![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
When the dark comes rising
Dec. 20th, 2021 04:09 pmI've just finished doing yoga — a slow, stretchy sequence, tucked upstairs in the bedroom, watching the night fall across the garden. Today is my birthday, and it's been a slow, sleepy day. I have:
Spoken to my father on the phone, and my mother and Sister #1 via FaceTime.
Gone for a short walk around the cathedral with Matthias, and picked up take-away bagels for lunch.
Pottered around online, catching up with Dreamwidth comments.
Drunk smoky Russian Caravan tea and eaten a segment of an incredibly rich marzipan brownie.
Made a plan for the remaining meals up to 27th December (in light of the fact that we're now staying at home rather than going away to Germany.
I've also finished one book: Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen, a YA fantasy novel which blends Andersen's The Little Mermaid with Yoruba mythology and West African history. I found the story to be really well written, and it's undoubtedly a good example of the type, but I find myself a bit wearied by tropey YA novels, particularly if they're told in first-person present tense, which they almost invariably are, and for this reason I perhaps didn't warm to the book as much as I would have done several years ago. The building blocks of the story are really interesting, and are put together well, it just wasn't what I was looking for in a book at the moment.
I'm now embarking on my annual The Dark is Rising reread, and it's like falling into a pile of warm blankets. The prose is as crisp as always, and the imagery — stark country lanes piled high with drifts of snow, otherwordly horses moving through unearthly ancient forests, and the contrasting warmth and hope of family and home — is as vivid and beautiful on this reread as it was the first time I opened this book. I feel as if its story is needed more this year than ever, and sinking back into those familiar pages is like coming home. It's wonderful.
I've also finished one book: Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen, a YA fantasy novel which blends Andersen's The Little Mermaid with Yoruba mythology and West African history. I found the story to be really well written, and it's undoubtedly a good example of the type, but I find myself a bit wearied by tropey YA novels, particularly if they're told in first-person present tense, which they almost invariably are, and for this reason I perhaps didn't warm to the book as much as I would have done several years ago. The building blocks of the story are really interesting, and are put together well, it just wasn't what I was looking for in a book at the moment.
I'm now embarking on my annual The Dark is Rising reread, and it's like falling into a pile of warm blankets. The prose is as crisp as always, and the imagery — stark country lanes piled high with drifts of snow, otherwordly horses moving through unearthly ancient forests, and the contrasting warmth and hope of family and home — is as vivid and beautiful on this reread as it was the first time I opened this book. I feel as if its story is needed more this year than ever, and sinking back into those familiar pages is like coming home. It's wonderful.