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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.)
