> Visiting Chicago was an adventure! I'm still getting caught up from the trip even though it's been a bit over a week, but my biggest takeaway was that the restaurants in the financial district weren't nearly as good I was expecting (especially for the price!). I did a lot of reading while I was away, though, I want to highlight some of the ... highlights ## Nonfiction - This [article about how some birds changed the pitch of their songs during the pandemic](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bird-songs-changed-pandemic) was fascinating, particularly because of the focus on how the birds haven't changed _back_ to their old pitches, even though the reason for the pitch changes probably had to do with coping with noise pollution... which has definitely returned. Very thought-provoking. - Arguments between archaeologists about the purposes of small objects is one of my favorite topics. I've written about the annoying ubiquity of "[items used for ritual purposes](https://eleanorkonik.com/ritual/) %% ( [[2021-11-24 Ritual]] ) %%" before, but here's an interesting take about how [ancient toys are really hard to have any certainty about](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220816-the-worlds-oldest-toys-what-toys-were-used-in-the-past), too, and are often offered as an alternative explanation when archaeologists aren't sure what something is for. "Must be a toy... or a religious object" is the way the saying goes. - A popular blogger named Scott Alexander recently had a book review contest, and the entry I keep going back to is this piece about [1587, A Year of No Significance](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-1587-a-year-of-no) which is about the decline of the Ming Dynasty from the perspective of the "boring" stuff, like a disinterested ruler and bureaucratic infighting. Nothing "big" happens, but it's a neat sort of "slice of life" biopic for an entire country and I really enjoyed it. - This [deep dive into how heavy iron age bows were](https://www.bookandsword.com/2022/07/02/how-heavy-were-iron-age-bows-part-1/) was particularly interesting to me, since I've got a chapter coming up involving arrows used in combat, and the author is a historian who always makes it a point to talk about things "enthusiasts" don't like to acknowledge when it comes to making and using replica war gear. ## Fiction - I finally got around to reading _Jade City_ by Fonda Lee, whose panels at the _last_ Worldcon in Washington, D.C. I really enjoyed. The books were fantastic, albeit a little more emotionally fraught than I typically pick for escapism. More people died than I'm used to, which just means that it was unusually realistic for a fantasy novel. It reminded me of [The Traitor Son Cycle](https://eleanorkonik.com/the-traitor-son-cycle-by-miles-cameron/) %% ( [[2021-02-26 The Traitor Son Cycle by Miles Cameron]] ) %% in that regard, except about post-colonial Japan instead of late Medieval Britain. - _Infomocracy_ by Malka Older was recommended by (I think?) Arkady Martine during a panel we were both on about legal systems in science fiction. It's near-future hard scifi, which is to say it falls under the banner of "it could happen" and presents a world that recently embraced micro-democracies thanks to ubiquitous Information research and lookup capacities. The characters were a bit less engaging than I usually go for, but the system and bureaucracy was really thought-provoking. - I re-read _The Hedgewitch Queen_ by Lilith Saintcrow in preparation for my panel about gendered magic in historic fantasy. I'd forgotten how thoroughly I disapprove of the male lead, but it was a compelling look at a fantasy Aquitaine, which is honestly one of my favorite Medieval regions; Eleanor of Aquitaine and her mother Aenor are two of my favorite historical women. - I read _Seasonal Fears_ by Seanan McGuire and was reminded of how much McGiure likes to include cheerleading and Americana in her "folkloric" books, which reminded me of Matt Stoller's [ongoing investigative journalism series](https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-a-cheerleading-monopolist-played) into the [American cheerleading monopoly situation](https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/antitrust-and-the-fall-of-a-cheerleading). It's remarkably sordid.