selections from the reading life
Jul. 5th, 2025 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyherenyaToday was sunny with a cold breeze, making the number on the thermometer deceptively optimistic.
(I paused here to look up why the standard spelling is thermometer and not thermometre, and I learnt: a metre is a unit of length and a meter is a device that measures and records the quantity, degree, or rate of something. Right. Obviously. This seems like something I should have realised before now. Hence perimeter, diameter, multimeter, etc.
Et cetera rhymes with meter in a non-rhotic accent. (I am interested in spelling patterns and how accents affect our perceptions of spelling rules, because this is relevant to my job.))
But today was still warm in the sunshine. I sat outside reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. (I haven’t read enough to feel hooked but I can see why my cousin recommended it. The prose is lovely.) When the sun moved behind the trees and my hands became cold, I took my dogs for a longer walk than usual because I wanted to see – and hear – the water birds. (I saw swamphens, mostly.)
I came home and made myself childhood comfort food (peanut butter on toast, and cheese toast) and a cup of tea. I’m sitting in the recliner chair that once belonged to my grandmother, and my great-grandmother before her. I watched as the setting sun lit up the nearby hills and now I’m watching as the last of the pink fades from the sky.
Bottle this feeling.
Part of the reason my current location seems like a better place to write than my desk does is likely because part of my desk is covered with books that I’ve bought this year but have yet to find shelf space for.
There’s also a book I took down from a top shelf (which I can’t reach without standing on a chair) to reread and I have neither reread it nor put it back. And I think there’s a colouring book…
• The Season of Dragons by Tansy Rayner Roberts: This retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in a world in which patrons are actually dragons, and society is divided into hoarders, who care for dragons and their hoards, and dragon hunters.
The Iverwold family’s dragon has remained in hibernation for many seasons, leaving the family without her patronage and guidance. Dimity Ivorwold worries that this leaves her brother Chambrey vulnerable to making unwise decisions, like hiring a house in the country or falling in love with a pretty daughter from a hunter family.
I wasn’t certain how much I would like this – I have enjoyed other books by Roberts’ (like her Teacup Magic series) but Austen’s Caroline Bingley is not a character I particularly want to spend more time with. However, I liked Dimity, and I found I enjoyed not knowing how closely the story was going to follow the events of P&P – and not being entirely sure who was going to end up with whom!
The Season of Dragons was entertaining and it became all the more so as the story progressed and dragons played a bigger role in events. ( ‘I was going to miss it all. My foolish twin had got it into his head that being a Gentlemen of Significance with full access to his money meant THIS was the occasion to hire himself a country house in the middle of nowhere and ruin my life.’ )
• A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid: By the time I noticed that this book was now available on Libby and I put it on hold, I could no longer remember why it had been on my list of books I was interested in reading.
I really enjoyed going into this story without knowing anything about it. It begins with Effy Sayre, a first-year student who is studying architecture because the literature college won’t accept women. She sees a notice soliciting designs for a manor home intended to house the library and the family of her favourite author, the late Emrys Myrddin. I liked wondering what sort of territory this was heading into… Fairytale territory? Arthurian mythology? Gothic Jane Eyre? Would it become a fantasy or would the fantasy be limited to the stories Effy loves?
I stayed up reading into the early hours of the morning, because I could not put this down. I loved how this is a story about stories. I loved the epigraphs taken from Myrddin’s work and from academic essays about it. (This reminded me a bit of Possession.) I loved the prose. I loved how the book evoked a strong sense of place, and built a compellingly-tense atmosphere. I empathised with Effy, with her love of books and her anxieties.
I didn’t have the sense to read this until two days before it was due back at the library, so I couldn’t immediately reread it like I wanted to. ( But I bought a copy this week and it’s now one of the books sitting on my desk. ) One of the reasons I’ve kept thinking about this story is because the weekend I read it, I discovered Taylor Swift’s “Lavender Haze - Acoustic Version”. I don’t think I actually listened to the song while I was reading A Study in Drowning but I did listen to the song many times that weekend, and my memory linked the two together.
Whenever I’ve listened to the song since then – apparently it’s my most-listened to track of the past 90 days – it has evoked memories of this book. It is possible I have listened to the song all the more because it has evoked memories of this book.
• Lady of Weeds by W.R. Gingell: This is another book I went into knowing almost nothing about it, and I really enjoyed that reading experience. All I knew was that it was connected to Lady of Dreams but set in a different country. (If I had read Lady of Dreams more recently, I might have realised the connections between the two stories faster, but I don’t think it mattered that I didn’t.)
As a guardian it is Carys’ job to protect the village by clearing seaweed from the shoreline every morning, to prevent it falling into the hands of dangerous selkies, and she is entitled to take anything she finds washed ashore. One morning, she finds an unconscious, injured young man in a rock pool.
I liked the descriptions of Carys’ life by the sea. I liked the mysteries, of which there are several tangled together – Who is Eurion and what happened to him? Why does Carys care about the ring she found with him? And what is Carys’ history? – and how they unfolded. I liked how Eurion, so sunny and effervescent, is such a contrast to Carys. And I liked how Carys’ words and thoughts can make her seem cold but, over time, her actions reveal a softer, warmer side. ( ‘Carys was used to the dark and the cold, just as she was used to the loneliness. She’d become so used to them, in fact, that now she merely thought of them as everyday life and no longer thought of them by their names.’ )
• The Naturalist Society by Carrie Vaughn: I impulsively bought this back in February because it was on sale and and it sounded like it might be interesting. And I’d liked two of Vaughn’s historical novellas. By the time I opened up The Naturalist Society, I couldn’t remember any specific details about it.
It is a fantasy set in the 1880s, mostly in New York, in a world in which knowledge about the natural world is valued, because those who practise Arcane Taxonomy can use this knowledge to do what could – and, in another book, would – be called magic.
As women are not allowed to join the Naturalist Society, Beth Stanley has been publishing her essays under her husband’s name, but Harry’s death cuts her off from this outlet for her work. When two of Harry’s friends, the explorer couple Bran West and Anton Torrance, visit Beth, hoping to find something in Harry’s study that could help with their next expedition, they discover Beth’s secret.
( This is a story about Arcane Taxonomy and ornithology and polar explorers, but I thought it was most compelling as a story about grief. )
• Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989): This isn’t a book but I feel like I should write about it here anyway, for thematic reasons.
People have recommended this film to me, but I didn’t get around to watching it until a couple of weeks ago. For the third week in a row, it felt like work had dominated my weekend (I’d decided that this was the best way for me to meet deadlines), and I just wanted to curl up on the couch with my dogs and watch something soothing and aesthetically pleasing.
I didn’t know what Kiki’s Delivery Service was actually about, beyond the clues given by the title, but I suspected it would fit the bill. And it did!
I wonder if I would have liked it even more if Kiki had been at least a year or two older – a thirteen year old leaving home to live alone is, if one thinks about it, quite an unsettling prospect – but then again, maybe that is actually part of what makes the film soothing? Because Kiki is young and vulnerable, but she’s able to find her place in the world without anything too terrible happening to her. Maybe that’s as much the fantasy as her broomstick and her telepathic connection to her cat.
I know, I should prioritise watching more Studio Ghibli films. (I have now seen *counts* five.)
(I paused here to look up why the standard spelling is thermometer and not thermometre, and I learnt: a metre is a unit of length and a meter is a device that measures and records the quantity, degree, or rate of something. Right. Obviously. This seems like something I should have realised before now. Hence perimeter, diameter, multimeter, etc.
Et cetera rhymes with meter in a non-rhotic accent. (I am interested in spelling patterns and how accents affect our perceptions of spelling rules, because this is relevant to my job.))
But today was still warm in the sunshine. I sat outside reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. (I haven’t read enough to feel hooked but I can see why my cousin recommended it. The prose is lovely.) When the sun moved behind the trees and my hands became cold, I took my dogs for a longer walk than usual because I wanted to see – and hear – the water birds. (I saw swamphens, mostly.)
I came home and made myself childhood comfort food (peanut butter on toast, and cheese toast) and a cup of tea. I’m sitting in the recliner chair that once belonged to my grandmother, and my great-grandmother before her. I watched as the setting sun lit up the nearby hills and now I’m watching as the last of the pink fades from the sky.
Bottle this feeling.
Part of the reason my current location seems like a better place to write than my desk does is likely because part of my desk is covered with books that I’ve bought this year but have yet to find shelf space for.
There’s also a book I took down from a top shelf (which I can’t reach without standing on a chair) to reread and I have neither reread it nor put it back. And I think there’s a colouring book…
• The Season of Dragons by Tansy Rayner Roberts: This retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in a world in which patrons are actually dragons, and society is divided into hoarders, who care for dragons and their hoards, and dragon hunters.
The Iverwold family’s dragon has remained in hibernation for many seasons, leaving the family without her patronage and guidance. Dimity Ivorwold worries that this leaves her brother Chambrey vulnerable to making unwise decisions, like hiring a house in the country or falling in love with a pretty daughter from a hunter family.
I wasn’t certain how much I would like this – I have enjoyed other books by Roberts’ (like her Teacup Magic series) but Austen’s Caroline Bingley is not a character I particularly want to spend more time with. However, I liked Dimity, and I found I enjoyed not knowing how closely the story was going to follow the events of P&P – and not being entirely sure who was going to end up with whom!
The Season of Dragons was entertaining and it became all the more so as the story progressed and dragons played a bigger role in events. ( ‘I was going to miss it all. My foolish twin had got it into his head that being a Gentlemen of Significance with full access to his money meant THIS was the occasion to hire himself a country house in the middle of nowhere and ruin my life.’ )
• A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid: By the time I noticed that this book was now available on Libby and I put it on hold, I could no longer remember why it had been on my list of books I was interested in reading.
I really enjoyed going into this story without knowing anything about it. It begins with Effy Sayre, a first-year student who is studying architecture because the literature college won’t accept women. She sees a notice soliciting designs for a manor home intended to house the library and the family of her favourite author, the late Emrys Myrddin. I liked wondering what sort of territory this was heading into… Fairytale territory? Arthurian mythology? Gothic Jane Eyre? Would it become a fantasy or would the fantasy be limited to the stories Effy loves?
I stayed up reading into the early hours of the morning, because I could not put this down. I loved how this is a story about stories. I loved the epigraphs taken from Myrddin’s work and from academic essays about it. (This reminded me a bit of Possession.) I loved the prose. I loved how the book evoked a strong sense of place, and built a compellingly-tense atmosphere. I empathised with Effy, with her love of books and her anxieties.
I didn’t have the sense to read this until two days before it was due back at the library, so I couldn’t immediately reread it like I wanted to. ( But I bought a copy this week and it’s now one of the books sitting on my desk. ) One of the reasons I’ve kept thinking about this story is because the weekend I read it, I discovered Taylor Swift’s “Lavender Haze - Acoustic Version”. I don’t think I actually listened to the song while I was reading A Study in Drowning but I did listen to the song many times that weekend, and my memory linked the two together.
Whenever I’ve listened to the song since then – apparently it’s my most-listened to track of the past 90 days – it has evoked memories of this book. It is possible I have listened to the song all the more because it has evoked memories of this book.
• Lady of Weeds by W.R. Gingell: This is another book I went into knowing almost nothing about it, and I really enjoyed that reading experience. All I knew was that it was connected to Lady of Dreams but set in a different country. (If I had read Lady of Dreams more recently, I might have realised the connections between the two stories faster, but I don’t think it mattered that I didn’t.)
As a guardian it is Carys’ job to protect the village by clearing seaweed from the shoreline every morning, to prevent it falling into the hands of dangerous selkies, and she is entitled to take anything she finds washed ashore. One morning, she finds an unconscious, injured young man in a rock pool.
I liked the descriptions of Carys’ life by the sea. I liked the mysteries, of which there are several tangled together – Who is Eurion and what happened to him? Why does Carys care about the ring she found with him? And what is Carys’ history? – and how they unfolded. I liked how Eurion, so sunny and effervescent, is such a contrast to Carys. And I liked how Carys’ words and thoughts can make her seem cold but, over time, her actions reveal a softer, warmer side. ( ‘Carys was used to the dark and the cold, just as she was used to the loneliness. She’d become so used to them, in fact, that now she merely thought of them as everyday life and no longer thought of them by their names.’ )
• The Naturalist Society by Carrie Vaughn: I impulsively bought this back in February because it was on sale and and it sounded like it might be interesting. And I’d liked two of Vaughn’s historical novellas. By the time I opened up The Naturalist Society, I couldn’t remember any specific details about it.
It is a fantasy set in the 1880s, mostly in New York, in a world in which knowledge about the natural world is valued, because those who practise Arcane Taxonomy can use this knowledge to do what could – and, in another book, would – be called magic.
As women are not allowed to join the Naturalist Society, Beth Stanley has been publishing her essays under her husband’s name, but Harry’s death cuts her off from this outlet for her work. When two of Harry’s friends, the explorer couple Bran West and Anton Torrance, visit Beth, hoping to find something in Harry’s study that could help with their next expedition, they discover Beth’s secret.
( This is a story about Arcane Taxonomy and ornithology and polar explorers, but I thought it was most compelling as a story about grief. )
• Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989): This isn’t a book but I feel like I should write about it here anyway, for thematic reasons.
People have recommended this film to me, but I didn’t get around to watching it until a couple of weeks ago. For the third week in a row, it felt like work had dominated my weekend (I’d decided that this was the best way for me to meet deadlines), and I just wanted to curl up on the couch with my dogs and watch something soothing and aesthetically pleasing.
I didn’t know what Kiki’s Delivery Service was actually about, beyond the clues given by the title, but I suspected it would fit the bill. And it did!
I wonder if I would have liked it even more if Kiki had been at least a year or two older – a thirteen year old leaving home to live alone is, if one thinks about it, quite an unsettling prospect – but then again, maybe that is actually part of what makes the film soothing? Because Kiki is young and vulnerable, but she’s able to find her place in the world without anything too terrible happening to her. Maybe that’s as much the fantasy as her broomstick and her telepathic connection to her cat.
I know, I should prioritise watching more Studio Ghibli films. (I have now seen *counts* five.)
Observations from the life of a reader, not reading so much
Jul. 2nd, 2025 03:11 pmladyherenyaI have spent most of the day sitting in the lounge room so I could watch the rain. It is most convenient of the weather to finally rain properly on a day when I was not planning on going anywhere.
I won’t know how much rain we’ve had until someone ventures out to check our rain gauge. I’ve looked up the two closest weather stations; one seems to have recorded too little to match the constant downpour I’ve observed but I don’t want to get my hopes up that we’ve instead had as much as the other station. Usually we don’t.
Things I worry about in the winter of 2025 – whether we’re getting enough rain.
I am currently on track to read the fewest books that I’ve ever read in a year.
At first I did not let this bother me.
There are a lot of good reasons for not caring about the number of books one reads in a year, at least not – or especially not? – when one is still reading considerably more than the “average person reads one book per month” statistic. One’s self-worth, and even one’s identity as a reader, are not tied to the number of books one reads. The quality of one’s reading experiences is more important than the quantity.
And the quality of one’s non-reading experiences is more important than the quantity of books one reads.
The April holidays, for instance. Those holidays in 2023 were memorable because I read nearly a book a day: 13 novels and 3 novellas, plus I had an audiobook I was in the middle of; possibly I reread some books as well.
Last year that fortnight was probably more typical: 6 novels, plus I finished one audiobook and nearly finished another, and I know I reread at least 3 books.
In contrast, this year I read – wait for it – 2 novels. I also finished an audiobook and started another.
But I have some good memories from the holidays:
• One of my cousins came to stay. She and I went on some lovely walks, and hunted around secondhand shops and wandered through bookshops, and swapped recommendations.
• I spent more time with my grandmother and discovered that one of her weekday carers is someone I knew in high school (we weren’t in the same year level but we went on the same overseas trip!).
• I watched two or three things I’d been meaning to see.
• I went to a handful of sessions at an Easter convention, because one of the guest speakers was so interesting and encouraging, and on two different occasions, I ran into a former colleague – one I’d worked with closely and the other I’d only ever spoken to in passing, but I had a good chat to both of them.
So when I went back to work, I didn’t feel any need to regret the amount of time I had, or hadn’t, spent reading.
But that was just two weeks out of 26.
Work has taken up more of my time. I’ve spent more time working (nearly 60 hours more than the first half of last year), and more time talking about, and thinking about, work, which is far harder to quantify.
( I suspect that the chief reason I’ve been reading less is because of work. )
In the last few weeks, that smaller-than-average number of books that I’ve read this year has begun to really bother me.
I don’t know if what I want is the sense of accomplishment that adding books to my reading record gives me. Or is what I’m missing is the emotional experience of reading – the enjoyment of a good story, and the distraction from thinking too much about my problems.
All of the above, probably.
I am going to try to prioritise reading more.
I have been finishing setting up my new phone. Most parts of the process have been easier than I was expecting, and other parts have proved to be more complicated. (My previous phones all had SD card slots so I’ve always stored files on an SD card, leaving me naively and blissfully ignorant of how files transferred directly to the phone have their date modified metadata overwritten with the date they were copied. This is not behaviour I am happy about. (Also, what do you mean, my calendar app will only sync events from the past year???))
It’s been a while since I last went through this process, not since right before the pandemic began – which certainly feels like an age ago. In more ways than one.
But I have also just opened a soon-due-back-so-I-better-read-it library book – one my cousin recommended – and been startled to notice that its publication date – 2020. I knew this book had been around for a couple of years but my impression was that it wasn’t that old!
I have realised that I could keep my old phone beside my bed to use for books and music. In this location, its reduced battery life wouldn’t matter. I could turn off work notifications, maybe even log out of some things altogether. I could take off its bulky case, which has been very convenient when out-and-about but less so when reading in bed.
And overnight my new phone could live… elsewhere!
( I have been unwilling to embrace the oft-repeated advice of not keeping one’s phone beside one’s bed. )
Honestly, I’m not sure what delights me more. Having a shiny new phone, or having a new purpose for my old phone.
I won’t know how much rain we’ve had until someone ventures out to check our rain gauge. I’ve looked up the two closest weather stations; one seems to have recorded too little to match the constant downpour I’ve observed but I don’t want to get my hopes up that we’ve instead had as much as the other station. Usually we don’t.
Things I worry about in the winter of 2025 – whether we’re getting enough rain.
I am currently on track to read the fewest books that I’ve ever read in a year.
At first I did not let this bother me.
There are a lot of good reasons for not caring about the number of books one reads in a year, at least not – or especially not? – when one is still reading considerably more than the “average person reads one book per month” statistic. One’s self-worth, and even one’s identity as a reader, are not tied to the number of books one reads. The quality of one’s reading experiences is more important than the quantity.
And the quality of one’s non-reading experiences is more important than the quantity of books one reads.
The April holidays, for instance. Those holidays in 2023 were memorable because I read nearly a book a day: 13 novels and 3 novellas, plus I had an audiobook I was in the middle of; possibly I reread some books as well.
Last year that fortnight was probably more typical: 6 novels, plus I finished one audiobook and nearly finished another, and I know I reread at least 3 books.
In contrast, this year I read – wait for it – 2 novels. I also finished an audiobook and started another.
But I have some good memories from the holidays:
• One of my cousins came to stay. She and I went on some lovely walks, and hunted around secondhand shops and wandered through bookshops, and swapped recommendations.
• I spent more time with my grandmother and discovered that one of her weekday carers is someone I knew in high school (we weren’t in the same year level but we went on the same overseas trip!).
• I watched two or three things I’d been meaning to see.
• I went to a handful of sessions at an Easter convention, because one of the guest speakers was so interesting and encouraging, and on two different occasions, I ran into a former colleague – one I’d worked with closely and the other I’d only ever spoken to in passing, but I had a good chat to both of them.
So when I went back to work, I didn’t feel any need to regret the amount of time I had, or hadn’t, spent reading.
But that was just two weeks out of 26.
Work has taken up more of my time. I’ve spent more time working (nearly 60 hours more than the first half of last year), and more time talking about, and thinking about, work, which is far harder to quantify.
( I suspect that the chief reason I’ve been reading less is because of work. )
In the last few weeks, that smaller-than-average number of books that I’ve read this year has begun to really bother me.
I don’t know if what I want is the sense of accomplishment that adding books to my reading record gives me. Or is what I’m missing is the emotional experience of reading – the enjoyment of a good story, and the distraction from thinking too much about my problems.
All of the above, probably.
I am going to try to prioritise reading more.
I have been finishing setting up my new phone. Most parts of the process have been easier than I was expecting, and other parts have proved to be more complicated. (My previous phones all had SD card slots so I’ve always stored files on an SD card, leaving me naively and blissfully ignorant of how files transferred directly to the phone have their date modified metadata overwritten with the date they were copied. This is not behaviour I am happy about. (Also, what do you mean, my calendar app will only sync events from the past year???))
It’s been a while since I last went through this process, not since right before the pandemic began – which certainly feels like an age ago. In more ways than one.
But I have also just opened a soon-due-back-so-I-better-read-it library book – one my cousin recommended – and been startled to notice that its publication date – 2020. I knew this book had been around for a couple of years but my impression was that it wasn’t that old!
I have realised that I could keep my old phone beside my bed to use for books and music. In this location, its reduced battery life wouldn’t matter. I could turn off work notifications, maybe even log out of some things altogether. I could take off its bulky case, which has been very convenient when out-and-about but less so when reading in bed.
And overnight my new phone could live… elsewhere!
( I have been unwilling to embrace the oft-repeated advice of not keeping one’s phone beside one’s bed. )
Honestly, I’m not sure what delights me more. Having a shiny new phone, or having a new purpose for my old phone.
June reading
Jul. 6th, 2025 04:21 pmlittlerhymesLast Night in Montreal - Emily St John Mandel
Midwinter Nightingale- Joan Aiken
The Witch of Clatteringshaws - Joan Aiken
Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem - Nam Le
Red Sword - Bora Chung, transl. Anton Hur
A Magical Girl Retires - Park Seolyeon, transl. Anton Hur
The Spear Cuts Through Water - Simon Jimenez
Batman: Wayne Family Adventures 2, 3 and 4 - CRC Payne, Starbite
Batman: Nightwalker - Marie Lu
Nightwing 1: Leaping into the Light - Tom Taylor, Bruno Redondo
( books and comics )
Midwinter Nightingale- Joan Aiken
The Witch of Clatteringshaws - Joan Aiken
Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem - Nam Le
Red Sword - Bora Chung, transl. Anton Hur
A Magical Girl Retires - Park Seolyeon, transl. Anton Hur
The Spear Cuts Through Water - Simon Jimenez
Batman: Wayne Family Adventures 2, 3 and 4 - CRC Payne, Starbite
Batman: Nightwalker - Marie Lu
Nightwing 1: Leaping into the Light - Tom Taylor, Bruno Redondo
( books and comics )
I'm a mercenary soldier and we all look the same
Jul. 5th, 2025 08:29 pmsovayI screamed in dismay in the middle of the night because I had just seen the news that Kenneth Colley died.
I saw him in roles beyond the megafamous one, of course, and he was everything from inevitable to excellent in them, but it happens that last weekspatch and I took the excuse of a genuinely fun fact to rewatch Return of the Jedi (1983) and at home on my own couch I cheered his typically controlled and almost imperceptibly nervy appearance aboard the Executor, which by the actor's own account was exactly how he had gotten this assignment stationed off the sanctuary moon of Endor in the first place, the only Imperial officer to reprise his role by popular demand. In hindsight of more ground-level explorations of the Empire like Rogue One (2016) and Andor (2022–25), Admiral Piett looks like the parent and original of their careerists and idealists, all too human in their sunk cost loyalties to a regime to which they are interchangeably disposable, but just the slight shock-stillness of his face as he swallows his promotion from frying pan to fire would have kept an audience rooting for him against their own moral alignment so long as they had ever once held a job. It didn't hurt that he never looked like he'd gotten a good night's sleep in his life, not even when he was younger and turning up as randomly as an ill-fated Teddy-boy trickster on The Avengers (1961–69) or one of the lights of the impeccably awful am-dram Hammer send-up that is the best scene in The Blood Beast Terror (1968). Years before I saw the film it came from, a still of him and his haunted face in I Hired a Contract Killer (1990)—smoking in bed, stretched out all in black on the white sheets like a catafalque—crossbred with a nightmare of mine into a poem. Out of sincere curiosity, I'll take a time machine ticket for his 1979 Benedick for the RSC.
He played Hitler for Ken Russell and Jesus for the Pythons: I am not in danger of having nothing to watch for his memory, as ever it's just the memory that's the kicker. No actor or artist or writer of importance to me has yet turned out to be immortal, but I resent the interference of COVID-19 in this one. In the haphazard way that I collected character actors, he would have been one of the earlier, almost certainly tapping in his glass-darkly fashion into my longstanding soft spot for harried functionaries of all flavors even when actual bureaucracy has done its best for most of my life to kill me. I am glad he was still in the world the last time I saw him. A friend no longer on LJ/DW already wrote him the best eulogy.
I saw him in roles beyond the megafamous one, of course, and he was everything from inevitable to excellent in them, but it happens that last week
spatch and I took the excuse of a genuinely fun fact to rewatch Return of the Jedi (1983) and at home on my own couch I cheered his typically controlled and almost imperceptibly nervy appearance aboard the Executor, which by the actor's own account was exactly how he had gotten this assignment stationed off the sanctuary moon of Endor in the first place, the only Imperial officer to reprise his role by popular demand. In hindsight of more ground-level explorations of the Empire like Rogue One (2016) and Andor (2022–25), Admiral Piett looks like the parent and original of their careerists and idealists, all too human in their sunk cost loyalties to a regime to which they are interchangeably disposable, but just the slight shock-stillness of his face as he swallows his promotion from frying pan to fire would have kept an audience rooting for him against their own moral alignment so long as they had ever once held a job. It didn't hurt that he never looked like he'd gotten a good night's sleep in his life, not even when he was younger and turning up as randomly as an ill-fated Teddy-boy trickster on The Avengers (1961–69) or one of the lights of the impeccably awful am-dram Hammer send-up that is the best scene in The Blood Beast Terror (1968). Years before I saw the film it came from, a still of him and his haunted face in I Hired a Contract Killer (1990)—smoking in bed, stretched out all in black on the white sheets like a catafalque—crossbred with a nightmare of mine into a poem. Out of sincere curiosity, I'll take a time machine ticket for his 1979 Benedick for the RSC.He played Hitler for Ken Russell and Jesus for the Pythons: I am not in danger of having nothing to watch for his memory, as ever it's just the memory that's the kicker. No actor or artist or writer of importance to me has yet turned out to be immortal, but I resent the interference of COVID-19 in this one. In the haphazard way that I collected character actors, he would have been one of the earlier, almost certainly tapping in his glass-darkly fashion into my longstanding soft spot for harried functionaries of all flavors even when actual bureaucracy has done its best for most of my life to kill me. I am glad he was still in the world the last time I saw him. A friend no longer on LJ/DW already wrote him the best eulogy.
New York books read on the East Coast
Jul. 6th, 2025 08:56 amlandingtreeIt more or less began as an accident that I spent most of my trip to North America reading books set in New York. I was reading Deep Roots before I got to New York, and I bought The Chosen and the Beautiful having forgotten that The Great Gatsby, which it retells, is set around New York. Then I read Trouble the Saints to complete the pattern. No ill will toward Montreal, Washington D.C., or Boston, where I had good times - and in diverse ways actually better times than I did in New York - but I did not read books set in them.
~
Actually, my trip reading began with the first part of The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño. This is a long novel that a friend sent me and I thought I would take ages to get around to it unless I isolated myself with it on a plane. It made me laugh out loud as I read it walking onto the plane, so success there! Part one of the book is a diary written by a hapless young lamb of a poet as he enters into an avant-garde poetry movement called the Visceral Realists (without being quite sure what Visceral Realism is, except that he likes it when he sees it) and having a lot of yearning and sex with various young women connected to the movement. Part Two begins to be written from the perspectives of a whole range of other characters, in a way that seemed interesting and to open up perspectives beyond the yearning of the poet, but then I landed in Montreal and began buying books at a rate of about one per minute and the detectives were left behind. (Not literally. They are still in my house).
~
In Montreal, I reread The Other Side of Silence by Margaret Mahy for the first time in years and years, prior to giving it to the Scintillation convention raffle. (Since returning home, I've met up with a friend who has spent ages attempting to track down Mahy books in second hand shops. He thinks they're getting awfully rare here, and is aghast that I just shipped ten of them out of the country. It only took me two weeks of not-very-dedicated searching to find this stack, so either he is wrong or I'm just very lucky). The Other Side of Silence is one of Mahy's YA books, about a girl in a busy family who has decided to stop talking. The book is divided into sections of real life, which is the time she spends with her family, and true life, which is the time she spends climbing alone in the trees over the high walls of the mysterious old Credence house next door, though it becomes more equivocal and less purely her own as the house draws her into its own story. This is in some ways a fairytale retelling and in some ways Gothic. Most of it I like very much. From memory, this is Elizabeth Knox's favourite of Mahy's books, and I can see individual sentences from which I think she took notes. They share a way of being completely unhesitating in pushing themes and elaborate metaphors to the front of the stage.
I give Mahy some praise for being a white writer portraying rap and hip hop as positive things in the nineties: they are other varieties of the word-magic she loves, feeding into the book's themes of speech and silence. At the same time, she tries to write someone improvising hip-hop and I do not think she knows how.
Mahy wrote so much! I look at her bibliography and much of it I've read, some of it I've heard of, but then there's Ultra-Violet Catastrophe! Or, The Unexpected Walk with Great-Uncle Magnus Pringle. As far as I recall I have never seen this book.
~
Deep Roots, by Ruthanna Emrys.
This I bought at Scintillation. It's the sequel to Winter Tide, which I liked fine. At some point I must go back and see if her writing changed or if I did, because I loved both this book and her subsequent one, A Half-built Garden. This series takes Lovecraft and says 'What if he was just as bigoted against his invented monsters as he was about everyone else who was in any way different from him?' It continues the story of Aphra Marsh, survivor of the concentration camps in which the American government killed most of the rest of the land-dwelling branch of her people. She begins the book going with her brother and people they came to trust in the first book to New York, in search of lost members of her blood family. New York is in itself overwhelmingly strange and loud and thronged, but quickly they find that its mundane complexities are not the only ones at play. They encounter people from the wider universe who certainly mean humanity well; the question is whether humanity in general - and Aphra and the agents of the American government she's involved with in particular - will agree on what 'well' means.
This continues to take what's good in Lovecraft - the sense of deep time, overshadowing all-too-mortal humanity; the love of what's comforting and small and known; the difficulties of dealing with what's radically different from you - and reply to it without the horrible racism in really interesting ways. Emrys is very good at writing books about the need to compromise with people whose values you truly don't share. I don't think anyone comes out of this book having got everything they wanted.
~
The Chosen and the Beautiful, by Nghi Vo.
This is one of those 'I am going looking for everything else she's written' kind of reads. It was also an odd experience, because I haven't read The Great Gatsby. Sometimes I can tell things about the original from this retelling - which makes Jordan, not Nick, the narrator; maybe makes the whole thing much queerer and into not so much a love triangle as a love blob (although I am not absolutely sure that doesn't happen in the original); and adds more magic and demons (presumably not quite so directly present in the original or you'd think someone would've told me). I feel like I can guess a lot about the original Gatsby, and something about the original Nick and Tom, and less about the original Daisy, and least of all about the original Jordan because as the narrator the retelling fills her in so thoroughly. The language of this is beautiful, and it fits magic into the world in a way that really works, and I am assuming that about race and sexuality and what it was like to be in New York in its time, it is wider than Gatsby, although I just started reading Gatsby so I get to find out.
...wait, she wrote a sequel? Huh.
~
Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson.
This book starts as the story of Phyllis Green, an assassin in New York as the Second World War looms, working for a mob boss who maybe doesn't have a whole heart made out of gold, but at least has some teeth made of silver, and that's something, right? Phyllis is black, but passes for white to gain his acceptance and move through society as she must - and keep her old family safe from any mob-related fallout.
I am told that a lot of people started reading this book for the badass magical assassin, and were therefore not best pleased by the turns it took. Phyllis is a badass magical assassin, whose saints' hands give her astonishing skills with a knife. But the book is much heavier than that description would indicate. It's more about the consequences and weight of violence - both personal and societal - and the degree to which individual moral choice, and individual loves, can and can't stand up to that. What are one assassin's choices in a world of segregation and war? Well, something. But not enough.
~
...and that is all the books I read in America! Is it all the books I acquired in America? ha ha ha no. I had gone to my mother's house, last stop before travel, with a perfectly reasonable size of suitcase. I then realised I could borrow her suitcase if I wanted, which was twice as big. I returned with the suitcase almost literally full of books - I had three pounds spare in my luggage allowance home. The other books are:
Notes from a Regicide, by Isaac Fellman. Bought at Scintillation, have been looking forward to this, could just have waited til it came in at the library but oh well.
Ship Without Sails, by Sherwood Smith.
Tone and Opacities, by Sofia Samatar.
Also bought at Scintillation.
Hunger: An Unnatural History
Resurrection Man, by Sean Stewart
The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai.
These are gifts fromambyr. The last two are interventions in me buying a book in a shop, when ambyr said "You know, you could just take mine."
The Burning Glass: The Life of Naomi Mitchison by Jenni Calder
Mechanique: a Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, by Genevive Valentine
Kingdoms of Elfin, by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Tumble Home and The Dog of the Marriage, by Amy Hempel. (This is the favourite writer of someone in my creative writing course a few years ago whose writing I liked.)
Merchanter's Luck, by C.J. Cherryh
A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis
These were from a good D.C. bookstore whose name I forget. [Capitol Hill Books! See comments.]
Remedios Varo: Science Fictions, On Homo Rodans and other writings.
These were from a museum shop. Expensive things look half as expensive in U.S. dollars as I'm used to, and these looked very nice. I had kept on being struck by Varo's art from a distance in the museum and then checking the artist and going, "Oh of course it's another Varo." Richly-textured scenes of magic being done in a somewhat Miyazaki-Howl's-Moving-Castle way. Also I can send one of them to the Australian friends who sent me Savage Detectives.
Warlock, by Oakley Hall.
God Stalk, by P.C. Hodgell
Strand Books.
The Incredible Digging Leviathan, by James P. Blaylock.
The Crane Husband, by Kelly Barnhill.
Behold my incredible restraint in buying only two books in Boston having already decided that I wouldn't have the luggage allowance to buy any more books at all.
The above gloating over my treasures shall inaugurate a time of restraint. I have not actually signed my name to a promise not to buy books for a year - a thingjsthrill once did and that I am considering - but I certainly intend to let the balance between getting and reading swing back to true for a while.
More accounts of my trip to follow, hopefully, unless I get swept away by the present.
~
Actually, my trip reading began with the first part of The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño. This is a long novel that a friend sent me and I thought I would take ages to get around to it unless I isolated myself with it on a plane. It made me laugh out loud as I read it walking onto the plane, so success there! Part one of the book is a diary written by a hapless young lamb of a poet as he enters into an avant-garde poetry movement called the Visceral Realists (without being quite sure what Visceral Realism is, except that he likes it when he sees it) and having a lot of yearning and sex with various young women connected to the movement. Part Two begins to be written from the perspectives of a whole range of other characters, in a way that seemed interesting and to open up perspectives beyond the yearning of the poet, but then I landed in Montreal and began buying books at a rate of about one per minute and the detectives were left behind. (Not literally. They are still in my house).
~
In Montreal, I reread The Other Side of Silence by Margaret Mahy for the first time in years and years, prior to giving it to the Scintillation convention raffle. (Since returning home, I've met up with a friend who has spent ages attempting to track down Mahy books in second hand shops. He thinks they're getting awfully rare here, and is aghast that I just shipped ten of them out of the country. It only took me two weeks of not-very-dedicated searching to find this stack, so either he is wrong or I'm just very lucky). The Other Side of Silence is one of Mahy's YA books, about a girl in a busy family who has decided to stop talking. The book is divided into sections of real life, which is the time she spends with her family, and true life, which is the time she spends climbing alone in the trees over the high walls of the mysterious old Credence house next door, though it becomes more equivocal and less purely her own as the house draws her into its own story. This is in some ways a fairytale retelling and in some ways Gothic. Most of it I like very much. From memory, this is Elizabeth Knox's favourite of Mahy's books, and I can see individual sentences from which I think she took notes. They share a way of being completely unhesitating in pushing themes and elaborate metaphors to the front of the stage.
I give Mahy some praise for being a white writer portraying rap and hip hop as positive things in the nineties: they are other varieties of the word-magic she loves, feeding into the book's themes of speech and silence. At the same time, she tries to write someone improvising hip-hop and I do not think she knows how.
Mahy wrote so much! I look at her bibliography and much of it I've read, some of it I've heard of, but then there's Ultra-Violet Catastrophe! Or, The Unexpected Walk with Great-Uncle Magnus Pringle. As far as I recall I have never seen this book.
~
Deep Roots, by Ruthanna Emrys.
This I bought at Scintillation. It's the sequel to Winter Tide, which I liked fine. At some point I must go back and see if her writing changed or if I did, because I loved both this book and her subsequent one, A Half-built Garden. This series takes Lovecraft and says 'What if he was just as bigoted against his invented monsters as he was about everyone else who was in any way different from him?' It continues the story of Aphra Marsh, survivor of the concentration camps in which the American government killed most of the rest of the land-dwelling branch of her people. She begins the book going with her brother and people they came to trust in the first book to New York, in search of lost members of her blood family. New York is in itself overwhelmingly strange and loud and thronged, but quickly they find that its mundane complexities are not the only ones at play. They encounter people from the wider universe who certainly mean humanity well; the question is whether humanity in general - and Aphra and the agents of the American government she's involved with in particular - will agree on what 'well' means.
This continues to take what's good in Lovecraft - the sense of deep time, overshadowing all-too-mortal humanity; the love of what's comforting and small and known; the difficulties of dealing with what's radically different from you - and reply to it without the horrible racism in really interesting ways. Emrys is very good at writing books about the need to compromise with people whose values you truly don't share. I don't think anyone comes out of this book having got everything they wanted.
~
The Chosen and the Beautiful, by Nghi Vo.
This is one of those 'I am going looking for everything else she's written' kind of reads. It was also an odd experience, because I haven't read The Great Gatsby. Sometimes I can tell things about the original from this retelling - which makes Jordan, not Nick, the narrator; maybe makes the whole thing much queerer and into not so much a love triangle as a love blob (although I am not absolutely sure that doesn't happen in the original); and adds more magic and demons (presumably not quite so directly present in the original or you'd think someone would've told me). I feel like I can guess a lot about the original Gatsby, and something about the original Nick and Tom, and less about the original Daisy, and least of all about the original Jordan because as the narrator the retelling fills her in so thoroughly. The language of this is beautiful, and it fits magic into the world in a way that really works, and I am assuming that about race and sexuality and what it was like to be in New York in its time, it is wider than Gatsby, although I just started reading Gatsby so I get to find out.
...wait, she wrote a sequel? Huh.
~
Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson.
This book starts as the story of Phyllis Green, an assassin in New York as the Second World War looms, working for a mob boss who maybe doesn't have a whole heart made out of gold, but at least has some teeth made of silver, and that's something, right? Phyllis is black, but passes for white to gain his acceptance and move through society as she must - and keep her old family safe from any mob-related fallout.
I am told that a lot of people started reading this book for the badass magical assassin, and were therefore not best pleased by the turns it took. Phyllis is a badass magical assassin, whose saints' hands give her astonishing skills with a knife. But the book is much heavier than that description would indicate. It's more about the consequences and weight of violence - both personal and societal - and the degree to which individual moral choice, and individual loves, can and can't stand up to that. What are one assassin's choices in a world of segregation and war? Well, something. But not enough.
~
...and that is all the books I read in America! Is it all the books I acquired in America? ha ha ha no. I had gone to my mother's house, last stop before travel, with a perfectly reasonable size of suitcase. I then realised I could borrow her suitcase if I wanted, which was twice as big. I returned with the suitcase almost literally full of books - I had three pounds spare in my luggage allowance home. The other books are:
Notes from a Regicide, by Isaac Fellman. Bought at Scintillation, have been looking forward to this, could just have waited til it came in at the library but oh well.
Ship Without Sails, by Sherwood Smith.
Tone and Opacities, by Sofia Samatar.
Also bought at Scintillation.
Hunger: An Unnatural History
Resurrection Man, by Sean Stewart
The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai.
These are gifts from
ambyr. The last two are interventions in me buying a book in a shop, when ambyr said "You know, you could just take mine." The Burning Glass: The Life of Naomi Mitchison by Jenni Calder
Mechanique: a Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, by Genevive Valentine
Kingdoms of Elfin, by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Tumble Home and The Dog of the Marriage, by Amy Hempel. (This is the favourite writer of someone in my creative writing course a few years ago whose writing I liked.)
Merchanter's Luck, by C.J. Cherryh
A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis
These were from a good D.C. bookstore whose name I forget. [Capitol Hill Books! See comments.]
Remedios Varo: Science Fictions, On Homo Rodans and other writings.
These were from a museum shop. Expensive things look half as expensive in U.S. dollars as I'm used to, and these looked very nice. I had kept on being struck by Varo's art from a distance in the museum and then checking the artist and going, "Oh of course it's another Varo." Richly-textured scenes of magic being done in a somewhat Miyazaki-Howl's-Moving-Castle way. Also I can send one of them to the Australian friends who sent me Savage Detectives.
Warlock, by Oakley Hall.
God Stalk, by P.C. Hodgell
Strand Books.
The Incredible Digging Leviathan, by James P. Blaylock.
The Crane Husband, by Kelly Barnhill.
Behold my incredible restraint in buying only two books in Boston having already decided that I wouldn't have the luggage allowance to buy any more books at all.
The above gloating over my treasures shall inaugurate a time of restraint. I have not actually signed my name to a promise not to buy books for a year - a thing
jsthrill once did and that I am considering - but I certainly intend to let the balance between getting and reading swing back to true for a while. More accounts of my trip to follow, hopefully, unless I get swept away by the present.
This is how we do it
Jul. 5th, 2025 01:47 pmcaitriWe observed the Fourth by watching Sinners and making Mexican food.
Sinners is also the best movie I have seen since Barbie. 12/10, no notes. Please Ryan Coogler, make more movies where Michael B Jordan kills white supremacists. I think that would do wonders for everyone.
Sinners is also the best movie I have seen since Barbie. 12/10, no notes. Please Ryan Coogler, make more movies where Michael B Jordan kills white supremacists. I think that would do wonders for everyone.
Hurt/Comfort Exchange reveals
Jul. 5th, 2025 04:45 pmregshoe![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
hurtcomfortex works are revealed, and I have received this lovely cosy Alan/Davie in Balquhidder fic. I recommend it :DBarbara Kingsolver: Demon Copperhead (Book Review)
Jul. 5th, 2025 10:59 amselenakAka a 2022 novel set in the Appalachians during the late 1990s and early 2000s with the euphemistically called "Opiod Crisis" very much a main theme, and simultanously a modern adaptation of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. The last Copperfield adaptation I had seen or read was the Iannucci movie starring Dev Patel in the title role which emphasized the humor and vitality of the novel and succeeded splendidly, but had to cut down the darker elements in order to do so, with the breathneck speed of a two hours mvie based on a many hundred pages novel helping with that. Demon Copperhead took the reverse approach; it's all the darkness magnified - helped by the fact this is also a many hundred pages novel - but nearly no humor. Both adaptations emphasize the social injustice of the various systems they're depicting. Both had to do some considerable flashing out when it comes to Dickens's first person narrator. No one has ever argued that David is the most interesting character in David Copperfield. As long as he's still a child, this isn't noticable because David going from coddled and much beloved kid to abused and exploited kid makes for a powerful emotional arc. (BTW, I was fascinated to learn back when I was reading Claire Tomalin's Dickens biography that Dickens was influenced by Jane Eyre in this; Charlotte Bronte's novel convinced him to go for a first person narration - which he hadn't tried before - and the two abused and outraged child narrators who describe what scares and elates them incredibly vividly do have a lot on common.) But once he's an adult, it often feels like he's telling other people's stories (very well, I hasten to add) in which he's only on the periphery, except for his love life. The movie solved this by giving David - who is autobiographically inspired anyway - some more of Dickens`s on life and qualities. Demon Copperhead solves it by a) putting most of the part of the Dickens plot when David is already an adult to when Damon/Demon is still a teenager (he only becomes a legal adult near the end), b) by making Damon as a narrator a whole lot angrier than David, and c) by letting him fall to what is nearly everyone else's problem as well, addiction.
( Spoilers ensue about both novels )
In conclusion: this was a compelling novel but tough to read due to the subject and the unrelenting grimness. I'm not saying you should treat the horrible neglect and exploitation of children and the way a rotten health system allowed half the population to become addicts irreverently, but tone wise, this is more Hard Times than David Copperfield, and sometimes I wished for some breathing space in between the horrors. But I am glad to have read it.
( Spoilers ensue about both novels )
In conclusion: this was a compelling novel but tough to read due to the subject and the unrelenting grimness. I'm not saying you should treat the horrible neglect and exploitation of children and the way a rotten health system allowed half the population to become addicts irreverently, but tone wise, this is more Hard Times than David Copperfield, and sometimes I wished for some breathing space in between the horrors. But I am glad to have read it.
Hurt/Comfort Exchange
Jul. 4th, 2025 11:31 pmsholiohurtcomfortex released today! I happened to be driving a backcountry highway with no cell service at the time (coming home from Mom Things), but it was lovely to find my gifts waiting for me when I got back.Hold a Candle To (MASH, 3400 wds, gen) delivered some lovely Charles drug withdrawal h/c with teamy affection, and A Way Out (Biggles, 4400 wds, gen) let me roll around in excellent Biggles & von Stalhein enemies-era reluctant cooperation and sympathy. Truly a lovely haul!
All of my ghosts are my home
Jul. 4th, 2025 11:32 pmsovayOn the normality front, our street is full of cracks and bangs and whooshes from fireworks set off around the neighborhood, none so far combustibly. Otherwise I spent this Fourth of July with my husbands and my parents and eleven leaves of milkweed on which the monarch seen fluttering around the yard this afternoon had left her progeny. My hair still smells like grill smoke. Due to the size of one of the hamburgers, I folded it over into a double-decker with cheese and avocado and chipotle mayo and regret nothing about the hipster Dagwood sandwich. A quantity of peach pie and strawberries and cream were highlights of the dessert after a walk into the Great Meadows where the black water had risen under the boardwalk and the water lilies were growing in profusion from the last, droughtier time we had passed that way. I do not know the species of bird that has built a nest in the rhododendron beside the summer kitchen, but the three eggs in it are dye-blue.
On the non-normality front, I meant it about the spite: watching my country stripped for parts for the cruelty of it, half remixed atrocities, half sprint into dystopia, however complicated the American definition has always been, right now it still means my family of queers and rootless cosmopolitans and as most of the holidays we observe assert, we are still here. It's peculiar. I was not raised to think of my nationality as an important part of myself so much as an accident of history, much like the chain of immigrations and migrations that led to my birth in Boston. I was raised to carry home with me, not locate it in geography. I've been asked my whole life where I really come from. This administration in both its nameless rounds has managed to make me territorial about my country beyond the mechanisms of its democracy whose guardrails turned out to be such movable goalposts. It enrages me to be expected not to care that I have seen the pendulum swing like a wrecking ball in my lifetime, as if the trajectory were so inevitable that it absolves the avarice to do harm or the cowardice to prevent it. It is nothing to do with statues. The door to the stranger is supposed to be open.
The wet meadows of the Great Meadows are peatlands. They were cut for fuel in the nineteenth century, the surrealism of fossil fuels: twelve thousand years after the glaciers, ashes in a night. The color of their smoke filled the air sixteen years ago when some of the dryer acres burned. If you ask me, there's room for bog bodies.
On the non-normality front, I meant it about the spite: watching my country stripped for parts for the cruelty of it, half remixed atrocities, half sprint into dystopia, however complicated the American definition has always been, right now it still means my family of queers and rootless cosmopolitans and as most of the holidays we observe assert, we are still here. It's peculiar. I was not raised to think of my nationality as an important part of myself so much as an accident of history, much like the chain of immigrations and migrations that led to my birth in Boston. I was raised to carry home with me, not locate it in geography. I've been asked my whole life where I really come from. This administration in both its nameless rounds has managed to make me territorial about my country beyond the mechanisms of its democracy whose guardrails turned out to be such movable goalposts. It enrages me to be expected not to care that I have seen the pendulum swing like a wrecking ball in my lifetime, as if the trajectory were so inevitable that it absolves the avarice to do harm or the cowardice to prevent it. It is nothing to do with statues. The door to the stranger is supposed to be open.
The wet meadows of the Great Meadows are peatlands. They were cut for fuel in the nineteenth century, the surrealism of fossil fuels: twelve thousand years after the glaciers, ashes in a night. The color of their smoke filled the air sixteen years ago when some of the dryer acres burned. If you ask me, there's room for bog bodies.
July 25, 2000
Jul. 4th, 2025 03:42 pmasakiyumeMy mood improved markedly with a visit from the tall one and his son, my grandkid, little treelet.
Wakanomori brought down a diary the tall one had kept as a kid: here is the entry from July 25, 2000, which includes our visit to Lloyd Alexander's house, where we put on a play for him and his wife Janine. Also included is a visit to the US mint in Philadelphia and commentary on the Delaware River (big!)
Wakanomori brought down a diary the tall one had kept as a kid: here is the entry from July 25, 2000, which includes our visit to Lloyd Alexander's house, where we put on a play for him and his wife Janine. Also included is a visit to the US mint in Philadelphia and commentary on the Delaware River (big!)
a handful of microfictions
Jul. 4th, 2025 11:35 amasakiyumeHaving some feelings, so ... have some microfictions.
May 20, prompt word "serve"
Directions for serving certain abstract dishes:
--revenge is a dish best served cold
--pornography is a dish best served hot
--satire is a dish best served salty
--mockery is a dish best served bitter
--disappointment is a dish best served sour
--romance is a dish best served sweet
June 26, prompt word "kind"
"May I pay you in kind rather than currency?" the woman asked. The man was selling Dastrian funerary masks, perhaps war loot from the last conflict.
"That depends. What you got to offer?" He was suspicious--she looked Dastrian.
"These magical birds."
Impressed, the man agreed.
As he neared home that evening, the birds suddenly took flight. They plunged through the windows of his house, seizing precious objects in their talons, and flew off.
Payment in kind.
July 2, prompt word "clear"
"I'm not guilty," I insisted. It was true. Sure, I'd taken the bribe and misplaced evidence, but I did NOT betray Pereira. Yet now all I got were angry looks and curses.
"My spell will clear your name," Lady One Eye said. I believed her and didn't notice when she added, "Clear it but good."
The next day, no one knew me. I introduced myself and they looked confused. I wrote out my name, but it was like they couldn't see it.
My name had been cleared into invisibility.
May 20, prompt word "serve"
Directions for serving certain abstract dishes:
--revenge is a dish best served cold
--pornography is a dish best served hot
--satire is a dish best served salty
--mockery is a dish best served bitter
--disappointment is a dish best served sour
--romance is a dish best served sweet
June 26, prompt word "kind"
"May I pay you in kind rather than currency?" the woman asked. The man was selling Dastrian funerary masks, perhaps war loot from the last conflict.
"That depends. What you got to offer?" He was suspicious--she looked Dastrian.
"These magical birds."
Impressed, the man agreed.
As he neared home that evening, the birds suddenly took flight. They plunged through the windows of his house, seizing precious objects in their talons, and flew off.
Payment in kind.
July 2, prompt word "clear"
"I'm not guilty," I insisted. It was true. Sure, I'd taken the bribe and misplaced evidence, but I did NOT betray Pereira. Yet now all I got were angry looks and curses.
"My spell will clear your name," Lady One Eye said. I believed her and didn't notice when she added, "Clear it but good."
The next day, no one knew me. I introduced myself and they looked confused. I wrote out my name, but it was like they couldn't see it.
My name had been cleared into invisibility.
Through crime and crusade, our labor it's been stolen
Jul. 3rd, 2025 11:56 pmsovayBecause Hanscom hasn't held an air show in years, I have no idea what the hell passed over my parents' yard behind the unrelieved overcast except that it sounded like a heavy bomber, but not a modern one: an air-shaking piston-engined roar like who ordered the Flying Fortress, which were not to my knowledge even tested at the base. It suggested lost psychogeography and worried me.
Japanese Breakfast's "Picture Window" (2025) came around again on WERS as I was driving this afternoon. The line about ghosts and home keeps resonating beyond the pedal steel guitar.
I see we will be celebrating the Fourth of July out of spite this year. So go other holidays. Af tselokhes, John.
Japanese Breakfast's "Picture Window" (2025) came around again on WERS as I was driving this afternoon. The line about ghosts and home keeps resonating beyond the pedal steel guitar.
I see we will be celebrating the Fourth of July out of spite this year. So go other holidays. Af tselokhes, John.
Birthday Sale
Jul. 3rd, 2025 06:50 pmosprey_archerAs always on my birthday, I am having my annual birthday sale. This year, since I’m planning to raise prices post-sale ($3.99 for a novella, $5.99 for a novel), I decided to put everything on sale for one big final blow-out. So currently all my novellas are $0.99, and all my novels are $2.99.
Do you like Cold War spies falling in love on an American road trip, even though they're from opposite sides of the Iron Curtain? Then give Honeytrap a try!
If a Civil War soldier woke up from an enchanted sleep in 1965, how long would it take for him to cotton on that men are no longer allowed to touch? Find out in The Sleeping Soldier!
Are you interested in an m/m World War II retelling of Beauty and the Beast? Then Briarley may be for you!
How about a couple of boys riding the rails and falling in love during the Great Depression? Tramps and Vagabonds has your back.
Do you like watching post-World War I woobies suffer beautifully by the seaside? The Larks Still Bravely Singing may be warbling your name.
More Cold War spies, but this time CHRISTMAS! Deck the Halls with Secret Agents is a holly jolly short return to a favorite theme.
Do you like throuples and World War II and retellings of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? Then A Garter as a Lesser Gift may be coming to a Green Chapel near you.
Do you like throuples and pining and strawberry shortcake in post-Civil War America? Then give The Threefold Tie a try.
Do you want Cold War spies (again!), but this time they're the leads in the fandom that our two heroines are obsessed with? And kind of role-play as while trying out the joys of "your interpretation of this character is so incorrect" hatesex? Enemies to Lovers is calling your name.
You know it is when there's this new girl in school that you're sooo obsessed with because you both love art, and then you have an obsessive friendship ending in a terrible falling out, and then meet again years later in Florence? Have a gelato with Ashlin and Olivia.
And finally, a couple of oddballs. A retelling of Little Red Riding Hood in pre-Revolutionary Russia! Kind of f/f if you want to be! The Wolf and the Girl features forays both into the Russian forest and the nascent French silent film industry.
Last but not least, if your inner eleven-year-old yearns for a magical timeslip story, there's The Time Traveling Popcorn Ball
Do you like Cold War spies falling in love on an American road trip, even though they're from opposite sides of the Iron Curtain? Then give Honeytrap a try!
If a Civil War soldier woke up from an enchanted sleep in 1965, how long would it take for him to cotton on that men are no longer allowed to touch? Find out in The Sleeping Soldier!
Are you interested in an m/m World War II retelling of Beauty and the Beast? Then Briarley may be for you!
How about a couple of boys riding the rails and falling in love during the Great Depression? Tramps and Vagabonds has your back.
Do you like watching post-World War I woobies suffer beautifully by the seaside? The Larks Still Bravely Singing may be warbling your name.
More Cold War spies, but this time CHRISTMAS! Deck the Halls with Secret Agents is a holly jolly short return to a favorite theme.
Do you like throuples and World War II and retellings of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? Then A Garter as a Lesser Gift may be coming to a Green Chapel near you.
Do you like throuples and pining and strawberry shortcake in post-Civil War America? Then give The Threefold Tie a try.
Do you want Cold War spies (again!), but this time they're the leads in the fandom that our two heroines are obsessed with? And kind of role-play as while trying out the joys of "your interpretation of this character is so incorrect" hatesex? Enemies to Lovers is calling your name.
You know it is when there's this new girl in school that you're sooo obsessed with because you both love art, and then you have an obsessive friendship ending in a terrible falling out, and then meet again years later in Florence? Have a gelato with Ashlin and Olivia.
And finally, a couple of oddballs. A retelling of Little Red Riding Hood in pre-Revolutionary Russia! Kind of f/f if you want to be! The Wolf and the Girl features forays both into the Russian forest and the nascent French silent film industry.
Last but not least, if your inner eleven-year-old yearns for a magical timeslip story, there's The Time Traveling Popcorn Ball
Not a GREAT week when it comes to ending sexual violence.
Jul. 2nd, 2025 09:08 pmmuccamukkThe whole Diddy thing. It doesn't matter how much proof there is.
Brad Pitt, who is known to have struck his wife and his children then perpetuated lawfare on them for years to the point where several of his kids no longer want contact with him, has the number one movie right now. Best opening weekend of his career. Most of the coverage doesn't even mention the violence.
On the anniversary of Tortoise Media publishing allegations of rape and sexual assault against Neil Gaiman, Netflix is dropping season two of The Sandman. Meanwhile, Gaiman is forcing one of his victims into arbitration. Not because she's libling him, but because she broke an NDA. Everything's gone very quiet, which I assume is what he wanted.
Some thoughts from smarter people:
Rebecca Solnit: Cynicism Is the Enemy of Action.
Tarana Burke: Tarana Burke doesn’t define #MeToo’s success by society’s failure.
Brad Pitt, who is known to have struck his wife and his children then perpetuated lawfare on them for years to the point where several of his kids no longer want contact with him, has the number one movie right now. Best opening weekend of his career. Most of the coverage doesn't even mention the violence.
On the anniversary of Tortoise Media publishing allegations of rape and sexual assault against Neil Gaiman, Netflix is dropping season two of The Sandman. Meanwhile, Gaiman is forcing one of his victims into arbitration. Not because she's libling him, but because she broke an NDA. Everything's gone very quiet, which I assume is what he wanted.
Some thoughts from smarter people:
Rebecca Solnit: Cynicism Is the Enemy of Action.
Tarana Burke: Tarana Burke doesn’t define #MeToo’s success by society’s failure.
Some people want to judge the movement on specific outcomes, so when a case is overturned, Burke said, “people are like, ‘Oh the #MeToo movement has failed.’” Instead, she said, such outcomes are proof of the difficulty of the work.
“It’s not about the failure of the movement; it’s the failure of the systems,” Burke explained. “These systems are not designed to help survivors, they’re not designed to give us justice, they’re not designed to end sexual violence.”
“When we bind ourselves to the outcomes of these cases, we are constantly up and down with our disappointment, our highs and lows,” Burke continued. “What they tell us is just how much work we need to change the laws and the policies but most importantly, to change the culture that creates the people who commit, who perpetrate acts of harm.”
wednesday reads and things
Jul. 2nd, 2025 06:17 pmisisWhat I've recently finished reading:
Lamentation by C.J. Sansom, the 6th Shardlake novel. This is all about the heresy hunts in the last few years before Henry VIII's death - one faction wanted to go back towards Catholicism, one wanted a radical re-imagining of religion and social structures, and if you wanted to stay in the regime's good graces, you walked the narrow path of "the King is the divinely ordained leader of the Church, and whatever he says goes." Warning for historical burning of heretics, plus canon-typical violence; also for weird religion and contentious legal cases. Matthew Shardlake still has a crush on the queen (Katherine Parr).
What I'm reading now:
My hold on Katherine Addison's The Tomb of Dragons came in, so that. Just barely started.
What I recently finished watching:
American Primeval, which, huh, I've never before encountered media in which the Mormons are the bad guys. (This is not a spoiler. It's pretty clear from the get-go, but it gets more pointed and cartoon-villainy toward the end.) Definitely violent and gory, though also it felt very clearly written to Tug The Heart Strings (and then, often, deliberately kill the character it's just tried to make you care about) at which at least for me it failed to do. I liked Abish, Two Moons, and Captain Edwin Dellinger, and James Bridger amused the hell out of me, but - I mostly enjoyed it, but I don't feel it was superlative. I got tired of the filter to wash out colors so it looked almost old-photo sepia.
I did enjoy the historical setting of the Mormon War; as I mentioned last time, I researched it for my Yuletide story, and I think it's just an interesting time, the settlement/colonization of western North America.
What I'm about to start watching:
Murderbot! We always wait until enough episodes are out that we can watch ~every other day and not have to wait.
What I'm playing now:
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, which was recommended to me as a "spooky atmospheric puzzle game", and I'm enjoying it a lot. You play as a mysterious woman who has come to a mysterious hotel full of locked doors in what might be Germany in 1963, at the request of a mysterious man for reasons of ??? I told my brother about it because it's cheap in the summer sale at Steam, and he decided it sounded good so he is playing it now, a bit behind my progress but because of the nonlinearity he's ahead of me in some things. We're trying to give each other elliptical hints when needed.
Lamentation by C.J. Sansom, the 6th Shardlake novel. This is all about the heresy hunts in the last few years before Henry VIII's death - one faction wanted to go back towards Catholicism, one wanted a radical re-imagining of religion and social structures, and if you wanted to stay in the regime's good graces, you walked the narrow path of "the King is the divinely ordained leader of the Church, and whatever he says goes." Warning for historical burning of heretics, plus canon-typical violence; also for weird religion and contentious legal cases. Matthew Shardlake still has a crush on the queen (Katherine Parr).
What I'm reading now:
My hold on Katherine Addison's The Tomb of Dragons came in, so that. Just barely started.
What I recently finished watching:
American Primeval, which, huh, I've never before encountered media in which the Mormons are the bad guys. (This is not a spoiler. It's pretty clear from the get-go, but it gets more pointed and cartoon-villainy toward the end.) Definitely violent and gory, though also it felt very clearly written to Tug The Heart Strings (and then, often, deliberately kill the character it's just tried to make you care about) at which at least for me it failed to do. I liked Abish, Two Moons, and Captain Edwin Dellinger, and James Bridger amused the hell out of me, but - I mostly enjoyed it, but I don't feel it was superlative. I got tired of the filter to wash out colors so it looked almost old-photo sepia.
I did enjoy the historical setting of the Mormon War; as I mentioned last time, I researched it for my Yuletide story, and I think it's just an interesting time, the settlement/colonization of western North America.
What I'm about to start watching:
Murderbot! We always wait until enough episodes are out that we can watch ~every other day and not have to wait.
What I'm playing now:
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, which was recommended to me as a "spooky atmospheric puzzle game", and I'm enjoying it a lot. You play as a mysterious woman who has come to a mysterious hotel full of locked doors in what might be Germany in 1963, at the request of a mysterious man for reasons of ??? I told my brother about it because it's cheap in the summer sale at Steam, and he decided it sounded good so he is playing it now, a bit behind my progress but because of the nonlinearity he's ahead of me in some things. We're trying to give each other elliptical hints when needed.