Rebuilding journal search again

Jun. 30th, 2025 03:18 pm
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
juushika: watercolor of a paraselene (cold)
[personal profile] juushika
Title: The Voyage of the Discovery, Vol I-II
Author: Robert Falcon Scott
Published: 1905
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 875 (455+420)
Total Page Count: 538,670
Text Number: 1970-1
Read Because: boys: the coldening, borrowed from the Internet Archive
Review: Polar exploration narratives perforce have a slow start, and Scott is particularly boring when trying to politely thank everyone for the excruciating committee-based construction of the Discovery expedition. As expected, things improve once the Discovery reaches Antarctica; the more Scott quotes from his diary, the better the text, as Scott is less self-aware and over-explanatory in his direct account; that said, there's remarkable retrospective sections about the experience of (springtime) sledging in particular.

I'm struck by the fact that both of Scott's major sledging trips on this expedition were haunted by the same issues that would eventually kill him, re: fuel and food shortages, vitamin deficiencies, overwork, and weather. Not because they're surprising--they're endemic to the work. Rather, because he did learn and did improve and it was still, memorably!, unprepared: the risk I took was calculated.jpg. Scott also gives insight into his disinclination to use dogs in his subsequent attempt at the Pole; it's sympathetic without remotely vindicating the Terra Nova's use of either ponies or dogs: further inadequate improvement. While doomed to pale in comparison to Scott's final journals, I'm glad I plowed through this hefty memoir. Scott gets in his own way, and the Discovery is interesting largely in context rather than its own right, but it is interesting in that context, and Scott, at his best, is evocative, honest, and revealing.
juushika: Screen capture of the Farplane from Final Fantasy X: a surreal landscape of waterfalls and flowers. (Anime/Game)
[personal profile] juushika
Title: Talking to Dragons (Enchanted Forest Chronicles #4)
Author: Patricia C. Wrede
Narrator: Bruce Coville et al.
Published: Listening Library, 2002 (1985)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 537,795
Text Number: 1969
Read Because: continuing the series, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Daystar is sent into the Enchanted Forest in possession of a sword and his mother's assurance that he'll figure out what to do with it when the time comes. This is fun! It feels substantial, and Daystar's PoV is the biggest factor in that: an educated outsider to the Enchanted Forest, he can be both reader stand-in and guide, and frames the whimsy and danger with humorous genre-awareness; and the mystery of what he doesn't know keeps this from being a straight travelogue or questing narrative. I still prefer Dealing with Dragons, but that's my particular wish-fulfillment fantasy. I regret that I didn't read this series in publication order, because the interstitial books almost serve a purpose, then; I get the nods and there sure is a sweeping, summarized backstory for them to fill out. Instead, at least, I get to go out on a high note.

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