Babyliography CCL

Ann M. Martin and Gale Galligan, The Baby-Sitters Club: Kristy's Big Day

2018 / Paperback / 160 pages

***

These responsible teenagers are on another level.

Zoë Clarke and Felicia Whaley, Collins Big Cat Phonics for Letters and Sounds: Witney and Boscoe's Lost and Found

2022 / School book / 24 pages

**

Jazz & Pop's gender swap.

Christina Mia Gardeski, All About the North and South Poles

2017 / Library book / 24 pages

**

Summer Reading Challenge 2026 #1. I got out a couple of easy readers to give her a headstart on the library challenge. She rated this one star, which seemed overly harsh. I guess she was rating me.

Lisbeth Kaiser and Marta Antelo, Little People, Big Dreams: Rosa Parks

2017 / Library book / 24 pages

***

Summer Reading Challenge 2026 #2. Not the most enjoyable reading session, but an important lesson.

Isabel Thomas, Collins Big Cat Phonics for Letters and Sounds: Bear Spotting

2021 / School book / 24 pages

***

Bears.

Aimee's art review 2026

More eloquent opinions on flicking through The Art Book.

Tom Wesselmann, Great American Nude No. 27 (1962)

"I mean, like, what is going on in this? This is rubbish."

Jackson Pollock, Number 1A, 1948 (1948)

"This is the worst painting in the whole entire world because it's just scribbles."

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Woman Inspired by Lucretia (1533)

"This is very detailed, and I like the different colours in it and how they made it."

Morris Louis, Alpha-Phi (1961)

"Is that all on the painting? Because that's rubbish."

Lucian Freud, Girl with a White Dog (1952)

"This is incredibly rude because she's showing her boob."

Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea (1952)

"Why is this even art? It's just scribbles like other ones, it's rubbish."

Willem de Kooning, Marilyn Monroe (1954)

"What is this? It's stupid."

Jeff Koons, Puppy (1992)

"This is so real and I love that they put lots of detail in it, but I think that it just looks very fake."

Odilon Redon, The Cyclops (1914)

"What is this? This is, like, the worst painting in the whole entire world. Look, he hasn't got an eyeball on the other one!"

Alrightreads: C'est Magnifique...

R. L. Stine, Fear Street Super Chiller: Broken Hearts

1993 / Audiobook / 218 pages

***

A long, soapy bloodbath.

R. L. Stine, Fear Street: The Cheater

1993 / Audiobook / 125 pages

**

This cautionary thriller didn't feel very on brand with only one killing and a plot that was just depressing rather than scary. Still better than ghosts, I guess.

R. L. Stine, Fear Street: Sunburn

1993 / Audiobook / 150 pages

**

The sunny setting and laughable ending made this one of the more memorable ones, though not really in a good way.

R. L. Stine, Fear Street Super Chiller: Silent Night 2

1993 / Audiobook / 196 pages

**

I would've preferred a festive anthology series over a straight-up sequel with the same annoying protagonist who disappointingly isn't allowed to die.

R. L. Stine, Fear Street: The New Boy

1994 / Ebook / 150 pages

***

Hitchcock suspense given a teen chick drama twist, though similarly written, and now ultimately read, by middle-aged men.

Alrightreads Special: Red Dwarf – Titan

Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall, Red Dwarf: Titan

2026 / Hardback / 406 pages

****

Red Dwarf fans had clamoured for Rob Grant's return for decades, but I wasn't especially thrilled when the Titan prequel project was first touted as a recast reboot (and even a cartoon at one point). But when network disinterest led to it morphing into a novel, where I can imagine the characters looking and sounding like they should, it became much more up my dingy alley. Like its predecessors (most of them, anyway), it'll be a book that's with me for the long run, with, hopefully, many return journeys to appreciate its uniqueness, pontificate pointlessly on forums and recreationally nitpick all those cute flaws. The first visit was a real good treat. RIP Rob.

Alrightgames: Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon SuperS: All Members!! Championship Contest

Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon SuperS: All Members!! Championship Contest

1996 / Super Nintendo emulator game / 1-2 players

**

Choose best girl in worst season and beating shit out friends but don't special power not work.

Alrightgames: Basic Fantasy Adventure – The Lost Tome (Adapted)

Basic Fantasy Adventure: The Lost Tome Teddy (Adapted)

2012 / Roleplaying game adventure / 2+ players

****

Dusting off some previously stalled characters – practical handypony Lillie Roase and scruffy alchemist Tatty Bogle – for their first thinly-disguised dungeon delve (this one's a musty occult library with traps and monsters; totally different), which was easily repopulated with established baddies and new allies, culminating in an annoying logic problem of my own invention that I helped her along with to ease the tedium. I should probably put more effort into developing our characters and their talents than just letting us find relevant power-ups in chests, but sometimes you just want the simplicity of Diablo.

Junior Gamesmaster: Tails of Equestria – Shiva

My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria – Shiva

DIY roleplaying game adventure

Besides some plot holes I didn't poke into, there's now little difference between this six-year-old's semi-planned RPG sandbox challenges and my own, to the extent that she preempted the specific plot point of finding a password in a book in a library that was going to feature in my follow-up. She pointed out that we were both nicking it from Final Fantasy VII anyway.

Alrightgames: SpaceShipped expansions

SpaceShipped expansions

As with Anthelion before it, the expansions for the 18-card interstellar trade simulator are small themed decks that replace rather than supplement other cards. One difference is you have the freedom to mix and match sets at your leisure this time, unless you prefer to set the theme for today's episode.

Expansion Collection: Debts and Damages, Out of Route & The Dynasty Seal ****

Each set of 6 cards has a fairly distinct theme that manages to stand out when only diluted by 12 others. Once you've played each of them once and learned their quirks, you can mix them all together and pick randomly. Some work better when they have enough related cards to synchronise with (especially the enemies), but the universe generally sorts itself out.

Lockdown ****

A slightly more game-changing enemy makes this the most interesting of the expansions and is the enemy I'd probably choose if I didn't leave things to fate. It was presumably left out of the wallet compilation for space. I say, let 'em bulge.

Alrightgames: SpaceShipped

SpaceShipped

2019 / Card game / 1 player

****

The Elite computer games as an ingeniously compact card game (which I obviously decompressed by getting it with all the expansions to give the universe some breathing room).

I was wary of dense multifunction cards after failing to grasp the likes of Deadeye Dinah, but this leisurely/boring activity of buying low, selling high and trying not to explode is up my space lane, and I can even win sometimes. Some humour wouldn't have gone amiss, but insisting on that retro computer font despite it making everything unnecessarily hard to read is quite amusing.

Alrghtgms: RNSM (DY)

RNSM (DY)

2024 / Wrd crd gm / 1-4 plyrs

**

Not going to keep that up. Button Shy's wallet games are renowned for ingeniously fitting complex games into small packages, often achieved through multifunction cards that can be flipped and rotated for a variety of purposes. RNSM is the most opposite case I've seen yet.

A simple but tricky word game that skips vowels, its plain letter cards are so simple to substitute using Scrabble tiles or going method with real newspaper and magazine cuttings that paying for the official game seems pointless, especially when it's not even that far beyond Lex Go.

Vexing Letters ***

The customary mini expansion adds 6 less common letters to the pile and an optional twin word variant that seems like the preferable way to play, since I'm stuck at 4 letters either way.