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minoanmiss

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Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/wednesday-and-december-2025-books/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=64850

My last weekly roundup of this year; the next one will be on Thursday 8 January.

Also my last monthly roundup of 2025. Analytical post to follow.

Last books finished
Five Little Pigs, by Agatha Christie
Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, by Laura Spinney

December reading

Non-fiction 3 (Year total 79)
Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo, by Ivo H. Daalder and Michael E. O’Hanlon
Mawdryn Undead, by Kara Dennison
Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, by Laura Spinney

Non-genre 5 (Year total 43)
Hallowe’en Party, by Agatha Christie
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, by Agatha Christie
Reeds in the Wind, by Grazia Deledda
Our Wonderful Selves, by Roland Pertwee
Five Little Pigs, by Agatha Christie

SF 9 (Year total 120)
If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller, by Italo Calvino
Adventures in Space, eds. Patrick Parrinder and Yao Haijun
The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport, by Samit Basu (did not finish)
Elidor, by Alan Garner
A Wrinkle in the Skin, by John Christopher
The Enigma Score, by Sheri S. Tepper
Yet More Penguin Science Fiction, ed. Brian Aldiss
The Moon of Gomrath, by Alan Garner
The Leviathan, by Rosie Andrews (did not finish)

Doctor Who 3 (Year total 31)
The Infinity Race, by Simon Messingham
Doctor Who: The Adventures After, by Carole Ann Ford et al
Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead, by Peter Grimwade

Comics 1 (Year total 36)
The Terror Beneath, by George Mann et al

5,000 pages (2025 total 77,700)
9/21 (2025 total 118/314) by non-male writers (Dennison, Spinney, Christie x 3, Deledda, Tepper, Andrews, Ford)
2/21 (2024 total 34/314) by non-white writers (Obama, Yu/Yang, Emezi, Falaise)
9 or 10/21 rereads (maybe Hallowe’en Party, definitely Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, Five Little Pigs, Elidor, A Wrinkle in the Skin, The Enigma Score, Yet More Penguin Science Fiction, The Moon of Gomrath, The Infinity Race, Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead)

193 books currently tagged unread, up 8 from last month, down 68 from December 2024.

Reading now

This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (And Why It Matters), by Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman
Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships, by Robin Dunbar
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, by Patrick Radden Keefe
Best American Comics 2011, ed. Alison Bechdel

Coming soon (perhaps)

Time Trials: The Wolves of Winter, by Richard Dinnick et al
Domino Effect, by David Bishop
Ghost Stories, ed. George Mann
Renaissance- en barokarchitectuur in België, by Rutger J. Thijs
The Forgotten and the Fantastical: Modern Fables and Ancient Tales: No. 2, ed. Taika Bellamy
Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep, by Philip Reeve
Lost In Time, by A.G. Riddle
Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy, by Christopher R. Hill
River Mumma, by Zalika Reid-Benta
Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath, by Sigrid Undset
Looking Glass Sound, by Catriona Ward
Bruxelles 43, by Patrick Weber and Baudouin Deville
Red Planet, by Robert A. Heinlein
The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Dead Take the A Train, by Richard Kadrey
Stone and Sky, by Ben Aaronovitch
Killing Thatcher: The IRA, the Manhunt and the Long War on the Crown, by Rory Carroll
The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett
The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
Drome, by Jesse Lonergan
Oscar Wilde: A Biography, by Richard Ellmann

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/wednesday-and-december-2025-books/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=64850

james_davis_nicoll

Well, that's it for 2025. Trump hasn't killed us all (yet) and I got a lot of books read.

December 2025 and 2025 as a Whole in Review

fromtheheartofeurope_feed

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/wednesday-and-december-2025-books/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=64850

My last weekly roundup of this year; the next one will be on Thursday 8 January.

Also my last monthly roundup of 2025. Analytical post to follow.

Last books finished
Five Little Pigs, by Agatha Christie
Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, by Laura Spinney

December reading

Doctor Who 3 (Year total 31)
The Infinity Race, by Simon Messingham
Doctor Who: The Adventures After, by Carole Ann Ford et al
Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead, by Peter Grimwade

Comics 1 (Year total 36)
The Terror Beneath, by George Mann et al

193 books currently tagged unread, up 8 from last month, down 68 from December 2024.

Reading now

Coming soon (perhaps)

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/wednesday-and-december-2025-books/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=64850

fred_mouse

Previous: 2024, 2023

I don't yet have the reading wrap up; I'm doing this earlier than I did last year, because I'm working my way through 'end of the year' tasks that I brainstormed, and right now I have the oomph to be typing.

These are in reverse chronological order; links are to reviews, if I wrote one.

Long works

Nest by Inga Simpson
Within Prison Walls: Being a Narrative of Personal Experience During a Week of Voluntary Confinement in the State Prison at Auburn, New York by Thomas Mott Osborne
The Deep Dark by Lee Knox Ostertag
The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen
Passing Strange by Ellen Klages
The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw
Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Points of Departure: Liavek Stories by Patricia C. Wrede, Pamela Dean
Firebird by Elizabeth Wein
We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

Short stories

Model Collapse by Matthew Kressel
Dragonsworn (Part 1) by L Chan
Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200 by R.S.A. Garcia
Stitched to Skin like Family Is by Nghi Vo
Where Oaken Hearts do Gather by Sarah Pinsker

mrs_redboots posting in

yuletide

You will find them here.
One is Yes Minister
Two are Georgette Heyer
and three are Lord Peter Wimsey.

I didn't actually mean them to come out like that, it just happened!

mrs_redboots

By Special Licence (2281 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Cotillion - Georgette Heyer

A Gentlewoman's Debt (5839 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: A Civil Contract - Georgette Heyer, The Toll-Gate - Georgette Heyer

Snow Job (1943 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Yes Minister

Happiness In Time of Joy (2389 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers

The Day After (4505 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers

a certain group of women (3182 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers

diffrentcolours

About 9 months ago I joined UTAW, the tech worker's union (technically a branch of the CWU rather than a union in its own right). Recently I left it.

I joined because I was hoping to find a group of like-minded people in the tech industry, to take action on AI/LLM technology, and on the pandemic and Return To Office mandates. I didn't see anything like that on UTAW's website but I was told it'd be like "pushing at an open door". So I signed up, and joined the official Discord.

( Details )

Rather than pushing at an open door, I felt like I was in a maze full of open doors, leading nowhere but twisty circles. Nobody ever told me I couldn't do anything, but nobody explained what I could do instead. it was opaque to those not in the inner circle or not familiar with trade unions. I briefly considered standing for election as comms officer to try and fix some of these problems but I felt the union as a whole was institutionally hostile to improving, and my minimal level of engagement was already sucking a lot of my energy.

Resigning was also a farce; the CWU website wouldn't let me log in or reset a password using the email address via which they sent me communications. So I just cancelled the Direct Debit for my membership payment, and they were right on top of that - a few days later I got a letter confirming my membership had been cancelled.

I do think it'd be good to have some kind of organisation working in the interests of the tech sector and tech workers. But UTAW isn't it - it's something co-opting tech workers to serving the interests of the trade union movement. At least I only wasted a relatively small amount of time and money finding this out.

fred_mouse

I said to myself earlier today 'last year's goal setting wasn't fabulous, let's not do that this year. ... I haven't quite managed to make myself believe that zero goals is the right number. Unlike last year where I allowed multiple goals for many topics, and separated them out, I'm going to allow myself 10 minutes (and yes, I've set a timer) to put 10-12 believable goals

Read >25 non-uni books. This one is going to be tricky to track because I put all the books I read into Storygraph; I'm going to have to manually count. (book: published physically as a single; short stories don't count)
Do my milestone 2 - this is a university requirement at about the 18 month mark; because of the way my school does things my choices are October (early) or February 2027 (late). Thus, I am aiming for the October one with the understanding that it is a large ask.
Eldest's quilt - at this point I would be happy with the quilt top being done
Continue playing with at least one of the community orchestras
Go to at least one of the Sunday morning sessions I have been invited to.
Spend time with friends and family. Reach out to friends I haven't seen in a while. Spend time with K&D, given they are going to be in the state and this will be the first opportunity I've had to actually explore what it means to be siblings.

... my time is not up, but I'm finding I don't want to put more. There is a reading, there is a uni, there is a music. There is a craft, and it is very specific, but I'm going to have to stop with the being obsessive. Do I think I'll stay on track with this? No. But also, I'm not going to attempt to track it through the year; it is a snapshot of what I thought I wanted.

paranoidangel

First, last year I had a goal of decreasing the number of unread books I have. I started at 38 and am down to 33. I have achieved my goal! But it still feels like a lot of unread books, especially when all the paper ones are in a box under my sofa which is very heavy to pull out.

But as much as I'd like to get that number down, past experience tells me it's not going to be that easy. Especially as one of the books is 7th in a 7 part series and another is 4th in a 4 part series. But since I managed to reduce that number by six this year, next year my plan is to get it down by seven - so to 26.

What I Just Finished Reading
Death and Other Occupational Hazards by Veronika Dapunt. I really enjoyed this. It's about Death taking a sabbatical and then ending up getting involved in investigating murders. It's just a little bit silly - there's a character who's clearly Jesus, but prefers being called the Human Communications Director and whenever he dies it only ever lasts for three days.

Lady Rample and the Lady in the Lake by Shea MacLeod. This was on offer and on my wishlist because I'd read the first book in the series and thought the characters were a bit silly. This was the twelfth and they felt a lot less silly. It was all right, but because it's only a short story the murder investigation wasn't that complicated.

What I'm Currently Reading
Roaring Girls by Holly Kyte. This is about eight women in pre-twentieth century Britain who blazed a trail. It is uplifting, what they achieved, but also depressing in the ere they lived in where women were supposed to be wives and mothers and nothing else, and how long change took. It's also full of footnotes, at the back and in tiny writing, which makes it a bit of a pain to read and requires two bookmarks.

Yardsticks for Failure by Ivo Graham. I started this for times when the other one was too hard to read, like when I'm eating. I thought it would be a quick, easy read, but it's actually quite long and a bit hard-going so far.

What I'm Reading Next
The Exploits of Arsene Lupin by Maurice LeBlanc. I borrowed this from my sister, so really ought to get round to reading it.

Mirrored from my blog.

osprey_archer

1. Bought the Hummingbird Cottage.

2. Resolved to read a book from my TBR shelf each month. Happy to say I have kept this resolution! Also kept the sister resolution to read purchased books in a timely manner rather than add them to the TBR shelf to languish.

3. Moved into the Hummingbird Cottage.

4. Started work on my garden. This was not wholly successful - the already established mint has unfortunately completely gotten away from me - but I did manage to grow a nice array of herbs, and at least planted two cherry tomato plants, which I think got a little too much shade to flourish as they should. A beginning at least!

5. Learned how to cross stitch and completed MANY cross stitches. Highlights include the Halloween cat, the fat red bird, and the unfinished trio of Puss in Boots. I have completed Puss Putting on Cape and Puss Putting on Boots but not yet Puss in Full Regalia with Plumed Hat… Then I needed some emergency Christmas presents so I ended up giving them all away and will need to begin the Puss in Boots trio all over again.

6. Finished the Newbery project! This has been either seven or twenty-five years in the making, depending how you’re counting.

7. Roasted a duck.

8. Made marshmallows! A friend sent me homemade marshmallows over a decade ago, and I’ve been chasing that homemade marshmallow high ever since.

9. All Christmas Book Advent, during which I read nothing but Christmas books during the advent season. Successful AGAINST MY WILL, as I attempted to break my vow on December 24, only to discover that the book with which I intended to break my vow started on Christmas Eve. Have considered this challenge for years so glad that I gave it a go, but have established to my own satisfaction that All Christmas Books is Too Many Christmas Books for me.

10. Picture Book Advent! In which I checked out 24 Christmas picture books from the library, wrapped them up under the tree, and opened one to read each day. I enjoyed this so much that I intend to make it a yearly tradition. Already planning to cross-stitch little Advent tags numbering 1 to 24.

regshoe

This is the eighth Hornblower novel in publication order and the fourth in internal chronological order; the first-published novel The Happy Return being the fifth in the chronology, the series has now come full circle, as becomes increasingly clear towards the end of this book.

( With all the will in the world, diving for dear life, when we could be diving for pearls )

Forester then went and messed things up by writing two more novels (and half of a third) totally out of order, but never mind, I'll see what I think of those next.

alisx

All right, buckle up kids. It’s 2026-o’clock.

Leave a comment.⁺

bruce_schneier_feed

Posted by Bruce Schneier

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/12/linkedin-job-scams.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=71401

Interesting article on the variety of LinkedIn job scams around the world:

In India, tech jobs are used as bait because the industry employs millions of people and offers high-paying roles. In Kenya, the recruitment industry is largely unorganized, so scamsters leverage fake personal referrals. In Mexico, bad actors capitalize on the informal nature of the job economy by advertising fake formal roles that carry a promise of security. In Nigeria, scamsters often manage to get LinkedIn users to share their login credentials with the lure of paid work, preying on their desperation amid an especially acute unemployment crisis.

These are scams involving fraudulent employers convincing prospective employees to send them money for various fees. There is an entirely different set of scams involving fraudulent employees getting hired for remote jobs.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/12/linkedin-job-scams.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=71401

gloriamundi

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Current Mood: cheerful

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Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/12/31/whos-making-all-that-racket-over-there

Photo by Dawn Wilson, via U.S. Department of the Interior

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/12/31/whos-making-all-that-racket-over-there

tamaranth

Everything is reviewed on this blog! (Sometimes rather cursorily.) Check out my monthlyculture tag.

Bracketed figures show range over the last 22 years [see the year-in-summary tag for my Cultural History since 2004].

Note: 'Best' is shorthand for 'not necessarily objectively good but I really enjoyed'.

Film (in cinema): 20 (4-21). Best three = Pillion, The Return, Thunderbolts*

Film (streamed): 32 (36-39 in the last 2 years). Best three that I hadn't already seen = KPop Demon Hunters, Official Secrets, Maria

Theatre (live): 20 (1-26). Best three = Elektra, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Born With Teeth

Theatre (streamed): 0 (38 in 2020, 16 in 2021, 8 in 2022, 0 in 2023). Must watch more NT@Home, even alone.

Concerts (classical): 9 (2-22). Best three = Dudamel, Volodos, Argerich.

Opera: 3 (0-10). Best three :) = Iphigenia in Tauris, Patience, The Magic Flute

Gigs: 5 (0-9). Best three = Patti Smith, Mitch Benn, Arcade Fire

Art: 6 (0-6) Best was probably Luxmuralis

Books: 211. Summarised here: reviews here.
Also in 2025: visited Belfast (Worldcon), Mallorca, Cambridge, Ludlow.

Current Mood: satisfied

tamaranth

See them all on LibraryThing

What I read in 2025...

* 211 books, including a couple of scanned books on Internet Archive; including, this year, most rereads, but not re-skims, DNFs or audiobook 'rereads' which I have taken to as an accompaniment to gaming / housewerk / getting to sleep.
* 141 by female writers, 54 by male writers (some collaborations, not all books tagged)
* 36 rereads

My categorisations (some books will have more than one of these tags):
* 85 fantasy, 29 SF, 54 historical (predominantly Classical Greek)
* 28 romance (majority non-het romance)
* 25 YA/children's
* 31 non-fiction

My reading challenges:
* The 'Something Bookish' Reading Challenge
* The Speculative Fiction Challenge
* The 52 in 52 Challenge
* The Non-Fiction Menu
* My own rereading challenge

Authors I read most by:
* Victoria Goddard (mostly rereads)
* Megan Whalen Turner
* Mary Renault
* Elizabeth Wein (mostly rereads)

Best five (based on my enjoyment, not their perfection):
*The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley
*Pagans by James Alastair Henry
*Slow Gods by Claire North
*The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
*A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by H G Parry

Last year's 'books read' post

Current Mood: satisfied

poliphilo

4.30. Got up

5.30. Left house

6.45. Dropped Wendy at Gatwick

(An endless stream of people under artificial light riding a travellator up into the airport building- like a scene from Fritz Lang's Metropolis......)

7.45. Driving into the sunrise.

(Is that a hill or a cloud bank? Actually it's both, a cloud bank in front of a hill, both the same height. The cloud bank breaking up to reveal the solid outline of the hill behind.)

8.00. Dropped in on the cat we're minding for a friend.

9.00. Ordered and ate a full English breakfast at Favo'loso

flowing_data_rss_feed

Posted by Nathan Yau

https://flowingdata.com/2025/12/31/trouble-with-ai-chatbots-that-mimic-people/

https://flowingdata.com/?p=80713

Kashmir Hill reports for the New York Times:

Schneiderman, the computer science professor, calls the desire to make machines that seem human a “zombie idea” that won’t die. He first noticed ChatGPT’s use of first person pronouns in 2023 when it said, “My apologies, but I won’t be able to help you with that request.” It should “clarify responsibility,” he wrote at the time and suggested an alternative: “GPT-4 has been designed by OpenAI so that it does not respond to requests like this one.”

Margaret Mitchell, an A.I. researcher who formerly worked at Google, agrees. Mitchell is now the chief ethics scientist at Hugging Face, a platform for machine learning models, data sets and tools. “Artificial intelligence has the most promise of being beneficial when you focus on specific tasks, as opposed to trying to make an everything machine,” she said.

For those who don’t know that data and probability drive chatbots, let alone knowing the technical bits, computers might as well have become magic machines that think for themselves. Building the models to sound like humans probably doesn’t help.

My only hope is that people grow more wary of the words they enter into chatbots and more skeptical of the probabilistic output that comes out. Every time my kids point out generative AI voice, pictures, or video feels like a win.

Tags: anthropomorphism, chatbot, ethics, New York Times

https://flowingdata.com/2025/12/31/trouble-with-ai-chatbots-that-mimic-people/

https://flowingdata.com/?p=80713

Network

"Artists canceling Trump-Kennedy Center shows are traitors!"

Wednesday and December 2025 Books

December reading

Reading now

Coming soon (perhaps)

December 2025 and 2025 as a Whole in Review

Wednesday and December 2025 Books

December reading

Reading now

Coming soon (perhaps)

2025 5 star reads

A few more recs

A few more recs, just before reveals

There Is No Power In A Union

No Goals 2026

What I am reading Wednesday

2025: A Year in Review

Hornblower and the 'Atropos' by C. S. Forester

Thursday @ 12:07 am

LinkedIn Job Scams

Driveby recs and thanks and end-of-year

Who's Making All That Racket Over There?!

2025: Year in Review (Going Out or Watching Stuff)

2025: Year in Review (Staying In -- books read)

Early Morning

Trouble with AI chatbots that mimic people