Here’s what I read in July and August of 2025. Finally, I had the chance to finish up some books I’ve been reading for ages, along with reading some new things I just recently discovered. One note: I’ve separated RPG books from everything else, since some people are not interested in that stuff.
A while back, I found myself in a kind of Lovecraftian mode. I was writing specifically stories that sort of merged my own version of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands setting with his Cthulhu stories, the stuff set in a world like ours, but with a horrifying alien-god conspiracy hidden in its shadows. I’ve long felt like this would be an interesting synthesis, something Lovecraft might have gotten around to himself if he’d lived longer–and there are hints of it, here and there, in the Dreamlands stories–but which is, nonetheless, very much my own take on things. My crit group at the time …
I love finding literary easter eggs in unexpected places, as in this description of a drive up to a summer camp to drop off a boy dreading the experience to come: — They drove through a lot of beautiful scenery, for hours and hours and hours. The camp was far to the north. That was one of its special qualities. — Great forests now received the travelers, as they had once received the French; and the car passed though towns with historic churchyards followed by stony farms that bore witness to various sublethal crop diseases which had originated in Dunwich, …
For the last few days, I’ve been taking medicine for an ear infection I suddenly developed. It’s not completely clear what caused the infection: contamination of the water in the pool where I swim is possible, but it’s just as likely that it’s a side effect of a particular asthma medication I’ve been taking. In any case, it’s not completely resolved, but it is a lot better than it was… yesterday, I was worried my eardrum might burst from the pressure, but today it’s almost normal again. (On the one side, at least.) Anyway, as a result, I’ve been unable …
I have a huge list of links marked “to post” which, to be honest, I find kind of daunting. I used to post links a lot more, but lately my blog is mostly devoted to housing my ongoing project, Blogging Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, along with occasional posts on SF or Korea-related issues. But I have had a few tabs open on my browser for over a week, which seem worth posting to me, and having been delayed for my critique group’s meeting by an annoying fridge-related disaster (though less delayed than another member), I am now sitting in a …