#DecRecs 2024 part one

[forestofglory]

For the last several years it's been my tradition to rec a thing every day of December and to encourage other people join me in reccing things using the the hashtag #DecRecs

Here are the first 5 things I've recced this year:

1) I want to start of this years #DecRecs with a recipe. Here in the US it was just Thanksgiving. For the last couple of year's I've been making these Sweet and Sour Brussels Sprouts with Plum Sauce as part of my Thanksgiving and they've been a hit every year

https://omnivorescookbook.com/roasted-brussels-sprouts-with-plum-sauce

2)For #DecRecs day two I bring you Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. A lovely middle grade Chinese inspired fantasy book. Featuring dragons, stories within stories, and colorful illustrations drawn by the author. There's two squeals that are also great!

3) I've been jokingly saying that the Taiping Guangji (太平廣記), a collection of minor stories and unofficial histories, is my main fandom for a bit now.

So today for #DecRecs I'm reccing Tales from Tang Dynasty China: Selections from the Taiping Guangji ed Alexei Ditter, Jessey Choo, and Sarah Allen as good introduction to the Taiping Guangji! It's short, its got a good variety of translated stories, and lots of helpful context

4)I'm having a frustrating day today so for #DecRecs today I want to rec something cute and charming:

"Fandom for Robots" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad

https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/fandom-for-robots/

I adore this story about a robot making friends through fandom!

5) Today for #DecRecs I want to talk about one of my favorite programs Zotero!

Zotero is free open source citation manager. You might be wondering why someone (like me) who is not writing academic publications needs a citation manager?

Maybe it is a little silly, but I have piles and piles of PDFs of papers about stuff that interests me and it was really hard to keep track. But Zotero has turned that into a searchable and taggable database --and now I can find things!

I also love that most of the time I can just drag and drop pdfs into Zotero and it will pull the metadata and make a proper entry -- no laborious data entry involved! You can also use a plug in to simply grab data form the web.

And if you do want to make a bibliography or use the citations it saves a lot of trouble with formatting.

Here's an example of something I did using Zotero: an annotated bibliography for my most recent fic (which I fell down many research rabbit holes while writing)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/60572710

To sum up Zotero is free, it helps me keep my pdfs organized, and I can use it to make the nerdiest fic notes ever! I love it!

Comments

[goodbyebird]

#Rec-Cember 🤜🤛 #DecRecs

So happy to see someone else doing this! And quite the variety of recs! A place in my home town used to have plum sauce and it was a favorite. I'm not a brussel sprouts person, but that might just win me over.

[forestofglory]

I love recs so much and have been enjoying yours!

I am a brussel sprouts person so I can't say if the recipe will work for you.

[dolorosa_12]

I love Zotero (and teach people how to use it as part of my job). The fact that it's free and open-source (and that it's continued to remain so for so long, when most educational software either disappears when the funding runs out or gets sold to a massive tech or publishing company after a few years) is really admirable.

[forestofglory]

it is really impressive that they can keep it free and open source!

[conuly]

I will never not love Fandom for Robots, though every time I think of it I feel it needs a content warning: "nothing bad happens to the characters except for in the flashbacks"