With hearts on fire I reach out to you

It's the end of the month, and I am really done with winter. I normally don't mind this time of year, but January in 2021 has mainly be rain, mud, and gloom — none of the crisp, clear, icy winter weather that I enjoy. Nonetheless, Matthias and I spent the one nice hour of the day out walking along the river, and if you follow me on Instagram (ronnidolorosa, you can see some of the weird and wonderful sights we encountered, via my Stories (before they disappear).

I've finished off the month with an uptick in reading: the first two books in Barbara Hambly's James Asher vampire series (combining two of my favourite things: vampires, and Barbara Hambly; lirazel, you were absolutely right, I adore these books!), and a memoir by Huma Qureshi called How We Met. The latter was a gentle, sweet book about how she and her husband fell in love. She is the daughter of Pakistani (and Muslim) immigrants to the UK, her husband is a white British man, and she was raised fairly conservatively, with expectations of an arranged marriage after university. What felt really refreshing about her experiences is that hers is not the story of a woman 'escaping' the restrictions of an oppressive religion and culture (to be clear: I don't think that Islam, or Pakistani migrant communities in the UK are such a thing, just that this is normally the cliché of how relationships such as Qureshi's and her husband's are portrayed). Instead, her now-husband converted to Islam, and her story is one of two people bringing their own experiences, backgrounds, and values together, to build something new, without needing to give up deeply-held, deeply-felt beliefs. Qureshi makes it clear that the pressure to marry was damaging to her, but that she had no desire to rebel against the norms of her family and community, and resists setting up a dichotomy between her religious and cultural background, and discarding all that for 'rebellion' and 'freedom' — for her, although her choice of husband led to a challenging situation, choosing him was not an act of rebellion and instead it enabled her to find the married happiness expected by her family.

Finally, I read one of my most anticipated books of 2021, The Mask Falling, the fourth in Samantha Shannon's amazing Bone Season fantasy dystopia. I reviewed it on my longform reviews blog:

The Mask Falling is a perfect midpoint to this brilliant dystopian series. It broadens and deepens our understanding of this richly imagined world, and every new corner explored feels lived-in and redolent with history. Old characters return after several books’ absence, and we have a clearer view of their roles and motivations. We meet new characters who draw Paige’s story forward. She and Arcturus finally have the time to think about their relationship — shared traumas, deceptions, power imbalances and all. And the book ends on a cliffhanger that had me both cursing Shannon’s diabolical genius, and applauding her skill at drawing so many different threads together into such a intriguing tapestry.

The day is somewhat running away from me, so I will leave things here, as I have a bit of cooking to do (meal prep for next week, turning a huge bunch of green chilli into shatta — a delicious pickle from Sami Tamimi's Falastin cookbook — and dinner), and Matthias and I need to move our belongings from the spare bedroom into the main bedroom. (We'd been sleeping in the spare room until our new bed was delivered and assembled, which happened yesterday.) If there's time I might reread Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver, which feels appropriately wintry. I also need to make time at some point to go through the new Festivids collection (thanks for the link, goodbyebird!).

I hope you've all had good weekends!