mme_n_b | Reading

I have a stack of library books and used bookstore buys looking at me accusingly but instead I have been lured into doing a massive McCaffrey read. I know. I don't respect my choices either.

My other problem is that once I am embarked on a Text I have a hard time stopping it, so when all the library offered me in ebook was an omnibus of Dragonflight - Dragonquest - The White Dragon I was always going to be reading all three. And, you know, it did start out quite well! Rereading Dragonflight a very funny experience because it's like

Dragonflight: and here's where Lessa washes her hair
Me: tiny Becca what do you think about this
the inner tiny Becca: I LOVE LESSA I LOVE IT WHEN SHE GETS TO WASH HER HAIR 🥹
Dragonflight: and here's where F'lar sends F'nor on a haunted mission back in time
Me: tiny Becca what do you think about this
the inner tiny Becca: who's F'lar

But actually with very few actual memories and a lot of informed knowledge from the twenty years since the last time I read these books I truly expected F'lar and the central romance plot in general to be ... worse? Like yes it's 1968 and yes there's the dubcon dragonsex of it all and yes F'lar's whole mission in life is to convince the world that you Cannot stop feeding the military-industrial complex even after four hundred years of peace or you Will be eaten by mindless alien hordes [On Which More Later]. But the thing that the dubcon dragonsex actually does, narratively speaking, is it fully displaces the emphasis of the romance away from 'when are they going to have sex' to 'when are these two assholes who trust themselves very much going to learn to trust each other.' They're having sex all through it; the dragons have taken care of that, so the sex is no longer the point. The partnership and the problem-solving is the point, and it is fun to watch them solve problems and increasingly know which problems they can rely on the other to solve. Which I think is interesting and purposeful and honestly pretty bold, for 1968! I'd like to see more romances do that now! Also the problem-solving is satisfying, and haunted mission back in time plot that I had completely forgotten is quite effectively creepy. I ended Dragonflight like 'you know what, as Of Its Time as it is, in many ways this book actually does really work. Maybe ... Pern is good?

Then on to Dragonquest and The White Dragon and it turns out Pern unfortunately is not good, although both of these books are real would-be-good-if-they-were-good situations.

Dragonflight: and here's where F'lar sends F'nor on a haunted mission back in time
me: Dragonquest what do you think about this
Dragonquest: what haunted mission

No, Dragonflight is kind of a mess of a book but what I do think is interesting about it, thematically speaking -- to come back to the military-industrial complex of it all -- is that the end of Dragonflight is a lot of people going 'to be manly and heroic is to fight forever on a cool dragon, we've reached peacetime and it's dull so we're going forward in time so we can continue fighting forever on a cool dragon' and the beginning of Dragonquest is like 'actually I have reconsidered my thinking about this and it turns out fighting forever is perhaps bad for you, psychologically? maybe instead of heroic forever war we can look at some alternate pursuits that are also heroic and manly but less lethal and traumatizing. Like space exploration! Did anyone watch the Moon Landing? Wasn't that pretty cool?' (

genarti when I was talking with her about this also pointed out that at the time Dragonquest came out we were also several more years into Vietnam.) Obviously McCaffrey is all in on the Pioneer Spirit and the wistful terra nullius of it all but I appreciate that she's actively revising her thoughts on the military and its relationship to the populace it theoretically protects as she's writing it, and it's interesting to see the evolution. Really really funny to see F'lar go from the 'SEND TITHES LIKE YOU DID IN THE DAYS OF YORE' guy to the 'I'm your progressive candidate for Weyrleader and I think this military appropriationism has gotten a bit out of hand' guy. I love the end of the book where it's like 'well we've actually solved the problem of Thread but unfortunately our solution is not cool and sexy, so we need a dragonrider to do something that is cool and sexy but ultimately completely useless to get everyone else to buy into it.'

(E who dragged me into this: plausible reading that the grubs are a feminised solution. we must put our hands into mother earth and urgh it's all moist and gooey
me: i love that you went there because my first thought is that the solution is lower class. the humblest tillers of the land
E, determined: thread is being absorbed by a planetary vagina dentata which also has life-generating properties)

Anyway, F'nor does some spaceflight, in a cool and sexy but ultimately completely useless way, which is making up I suppose for the other cool and sexy thing that F'nor absolutely does not get to do which is challenge dragon biological essentialism. F'nor/Brekke is not a particularly successful or interesting romance plot but nonetheless I truly was on the edge of my seat for this -- I remembered that Brekke's mating flight ends in Tragedy but I thought F'nor might at least like succeed a little bit in proving that it's hypothetically possible for a brown dragon to mate with a queen? But no! he doesn't even get to try! Having raised the question of 'what does dragon gender really mean and how much does it bind us' Anne cannot bring herself to answer it. Have you instead considered that spaceflight is cool and sexy.

And The White Dragon is even more a book of 'having raised the question, Anne cannot bring herself to answer it.' Not much actually happens in The White Dragon, we're making a number of mountains out of molehills, but it's all whirling around the central anxiety point of 'if my soulbonded dragon falls out of standard dragon color/gender categories and moreover is definitely ace then what does that make me?' And the book's answer is '....a guy. A manly guy who successfully achieves all of his society's standards of masculinity. Do not worry about it.' Well, I wouldn't have been worrying about it, Anne, if you hadn't been telling me to worry about it, and then you gave me the most boring answer possible.

There is more to say about The White Dragon -- not least the way that every woman in the book seems to have gotten a hefty splash from the misogyny fountain -- but I am running out of time so we'll call it here. Am I done? No! I am now halfway through Dragonsdawn. More on that anon.

osprey_archer

It’s been a long time since I posted about writing, because it’s been a long time since I’ve written very much, but visiting

skygiants and

genarti and

asakiyume inspired me to get back in harness. I am working very slowly on a secondary world fantasy novelette involving a princess in a tower and a magical paper bird and a sorceress’s apprentice.

If this sounds familiar, this story has been in the works for about 15 years. This time I’m going to finish it, though! I finally know what happens!

I also published Diary of a Cranky Bookworm this month, and since it’s basically not selling, I’ve decided that in the future I’ll continue to self pub m/m and m/m/f but will look for trad pub options for anything else. Or might just not write anything but m/m, at least at novel length. The m/m has made 15 times more money than all my other books combined.

I have however accrued a small stable of short stories, mostly fantasy, mostly not romantic, many possibly not publishable. (I know there are readers for a story about a tiny person who lives in a library, but are there venues?) (The one story about the grizzled warrior who falls in love with the magical coffee shop she manages is a shoe-in for publication somewhere, though.). My goal is to submit at least one story each month. May they come back with their pockets full of gold!

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3226/

"While I try to do my part to destroy the environment, I try not to focus too much on individual responsibility. By pushing for broad policy changes, we can collectively do far more damage to the biosphere than any of us could on our own."

https://xkcd.com/3226/

larryhammer

For Poetry Monday, dipping back a few millenia:

A love song of Shu-Sin, Unknown

Man of my heart, my beloved man, your allure is a sweet thing, as sweet as honey. Lad of my heart, my beloved man, your allure is a sweet thing, as sweet as honey.

You have captivated me (?), of my own free will I will come to you. Man, let me flee with you — into the bedroom. You have captivated me (?); of my own free will I shall come to you. Lad, let me flee with you — into the bedroom.

Man, let me do the sweetest things to you. My precious sweet, let me bring you honey. In the bedchamber dripping with honey let us enjoy over and over your allure, the sweet thing. Lad, let me do the sweetest things to you. My precious sweet, let me bring you honey.

Man, you have become attracted to me. Speak to my mother and I will give myself to you; speak to my father and he will make a gift of me. I know where to give physical pleasure to your body — sleep, man, in our house till morning. I know how to bring heart’s delight to your heart — sleep, lad, in our house till morning.

Since you have fallen in love with me, lad, if only you would do your sweet thing to me.

My lord and god, my lord and guardian angel, my Cu-Suen who cheers Enlil’s heart, if only you would handle your sweet place, if only you would grasp your place that is sweet as honey.

Put your hand there for me like the cover (?) on a measuring cup. Spread (?) your hand there for me like the cover (?) on a cup of wood shavings.

Original text:

Thanks, WikiMedia!

Hat tip. One of the world’s oldest surviving lyric poems, written presumably during the reign of Shu-Sin / Šu-Suen, king of Sumer and Akkad from circa* 2037-2028 BCE. The tablet identifies the speaker as Inana, and it’s generally read as relating to the sacred marriage of the fertility goddess** and the land’s king. That said, it reads to me as a straight-up (i.e. non-ritual) erotic poem — a smoking hot one.*** The translation from Sumerian is a composite created by Graham Cunningham from ones by Krecher & Jagersma and Sefati (source, credits).

* While relative times in Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia are relatively solid, absolute timestamps have error bars of ±60 years. For context, he ruled two and a half centuries after the death of Sargon of Akkad, the father of Enheduanna.

** Possibly, though this is highly debated, embodied as her high priestess. Not debated: she almost certainly didn’t wear little red panties.

*** I hope those wood shavings (?) don’t catch on fire.

---L.

Subject quote from Semi-Charmed Life, Third Eye Blind.

osprey_archer

I haven’t quite finished the 2017 books yet, but I had some extra time at work Friday and what better use of that time than to go through my 2019 reading list and decide which authors to revisit? So here we are.

Katherine Applegate - Pocket Bear

Grace Lin - Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods

Shaun Tan - The Arrival. I read Tales of the City in 2019 and found it pretty downbeat, but

littlerhymes clued me in that Tan also wrote picture books so of course I have to give those a try.

C. S. Lewis - considering The World’s Last Night and Other Essays, although I’m also interested in Studies in Words

Toni Morrison - Beloved

Ben MacIntyre - Agent Sonya: Moscow’s Most Daring Wartime Spy

Lisa See - Daughters of the Sun and Moon. Her newest book! Not yet out, in fact.

Jacqueline Woodson

Penelope Farmer - the university library has Eve: Her Story, but also a book called Soumchi which appears to be written by an Israeli writer named Amos Oz, but nonetheless has Farmer’s name attached in the catalog. Did she translate? Or write the preface? May check it out just to solve the mystery.

Dorothy Gilman

George Gissing - Demos. After New Grub Street, I felt I had to explore Gissing further, and according to Wikipedia, George Orwell thought Demos was one of Gissing’s best novels.

E. M. Delafield - The Provincial Lady in Wartime

George Orwell - The Road to Wigan Pier

Vivien Alcock - A Kind of Thief. I found this book at a used bookstore so it has become my next Alcock

William Dean Howells - Their Wedding Journey

Booth Tarkington - Penrod. I’ve meant to explore more Booth Tarkington since I read Seventeen. At last I’m getting around to it!

Barbara Cooney - Letting Swift River Go. When I visited

asakiyume we went to the Quabbin on a foggy day, and

asakiyume mentioned that Cooney illustrated a book about the building of the Quabbin, so of course that's next on my list.

Susan Cooper - torn between Dreams and Wishes: Essays on Writing for Children and Green Boy

William Bowen - Merrimeg. Bowen was a children’s fantasy author in the 1920s. I’d really like to read his book The Enchanted Forest, but it doesn’t appear to be on Gutenberg or FadedPage, so I’ll content myself with Merrimeg for now.

kaberett

Reading. Preeeeetty much just progressing further through the She's A Beast archives, and continuing to develop opinions. I... think that's it? I think that's it; it has been A Busy Week.

Writing. Words Go Up: over 9.5k. Two more subsections titled. I continue to chew things over.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac. Technically up to May 2015, but I'm going to be going back over most of 2015 on account of Tragically, Some Dozing. (It is Car Noise, you see, and we have been. Travelling.)

Eating. A lot of food made for me by a variety of other people, notably including dosa + thali by Chai Station Chester, hot chocolate from [Knoops] in Chester, bread/cake/cookies/waffles by the Jaunty Goat and petits fours by Biscotti di Debora. Petits fours AMAZING; further thoughts possibly to follow.

Exploring. Southport Botanic Gardens, which struck me as much more of a park and rather less of a botanical garden than I'd quite expected based on the name, though perhaps this is because the fernery was closed by the time we got to it; very much enjoyed THE AVIARY.

Minimal exploration of Chester Zoo, once again culminating in staying in the bat cave until kicking out time.

Little bit of poking around Salisbury, feat. excellent tulips, excellent irises, FREE BLUE AGAPANTHUS that someone had divided, excellent bee doorknocker.

And then finally we made it HOME.

Making & mending. Progressed A's second glove some more! Stalled when I got to starting increases for the thumb gusset on account of my additional stitch markers were in the roof box and ... no.

Growing. Kept the lemongrass alive through The Travels. Acquired, as mentioned, a chunk of agapanthus. Unshockingly, the aubergine I sowed immediately before leaving has not sprouted, but hey, I'll turn the propagator back on. Nothing else seems to have died while I was away, hurrah.

Observing. MOON. The Dog. Creatures, including A having an excellent time Experiencing Bats (and also Flamingoes With Wings, A Rhinoceros, some grey-crowned cranes, and Monkeys).

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3225/

We're working to make sure the images are as up-to-date and accurate as possible, with a minimum number of sponsored galaxies.

https://xkcd.com/3225/

osprey_archer

I showed up at

asakiyume’s place just a couple of days before St. Patrick’s Day, so we decided it would be the perfect time to catch up on the latest movies released by the Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, still perhaps most famous for its first movie The Secret of Kells.

We perhaps should have saved Wolfwalkers for St. Patrick’s Day itself, as it’s actually set in Ireland. Young Robyn Goodfellowe has just arrived in Ireland with her father, a professional hunter who has been hired by Oliver Cromwell to eliminate the wolves in the nearby woods. Once the wolves have been driven out, the wild woods can be cut down and converted to farmland, thus by proxy also taming the wild Irish people.

Young Robyn is supposed to stay home and do chores, but in classic heroine mode, she would much rather dash about the woods hunting with her father. Unable to accompany him on his hunt, she instead goes into the woods on her own, and accidentally falls into one of her own father’s snares!

Robyn is released by mischievous young wolfwalker Mebh, and they spend a happy day frolicking through the forest together. But in the process of releasing Robyn from the trap, Mebh nipped her. And that night when she falls asleep, Robyn’s spirit rises from her body in the form of a wolf…

Absolutely gorgeous animation. I particularly loved all the sequences featuring the wolfwalkers in wolf form, particularly the eerily beautiful image of Robyn’s wolf-spirit frantically trying to return to her body when the whole town is attempting to hunt down this wolf that inexplicably got into the town walls.

I was also impressed ( spoilers )

The animation in My Father’s Dragon wasn’t quite as lovely, or rather didn’t have quite as many opportunities for numinous loveliness. But I also enjoyed it, which surprised me because I didn’t particularly like the book it’s based on and likely wouldn’t have tried it if it weren’t Cartoon Saloon.

The book (also called My Father’s Dragon) is a straightforward tale about a boy going to an island where he defeats and/or escapes various ferocious animals (crocodiles, tigers etc) in order to rescue a baby dragon. The end. A brisk recitation of a series of events without much character development or worldbuilding of the island or anything else.

The moviemakers clearly realized that in order to stretch the story to feature-length, character development and worldbuilding and so forth was just exactly what they’d need. The result is a much richer story, where the various ferocious animals are no longer basically an obstacle course but characters with their own motivations. Also, the human protagonist meets the baby dragon much earlier, which changes his journey from a solo quest into a sort of heartwrenching buddy comedy.

The filmmakers were trying very hard, and unfortunately sometimes you could see the gears grinding as they strained to get the emotional effect they wanted, which of course serves to undermine that effect. But still, an ambitious “shot for the moon and landed among the stars,” which is still a pretty decent place to land.

ecreet

Сегодня я узнала, что клещи не насекомые, а паукообразные. У них восемь ног! Почему.

osprey_archer

When I posted about George Gissing’s The Odd Women, I commented that it was indeed an odd book, but I think I undersold or perhaps did not yet understand the sheer oddness of Gissing’s work, not only in a 19th century English context but just in terms of English literature in general.

This is even more obvious in New Grub Street, which takes as its cast a motley crew of struggling writers in 1880s London, and as its themes money and love. More specifically, its themes are:

1. Poverty is horrible and degrading and undermines every other facet of life; and

2. Money is a necessary but not sufficient condition for love. That is to say, you can have money but not love, but love without money cannot last.

Of course these themes are implied in other books (think of Jane Austen’s characters breathlessly discussing the marriage prospects of so-and-so who has thus-and-such pounds a year), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them expounded with Gissing’s brutal clarity. It’s bracing, stimulating not always to total agreement but certainly to deeper thought, for instance about the fact that people marry not only because they fall in love with an individual but because they love the image of the lifestyle and status they think they’ll have with that person.

Gissing has the Zola-like gift of creating an ensemble cast of characters who illustrate different facets of his theme while also being interesting and individual people in their own right. Gissing is trying to give them all a fair shake, to portray them all so clearly that we can see why they act the way they do. Readers may or may not find it in our hearts to sympathize, but that will be our own decision, not a result of Gissing putting his finger on the scale.

--Sensitive Edwin Reardon, who married upper-middle-class Amy on the strength of one well-received novel and now suffering immense writer’s block. Amy fell in love with both Edwin and the idea of being a successful novelist’s wife, and is appalled to see this dream crumbling under what appears to her to be his refusal to work.

As I’ve struggled with writer’s block for the past couple of years, I feel a great sympathy for Edwin: he quite literally cannot write anything good right now! It’s not his fault! But I can also see why it doesn’t look that way to Amy and her family, especially because the social rules of 1880s London mean there is no graceful road of retreat. Not only is it impossible for Amy to get a job (this is literally unthinkable: not one character ever even imagines it), but now that Edwin has set up as a full-time writer, the whole family would lose caste if he took a job for wages.

--Jasper Milvain, debonair man about town who approaches writing as a business and forthrightly says his goal is to earn a thousand pounds a year. A character type who in many books would be a villain, and I won’t say that he’s not just a bit villainous at times, but he’s also a complex character who definitely has a point. In the tradition of an Austen baddie, he ends up perfectly happy with himself and his choices.

--Alfred Yule, a cranky aging writer of moderate abilities who was never very financially successful, and married a working class woman because he never made enough to support a wife of his own class. There’s a section where Gissing lists a whole bunch of similarly positioned writers who made a similar decision and makes it clear that he thinks this is pretty much always a mistake that will lead to marital disharmony.

--Marian Yule, Alfred Yule’s daughter and assistant, who is to an ever-greater extent perhaps simply writing his articles for him. (We also get a glimpse of two other women writers in Jasper’s sisters, who at Jasper’s suggestion take to writing Sunday school stories to support themselves.)

--Whelpdale, an unsuccessful writer who makes a success of it telling other writers how to write to market. A jolly young man despite all his setbacks.

--Harold Biffen, an extremely poor though talented writer of the realist school who sticks fast to his principles and loves discussing Greek and Latin literature with Edwin Reardon. Would be the tragically romantic starving artist in a garret in another book. Unfortunately wound up in a Gissing book instead.

Having set these and various other figures going, Gissing simply observes them, like a naturalist watching a particularly interesting species of cockatoos. The result is absorbing, as

skygiants and

genarti can attest, having been subjected to various rants and wails as I tore through the back half of the book. Highly recommended on account of quality, recommended cautiously on account of emotional intensity.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3224/

Yes, the cosmic microwave background is great, but what about the earthly microwave foreground?

https://xkcd.com/3224/

troisoiseaux

Read Bog Queen by Anna North, a well-pieced-together pocket watch of a novel about the discovery of an Iron Age bog body in the West Midlands, England, in 2018, split between the perspectives of a forensic anthropologist determined to figure out how this woman died while navigating the competing interests of local environmentalists who want to rewild the bog where she was found, the peat company that owns it, and the relative of a 1960s murder victim believed to also be buried there; of the Iron Age woman, a young druid growing into her role during a time of shifting alliances and growing Roman influence; and, interwoven between the two in brief vignettes, the bog (or rather, the moss?) itself.

Read Diary of a Cranky Bookworm by Aster Glenn Gray (DW's own

osprey_archer), which was a delight. On a general note, this is a fun and thoughtful coming-of-age YA novel in which the characters are great both at being characters and at feeling like people; on a personal one, this was very fun to read as a book about a bookworm by someone who I became friends with over books, because protagonist Sage's literary landscape felt immediately and intimately familiar. :)

Current Music: Growing Up - Hilary Duff

osprey_archer

This Wednesday Reading Meme covers the last two weeks, so it is perhaps a bit longer than usual, although not so long as it could be as I intend to write a whole post devoted to George Gissing’s New Grub Street. Will I manage this? Unclear. Not sure I ever truly did justice to The Odd Women either.

What I Read Over the Past Two Weeks

Patricia C. Wrede’s Caught in Crystal. I was excited about this book because I loved Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles, but I found Caught in Crystal a disappointment. The characters spend a lot of time moving from location to location without ever giving much sense what makes any particular location interesting and unique, and it takes about 75% of the book before we finally get started on the quest that we could all see coming from about chapter two.

Eleanor Hoffman’s A Cat of Paris, illustrated by Zhenya Gay. Another lavishly illustrated cat POV children’s book from the 1940s, which seems to have been a highwater mark for this sort of thing. Delightful as books in this genre almost invariably are, with the extra delight of taking place on the Left Bank of Paris! I was only sorry that our cat never got to pose for the patissiere who yearned to sculpt him in marzipan.

Scott Eyman’s Hank and Jim: The Fifty-Year Friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart. During a long wait at the airport I sorted through my Kindle and found some books I’d forgotten about, including this one! I love Golden Age Hollywood and Jimmy Stewart especially, so I found this a lot of fun, even though Henry Fonda is the kind of guy who says things like “I’ve never liked myself very much” and you go mmm yeah I don’t think I like you very much either. Apparently if someone got too emotional in front of Fonda, or asked for help, his characteristic move was to silently walk away.

However, I did find Fonda’s needlepoint hobby endearing.

Ngaio Marsh’s Enter a Murderer, the second Inspector Alleyn novel, which I approached with trepidation because I’ve found the early Alleyn books hit or miss. (IMO Marsh hits her stride in Artists in Crime, when Alleyn falls head over heels for murder suspect Agatha Troy.) However, this one was a surprise pleasure. The story is set in a theater, and Marsh’s theater mysteries are almost always good, and although Alleyn doesn’t seem to have quite settled into his characterization yet, it is extremely funny to watch him flippantly flirting with starstruck reporter Nigel Bathgate.

”Here’s the warrant,” murmured Alleyn. He struggled into his overcoat and pulled on his felt hat at a jaunty angle.

“Am I tidy?” he asked. “It looks so bad not to be tidy for an arrest.”

Nigel thought dispassionately, that he looked remarkably handsome, and wondered if the chief inspector had “It.” “I must ask Angela,” thought Nigel.

Must you, Nigel? I think you can tell damn well that Chief Inspector Alleyn simply oozes sex appeal.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve begun Takuya Asakura’s The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop, which I bought because it was a mere $5 with a drink at the Barnes and Noble cafe (deal lasts till the end of March!) and I was weak to the beautiful cherry blossom explosion of a cover. I feel that a bookshop that only appears when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom ought to feel a bit more numinously magical than the one in this book, but nonetheless I’m enjoying it enough to keep reading.

What I Plan to Read Next

Continuing my Provincial Lady journey with The Provincial Lady in America.

osprey_archer

(I actually wrote this review before my trip, then ran out of time to post it.)

Sometimes you just know, just from looking at a book’s cover, that this book is in some way For You. Such is the case with Sara Pennypacker’s Pax, with its Jon Klassen cover of a fox standing on a wooded hill gazing across a plain at a sunset. I’ve looked at this book for years and always meant to read it and somehow never quite picked it up.

But at last I’ve read it, and I was correct that it IS for me, full of solid fox action (which you would expect from the cover) and also surprisingly serious musings about war (which you would not guess from the cover, but it works).

War is coming to the country. Which country? The country, which is similar to America but perhaps not America. With whom? The enemy. What for? The water. Why? Because the humans are war-sick. This vagueness might not work for me in a different book, but here it works well to highlight the destructiveness of war, not only for people but for the land and the animals.

Peter’s father has joined the army. Since Peter’s mother is dead, he’s going to live with his grandfather, which means he needs to get rid of his pet fox Pax. So Peter’s father drives him to an isolated road, and Peter throws Pax’s favorite toy into the woods, and Pax chases after it.

But as soon as Peter arrives at his grandfather’s house, he realizes he’s made a horrible mistake. There’s nothing for it: he’s got to run away and trek cross-country to find Pax.

Meanwhile, Pax intends to sit by the side of the road and wait for his boy. But hunger and thirst force him to begin exploring the forest, where he meets other foxes… and they discover that the human armies are drawing closer.

Really enjoyed this. Great fox POV. There’s a sequel, so I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Pax lives. Don’t want to give too many spoilers, but I found Peter’s journey unexpected and satisfying, and Pax’s journey pretty much what you might expect from that summary but also satisfying. Sometimes stories hit certain beats for a reason, you know?

osprey_archer

I have returned from my travels! In fact I returned a few days ago, but have been busy with post-trip errands/releasing Diary of a Cranky Bookworm/convincing the cats that I still love them despite CRUELLY ABANDONING them; and therefore have not had time to post.

Lovely trip! Started in Boston, where I stayed with

skygiants and

genarti and watched the Alec Guinness Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (emotionally destroyed me, will post about it later) and also various movies from TWO perfectly timed film festivals, one featuring films by Katherine Hepburn and the other featuring Spunky Girl Reporters, about which films I will ALSO post later. Crushed that I didn't get to see Katherine Hepburn as a Girl Athlete in Mike and Pat but I simply could not spend ALL my time watching movies. Other Boston highlights:

1. At long last, I visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner! Loved the mix of artworks from different places and periods and media - an entire corner devoted to lacework! some excellent tapestries! beautiful musical instruments, and I so hope that sometimes the museum has concerts where these lovely instruments get played. Loved the lack of labels so you can just drift about absorbing without getting bogged down with facts. Delicious Italian Renaissance courtyard. A bit disappointed that you couldn't wander through the garden the way you can in the Cloisters. Happy to report that for once the museum store had postcards of almost all my favorite paintings!

2. Much good food! We picked up cakes and chocolates at Burdick's, croissants at Lakon Paris, and a Pi Day special of FOUR pies, three savory and one sweet. Also an amazing afternoon tea at the Courtyard Tea Room at the Boston Public Library, followed by a repeat visit to all the murals (I think the Galahad cycle is my favorite although Sargent is also spectacular) plus a side trip to a room with some delightful dioramas of Famous Artists at Work.

3. The USS Constitution! A very suitable excursion for Year of Sail, especially on point because the ship just got a little cameo near the end of Hornblower and the Hotspur. Loved being actually inside the ship and seeing the hammocks crowded in, the galley in the middle of the deck, the lieutenants' little cubicles and the captain's larger quarters with an actual bed, albeit quite a narrow one, note that down for fic purposes.

And then away we went to meet up with

asakiyume at the Yiddish Book Center, where

skygiants and

genarti handed me over for the second part of my journey. We toured the Yiddish Book Center, made a cranberry-pecan tart, visited Bright Water Bog--

This link takes you to

asakiyume's entry with pictures of the ice forming on the bog. It also mentions eating the cranberries cold from the bog water and the absolute delight of a swing hung between two pines by the waterside. Absolute thrill. Nothing in the world like a swing.

We also hit up the Smith College Spring Bulb Show, a welcome infusion of color and light after a long cold winter. And we made some of the decadently rich hot chocolate from Burdick's, hot chocolate so thick it's practically chocolate sauce (in fact I ate/drank most of it by dipping croissants in), and watched Cartoon Saloon's Wolfwalkers and My Father's Dragon, about which more anon...

Simply a delightful trip!

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3223/

Depending what corners of the internet you hang out on, 'regular' may at times awkwardly coexist with 'sexy.'

https://xkcd.com/3223/

larryhammer

For Poetry Monday:

Suicide’s Note, Langston Hughes

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.

---L.

Subject quote from Sailing, Christopher Cross.

kaberett

Reading. Finished my first pass through LIFTOFF by Casey Johnston! Will continue to use it as a reference work (tomorrow starts my third and final week of Phase 1 -- bodyweight practice of compound movements -- before I move on to doing things with Actual Weights...). I should probably note for the record that I have edited it as I've gone through to fix a fair few typos.

More She's A Beast archives (just reached February 2023!).

Tiiiiiny bit of a start on my Wicked Problems (Max Gladstone) reread, in a general spirit of wanting to have any idea at all of what's going on in Dead Hand Rule.

Writing. The document! is over! 9000!!! despite the fact that I've deleted a bunch of bits of variation-on-a-theme as I home in on what it is I actually want to say! I have gone "that will do" about my first draft of the introduction (it definitely needs ... more ... tweaking, but I think all the pieces are now there) and have moved on to the introduction to part the first, working title "What is pain?" I'm very close to having that Good Enough For Now, I think, whereupon... a chapter?!

Watching. 2026 Migraine World Summit. So much Migraine World Summit. BUT I managed to catch everything this year, and now I am working on condensing and transcribing my digital notes into my notebook. More to follow, possibly.

Listening. I caught up to where A had got to with Hidden Almanac (which I had theoretically heard all of but in practice was asleep for... some... of)! We had a long drive! We are now most of the way through 2014, I have learned about Pastor Drom's side hustle, and there is a crow named George.

Playing. Bit more Inkulinati? Tiny bit more Inkulinati.

Eating. Mooooore allotment lamb's lettuce. AND a bunch of TREETS from the local FANCY BAKERY, incl. double chocolate brownie (not quite dark and chocolatey enough for my tastes; too dark for A); bread pudding; and a rhubarb and ginger teacake.

This week I am also experimenting with lentil cakes (like rice cakes, but lentil) and Dr Karg's Pumpkin Seed Protein Thins. I find the former perplexing, in that they taste kind of like crispy seaweed snacks while also being completely the wrong shape and texture, and am much more into the latter (even eaten dry!) than I expected. A considers them alarming cardboard; I think I think they are enough like Ryvita, of which I am fond, to be of at least some interest? Might... get more of these. (Could in theory reverse engineer them but that sounds like a lot of effort.)

Exploring. Had another couple of Extremely Satisfactory errand-bimbles discovering People's Front Gardens.

Making & mending. I have FROGGED the experimental continental knitted portion of A's second glove (tension was bad; have decided I want these gloves Done more than I want to do enough continental knitting to get the tension right) and resumed; I have done A Little More Cuff.

Growing. Aubergines finally! belatedly! sown! Oca into the ground. Broad beans finally coming up. More garlic transplanted.

Observing. THE COOTS! HAVE! EGGS!

bunn

I finished stripping the dinghy.

( Read more... )

kaberett

Today was A Travel Day; yesterday, in preparation for same, I Ran Errands, including "acquiring Tiny Cake" and "visiting the pharmacy".

On the way from those two jobs to the next couple, I passed Several Good Things.

One was a new-to-me flavour of completely ridiculous daffodil:

a double daffodil, with white petals and inner trumpet, protruding past a much shorter orange outer trumpet

It's a double not in the sense of having a confusing froth of intermingled trumpets (as of Double Fashion or Double Camparnelle, both of which exist locally), but in the sense of having two nested trumpets, one shorter and orange, from which the longer white one protrudes. I have never! previously! seen a thing like this! I am really enjoying my current streak of encountering varieties of daffodil that make me go "what the fuck???"

Shortly thereafter I checked over my shoulder while crossing a tiny bridge and was startled and delighted to see A COOT UPON THE NEST that, last I passed it, was clearly still derelict. Obviously I went back and Gazed Upon It for Some Time and was eventually rewarded by it STANDING UP to reveal SEVEN??? (possibly) EGGS!!!

And the Egyptian goslings were peeping about the place when I subsequently passed them on my way back up the hill. A+ errands would run again.

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mme_n_b

March 2026

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Page Summary

skygiants - (no subject)
osprey_archer - March Writing and April Goals
xkcd_feed - Home Solar
larryhammer - “you’re the priestess i must confess / those little red panties they pass the test”
osprey_archer - Revisiting My 2019 Reading List
kaberett - vital functions
xkcd_feed - Satellite Pollution
osprey_archer - Wolfwalkers and My Father’s Dragon
ecreet - \\\\о////
osprey_archer - Book Review: New Grub Street
xkcd_feed - Centimeter Wavelengths
troisoiseaux - Reading Wednesday
osprey_archer - Wednesday Reading Meme
osprey_archer - Book Review: Pax
osprey_archer - Back from Massachusetts!
xkcd_feed - Inflation Timeline
larryhammer - “it’s not far down to paradise / at least it’s not for me / if the wind is right you can sail away”
kaberett - vital functions
bunn - A Mirror Dinghy progress update
kaberett - happy equinox, etc

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Reading

(no subject)

March Writing and April Goals

Home Solar

“you’re the priestess i must confess / those little red panties they pass the test”

Revisiting My 2019 Reading List

vital functions

Satellite Pollution

Wolfwalkers and My Father’s Dragon

\\\\о////

Book Review: New Grub Street

Centimeter Wavelengths

Reading Wednesday

Wednesday Reading Meme

Book Review: Pax

Back from Massachusetts!

Inflation Timeline

“it’s not far down to paradise / at least it’s not for me / if the wind is right you can sail away”

vital functions

A Mirror Dinghy progress update

happy equinox, etc

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March 2026

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