This is quick, as things have been fraught, with a sick family member who doesn't do well with sickness.

Dobrenica 3: Revenant Eve

Re-edited and reissued:

It’s now 1795, the rise of Napoleon, and Kim finds herself a guardian spirit for a twelve-year-old kid who will either become Kim’s ancestor . . . or the timeline will alter and Kim will vanish, along with the small, magical European country of Dobrenica.

Kim hates time travel conundrums, and knows nothing about kids. How is she going to spirit-guide young Aurelie, born on Saint-Domingue, with whom she has nothing in common?

From pirate-infested Jamaica to mannered England to Revolutionary Paris in the early 1800s, Kim and Aurelie travel, sharing adventures and meeting fascinating people, such as the beautiful and charming Josephine, wife of Napoleon.

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my-books

swan_tower

I think I've suddenly become an evangelist for figures of speech.

During a recent poetry challenge in the Codex Writers' Group, someone recommended two books on the topic: The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase by Mark Forsyth, and Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase by Arthur Quinn. I found both delightfully readable, in their different stylistic ways, and also they convinced me of what Forsyth argues early on, which is that it's a shame we've almost completely stopped teaching these things. We haven't stopped using them; we're just doing so more randomly, on instinct, without knowing what tools are in our hands.

What do I mean when I say "figures of speech"? The list is eighty-seven miles long, and even people who study this topic don't always agree on which term applies where. But I like Quinn's attempt at a general definition, which is simply "an intended deviation from ordinary usage." A few types are commonly recognized, like alliteration or metaphor; a few others I recall cropping up in my English classes, like synecdoche (using part of a thing to refer to a whole: "get your ass over here" presumably summons the whole body, not just the posterior). One or two I actually learned in Latin class instead -- that being a language that can go to town on chiasmus (mirrored structure) because it doesn't rely on word order to make sense of a sentence. ("Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country": English can do it, too, just a bit more loosely.) Others were wholly new to me -- but only in the sense that I didn't know there was a name for that, not that I'd never heard it in action. Things like anadiplosis (repeating the end of one clause at the beginning of the next: "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.") or anastrophe (placing an adjective after the noun it modifies: "the hero victorious" or "treason, pure and simple")*.

*Before you comment to say I'm using any of these terms wrong, refer to the above comment about specialists disagreeing. That anastrophe might be hyperbaton instead, or maybe anastrophe refers to more than just that one type of rearranging, or or or. Whatever.

Quinn's book is the older one (written in the early '80s), and something like two-thirds of his examples are from Shakespeare or the Bible. On this front I have to applaud Forsyth more energetically, because he proves his point about how these things aren't irrelevant to modern English by quoting examples from sources like Katy Perry or Sting. (The chorus of "Hot n Cold" demonstrates antithesis; the verses of "Every Breath You Take" are periodic sentences, i.e. they build tension by stringing you out for a long time before delivering the necessary grammatical closure.) And when you get down to it, a ton of what the internet has done to the English language actually falls into some of these categories; the intentionally wrong grammar of "I can haz cheeseburger" is enallage at work -- not that most of us would call it that.

But Quinn delivers an excellent argument for why it's worth taking some time to study these things. He doesn't think there's much value in memorizing a long list of technical terms or arguing over whether a certain line qualifies as an example -- which, of course, is how this stuff often used to be taught, back when it was. Instead he says, "The figures have done their work when they have made richer the choices [the writer] perceives." And that's why I've kind of turned into an evangelist for this idea: as I read both books, I kept on recognizing what they were describing in my own writing, or in the memorable lines of others, and it heightened my awareness of how I can use these tools more deliberately. Both authors point out that sentiments which might seem commonplace if phrased directly acquire impact when phrased more artfully; "there's no there there" is catchier than "Nothing ever happens there," and "Bond. James Bond." took a name Fleming selected to be as dull as possible and made it iconic. And it brought home to me why there's a type of free verse I find completely uninteresting, because it uses none of these things: the author has a thought, says it, and is done, without any intended deviations from ordinary usage apart from some line breaks. At that point, the poem lives or dies entirely on the power of its idea, and most of the ones I bounce off aren't saying anything particularly profound.

So, yeah. I'm kinda burbling about a new obsession here, and no doubt several of you are giving me a sideways look of "ummm, okay then." But if you find this at all interesting, then I recommend both books as entertaining and accessible entry points to the wild jungle of two thousand years of people disagreeing over their terms.

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/08rQSn)

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ladyherenya

• Catherine Called Birdy (2022): I finally watched the adaptation of Catherine, Called Birdy, about a young teenager living in 13th century England.

I read the book ten years ago, so I couldn’t really remember what happens in it, but the film focuses on the sorts of events, and the sorts of experiences, I expected it to! I thought it nicely balanced the realities of life for a teenage girl from a noble family in medieval times with humour and with emphasis on the parts of Birdy’s experiences of adolescence which are more universal. Universal in the sense of lots of teenage girls in modern times have similar experiences , not in the sense of all teenage girls go through this.

I came away feeling more optimistic about Birdy’s future than I remember feeling at the end of the book. Maybe that’s the effect of an upbeat soundtrack. (I think the casting choice for her parents – Andrew Scott and Billie Piper! – may have also favourably skewed my impression of her parents.)

• Moana 2: I saw this just over a month after it came out, so I didn’t feel a sense of “finally” about the film itself. In fact my chief reason for choosing to see it was because my cousin and I wanted to go somewhere with air-conditioning and this happened to be showing. But it was the first time I’ve been in a cinema since 2020. During the pandemic I lost the habit of keeping tabs on what films were coming out and when, and then actually making an effort to go and see the things I’m interested in.

My cousin wanted to rewatch the first film beforehand, so that’s what we did. I think the first film is a tighter story. Moana 2 has some scenes that venture more into Pirates of the Caribbean-“Up-Is-Down”-esque dreamland (At one point I was genuinely confused as to whether they were still sailing on the ocean in the “real world” or if they were in some supernatural realm). It also has more supporting characters accompanying Moana on her voyage, and while on one hand that makes this story different from the first one, there’s not enough time to really develop them in any depth.

But Moana herself is a delight, and I liked getting to meet her little sister.

• The Dragon Prince (season three): “Why didn’t we watch this when it came out?” I asked my sister and she replied, “Must have been in the middle of watching something else.”

I looked it up – we watched it season two back in, whoa, 2019!. That might explain it. Because then there was a pandemic disrupting everything (like my cinema habits) and somewhere along the way, The Dragon Prince fell off my “Continue Watching” list and even though I was intending to come back to it, I just – didn’t. Until this week.

I really enjoyed it! The landscapes are pretty, the main characters have their funny moments and the titular dragon prince Zym is utterly adorable – he moves a lot like a puppy and I am predisposed to find that delightful.

In this season, a few interesting pieces of backstory get revealed and there are some satisfying developments – like characters learning new skills, making new allies or being reunited – and it all culminates in a PG-rated epic battle. And, to my great surprise, given that there are at least four more seasons still to go, the ending actually resolves things! There are still a few loose threads, presumably to be picked up on in subsequent seasons, but it has a happy ending!

It appears that season four is more like the beginning of a sequel. I watched the opening of the next episode to confirm – new intro, new title and it’s set two years later.

Watching this made me feel nostalgic for some of the fantasy I read when I was growing up. It made me happy.

• Virgin River (season three): During the pandemic I watched season two and I started season three, got annoyed by something in the first episode or two, decided I didn’t have the patience for it and watched a bunch of K-dramas instead.

As I said about season two, I love the scenery and I enjoyed spending time with (most of) the characters. And the ending of each episode made me want to see what would happen next!

( But I’m going to wait before I dive into the next season. I suspect that, in a larger dose, some of the communication issues would become frustrating. )

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ladyherenya

At some point I switched from using a hyphen for a dash - like so - to using two dashes, spaced. That solution seemed easier than figuring out how to get actual en/em dashes outside of Word, which converts them automatically. But I have now learnt the en dash shortcut alt + 0 1 5 0! I’ll see if I can remember this.

I prefer a spaced dash, so I’ve gone for the en dash over the em. Apparently a spaced en dash is acceptable usage in some style guides, which must be why it looks “right” to me.

I can’t remember when I started using dashes. Maybe I was fourteen? It wasn’t a form of punctuation I was formally taught to use, I just picked it up from what I read. These days I make a deliberate effort when I’m writing reports at work to use parentheses instead – when trying to be as concise as possible to fit within the character limit, I think brackets can sometimes be clearer and even if they aren’t, they use up fewer spaces. But I’m sure almost everything else I’ve written in the past two decades uses a dash somewhere.

I’m not sure if my spaced en dash use will mean that writing will be suspected of being authored by ChatGPT. Rolling Stone had an interesting article about that phenomena recently: 'ChatGPT Hyphen': Are Em Dashes a Giveaway of AI Writing?:

Yet suspicion of the em dash also speaks to our mounting paranoia over automated communication. [...] When it comes to text, there are a few clear-cut examples of bots flagging themselves, like when attorneys file legal motions that cite nonexistent court cases. The trouble is that merely “polished” writing is now being mistaken for AI content. The models, of course, are trained on a massive volume of professionally composed and edited prose, including books, magazines, and academic papers, and (unlike many people) they follow the rules and conventions of grammar. If a typo or misused word is an indication of a real person at a keyboard, the reasoning seems to go, then the lack of any errors could point to ChatGPT.

This just doesn’t follow, however. We should expect that a major fashion company has copywriters who collaborate on statements shared on the brand’s social media channels, that they agree on the wording of their messaging, that they double-check their spelling, and, yes, even dress up their sentences with a little flair. The em dash has long been a feature of marketing language, helpful in creating rhythm and emphasis. Once you start assuming that any cogently composed piece of text must have come from AI, you are tossing out tons of stuff that took actual labor.

Well, I can’t claim that my writing is flawless. I often don’t manage to catch all my typos … probably because book reviews and personal blethering doesn’t warrant the same level of scrutiny that lots of the things I write for work require.

Sometimes work things require getting someone else to proof-read.

Anyway, this preamble isn’t only topical because typing out alt + 0 1 5 0 all the time is making me pause and notice how much I use dashes. One of the books I finished this month, Mrs Tim of the Regiment, was full of misplaced en dashes. Plenty of them were in the right place, but some of them weren’t – it took me a while to realise that usually they’d be in the right sentence, but four or five words too soon.

We sit down by the fire for a real good talk, which ranges – from picture palaces to pigs these last being the colonel’s latest whim.

She was much – too busy enjoying herself men simply flocked around her, my dear, it was too awful sometimes.

I have never encountered that before.

Where were your copy editors, Bloomsbury Publishing? WHERE WERE THEY?

• Mrs Tim of the Regiment (1934) by D. E. Stevenson: This was written after Stevenson had leant her diary to a friend who wanted to know what her daughter’s life might be like as an officer’s wife; the friend suggested it could be expanded into a book. I first tried reading it last year or maybe even the year before and I struggled to get past the first few diary entries. I was confused as to who all these people were and I couldn’t yet spy any of the qualities I find delightful about Stevenson’s stories. However, I made an effort to try again, because I knew those qualities were going to turn up sooner or later, and I am glad I did.

Hester is married to Tim Christie, an officer in a Scottish regiment. For the most part, people address her as “Mrs Christie” so I’m not sure where the title comes from, but anyway. The first half of the book takes place from January to May, and introduces us to Hester’s life amongst the regiment in an English town, and then – when Tim is posted to a job in Scotland – her life away from the regiment. The second half of the book, which was originally published separately, is set in June. Hester (and her daughter) have gone to stay with a friend in the Scottish Highlands. No year is specified but judging from the dates when Hester attends church, it’s 1932.

I bookmarked so many quotes! ( ‘The thunder has made my head ache, so I lie back in my corner and try not to hear; but it is impossible not to hear. Why are we not provided with earlids to work in the same way as eyelids, so that if we want to be quiet we may shut our ears and drift away upon our own thoughts?’ )

• Penric and the Bandit by Lois McMaster Bujold (audiobook): After I read Demon Daughter, I wrote: I would happily read more about Pen and Des, but if the series ends here, I think I would be able to consider it as complete.

Penric is travelling to an abandoned mountain temple when he employs the assistance of Roz, who mistakes Pen for a hapless scholar and secretly plans to rob him.

It was fun seeing Pen from the perspective of someone who completely underestimates him! ( I enjoyed anticipating Roz’s inevitable discovery of who Pen is – not only in terms of Pen’s powers as a temple sorcerer, but in terms of Pen’s perspective and values. I like the way Pen approaches giving people the opportunity to make better choices. )
On an audiobook-related side note – it occurs to me that I’ve made a few of those this week – I listened to this and I was really taken aback afterwards to discover that Roz’s name is spelt with an ‘o’! To me, the vowel sounded like the ‘ar’ in ‘car’, which in my non-rhotic accent is an ‘ah’ sound. I was expecting that to be written Raz (with the ‘a’ of ‘banana’ and ‘grass’) but I wouldn’t have been surprised by Rarz or Rahz.

However, given Grover Gardner’s American accent, I suppose ‘o’ makes sense. My job means I spend a bit of time thinking about accents, pronunciation and spelling. One of the reasons is that I need to be on alert for things like the exercise in our ostensibly de-Americanised phonemic awareness program which claimed that saying ‘from’ and then changing the ‘f’ to a ‘c’ turns the word into ‘crumb’. In my accent, it does certainly not!

(I also have to be on alert for resources that suggest teaching that ‘oo’ in ‘pool’ and ‘cool’ is the same as the ‘oo’ in moon and ‘spoon’, or that the ‘er’ in ‘fern’ is the same as the ‘er’ in ‘winter’.)

• Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis: There is a branch of my library that I hadn’t visited since it re-opened in its new location. One of my cousins and I had spent our afternoon shopping for books nearby and I suggested we check out the library. I was just curious about what the space was like! I wasn’t expecting to borrow anything – I thought it’d be unfair to take my time browsing for books when I knew my cousin wouldn’t want to borrow anything (she lives too far away for that to be convenient) – but I spotted this book on a display near the entrance.

I was delighted! I’d checked if it was on Libby and clicked “notify me [if my library gets it]”, I’d checked if it was on Everand. I hadn’t yet checked the library catalogue for a printed copy but based on past experiences, I was assuming that it’s availability would still be listed as “On Order” and there would be a lengthy holds queue. I didn’t expect it to be just… sitting there. Available!

Felix, the Archduke of Estarion, escapes his controlling former regent and now Chief Minister, and flees to Kitvaria. Felix plans to ask the queen there for shelter, since his Chief Minister's armies have been unable to get through Kitvaria’s magical defences. But upon arriving at Queen Saskia’s castle, he is assumed to be a dark wizard applying for the position of castle librarian. Felix doesn’t know anything about magic, but he decides he can pretend – he’ll just be a dark wizard who cares too much about protecting the books to risk doing magic in the library.

This was fun, and very much what I expected from Burgis. I liked the crow familiars. ( “I believe they’re attempting to help me build a new pen. It is very kind of them to share their treasures, although I’m not sure exactly how to make use of them.” )

This was marketed as “romantasy”. I have been a bit wary of books with that label, even though I, obviously, love romantic fantasy. I think because I haven’t actually been sure what most people mean by “romantasy” (beyond A Court of Thorns and Roses year ago, which I read a few years ago and decided I wasn’t going to read any more. So any recommendations for romantasy that referenced that particular series just reinforced my impression that my tastes don’t quite align with this subgenre).
( Apparently I’m not the only one who has felt confused. )

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ladyherenya

I succumbed to curiosity and installed TikTok. I understand that TikTok can be like falling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland and that makes me wary, but I wanted more local perspectives about the field I’m in and it turns out there’s more of that on TikTok.

Some of the videos I’ve seen have used snippets of “Anxiety” by Doechii. It seemed catchy and I like the idea of singing about anxiety, so I looked up the song… and oh no! Even before the song reached the rap section – not my genre – the accompaniment is identical to the instrumental track from “Somebody That I Used To Know”!

Now I keep getting that going around my head.

(I wouldn’t say I dislike “Somebody That I Used To Know” per se, I just heard it a lot back in the day and I don’t want it stuck in my head.)

• Deep End by Ali Hazelwood: When Scarlett’s diving teammate Penelope discovers that Scarlett is kinky like Penelope’s soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, Pen suggests that Scarlett and Lukas should get together.

I wasn’t sure if I would like this one. On one hand, I want more stories about universities and academia, and considering Hazelwood’s other books, I trusted that the setting wouldn’t be only used as a backdrop for sports, socialising and sex. But on the other hand, I didn’t know where the kinky relationship would fall on the scale between “so this isn’t really my cup of tea” and “OH HECK NO I AIN’T READING THIS”.

There are intimate moments between Scarlett and Lukas which I found unappealing, but as it turns out, that didn’t colour how I felt about the rest of the story. Scarlett explains clearly why she finds their power dynamic appealing and how it’s about trust and honest communication, and I liked how the narrative shows all the other ways she and Lukas are well suited to each other. They have common ground (they’re both student athletes, they’re both pre-med, they both really like science) and they pay attention to details about each other’s lives. They so clearly care about one another and I felt invested in their romance (even though I didn’t want to read about every single detail!).
( I also liked the rest of the story! I was interested in seeing the life of a student athlete, I liked the focus on attending therapy, and on navigating an imperfect friendships. )

• A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston (audiobook): Elsie on a road trip, heading for a solitary week of reading in a cabin, when a bad storm and car troubles force her to turn off the highway. She finds herself in the fictional town from her favourite romance book series. All the people she meets in the town are familiar from the books – with the notable exception of the bookstore’s grumpy owner.

I enjoyed this story. I was intrigued by the concepts it explored and I really liked some of the prose. I finished the whole audiobook in just a week because I didn’t want to read anything else in the interim, I just wanted to spend all my reading time listening to this story! But I came away thinking about the things that would have made me like it more. ( Maybe if I hadn’t listened to the audiobook? Maybe if Elsie’s favourite book series had been in a different genre? )

So who could blame me for sinking into books, where I knew the people weren’t real, but they also never disappointed me? I knew everything would work out in the end. I knew happy endings were destined, ever afters fated, and no matter what trials and tribulations and, well, surprise fuckups happened, things would end up okay. I just needed a story–or maybe a few hundred stories of happily ever after–to escape mine.

• The Love Labyrinth by Kate Healey: This novella is part of Healey’s Olympus Inc. series and is a non-magical, romantic comedy take on the Minotaur’s maze.

After studying fashion design in Paris, Ariadne Spinner returns to her hometown to spend time with her brother before starting an internship at Olympus Inc. She decides to use her sewing and design skills to help him improve his escape room business, Labyrinth Escapes, even though she clashes with his grumpy business partner, Stirling.

This book felt like perfect timing. ( I read it during the penultimate week of the school term, when something short, fun and romantic was just what I wanted. )

• First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison: Late one night, Lucie discovers her 12 year old daughter on the phone to a radio romance hotline because Maya is worried about her mother’s lack of love life. Lucie’s subsequent conversation with the host, Aiden, goes viral and she’s invited to become a regular part of the show.

I enjoyed this! I don’t think I enjoyed the second half of the book quite as much as the first but that’s okay. The book reminded me a bit of Weather Girl, although any similarities between the two stories are in the characters’ circumstances, rather than the plots. ( ‘Love and romance seem like a fairy tale now, something we tell kids to help them sleep better at night. Something we tell ourselves too.’ )

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ladyherenya

Here’s the rest of what I read in January.

• The Friend Zone Experiment by Zen Cho (audiobook): I clicked on this in the library catalogue because I enjoyed some of Zen Cho’s fantasy, and I wanted to read it asap because it sounded so much like a Korean drama.

Renee Goh is from Singapore, not Korea, and she lives in London, but she has certain things in common with Se-ri from Crash Landing on You (aka my absolute all-time favourite K-drama). She runs a fashion company and is planning to expand into homewares. Her relationships with her family members are strained and dysfunctional. Part of the plot is set in motion when her dad, a wealthy CEO, announces he is considering whether Renee or one of two older brothers, should be his successor.
Ket Song is from Malaysia, not Korea, but like Crash Landing’s Jeong Hyuk, he went overseas to study music at university and had to give up his career as a concert pianist for family reasons.

( Despite these parallels this is actually very much its own story. I really, really enjoyed it. )

• Best Foot Forward by Celia Lake: This is the first in a series about Albion during the 1930s-40s. I want to read the later books in the series, so I gave this one a go even though the prospect of reading it didn’t didn’t really appeal to me.

Neither Carillon nor Alexander were on my list of Lake characters I’d be excited to spend more time with, although I don’t dislike either of them, and I was feeling unenthusiastic about seeing their trip to Nazi Germany. And I was even more unenthusiastic, having read a whole book about Carillon’s romance with his now-wife (Goblin Fruit), about seeing Carillon get involved with someone else. ( As I expected, this wasn’t always my cup of tea. That said, I found the rest of the story more interesting than I’d expected. The protagonists themselves, too. Lake portrays them with nuance and gives each of them space to grow in their understanding of themselves. )

• The British Booksellers by Kristy Cambron (audiobook): This story alternates between the 1910s, when Charlotte and Amos are close friends despite their different class backgrounds and Charlotte’s family’s disapproval, and 1940, when Charlotte and Amos are owners of rival bookshops on the same street in Coventry.

I enjoyed this, even though I felt like it didn’t offer an especially nuanced and meticulously-researched portrayal of life during WWII. I couldn’t pinpoint why I felt that way. (I mean, the man on the front cover looks too modern, but that doesn’t explain it!) Were some of the secondary characters a bit too stereotyped? Or did I want more details about working in a bookshop during wartime for that to seem like a believable venture?

But as I said, I did enjoy listening to this.

“‘Books are an escape that beckons the reader from the heavy burdens of this world.’ Isn’t that what you told me once? They can challenge as well as comfort. Entertain and educate. Even save us in ways we’d never expect. You’ve used the words art, oxygen, and life all to describe them. Anyone who can see such value in these pages ought to also see that they could take him away from a future he doesn’t want. If anything, that is what Dickens wrote for his characters. Isn’t that what you wish for yourself?”

One downside to listening to the audiobook is that a significant portion of the book, the narrative switches between 1914 and 1940, and I kept missing whether the narrator said “fourteen” or “forty”! I had to wait to work out from the context which era the chapter was set in. Yes, I’d set the audiobook speed to 1.2x or 1.5x, and I did things like cook dinner as I listened, but I always listen to audiobooks this way and I haven’t had this sort of problem before…

• The Takedown by Lily Chu: I really enjoyed Chu’s previous novels, The Stand-In and The Comeback, but I didn’t get this one finished before it was due back at the library.

I think there were just too many things I was finding stressful: ( Including that this story is about the bind people can be in when they see problematic things going on in their workplace. If they keep their head down, they can keep their job – and potentially become complicit in something they disagree with. However if they speak out, they’ll get kicked out, losing the prospect of making a difference from the inside and maybe losing the prospect of finding another job in their industry, too. )

None of this is a criticism of the book, for what it’s worth. Just a reflection on my own reaction to it.

Maybe I will borrow this again sometime.

• When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn: After I finally finishing the latest season of Bridgerton, I looked up this book in Libby to check out the first few chapters. I wanted context for some comments I’d seen online about Francesca.

The opening was interesting, and since the book was available, I borrowed it and read it all (quite possibly as a way of procrastinating from reading more of The Takedown). ( I was sufficiently entertained in the moment but I came away feeling indifferent to it all. )

As for Bridgerton (season three), some of it was enjoyable and some of it was stressful. I liked spending more time in Penelope’s company but, perhaps because she doesn’t have a truly supportive family, the times when she’s at odds with one of her favourite Bridgertons felt particularly unpleasant. I took several attempts to get through the episode where Eloise has given Pen a deadline to reveal her secrets.

• The Getaway List by Emma Lord: I really liked this! Riley hasn’t seen her best friend Tom since he moved to New York three years ago. Their plans to visit each other have fallen through, and lately they haven’t been keeping in touch as much. So after her high school graduation Riley impulsively decides to catch a bus to go and see him.

Which is to say, I’ve mostly spent the past two or so years not-so-covertly reading fantasy books and my abandoned fanfics on my phone while all these boring things happened around me. This survival strategy was all well and good until this moment now, because it turns out I am not a royal burdened with ancient power or a knight infiltrating a distant realm with a dark secret, but just Riley. Powerless and ordinary and unsure of myself.

( I empathised with Riley’s feelings of powerlessness. I enjoyed seeing Riley and Tom’s nerdy friendship, and the other new friends Riley makes. I liked how her time in New York helps her to figure out what she wants from her life after high school. )

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ladyherenya

• I’m Not Lazy, I’m on Energy Saving Mode by Dancing Snail, translated by Clare Richards: I borrowed this because I love the title. It’s a Korean non-fiction that is memoir-adjacent, told through a mix of comics (or would it be more accurate to call them annotated illustrations?), and prose reflections.

I enjoyed the comics more than the reflections, as they focused on describing the author’s experiences whereas her reflections drifted a bit more into making generalisations or giving others advice. That said, there was still a lot in those reflections that I bookmarked! So many things I found relateable or thought-provoking!

Let me tell you a little trick I have for making life harder. When I come back home after meeting someone new or spending time with someone I don’t get along with, I replay our conversations over and over in my head. After messaging with someone I find difficult, that night in bed I’ll re-read the conversation from start to finish and ruminate on the parts where I might have slipped up. I think to myself: What did I go and say that for? Or I know what I should’ve said then. I dwell on where I went wrong and even grow concerned for the future. What if I made the same mistake again…?

I really like the idea of labelling this “a little trick I have for making life harder”. I try hard to shut down this sort of internal dialogue and to instead focus on things that will recharge my battery, because I’ve worked out that feeling like I need to ruminate on this sort of thing is usually just a sign my battery is low. (It’s like having a low battery triggers a stress response and my brain starts freaking out, trying to find the “problem”.)

Speaking of batteries, I screencapped a couple of my favourite illustrated pages. I can’t easily “quote” the pictures but this is what the accompanying text says: ( 'The minute a homebody steps out the door, their Homebody Gauge starts top drop.' )

These next two quotes were food for thought, looking at perfectionism and self-criticism with an emphasis I hadn’t previously considered. Which is to say, I agree with the point the author is making, but I hadn’t thought about it in quite these terms: ( 'The belief that we’ll only be worthy of love and acceptance once we are perfect is a slippery slope.' )

And I’ve just realised that this last quote ties in with what I have been thinking about recently, about criticisms of a young woman living in her childhood bedroom. There was the underlying message, if it wasn’t outright stated – I don’t remember exactly what was said now – that a young person should be challenging herself to move beyond her comfort zones, she shouldn’t be retreating and resting.

And what I keep thinking about is But there are all sorts of reasons why someone might need to retreat and rest!

Society seems to view pushing ourselves beyond our limits as some incredible virtue. But are limits always something to overcome? And what does ‘overcoming’ really mean? Achieving visible results? Not letting disappointment get us down, and instead getting back up and trying again? Isn’t the real virtue knowing how to rest once we’ve reached our limits? Maybe knowing how to handle disappointment is one of the most important skills we can possess.

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ladyherenya

These days my preferred format for reading is ebooks on my phone. It’s convenient. I can carry around a lot of books at once. I can hold my phone comfortably in one hand. I can adjust the font size. It’s easy to find and bookmark quotes. I can read without having to turn on any lights. And so I keep reading ebooks while unread paperback books remain unopened on my physical bookshelves.

But over the summer, I took some paperbacks from my shelves and reread them. Mary Stewart’s The Ivy Tree. A couple of Susanna Kearsley’s novels (both of which I enjoyed more wholeheartedly than I did the first time round). A bunch of Melina Marchetta’s – and after rereading The Lumatere Chronicles I immediately reread (most of) Froi of the Exiles and Quintana of Charyn yet again.

I don’t know whether to conclude that I can still happily focus on reading a physical book if I am already invested in the story, or whether being on holidays and knowing that I had lots of time for reading meant that I felt like it was worth making the effort to set myself up to read a physical book comfortably. Like by turning on the right combination of lights so that my page isn’t in shadow and the light isn’t directly in my eyes.

( It sounds a bit ridiculous when I type it out, but that can feel like an effort, especially at the end of a working day. )

Something else I wonder about is the size and weight of paperbacks today. When I was growing up, most of the paperbacks I read were much more compact. Some of that was simply a result of stories being shorter, because I was reading a lot of books published prior to the late 20th century discovery that books for young people can actually be over 200 pages. But even the adult fiction I was reading – murder mysteries, Penguin classics, historical fiction – had smaller font, tighter line spacing, smaller margins, less space devoted to things like chapter headings and sometimes much thinner paper.

I’m really glad that publishing figured out that longer books for young people can be sellable. That’s great! And I’m sure that more spacious line spacing is helpful, making text easier to read. But sometimes I wish 21st century paperbacks weren’t so big and heavy.

… I took off on a completely unnecessary tangent comparing two of the paperbacks I’d read¹ before it occurred to me that I really wasn’t comparing apples and apples, because I was comparing two different formats. So I looked up paperback formats and learnt something new.

The smaller, more compact (and older) book was an A-format paperback, whereas the larger book was a Royal C-format. I prefer the former (which is slightly different from a US mass market paperback²) over the latter. I also like the B-format, which falls in between the other two.

I don’t have any evidence to support my impression that more books these days get initially released as a C-format… unless my Diana Wynne Jones shelf counts.

It is a mix of books I’ve bought new and books I’ve bought secondhand. The only two I have in a Demy C-format (smaller size than Royal) are two of Jones’ later novels, The Merlin Conspiracy (2003) and The Pinhoe Egg (2008). I know Conrad’s Fate (2005) was also released in the same size.

The only ~~two~~ three I’ve found in A-format are 90s editions. And the rest, with the exception of two US mass markets that I occasionally contemplate replacing², are B-formats. That’s the size they’ve all been re-released in.

( But the older B-formats are definitely more compact. )

So maybe this is a factor in my current-day preference for ebooks. It’s not just that I like having a library in my pocket, or that I can’t be bothered getting off the couch to turn on a light.

( Footnotes )

Anyway, #first world problems.

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ladyherenya

I keep thinking about some comments I saw criticising the Youtuber Ruby Granger for her current stage of life: living in her childhood bedroom, working part-time, making videos about her solitary hobbies (like reading and writing), dealing with mental health struggles and not following the path she’d originally meant to take for the current academic year – and not doing the things considered “normal” for twenty-something, like dating or socialising more.

I told myself that it wasn’t worth dwelling on such comments. Haters gonna hate, etc, and because Ruby Granger has nearly a million subscribers, it would probably be seriously surprising if no one out there had anything negative to say. Moreover, as I only stumbled across her content ~~recently~~ last month, I don’t think I’m informed enough about her videos and her life choices to come to her defence.

But I don’t want to defend Ruby Granger – I want to defend the stage of life she appears to be in. Because I can relate.

Not to having a sizable internet presence, oh no! And I’ve never been to Oxford.

But after I graduated from university, I too spent a lot of time in my childhood bedroom. I was un(der)employed. I pursued solitary hobbies. I struggled with anxiety. My future was not unfolding the way I’d expected it would.

( Over the years, I’ve realised that, although this isn’t an expected stage of life that everyone goes through, neither is it an uncommon one! So I see value in having someone like Ruby Granger normalise this experience. In fact, I think there’s value in having her ROMANTICISE it. )

I also think that there’s also value in normalising the experience of living in one’s childhood bedroom as an adult on behalf of those for whom this sort of thing is not just a phase but a long-term arrangement. Especially for those whose living circumstances are constrained by a chronic health condition or financial limitations or family responsibilities.

Independence and support networks are topics that have been on my mind a lot of late, specifically the ways society treats people who are unable to live independently. Which brings me to something else that reminds me of a return to a childhood bedroom. Last year my grandmother had to move into a nursing home. She moved from a larger, carpeted one-room apartment with a kitchenette, a washing machine and all the furniture being her own to a utilitarian room that’s dominated by the (nursing-home-supplied, single) bed. She has room for a few of her own pieces of furniture, but the limitations of the room’s layout and the nursing home’s rules mean that when I visit her, either I perch on the edge of her bed and try not to set off a sensor that will summon a carer, or I have to move a chair over.

It’s a whole new world. None of my other grandparents lived long enough to reach this stage of life. ( I find myself empathising with the people who stubbornly insist that under no circumstances will they go to such a place. )

It has taken me several weekends to write this. Going to actually post it now.

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swan_tower

Today has just brought a bunch of poetry news! I mean, one part of it was a form rejection for a packet of poems, but to take the sting out of that, another place bought two from me in one go, "Our Rewards" and "Hallucination". I knew that could happen with poetry (since most markets want you to send them more than one poem at a time), but it's the first time I've unlocked that achievement!

And on top of that, I have a poem out today! Eye to the Telescope has done a plant-themed issue, to which I contributed a poem about the World Tree, "Axis Mundi". You can read the whole issue online there!

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poetry

sartorias

All those who celebrate a joyous Passover, in these difficult times.

lizbee

We said goodbye to Harvey today. It was very peaceful and very quick. He has been slowing down for a few months, but on Tuesday he was normal and on Wednesday morning he stopped eating. We took him to the emergency vet yesterday, who warned us there was no hope. He had declined even between then and going to our regular vet this afternoon, but I'm confident he wasn't in any pain or discomfort.

He was a terrible cat, and I miss him

lizvogel

Our kitchen has a wall with the stove and a tiny chunk of counter, bracketed by two built-out bays, one for the fridge and one presumably for an indoor freezer. Since like most of the house the kitchen is a large room but desperately short on storage and work space, we opted for putting the freezer in the garage and building shelves/temporary counter into the freezer bay. (Temporary in this case means about a quarter of a century, of course.) Assorted mishaps in the past year or two led to the "temporary" stuff being pulled out, and the bay just sitting there.

Yesterday I (finally!) took down one of the two walls that forms the freezer bay. I'd previously confirmed that it wasn't structural, so it should have been a quick bash-and-pull. And it turns out it wasn't structural... but it was interwoven with the structure in a way that just makes me completely baffled as to what they were thinking, or even in what order it was all built. I'd assumed the room walls were built first, and the "bay" walls were tacked in later... but I think those bays must have gone up when the rest of the room did. And why was that 2x4 cross-hatched that way, and who puts a board up there to nail the ceiling drywall to that's being held down by the wall framing, and....! And one part of one layer of the bay wall (there were two layers, making a double-thick wall sticking out into the room, I have no idea why) is part of the support for one of the hewn-wood beams in the ceiling. So that's staying; I can knock it back flush to the adjacent bit of wall, but I can't take it out to make the "bay" area that four inches wider. Okay, I can cope with that. But what the hell they were thinking with supporting the beam in three or four different segments, and notching it, and.... Yeah. It's weird. The whole layout is weird, and the structure underlying it is freakin' bizarre.

But! With that one bay wall gone, the room is already vastly more open and spacious feeling. I hadn't realized that I instinctively scrunched up every time I left the kitchen that way, until now suddenly I don't have to. I can walk out of the room like a normal human being! And someone in the entryway can actually hear the person in the kitchen talking! It's only about a foot of actual floor space that's newly exposed, but the effect is downright magical.

I can't wait to see what it's like when the other bay wall is gone. Which will be trickier, because we're keeping the cabinets on the other side of it, and I won't know what's attached where until I get into it. (And what weird and unnecessary interlinkings with the structure may be in there.) And it'll be a few days, because while I can still work just as hard and long on a project as I ever could, I'm not so good about getting up and doing it all over again the next day. (And this is coming on the heels of discovering our sump pump wasn't working, in the way one usually discovers that, and all the icy-cold-water-in-crawlspace fun that involved.) But it's going to be awesome.

Tuesday was supposed to be a writing day, and this is what I did instead. Not sorry.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Teh Kitten's snoring

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house,
rl

lizbee

The trailer for the Murderbot TV series is out, and I'll be honest: it gives me the ick. Like, I've blocklisted the word "Murderbot" on my social media, blocked Martha Wells so I don't see her promotional posts in my timelines, and I'm thinking of giving my books away.

Which is absolutely an overreaction, so I'm sitting on my hands for now, but it has powerful "we have completely captured everything you imagined, except it's white, cis, male and incredibly cheap looking".

AppleTV+ generally produces quite decent-to-good sci-fi, so I assume this will be watchable, but so far it looks generic and boring.

Semi-related, but I did wind up creating a little newsletter where I talk about the TV I've been watching, with an option for other media as the mood strikes me. I have 16 subscribers! You could be the 17th!

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idiot box

sartorias

I had a gas reading this book.

Brenda Clough maintains she writes historical SF, maybe too confining a label? She has set a number of her novels in the past–including this one, set in the late seventies. It’s loosely connected to her Marian Halcombe series, which takes Wilkie Collins’s once-famous heroine farther into a long and remarkable life.

One of the features of these novels, including His Selachian Majesty Requests, is their sheer unpredictability, pulling in ideas and tropes of fantasy and SF and mainstream as needed. Her philosophy seems to be “follow the action,” but that action is always character-driven, and finding the tension point between character and plot is one of the elements that make a book for this reader. That and the narrative voice.

I thoroughly enjoyed the entire book, but my favorite part happens somewhere in the middle, when the protagonist gets kidnapped and has to use his wits to try to escape. Clough has created a vivid island in Southeast Asia, I believe from where her family stems, and the contrasts of life there with the rest of the world contributes a lot of the fun. And the, ah, bite. (If you understand the Latinate ref to "selachian" you'll get my attempt at a pun).

Anyway, I took my largely inchoate thoughts to the author, who graciously took the time to respond. Here’s our exchange:

ME: There are some who maintain that Marian is one of the more interesting characters written during the 19th century, especially by men. She’s very different from the generic Victorian heroine (though there’s one of those provided by Collins!) What inspired you to start this series?

HER: I’m with everybody else — Marian Halcombe is definitely a more attractive heroine than her unfortunate sister Laura. The work was published serially, and you can put your finger on the place in the novel where the editor said, “Wilkie, the woman’s taking over the plot. Wasn’t the hero supposed to be Walter Hartright?” So Collins gave her typhus and sidelined her, so that Walter could pick up the ball.

It’s obvious that there should be more, much much more, about Marian Halcombe. The novel was a tremendous best seller, Marian so popular that the publisher received letters addressed to her proposing marriage. Why on earth didn’t Collins capitalize on this and write a sequel? (The answer is that he was busy inventing the mystery novel, writing the foundational novel THE MOONSTONE.)

Well, when you want something done, you have to do it yourself. I began and it was like getting on a toboggan at the top of the slope.

ME: How much research did you need to do?

HER: Oh, tons. I went to Britain and France to take pictures. I delved into period marriage manuals. I copied out recipes for Victorian invalid dishes. I made smoking bishop and served it at Christmas. I watched YouTube videos about Victorian ballroom dancing. And I accumulated masses of books!

ME: No writer can remain in a static time or place, alas: years pass while an author writes a series, and their own life undergoes transitions. So does their storytelling. Did the series change on you as it evolved?

HER: I was able to keep the Marian novels purely historical for a long time, but eventually the cloven hoof of the fantasy writer peeped out from under the hem of the petticoat. If we asked her, Marian herself would energetically deny that she is anything other than a Victorian matron. But I have made her in truth an angel, one of many messengers from the divine. All of this is delved into in a novel, HIS SELACHIAN MAJESTY REQUESTS, about her great-great-grandson.

ME: What did you learn in the course of writing this series?

HER: I have always thought of myself as a science fiction and fantasy writer. After writing a dozen novels set in the 19th century, I realize I am a historical SF and F writer. Everything I write has a historical angle in it.

ME: There are many readers who want period verisimilitude, and other readers who prefer modern people in period clothes for their historical fiction fix. Your Marian books hew much closer to the period and the tone of the “sensationals,” though I find them a beguiling blend of the period and modern sensibilities, which heightens their appeal. Who is the audience you aimed for?

HER:I wish I knew! You’ll enjoy my work if you value originality and dislike boredom. I like books where stuff happens! I try to make each novel like a roller coaster. Maybe uphill at the beginning, but it gets steeper and faster and by the time you get to the end you’re hanging onto the bars and your knuckles are white!

You can find the book here

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kerravonsen

Follow up to this. Good news on the speaker front! Apparently the kind of speakers my old speakers were is called "2.1 channel" because of the two small speakers and the one on-the-floor speaker which provides bass (which is why my temporary speakers sound so tinny). Anyway, Logitech have three different versions of these 2.1 speakers, and they are available from both JB HiFi and Officeworks at about the same price. So, yay, I can actually replace my old speakers (I was taking their quality for granted, but every time I turn on my music now, I do a double-take because it sounds so odd and thin.)

Current Mood: accomplished

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computer:woes

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“but are limits always something to overcome?”: I’m Not Lazy, I’m on Energy Saving Mode

unnecessary tangents about paperbacks

On childhood bedrooms and independence

poetry bonanza day!

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Harvey

And the walls came down....

Murderbot (AppleTV+ 2025)

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