this might be the place

I got tagged for a meme on Tumblr and I liked this list so much I'm just going to post it here: Ten of your favorite female characters in ten different fandoms.

1. Dana Scully - The X-Files
2. Chloe Sullivan - Smallville
3. Nyota Uhura - Star Trek
4. Leslie Knope - Parks & Recreation
5. Britta Perry - Community
6. Hermione Granger - Harry Potter
7. Samantha Carter - Stargate SG-1
8. Joan Watson - Elementary
9. Olivia Dunham - Fringe
10. Elise Wassermann - The Tunnel

Look at all those awesome ladies. I could have gone on for another ten. Like I didn't even mention Lana Kane from Archer, or Blue Sargent from The Raven Cycle, or Teyla or Lois Lane or Beverly Crusher or Princess Leia or Buffy or Pepper Potts or—

{also posted to Tumblr}

Slade House, by David Mitchell: I'm reading spooky/ghost/horror stories for October, and this was almost exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. It's a ~literary ghost story, which means I liked the concept, but the characters were barely filled in, and Mitchell was absolutely pushing my buttons with the racist domestic abuser cop, I mean, first of all, could you be more predictable, but mostly, no, hard pass. Sadly his was the second chapter, so it took me a while to realize I was enjoying the book.

It goes off the rails at the end when it gets too explainy, but until then, it's an interesting cross between a murder mystery and a haunted house, with some Inception thrown in for color.

Contains: animal harm, fear of dogs, references to domestic abuse, racist remarks, racist police officers, racist police officers having sex with someone who is concealing their true nature—so dub-con, fatmisia, and mention of eating disorders.

Easy Flourless Muffins, Bars and Cookies: Delicious Recipes for Healthy, Portable Gluten-Free Snacks, by Amanda Drozdz: All the recipes in this book are gluten-free, but not exactly flourless. Drozdz gets around this by calling for whole oats, and then having you pulverize them in the blender. That's oat flour, but whatever. Most of these recipes are made in a high-powered blender, and call for oats, ground flaxseed, honey, almond butter, almond milk, and often Greek yogurt, almond flour, and eggs. A lot of the recipes are oil free (if you don't count the oil in the almond butter), grain free, dairy free, and can be made refined sugar free and vegan. At the top of each recipe, it tells you what it's free from. None of the recipes use gums, and there's only the occasional use of arrowroot powder (or you can use cornstarch instead). Because the muffins are oil free, the author recommends using parchment paper muffin liners because the muffins will stick to ordinary paper cups; I can only imagine how expensive those are. (Amazon says 120 for $6.79, yowch. Wait, fuck you, Amazon, Target has the same cups, 60 for $1.99. Still pricey, but much better. I do have reusable silicon muffin cups but they're such a pain to waahahash.)

The book has a color picture for each muffin, bar, or cookie, and they all look pretty great. The recipes have a description of the taste and texture, measurements by volume and weight (grams), storage advice, and sometimes substitutions, though not for the coconut flour or oil, which are things I would want to replace.

There's a lot of chocolate and bananas, as well as carrots, zucchini, apples, pumpkin, and cheesecake topping. There's even an entire chapter for one-serving microwave muffins, as well as one devoted to chocolate. I have a lot of the recipes flagged, and I like that they're not the usual white rice flour and starch, but I don't like using honey as a sweetener because it can have a cloying flavor, and also maybe I don't want almond butter in everything? Because that shit is expensive?? But I'll give it a try. The pictures are really inviting.

The index is thorough too. It's just a really nice book.

Update: My food sensitivities are out of control, so I made the dairy free banana bread muffins and they turned out amazing? Tender, moist, and light, which blows my mind considering what's in them, or not in them. The only problem is I don't like banana bread. I know, I know, but I had some super ripe bananas. I know. I'm going to make the pumpkin muffins next. I do love a pumpkin muffin.

Horrorstör, by Grady Hendrix: I was excited about this because it's a horror story set in an IKEA parody, but unfortunately, it's not particularly funny or scary. It is gross, however, and has plenty of body horror and blood, though not always in a psychologically effective way. The bad guy's a drag—wordy and one-dimensional—and I didn't like the narrator until the very end, so I wasn't invested at all. I feel like Basil, assistant manager and black nerd, would have made a better narrator, someone with an actual stake in the building and his employees. Amy, on the other hand, doesn't give a shit; plus her characterization's sloppy. She's afraid of being fired and is working overtime to make rent, but then Horror Movie Logic sets in and, obviously, now, when she desperately needs to keep her job, is the best time to hold a séance in her place of work while her manager is around and also there's spooky shit going on in Storage Solutions. Obviously.

The most satisfying thing about this is the IKEA font. The illustrations of the various ORSK products are on point, except for the Jodlöpp, which makes no sense (is it upside down? what part goes on your head?) and doesn't match the description in the text.

A promising idea, but the execution didn't work for me. The end is pretty exciting though.