and Beauty of the Winter Landscape" (Polychrome Heroics: Rutledge, March 4, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl)

Buy some poetry!
If you plan to sponsor some poetry but haven't made up your mind yet, see the unsold poetry list from February 3. That includes the title, length, price, and the original thumbnail description for the poems still available.

This month's donors include:

janetmiles,

fuzzyred, and Anthony Barrette. All sponsored poems from this fishbowl have been posted. There are 3 tallies toward a bonus fishbowl.

The Poetry Fishbowl has a landing page.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

The following poems from the February 3, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl are currently available. Poems may be sponsored via PayPal -- there's a permanent donation button on my Dreamwidth profile page -- or you can write to me and discuss other methods. There are still verses left in the linkback poems "Delight in Another," "A Sense of Weather Changes," "Ouroboros Insects," "The Loving Embrace of Night," "Generations of Cooks Past," "Homefree and Clear, " "One Bite at a Time," "Stars and Diamonds," "Mishpocha," "Changing Your Nature," and "Besa."

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

tsuki_no_bara

first important thing: the us mixed doubles won silver against sweden, which isn't as good as a gold but is the first us medal in that branch of curling so i'm not complaining too much. it was a good game too, very tense. (i may or may not have missed an admim meeting because i was watching it online at work. ahem.) and my curling club got a shoutout. :D

2 fast 2 curlious. hee.

(last night i watched some of the women us vs sweden and cory thiesse who was on the mixed doubles team is on the women's team and she must be so tired.)

second important thing: i got snowed on tuesday on the way home. :DDD it was very exciting.

other sports i've seen include some ski jump (looks both fun and absolutely terrifying), some speed skating (holy shit thighs), and some ice dancing (my favorite was the spanish couple who skated to the music from dune). i was briefly distracted by more norwegian drama, namely the biathlete who used his bronze-medal interview to admit he cheated on his girlfriend (she broke up with him) and then also admitted he hoped his public declaration of love would win her back. it did not. there's also drama in the figure skating but it sounds less like "guy did a stupid thing" drama and more like "everyone's covering for the rapist" drama and that is just way more serious.

i also randomly caught the gold medal run for women's snowboard cross which was won by an australian with a huge cheering section all wearing pink hats. so cute. the snowboarders all hugged each other after the run and that was also extremely adorable. now i'm watching the men's halfpipe and one of the japanese snowboarders is wearing pearly nail polish and how can you not love that? shaun white is there and his reactions to the tricks and the falls are fantastic.

now you're gonna get curling links because it's me and i only get to do this once every four years.

snoop dogg hangs with the curlers. korey dropkin's mom taught him about curling. (mom's name is shelly and while i don't know her i think she was president of the club at one point and was basically kind of a big deal. everything i've ever heard about her is positive.)

the oldest athlete at the games is a fifty-four-year-old lawyer on the us men's curling team. :D one of the other guys on the team, this lawyer curled with his dad. it's gotta be weird to be old enough to have fathered the other folks on your team but it sounds like they're all very cool about it.

i don't know what to call this. there are wrestlers. it's weird. also cute.

how about a curling stone cake?

and finally an article about my club, because god knows i've mentioned it enough. (that should be a non-paywalled link.)

couple more general olympics links:

meet one of only two greenlanders at the olympics. she's a biathlete there with her brother (also a biathlete) and if you saw people waving the greenlandic flag along the course? danish fans showing their support.

the olympic village ran out of condoms in THREE DAYS. someone seriously underestimated the amount of sex these attractive, athletic folks were going to be having.

speaking of curling i was way off my game on sunday altho the ice was quite weird but we had to call the game when someone on the other team slipped, fell, landed on her wrist, and had to get off the ice. her hubs took her to the er. they were ahead so we just gave them the win and ended it. i'm sure she's out for the rest of the season but i hope she's ok. i consequently did not see any of the super bowl or the halftime show which was kind of a bummer because i wanted to watch that.

and saturday for dinner i was really feeling it for hawaiian food and fortunately! there's a place not super far from me that can provide. i get there and the guy behind the counter asked me "you want some free food?" and i went "uh..." because on the one hand yes, who's going to turn down free dinner? but on the other, why were they giving it away?? because they were about to close. so i went home with my spam musubi and my mix plate and a random container of poke (yum), a random container of mac salad (yum), and a random container of pickled cucumbers (yum). a++, will order late from them again.

wednesday was the anniversary of the day the good voters of nevada passed a constitutional amendment prohibiting people who'd participated in a duel from voting or holding office. they voted on this in 1889. it may or may not still be on the books.

in honor of tomorrow being ~~cheap chocolate eve~~ valentine's day i need to share that angry orchard hard cider will take your ex's stuff and exchange it for cash. and then you exchange the cash for cider. everyone wins. :D

you can preorder squishable toilet paper. you know, if your life needs a toilet roll plushie in it.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: ok now it's men's figure skating

petra

If Revenge of the Sith happened on Tumblr (871 words) by Petra
Chapters: 7/7
Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Sheev Palpatine & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Characters: Anakin Skywalker, Sheev Palpatine | Darth Sidious, Padmé Amidala, Obi-Wan Kenobi
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Tumblr, Drama, Crack
Summary:

Anakin gets swept up in the discourse.

Current Mood: chortling
Current Music: Duel of the Fates

rocky41_7

Earlier this week I finished another commute audiobook, Looking for Smoke by K.A. Cobell. This is a crime thriller/murder mystery that takes place on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. When a teenage girl is found strangled at the Indian Days summer powwow, four of her classmates become the prime suspects in her murder.

I would say this is a solid entry in the murder mystery genre. The book alternates perspectives between the four classmates, which allows the author to do some fun things keeping the reader on the hook. One character will make a big discovery only for the POV to pop over to another who doesn't have that information, so Cobell can keep information from the reader without it feeling too forced. The audiobook has a separate narrator for each POV, which was also fun (although I didn't care for Eli's reader) and if you're prone to picking up and putting down your audiobook in the middle of a chapter, this helps you keep track of whose POV you're in.

Cobell uses the format of the crime thriller, like Marcie Rendon in Where They Last Saw Her, to draw attention to the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), but the book still feels like a novel its own right; it never feels like just a tool for explaining the MMIW issue. And it's an important issue that deserves a lot more attention. The statistics on violence against Native American women are shocking--even if you think they're bad, they're probably worse than you're imagining--and specific stats get highlighted in the text and in the author's note at the end. In this way, I think the book has enormous social value. Cobell uses her characters to personalize the problem and show the comorbid impacts of poverty and drug use on the reservation.

Outside of its interest in the MMIW crisis, I don't think the book does much that's particularly groundbreaking. The teens band together to try to solve the mystery and absolve themselves, as you'd expect. At various times they suspect each other, family members, law enforcement. Cobell keeps you on the hook while offering reasonable suspicion for a number of characters. She avoids my least favorite move in the murder mystery genre, which is pinning it on some rando at the last minute.

The ending is pretty explosive and I enjoy some of the things she does with perspective here as well. We the readers know what the killer thinks of their crimes because the text tells us. But the other characters never hear that explanation except third hand, and many of them simply don't believe it. And that feels real--they end the story with their own version of the truth and there's simply no space for that to be corrected (and why would they believe the word of a killer anyway?) The killer feels a little one-dimensional, but the motives make sense, if they're unsurprising. The motivations behind most violent crimes are pretty repetitive.

The prose is fine. We're reading from the perspective of teenagers, so expect a lot of melodramatic metaphors and jumping to conclusions based on minimal evidence.

Overall, this book tells an important story. It was entertaining as a narrative and sheds light on a community that deserves a lot more attention.

ysabetwordsmith

A dinkus is a row of symbols, often asterisks, used as a section break in text.

Current Mood: busy

dialecticdreamer

Another Complication
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 1, complete
Word count (story only): 1179
[Wednesday, May 13, 2020, 2 pm]

:: Once they’re home from the library, the Teagues are dragged into the problem that Win is investigating. Part of the Edison’s Mirror (Teague Family) story arc. ::

Back to All Together Now (part two)
To the Edison's Mirror Landing Page
On to

A dozen paces from the dip that divided the two lane road from the long driveway that led to the garage with its apartment above, Aidan stopped abruptly. He lifted Mac and set her into Ed’s arms, and caught Vic’s gaze before cutting his eyes to the small outbuilding. “There’s someone inside, not Nik or Shandiin,” the older man murmured. He pulled Vic two steps closer to the brown rolling door, then stopped. “Take care of them, and yourself. I’ll whistle if it’s clear. If I say anything else, be prepared for a trap.”

“Paranoid.” Vic nodded once. “I can get behind that.”
( Read more... )

Current Mood: anxious

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Tucker McKinnon

Words are inadequate

Adventures in Mamboland

"Jazz Fish, a saxophone playing wanderer, finds himself in Mamboland at a critical phase in his life." --Howie Green, on his book Jazz Fish Zen

Yeah. That sounds about right.

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Others

Whatcha Reading? February 2026, Part One

Whyyyyyyyyy

Friday's Child thinks that anywhere else it would have been an A+

populate your world with a population, i say

Space Exploration

A little more B5 script book stuff

Creative Jam

Creative Jam

Philosophical Questions: Emotions

NGC 147 and NGC 185

Pyra Cantha D&D: Summary for 2/13 Game

Pinetree Garden Seeds Order

Daily Happiness

Poetry Fishbowl Report for February 3, 2026

Unsold Poems for the February 3, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl

almost all olympics, all the time

If Revenge of the Sith happened on Tumblr - Star Wars humor

Recent Reading: Looking for Smoke

Vocabulary: Dinkus

#79 Another Complication (part 1 of 1, complete)

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