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PaperclipPerfector  17hr ago (text post)   695 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 10, 2026

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So, what are you reading?

I've finished The Handmaid's Tale. It's a book I'll have to read again sometime, since there's clearly a lot which I haven't noticed. Can't say it ever came together for me, but maybe that's because I didn't really understand its thrust. The tone throughout was sterile, which was probably intentional, given the motifs of waiting and idleness. The world itself never made a convincing dystopia; it was way too lax in just about everything, and the sense of fear of reprisals or of other people never became more than a literary suggestion. The writing was quite good.

It proved as curious as Atwood, who has not been a predictable simpleton when it comes to politics. On the one hand, it could be read as a screed against the religious right, but the picture is always muddled by something, like the quoting of the communist from each according to his ability. The last chapter muddies the picture even further, making us wonder to what extent this is to be taken as history or myth. As a myth, it may be something of value, something worth a closer look. As a history, it is laced with what seems like old arguments among old activists which seems to limp on eternally, even up to paranoia over viruses.

Going to try some Agatha Christie next, which perennialy seems to be collecting dust on my shelf.

The Lies of Locke Lamora. The writing smacks of the fedora, if you catch my drift - but the plot is engaging enough to keep me interested.

Although I can't help but wonder why the Thiefmaster needed dispensation from Capa Barsavi to whack Locke, but apparently didn't need it for Viselin and just killed him and his buddy on the spot.

So, what are you reading?

I just started Platform Decay. Murderbot is comfortable science fiction, to me. It's not groundbreaking work, but it is smoothly executed and enjoyable. The series definitely does a bit of anti-capitalist pandering but this never does successfully undermine its meritocratic undertones. The TV adaptation was also watchable, though strictly inferior (and more inclined to lean into the pandering).

Devouring Man Eaters of Kumaon.

I tapped out on Les Miserables at page ~500 due to its unsatisfying filler:killer ratio and read the synopsis on Wikipedia instead. Can't win them all.

Now reading some Will Self short stories.

Nothing in my life at the moment but SPMM notes for the MRCPsych Paper B and the book I'm meant to review for ACX. One of these is significantly more pleasant company than the other.

Well, the end is nigh. Another week and change, and I won't have to devote quite so many irreplaceable neurons to remembering which antipsychotic is least likely to make you piss yourself in your sleep (risperidone, at a relatively continent 6.2% rate of nocturnal enuresis, versus clozapine's stately one-in-five). Or to remembering whether male British prisoners are more likely to be antisocial assholes or drug-addicts (the former, I think, given that roughly 47% of male prisoners across surveys meet criteria for ASPD; the massive overlap with substance dependence being something the syllabus and I have agreed, by tacit treaty, to disregard).

I'd appreciate recommendations, by the way. God knows I'd like to have something to read once I'm done and dusted. The first Paper A made me depressed. The second Paper B is pushing me towards a psychotic break, which would at least have the dignified completeness of a full syllabus run-through. The system makes me understand how the forensic system works, so it can drive me nuts and admit me for a firsthand tour.

A stupid syllabus full of inane questions, then further mangled by SPMM into a form whose clinical relevance is mostly aspirational, and my sorry ass parked somewhere in the middle of it. At least I'm not a gynecologist.

at a relatively continent 6.2% rate of nocturnal enuresis

Per dose or per patient?

Per patient. If it made your piss yourself that frequently, it would be a shit drug. It's still a... not great drug, but it's better than untreated schizophrenia.

Of course. I just read and wondered if some patients had an innate susceptibility to side effects while others never did. Would be interesting if so.

As a lay person, it’s always complicated looking at lists of side effects. Take a side effect of:

Very rare: stroke.

Does that mean that every time you take it, you are rolling a 1:10,000 chance of stroke. Or is it 1e-9 for a young healthy person and 1:10 for a very elderly person who’s already had one stroke? And so on.

The BNF provides a way to convert from intuitive explanations of risk to quantifiable forms. Common is like >10%. Very rare is like 1:10,000. That's not in terms of every time you take the pill, it's what you'd see in a patient who is taking the pill for prolonged periods of time.

And yes, patient demographics do change things. The elderly are particularly annoying, they'll collapse if things aren't dosed just right.

Sky Pride on royal road.

The description felt very generic eastern cultivation story. But I finally gave in and read it because of its long tenure in the top stories. Even though it is generic and plays standard tropes quite often I feel many of the elements are done well.

What I feel it handles best is the ugliness of a cultivation world. Or at least having a non psychopath OP that finds the psychopathy of the setting horrifying and trauma inducing.

Been following this with a few friends since November last year - quite good, I second the recommendation.

Entertainingly, it does pretty well on the daoism front. I tested this out against a few people I know who were in the middle of reading the Zhuangzi and it took much longer than I expected for them to figure out I was pretending at knowledge by aping a webnovel

I gave it a very fair shake and was mostly disappointed. The prose leans purple, the protagonist is... okay, but "quirky" in a manner I do not find charming. He's painfully earnest, and the feral child being resocialized deal overstays its welcome. It's been long enough that I've forgotten much of my criticism, but I'd describe it as a mid novel at best.

That's a shame, because To The Far Shore is up there in terms of novels I've read on RR. Post-post-apocalyptic Oregon Trail, with radiation magic and fallen civilizations rediscovering muskets and the ruins of hyper-advanced civilizations that came before? You bet I enjoyed it.

Both are by the same guy, which is annoying. It means Warby can write. He just can't write this.

Consider the starts. Mazelton begins media res, he arrives at TTFS ready to fire: paranoid Ma assassin with an almost pathological lack of empathy, an inventory of opinions about everyone in the room, instincts honed by a clan that treated "eat carrion if you must" as parenting advice.

Tian arrives with nothing. The opening arc is the author manually installing a soul, one trauma-recovery beat at a time, and the prose is straining for emotional registers the protagonist can't yet supply. That's where the purple comes from. Lavender adjectives are what you reach for when your POV character is still booting up.

Xianxia compounds it. The genre wants a genuinely virtuous MC so cultivation breakthroughs feel earned, which makes "sweet boy from the trash heap" the obvious play. It is also rather played-out in the genre, and once Tian commits, his available range is roughly Pure to Slightly Less Pure. The supporting cast keeps trying to drag him somewhere more interesting. They were losing, when I gave up on it.

About to start Shatterdark: System of Nil book 2 by Tim Paulson. Still would rate the first as 3/5, but want to see what the author does with the world and the characters he created. Of course, I had to devour Out Law: A Dresden Files novella by Jim Butcher, since it just dropped, and I'm happy to recommend it to fans of the series.

Finally, shout-out to @FtttG, who let me beta read the book they'd been working on. Fun!

One chapter in to GB Stern's The Matriarch.

Going to try some Agatha Christie next, which perennialy seems to be collecting dust on my shelf.

If you haven't read either already, I would highly recommend And Then There Were None and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

About to finish Mage Errant. I'm liking it, but it has definitely slipped from a 4/5 to a 3.5 over the course of the last book so far. It's a shame, because the series had a lot of potential. Too much filler and random side character action right after a cliff hanger for my taste though, it's absolutely relentless during this book.

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