A week of Blaugust, a honkaku mystery, some music for Bandcamp Friday, Traitors NZ, and more Zelda. We are a week into Blaugust and I have managed a post a day so far. However next Monday I'm back to work for a full seven days so will probably not continue that pace. Probably another link post on Monday or Tuesday and a digest on Friday at least. I also need to spend some more time job hunting. I am only really employed at my current job until the end of September. Which isn't that far away. Trying not to panic, but the low level anxiety has started simmering in the background. Blogging sure doesn't pay any bills! Contents: Reading Listening Watching Playing Posting Reading I had been reading a Sci-Fi anthology, but paused in the middle to read The Clock House Murders by Ayatsuji Yukito (1991, trans. 2026). Having read a lot more John Dickson Carr since the last of his books I read the comparison is much more obvious this time around. Ayatsuji really goes for Carr's combination of the supernatural/occult/horror and tricky fair play puzzle mystery. Something else Carr really had a penchant for was an ominous and 'cursed' physical built environment, which Ayatsuji has based this entire book series on. I don't think any of his novels will ever beat The Decagon House Murders (1987, trans. 2021) because it felt so intensely perfect at the time that I read it, but Clock House might be my favourite of the ones since then. The story still includes a lot of the tropes he has a tendency to use -- borderline incestuous father/daughter relationships, obsessive relationships in general, people being isolated from the outside world, a cast of 'outsiders' coming into the space, masks, weird children, and of course locked room murders. Something I have to give Ayatsuji credit for is, like many Japanese honkaku writers, he has to assume his readers already know all the tricks. So the solution can't be something that will be obvious to someone who has already read John Dickson Carr's famous treatise on locked room murders. He can't just use the And Then There Were None twist again. So he always has his own characters in-story be aware of those ideas as well, in the way that a magician will "show" the audience that their hands are empty, or that the guillotine really cuts a head of lettuce. It makes it more impressive when he does, in fact, make the mystery work. I think his weakness is in making memorable characters, or at least ones you will be attached to or invested in. But, again, if Agatha Christie could use the exact same stock characters in most of her books I think Ayatsuji should get a pass on that as well. He also isn't quite as good at creating the horror atmosphere as Carr, but also that kind of lurid writing isn't exactly the style these days. Maybe you could argue Another (2009, trans. 2014) as a light novel had more permission to be slightly silly and over the top with the horror. The 'trick' to the house in this book compared to the two previous ones works better in my mind, so it makes the conclusion more satisfying. In any case, if I was going to recommend a honkaku novel I'd still start with Decagon House, but this isn't a bad continuation of the concepts and themes he has been playing with since the start. If you like this sort of thing then you like it, and new fair play puzzle mysteries are hard to come by in 2026. Listening It's a Bandcamp Friday, but I don't have a lot of new albums to share. Four Tet has a new two-song single Human Voice that is pretty good. The first track is his usual kind of thing under the 'Four Tet' name, but the second track sounds more like what he has been putting out as 'Kieran Hebden'. I also bought 99 Nights by Charlotte Cardin which is from 2023, but I was listening to it over my trip last month. She does good pop, what can I say. I have a lot of stuff on my wishlist that I haven't even listened to yet, you can check out my collection on bandcamp. Watching I have just finished Traitors NZ S03 just in time to be 2 episodes behind in Traitors AU S03. This show is a full time job. The problem is that the last episode is rarely the most interesting. It's rare that anything really interesting or unexpected happens. This one went almost as expected, which I suppose means there was a bit of a twist, but the editing foreshadowed a lot. I don't know how anybody disliked Keanu, I have to assume it's pure homophobia and racism cause he was a sweetheart. There's a big difference between a gay POC man being confident and a white guy being a dickhead and that's what I'll say about that. This season wasn't as good as Canada S03 but was slightly better than Québec S03 in my hierarchy of recent series. We'll see where Australia falls, considering its done by the same production team as NZ. I've also surprisingly really liked this season of Taskmaster AU S05. Normally AU is my least favourite of the English language Taskmasters, but for whatever reason this one has been much more entertaining and positive. Playing I've finished the Hyrule Castle and unlocked the final sage dungeon so I'm approaching the endgame. I'm trying to stay on track but as always it's very tempting to wander around looking for interesting things in the landscape or try to get to new sky islands or find new lightroots. But I do want to finish this game before I get bored of it. I did recently buy Persona 5 Tactica and plan to make that my next game. I've also spent a couple hours on the jigsaw puzzle this week. It might be finished in... a few months! Posting 06 Aug, 2026 Vintage vs Second Hand 05 Aug, 2026 A Year of Bearblog Analytics 04 Aug, 2026 Week 32 Links 03 Aug, 2026 re: AI use in communities 02 Aug, 2026 AI is so boring 01 Aug, 2026 Blaugust 2026 31 Jul, 2026 2026 Week 31 Digest ⇄ Reply: mastodon+email ＄ Tip: ko-fi+liberapay 2026 Week 32 Digest was last edited: 15 hours, 57 minutes ago