My Garmin is suggesting I never run again and I'm expecting Amazon to start recommending crutches and wheelchairs. And those socks are *never* coming clean.

I'd love to hear what they think of them, as and when. And what would they/you suggest for me? Goes both ways...

Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds and Iain M Banks for hard SF, big ideas? Ann Leckie would be great. Scalzi's _Old Man's War_ series. Mary Robinette Kowal's _Lady Astronaut_ series if they'd like some alt history.

Ooh, good Q. And the Expanse series is excellent, just not what I'd have thought of for a first step.

FWIW:
- Terry Pratchett but *not* _TCoM_!
- Becky Chambers, _The Long Way..._
- Pierce Brown, _Red Rising_ etc
- Naomi Novik, _Scholomance_ trilogy
- Andy Weir, _The Martian_
- Martha Wells, _Murderbot_ series
- Seanan McGuire, _October Daye_ series
- Jim Butcher, _Dresden Files_ series

Inspiration has expiration built in.

Looking good! I'm doing pizza today but need to do bread next week...

We talked about how 'fear of the other' could be seen in everything from old fairy tales to vampire/werewolf myths and more recent 'stranger danger'. I didn't quite share my theory that humans invented monsters because the idea was less scary than accepting other people could be monstrous.

I was having this discussion with my youngest, but from the opposite direction; that in stories what makes characters frightening 'monsters' might be them actually being scary, or it might be how we see them. We then got into how folk tales can be seen as a bad model for explaining MH/disability/ND.

(apart from the bug, obviously!)

A succession of injuries - herniated disc in 24 then dislocated shoulder last autumn - have certainly made it hard, but it's great to be back into it. Signing up for a long one in May has definitely helped my motivation! How are things with you?