E. A. Fredericks
@efredericks.bsky.social
West Coaster in exile, pining for sunshine & teaching literature to college kids in the Midwest. Ruled by a tiny dog. Books, baking, baseball (3rd generation Dodgers fan), film, #toastie
Oh yeah. This is a fun cast doing good work, cannot wait to see your takes as it progresses.
January 14, 2026 at 9:43 PM
Oh yeah. This is a fun cast doing good work, cannot wait to see your takes as it progresses.
It is what it is! I converted my sisters to coffee drinkers but they *wanted* it, haha. (I just made it for myself and let them try it whenever they wanted to.) My mom has tried multiple times, never has liked it, so I just enjoy buying tea for her.
January 14, 2026 at 8:17 PM
It is what it is! I converted my sisters to coffee drinkers but they *wanted* it, haha. (I just made it for myself and let them try it whenever they wanted to.) My mom has tried multiple times, never has liked it, so I just enjoy buying tea for her.
(there's four of us siblings, so I get why she first thought that she wanted so many, esp since she was the baby)
January 14, 2026 at 8:14 PM
(there's four of us siblings, so I get why she first thought that she wanted so many, esp since she was the baby)
My sister thought she wanted five and then stopped at three because she realized that was all the baby/small child she could cope with & I have total respect for that self-awareness.
January 14, 2026 at 8:13 PM
My sister thought she wanted five and then stopped at three because she realized that was all the baby/small child she could cope with & I have total respect for that self-awareness.
Neither of my parents drink coffee and they managed to raise four kids who now, as adults, all drink coffee. People just like what they like! Life is a rich tapestry!
January 14, 2026 at 8:10 PM
Neither of my parents drink coffee and they managed to raise four kids who now, as adults, all drink coffee. People just like what they like! Life is a rich tapestry!
Whyyyyyy are people so weird, also my mom got my rant on that same topic as it pertains to the show Miss Scarlet [and the Duke] in which the actor who played the Duke left, probably because every season just reset the romantic dynamic and left him playing the same notes! it got boring!
January 14, 2026 at 3:43 PM
Whyyyyyy are people so weird, also my mom got my rant on that same topic as it pertains to the show Miss Scarlet [and the Duke] in which the actor who played the Duke left, probably because every season just reset the romantic dynamic and left him playing the same notes! it got boring!
Having rewatched this episode just recently: a lot is suggestion/clever angles, and there's a cut to the aftermath which is just a guy pinned to the lawn surrounded by broken bottles. MM tends to show you just enough that you can imagine the rest for yourself but it's never really gory/explicit.
January 14, 2026 at 3:35 PM
Having rewatched this episode just recently: a lot is suggestion/clever angles, and there's a cut to the aftermath which is just a guy pinned to the lawn surrounded by broken bottles. MM tends to show you just enough that you can imagine the rest for yourself but it's never really gory/explicit.
Not this semester; my non-gen ed class every other term is a period survey, so I'm teaching Victorian/Modern British lit. Which is a class I love, so no great hardship there! But the WWI class went well so it'll definitely happen again.
January 14, 2026 at 1:09 PM
Not this semester; my non-gen ed class every other term is a period survey, so I'm teaching Victorian/Modern British lit. Which is a class I love, so no great hardship there! But the WWI class went well so it'll definitely happen again.
...I also worked for one of our deans on issues of abuse in the academy as a factor for noncompletion of PhDs & it's far, far more common than we'd like, even if many of us can say anecdotally that we were fine. The more elite the school, at times, the more leeway a prestigious abuser can have.
January 14, 2026 at 12:34 AM
...I also worked for one of our deans on issues of abuse in the academy as a factor for noncompletion of PhDs & it's far, far more common than we'd like, even if many of us can say anecdotally that we were fine. The more elite the school, at times, the more leeway a prestigious abuser can have.
Kuang isn't just looking at academia writ large but a very particular slice of academia which has centuries more tradition to reinforce certain patterns of behavior that can easily turn cruel and abusive. My PhD experience was also positively halcyon compared to this book, but...
January 14, 2026 at 12:32 AM
Kuang isn't just looking at academia writ large but a very particular slice of academia which has centuries more tradition to reinforce certain patterns of behavior that can easily turn cruel and abusive. My PhD experience was also positively halcyon compared to this book, but...
At Oxford/Cambridge there very much was a great deal of sexism still in the 1980s, and Kuang presents their field of study much like STEM, which compounds the problem. My experience of the UK is that there was way more hostility to opening male spaces to women. Alice also is American and not white.
January 14, 2026 at 12:30 AM
At Oxford/Cambridge there very much was a great deal of sexism still in the 1980s, and Kuang presents their field of study much like STEM, which compounds the problem. My experience of the UK is that there was way more hostility to opening male spaces to women. Alice also is American and not white.
The time period is a little nebulous, but it's so clearly the past & thus a reminder not to idealize the academic world of 40-50 years ago when jobs were more plentiful, but the atmosphere could still be profoundly toxic & there wasn't a common language for that.
January 13, 2026 at 11:58 PM
The time period is a little nebulous, but it's so clearly the past & thus a reminder not to idealize the academic world of 40-50 years ago when jobs were more plentiful, but the atmosphere could still be profoundly toxic & there wasn't a common language for that.
I do think it's important that this is pretty clearly set not in the present, though. Alice has made bad choices, sure, but she's also in an era of academia that is far more male-dominated and in which the idea of abuse in the ivory tower is pretty muted/nonexistent. Alice is far more vulnerable.
January 13, 2026 at 11:56 PM
I do think it's important that this is pretty clearly set not in the present, though. Alice has made bad choices, sure, but she's also in an era of academia that is far more male-dominated and in which the idea of abuse in the ivory tower is pretty muted/nonexistent. Alice is far more vulnerable.
Oh, and this is fantasy with good 🏳️🌈 representation, since Calehar is clearly not straight.
January 13, 2026 at 10:44 PM
Oh, and this is fantasy with good 🏳️🌈 representation, since Calehar is clearly not straight.
Calehar is an interesting character to follow, someone who feels so alienated from everything, deeply at odds with some of his colleagues, but the arc of this narrative is clearly toward reintegration, due to his fundamental decency underneath his pessimism. 📚💙
January 13, 2026 at 10:44 PM
Calehar is an interesting character to follow, someone who feels so alienated from everything, deeply at odds with some of his colleagues, but the arc of this narrative is clearly toward reintegration, due to his fundamental decency underneath his pessimism. 📚💙
Finished listening to Katherine Addison's Witness for the Dead last year. If you want a fantasy murder mystery & a fantasy setting that's not medieval and has some Eastern influence in its invented cultures, go for it. I also enjoyed The Goblin Emperor, the first book in the series, last year. 📚💙
January 13, 2026 at 10:42 PM
Finished listening to Katherine Addison's Witness for the Dead last year. If you want a fantasy murder mystery & a fantasy setting that's not medieval and has some Eastern influence in its invented cultures, go for it. I also enjoyed The Goblin Emperor, the first book in the series, last year. 📚💙
Ghosts of Rome, I think! I really liked its predecessor, My Father's House, and O'Connor is a really good historical novelist. But the Mitford biography is also a pretty engrossing read.
January 13, 2026 at 12:32 PM
Ghosts of Rome, I think! I really liked its predecessor, My Father's House, and O'Connor is a really good historical novelist. But the Mitford biography is also a pretty engrossing read.
Just started listening to The Ghosts of Rome, reading both Tash Aw's the South and a biography of the Mitford sisters.
January 13, 2026 at 3:55 AM
Just started listening to The Ghosts of Rome, reading both Tash Aw's the South and a biography of the Mitford sisters.
The man did well!
January 12, 2026 at 3:52 PM
The man did well!
Ooohhh where did you get that box? (Also nice lunch)
January 12, 2026 at 3:40 PM
Ooohhh where did you get that box? (Also nice lunch)
The deja vu it gave me to see this pop up! I taught David Jones's In Parenthesis last semester and one student got every into Y Gododdin as a result for their final paper.
January 11, 2026 at 9:30 PM
The deja vu it gave me to see this pop up! I taught David Jones's In Parenthesis last semester and one student got every into Y Gododdin as a result for their final paper.
The light read for this first week (and good God, light reads are going to be load-bearing this year) was Tasha Alexander's And Only to Deceive. Plot is a little repetitive at times, but a privileged young Victorian-era widow finding out the truth behind her husband's dead is a fun idea. 📚💙
January 9, 2026 at 6:40 PM
The light read for this first week (and good God, light reads are going to be load-bearing this year) was Tasha Alexander's And Only to Deceive. Plot is a little repetitive at times, but a privileged young Victorian-era widow finding out the truth behind her husband's dead is a fun idea. 📚💙