LADNIP

Or, Lying Around Doing Nothing In Pajamas, which is how my professional-singer brother plans to spend his post-Christmas holidays.

Did a fair bit of it myself yesterday, aided by my three main presents of Doctor Who pajamas, a Questionable Content "Baking is science for hungry people" apron, and a book from Mucca about the Mars Curiosity rover. Which I am now about a third of the way through. It is really, really fascinating, especially how the author (chief engineer for the Mars Program Office at JPL) keeps tying in what they invented and discovered and designed for Curiosity both with the previous Mars missions (Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity) and with future plans for human exploration of Mars. Which they are seriously thinking about in concrete terms, and he goes into that.

I'd just finished a biography of Sally Ride (Sally Ride: America's First Woman In Space by Lynn Sherr) so it's really cool seeing an engineering perspective on the whole thing after reading about astronauts. The Ride book was fantastic as well. I continue to be torn between being jealous of Ride for getting to be an astrophysicist, being jealous of her later college students (she sounds like such a good teacher! aaahhhh), and being sad that she didn't feel safe coming out as bi/lesbian in her lifetime. (Though her friends knew.) And besides the obvious big things like being the first woman in space (SPAAAACE!), I love so much that Ride was openly a feminist and spent the last decade or so of her life supporting STEM education for girls in practical, workable ways with Sally Ride Science. I'm just a little sad that I'm one of the girls who fell through the cracks. But, you know: bi feminist astrophysicist in space. \o/

Other reading list:

* Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity's Chief Engineer (Rob Manning & William L. Simon)
* The Siren Depths: Book 3 of the Books of the Raksura (Martha Wells)
* Parallel 59 (Eighth Doctor Adventure #30) (Natalie Dallaire & Stephen Cole) [also about space, and interrogations of naked!Eight, oh how I appreciate this canon's dedication to my kinks]
* Sister Mine (Nalo Hopkinson)
* Triptych (J. M. Frey)
* Three Parts Dead (Max Gladstone)
Recently read:
* Stranger (Rachel Manija Brown & Sherwood Smith)
* Hostage (eARC) (Rachel Manija Brown & Sherwood Smith)
* The Prosekiller Chronicles: Rise of the Spider Goddess (An Annotated Novel) (Jim C. Hines)

Also Yuletide, including ten (:D!) Imperial Radch fics, a goodly proportion of them Breq/Mercy of Kalr (♥), and half a dozen Raksura fics (which I am forbidden to read until after I finish Siren Depths, because spoilers). But did I read any of those late last night? No, no I did not; instead I fell into the Doctor Who tag on AO3, aiming for Twelve/Gomez!Master fic but falling into some Gomez!Master femslash, some Eight/male companions, some Ace/Seven (I've not even seen Seven), and various assorted other things.

Recs:
Minimum Viable Population by yonderdarling -- Twelve and the Mistress negotiate the annoying, raging attraction they have for each other. Bloody hilarious. (6169 words)

Companionship by Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw -- When Rusty met Oswin, or, a few good Daleks. (373 words)

And now I shall go see about turkey leftovers.