Exherbo

One Night on the Island by Josie SilverMy rating: 2 of 5 starsI just wanted a nice little romance to reset my brain. What I got was a weird mix of hippie crap (self-coupling my arse), commitment issues (Susie, Cleo, the kids, Mack; all suffer ... [More] , none win).Cleo, a writer for “Women Today”, writes a column about finding what she calls her “flamingo”, meaning her “soul mate”, “forever love”, you name it.In an act of defiance – orchestrated by her editor, though – because she keeps finding (and promptly losing) sparrows instead of flamingos, Cleo goes on a trip to (brace yourselves!) “Salvation Island” to “self-couple” for a while in isolation and to ultimately “marry herself”.By chance, fate or, more realistically, a careless mistake by the owner of the “Otter Lodge” which her magazine rented for her, hectic Londoner Cleo meets “inconvenient American” Mack who intended to recover from a painful separation from his wife in the loneliness of his ancestral island home: Mack’s grandmother used to live on Salvation Island.Thus set up, the two first make a truce (including a chalk demarcation line and a DMZ!) and, this is a romance after all, decide to have a holiday romance, a “micro-love” as they’re going to call it.Integrated into the “Salvation Island” society by means of knitting (Cleo) and generally being manly and drinking (Mack), both try to make peace with their lives. They’re just not very good at it, sadly.Mack is still strongly hung up on his wife Susie. Just like Mack on “Salvation Island” with Cleo, Susie has an affair. An office affair. With her boss, Robert. Separated from Mack for a year, Susie has been with Robert for months but pretty much the minute Mack tells her about Cleo, she wants him back. Cliché? No, not at all!Mack himself barely resists the urge to kiss Susie under a convenient mistletoe and when Susie kisses him (on Christmas Eve, of course!) the focus conveniently moves away just in time…Complicating matters, the two have two kids to whom Mack’s entire life is devoted and for whom he’s willing to sacrifice everything – even his own happiness.I’ve kept wanting to slap Mack, telling him that if he’s so unhappy, he can try as he might; he won’t be able to fool his kids and simply won’t be able to be the father he wants to be for them.All the while, Cleo stays on the island, sitting in the sand (on a cushion, we don’t want an inconvenient wet arse!), marries herself (which gives her feelings of being deeply profound for reasons entirely escaping me), cries a lot, pines after Mack and talks a lot about “micro-love”.Tragedy strikes the island, one life ending, one life beginning, Cleo finds her new self and, ultimately, during the big finale, Mack returns to suggest a thousand holiday romances for the two of them to which Cleo meltingly and enthusiastically agrees.Thus, conveniently never fully committing to each other, they’re implied to have a thousand happily-ever-afters.I thought I had signed up for a “romantic comedy” but what I got was a bland, half-arsed story about shallow people with commitment issues.Is this something you’d like to read? Me neither.Two out of five stars because… it’s not total garbage (just mostly).View all my reviews Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam [Less]

Foxes for Christmas by Ben AaronovitchMy rating: 4 of 5 starsTruly just a “moment” but a nice, kind and amusing one. View all my reviews Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins ReidMy rating: 4 of 5 starsOh, well, another difficult review to write… I really did like this book and while writing this very sentence I’m still unsure what my final verdict will be.Evelyn ... [More] Hugo, fictional Hollywood icon, is – to me – an immensely likeable person: Starting her career in the 1950s she works her way up to become a legend. That alone would already have made for an interesting read because I grew up on films from the Golden Age of Old Hollywood.When I first read the title I immediately thought of Elizabeth Taylor (eight marriages, seven husbands…) whose work in the film industry has indeed inspired Reid (as I just found out). Just like fictional Evelyn Taylor has been a staunch ally of the LGBTQ* community and an early HIV/AIDS activist.More than that, how could I not like a bisexual woman who lives through eight tumultous marriages? In a time, more than 20 years into the 21st century, during which still way too many countries, peoples and people do not accept love between consenting adults regardless of their sexual identity and preferences – how could I not like and endorse a book that succeeds at depicting queer relationships in a loving way?»That night, Celia and I slept nude, holding each other. We no longer pretended to touch by accident. And when I woke up in the morning with her hair in my face, I inhaled, loudly and proudly. Within those four walls, we were unashamed.«I really enjoyed how unapologetic Evelyn is about the way she fights for what she wants and takes what she thinks should be hers.»I’m OK with the fact that sometimes doing the right thing gets ugly. And also, I have compassion for myself. I trust myself.«Whom I liked less, sadly, is Monique Grant, our current-day journalist who is tasked to write Evelyn’s biography. She never materialises fully in the book: While Evelyn is rightly in the spotlight but Monique remains a bit like an unfinished draft: Yes, her story is told and finished but as a person she remains mostly in the shadows. Unlike Evelyn, she’s denied the opportunity to really become a person.Also, like some other of my fellow reviewers, I felt this book lacked a bit of depth: It was a truly good read but while showing but not exploring violence inside a marriage, while showing true love but also leaving unexplored the deeper reasons why Evelyn is hesitant to come out, “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” sadly fails at making a true “impact”.At times, I felt like this book has come too late – the social battles that were necessary and instrumental in allowing for public queer relationships have been fought and, thankfully, mostly won.What remains to be achieved is total, utter, complete equality and this book, sadly, does not truly further that cause. It rehashes what most of us have long known but it doesn’t pose any new questions.While being very entertaining, it satisfies my need for really good entertainment but unlike some other books, it doesn’t challenge my perceptions.I guess I have my answer: Four of of five stars.Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendamView all my reviews [Less]

I recently picked up a new Framework laptop to replace my aging Chromebook, so I’m back on a “real” Linux laptop for the first time in nearly a decade. That meant it was time to revisit a few old blog posts. This time, though, I’m running Fedora ... [More] , so all the work above gets replaced with a single checkbox in the installer! But my new laptop has a TPM chip, so I can make this even more painless using systemd-cryptenroll. The Fedora installer prompts for a passphrase which I have to enter at every boot. But, if the system hasn’t changed significantly (e.g. from UEFI firmware or Linux kernel updates), then the TPM chip can handle unlocking things on my behalf. I found a fedora-users mailing list post that gave me the most succinct version of things to get working. Key parts: Use systemd-cryptenroll --tpm2-device=auto -tpm2-pcrs=0+7 /dev/$DEVICE to enroll an additional token to unlock the LUKS volume. In my case, $DEVICE was /dev/nvme0n1p3, but your mileage may vary. This would be the block device backing your LUKS volume. lsblk should make it clear. Edit /etc/crypttab, and change the end of the one line (starting with luks-$UUID) to tpm2-device=auto,discard Until Fedora uses Dracut 056 (see #1976462), you need to create a file called /etc/dracut.conf.d/tss2.conf, with this in it: install_optional_items+=" /usr/lib64/libtss2* /usr/lib64/libfido2.so.* " then run sudo dracut -f Reboot, and enjoy a fancy secure boot experience! Of course, if your threat model includes state actors or the like, this may not be the right choice to make, but if you’re just wanting to make sure that your system is relatively secure if stolen, and that your boot disk is basically gibberish whenever you dispose of it some day, then I think this is a pretty good compromise. [Less]

Favours by Benedict JackaMy rating: 4 of 5 starsThis is a short story told from Sonder’s perspective, primarily featuring him and Caldera. Alex is only mentioned in passing.Nevertheless, this short story definitely makes you feel right at home ... [More] back in the Verus universe.I never really liked either Sonder or Caldera and both their behaviours here just firmly cement this antipathy. Sonder is opportunistic and primarily worries about his future, whereas Caldera takes out her frustration on both Sonder and Anne whom the former pressures into service.Knowing the events in ”Risen” I was able to mentally lean back and enjoy the show.Four out of five stars for a surprisingly good story.View all my reviews [Less]

The Maid by Nita ProseMy rating: 1 of 5 starsFrom whatever point of view: This is a disgrace of a book.Let’s look at the story itself first: Molly, usually referred to and sometimes self-referring as “Molly the Maid” (as if that’s all she is) ... [More] , works as a maid in the Regency Grand Hotel.One day, when she’s cleaning a suite she finds the body of Mr. Black, a rich “power magnate”, who stays at the hotel with his second wife, Giselle.While it becomes clear to the reader very quickly that something sinister beyond the murder is afoot, Molly doesn’t recognise it and, thus, quickly becomes the prime suspect in the murder case.Trying to prove Molly’s innocence Molly and a bunch of coworkers-cum-friends come up with a plan to entrap the true culprit…So, there’s basically nothing new plot-wise. It is unoriginal and rather boring.What about the character’s, though? We get to “meet” about 20 people – which is quite a lot but, thankfully, it’s manageable.The problem here is, though: Most of them are stereotypes and never get a chance to evolve into something real. There’s Mr. Preston, the fatherly good-natured doorman and his sharp lawyer daughter, Charlotte, who doesn’t even know Molly but doesn’t hesitate to post a $800,000 bail for her…Mr. Black, the corpse, we basically only get to know in passing from descriptions by Molly and his wife no. 2, Giselle Black. Giselle is depicted as a typical trophy wife – thirty-five years her husband’s junior, not only is she neglected (and, of course, having an affair) but also being physically abused. Oh, and, of course, she’s also taking drugs.Rodney, Giselle’s illicit lover, is pretty much a diabolical enforcer. He’s written so simplistically that we know immediately that he’s going to be one of the “bad guys” when we first encounter him.There’s also Juan Manuel, a Mexican dishwasher in the kitchen, involved in both the mystery and its resolution. There wasn’t much character description left in Prose’s severely limited repertoire so he has to be content with basically being a male version of Molly.In a world of latent racism, it’s easy to match the Mexican with Molly…Speaking of whom: Molly… Now, that’s where Prose really “shines”. As becomes obvious very quickly, Molly is neuroatypical/neurodivergent/on the autism spectrum – whatever you want to call it.Prose doesn’t mention anything about that even once, though. Instead, she has Molly being called “weird”, “weirdo”, “freak”, “awkward”, “standoffish” by “friend” and “foe” alike.Molly’s “weirdness” is mostly info-dumped on us but never called what it is – probably to avoid criticism for having written about something the author doesn’t really know anything about.In her “Acknowledgments” Prose thanks everyone and their dogs and lists their respective roles – but, curiously, none of them seem to have any kind of professional experience with neuroatypical persons.Prose’s characterisation of Molly reads a lot like plain old guesswork. She seems to have read up on Wikipedia on autism, assembled a list of possible issues and wrote a Molly who’s exhibiting most of them at the same time.»My truth highlights and prioritizes my lens on the world; it focuses on what I see best and obscures what I fail to understand—or what I choose not to examine too closely.«That’s still not all, though: Molly isn’t even acting consistently with the way she’s being characterised. She keeps acting out of character completely. From the ultimate innocent “noble savage”, at times she becomes a cunning conspirator, willfully lying by omission, smuggling a gun and even resorting to vigilantism.»“In my experience, there are times when a good person must do something that’s not quite right, but it’s still the right thing to do.”«Also, Molly doesn’t even seem to know anything about her condition. She knows full well she’s “different” but she cannot name it. While this might have rung true some decades ago, in this day and age, Molly would know why she is “weird”.Prose simply avoids identifying Molly’s issues as neuroatypical in order to avoid being held responsible for an accurate, consistent and fair depiction. As it stands, Prose can always try and wiggle her way out of it by simply disavowing that she ever meant anything beyond what she calls Molly – “socially awkward”.Maybe she did some shallow “research” because – judging by her LinkedIn profile – Prose (or rather: Pronovost) has no prior professional experience with neuroatypical people.While obviously not applying it to herself, Prose knows full well what she’s doing:»“Sometimes life isn’t fair,” Charlotte adds. “And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over years of practice, it’s that there’s no shortage of criminals out there who will prey on a person’s difference for their personal gain.”«I consider that shameful and despicable.Last and, in fact, least: This book is full of “calendar wisdom” of questionable truthfulness:»The longer you live, the more you learn. People are a mystery that can never be solved. Life has a way of sorting itself out. Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.«One out of five stars and an especially strong recommendation to stay away from this if you’re on the spectrum yourself.View all my reviews [Less]

Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage by Heather HavrileskyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars»Forever is two immortal elves, sipping pink champagne by a burbling stream, then exploring the wild, gorgeous woods around them in everlasting harmony. ... [More] Forever is set in New Zealand, not New Jersey.«It was around Christmas when I came across Heather Havrilesky’s essay “Marriage Requires Amnesia” (which is an adaptation from this book) in the New York Times.In it, Havrileski poignantly describes her 15-year marriage to Bill Sandoval. While reading it, I laughed out loud and I cried and sometimes all of it at the same time.Being in the 23rd year of my marriage myself, I felt both understood and like gaining a better understanding of my wife.»But we weren’t married yet, so he still thought he could do whatever he wanted.«I couldn’t wait to see “Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage” released in early February because I was hoping for more of the same. And I got it – to some extent.Divided into four parts, “Foreverland” reads like the memoir of a relationship – starting at the tumultuous courtship between Heather and Bill, we learn a lot about Heather who tells us precisely who she is and what she craves at the age of 34:»I wanted a husband. One that looked nice. […] with a solid career to match my own. I wanted a hunky, square-jawed, mature listener. […] a nurturing daddy type who would hang on my every word. And I wanted an athlete. […] an intellectual who was also a comedian, but with a nice ass. I wanted a cross between a therapist and a cowboy.«This is when she meets Bill, a professor. Who is, as we’re going to learn, hot and incredibly patient and, on the other hand, »he is more or less exactly the same as a heap of laundry: smelly, inert, useless, almost sentient but not quite.« before he had his first coffee (which I can totally relate to!).Marriage, kids, the suburbs, pestilence and plague follow and are explored in-depth in this wonderfully liberating book. While Havrilesky is both exploring and explaining her marriage, she delivers an unapologetically honest account of both their struggles.A totally honest Havrilesky dispels the myths of “happily ever after” and marriages without issues.From the small annoyances…»A simple inquiry—“What are we going to do about dinner?”—incites an existential crisis, the 742nd of its kind since your wedding day.«… to completely questioning everything…»I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend forever with anyone, least of all myself.«… this was a breath of fresh air. A much needed breeze to blow away the fairy tale depictions of love and marriage to create space for a more understanding and a more humane approach.At times, the book drew out a little – there was a lot of stuff about the kids around the 50% mark and rambling descriptions of life in the suburbs (which seem to be very similar in Western societies, even on different continents…) but at about 70% Havrilesky picks up the pace again and I was laughing tears. When my daughter (20) came along and I let her read some passages, she giggled and triumphantly shouted “That’s YOU, DAD!”.And I cannot really deny it. In some aspects I’m Bill. If I were the type, I’d get myself a t-shirt saying “I’m Bill”. But, luckily, my wife is also a bit of a Heather. And so am I, too. And she can be a Bill at times.Maybe you’re going to say, “But my marriage is perfect! My partner farts a scent of roses!”. Well, maybe I’m the odd one out – or maybe you are. Maybe Havrilesky gets it all wrong, I don’t know (it’s just that a lot of it makes sense to me!).At no point, though, does Havrilesky claim to present any universal truths about marriage. She doesn’t fall prey to making one – her – marriage as a blueprint for all marriages. That’s part of what I like a lot about this book. In fact, she states it clearly:»This book represents my personal attempt to understand why I signed myself up for the world’s most impossible endurance challenge.«To me, Havrilesky very much succeeds at that while also rationalising feelings of doubt, “the darkness” as she puts it:»I wrote this book to explore that tedium, along with everything else that marriage brings: the feeling of safety, the creeping darkness, the raw fear and suspense of growing older together, the tiny repeating irritations, the rushes of love, the satisfactions of companionship, the unexpected rage of recognizing that your partner will probably never change. And in writing this book, I discovered new layers within my marriage and myself, haunting and chaotic, wretched and unlovable.«Thank you, Heather, for this book! And thank you to you, C., for being my “partner in crime” for all this time and, hopefully, for a long time to come.Four out of five stars for the book – and an extra one for courage and honesty!View all my reviews [Less]

Breathe Your Last by Lisa ReganMy rating: 4 of 5 starsJosie Quinn No. 10. A swimming champion drowns, a firefighter sets his house on fire, some ordinary people try their hand at flying… It soon becomes clear that these are not just cases of ... [More] truly bad judgement but that a half-crazed serial killer is on the loose in Denton.Sounds good? It is – for what it is.If you like Josie Quinn, you’ll enjoy this instalment. If you don’t, this won’t make you change your mind. Since this is a pretty “decoupled” episode, you can enjoy this book even if you haven’t ever read any of the previous books.Just be sure you know what you’re getting – a suspenseful but bog-standard police procedural like many others out there. It just happens to be one of the sort I enjoy from time to time for its pure relaxation value.Four out of five stars. View all my reviews [Less]

Der Arumbaya-Fetisch by HergéMy rating: 3 of 5 starsIn diesem Band ist Tim auf der Suche nach dem namensgebenden Arumbaya-Fetisch und reist dafür nach Süd-Amerika, wo er zunächst auf dauer-putschende Militärs in zwei fiktiven Ländern stößt, um ... [More] dann auf der Flucht auf die indigene Bevölkerung zu treffen.Immer gehetzt von zwei Kriminellen, die ebenfalls den Arumbaya-Fetisch an sich bringen wollen, findet er schlußendlich eine Werkstatt, in der der vermeintlich einzigartige Fetisch in großen Stückzahlen produziert wird.Eine eher langatmige Abenteuer-Geschichte mit sich wiederholenden Motiven. Wenigstens aber zumindest weniger rassistisch als die vorherigen Bände, obschon auch hier “black-facing” als Verkleidung genutzt wird und am Schluß buchstäblich ein paar “schwarze Teufel” einen kurzen “Auftritt” haben.Alles in allem: Vergleichsweise harmlos, aber eher langweilig.Drei von fünf Sternen.View all my reviews [Less]

Traditions by Michael J. SullivanMy rating: 3 of 5 starsWhat a curious coincidence! Immediately after finishing “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” I picked up “Traditions”.Written in Michael’s world of Elan, it features Annie, a girl who’s ... [More] about to be sacrificed to a monster for the continued well-being of her village.Presented by her boyfriend with an opportunity to flee together, she rejects his plan but decides not to play by the age-old rules but to try and determine her own fate.Thus, she walks up to the lair of the monster and confronts it. The monster, an old, basically invalid dragon tries to talk her out of killing him by presenting the possible catastrophic consequences if it becomes known that the dragon “protecting” the village is gone. That all the sacrifices for a very long time have been for nought.In contrast to the people of Omelas, Annie decides not to play by the rules: She does not accept the potential consequences as a given. She does not sacrifice herself for the greater good.Instead, she changes the rules and when she leaves the cave, a new dawn is rising. Let’s not accept rules just because they are rules. Let us question the rules, let us change them together instead of complacently accepting the torment of others.Let us also not become complicit as Le Guin in Omelas by stating “rules are rules”. We make the damn rules and, if need be, we can bend or even break them.Three out of five stars.View all my reviews [Less]