Take a second of me

[dolorosa_12]

It's been a cozy weekend — a bit of cooking, a few walks out in the clear winter sunshine, and quite a lot of reading and writing. I've finished off the first of my planned Yuletide treats, and am pretty satisfied with the result.

I've embarked on the beginning of a Dark Is Rising sequence reread. So far I've read the first three books, and it's reminding me again of how intensely I love this series. What it's also reminding me, though, is that the seeds of the extremely frustrating ending are very much there from the beginning — and knowing how the series concludes makes all those little hints all the more glaring. I think that Greenwitch remains my favourite — it's just such a weird little book, and any story that's about the unknowable, uncontrollable power of the sea is definitely going to find favour with me.



Other books read this month include Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic (creepy, haunting, does very clever things with gothic novel conventions), and Drinking Gourd, the next book in Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January series. I think the thing that struck me most in this particular book is how uncompromisingly Hambly depicts the white people who inhabit her stories (with great justification). She's able to show that the 1830s American South was a terrible place for white women, but the experiences of such women do not lead to any sense of solidarity or empathy with the black people around them who are suffering even greater iniquities. The parallels with our present world are, of course, blatant.


I'm currently reading Guy Gavriel Kay's A Brightness Long Ago, which, like all his fiction, is set in a fake fantasy version of our own world — in this case, Renaissance Italy, with its mess of city states and warring dynasties. It's a very GGK novel (those familiar with his work will know what I mean), with his usual character types, and I love it a lot so far. There was a moment, early on in the book, where one of the characters quotes a poem by Ammar from The Lions of Al-Rassan, except of course that so much time and history has passed that he has no idea of the name of the poem's author, and I felt a bit weepy. Ammar's name is gone, lost in the dust of time, but his words remain, and people still quote them, and find them meaningful. Oh, my heart.

I've signed up for a seasonal multifandom gifting fest — fandomtrees, which is very much in the style of last year's in_a_peartree (in which I participated), and fandom_stocking (in which I have not). If anyone is interested, I recommend signing up, and, if anyone is so moved to create gifts, my 'tree' is here. I'm requesting a lot of female-centric fandoms ... and icons of plants/trees/summery/wintery/autumnal/spring-like things. In any case, it looks like a fun, low-pressure fest.

I hope everyone's been having lovely weekends!

Comments

[trepkos]

Productive, in the garden-tidying sense. (Not too tidy.)

[dolorosa_12]

Oh, that still sounds wonderful. I love gardening!

[merit]

Summer fruit season is kicking off so everything is fresh and lovely!

[dolorosa_12]

Oh, that sounds so wonderful! I hope you're going to get a good harvest from your garden.

[lirazel]

Confession: I never read the Dark Is Rising series!

She's able to show that the 1830s American South was a terrible place for white women, but the experiences of such women do not lead to any sense of solidarity or empathy with the black people around them who are suffering even greater iniquities.

YES. She's SO good at this. She has profound compassion for these women but she never lets them off the hook for the way they benefit from the system they're in. It's kind of amazing how fantastic Hambly is at exploring that.

I started A Brightness Long Ago and was enjoying it but got distracted by other things (I think that's when Piranesi arrived). But I got far enough for the Ammar poem and it did things to my insides!!!

[dolorosa_12]

Confession: I never read the Dark Is Rising series!

Oh, it's such a wonderful series of books, and so deeply tied to the seasons, and to the landscape of various parts of the UK. I love it immensely.

She's SO good at this. She has profound compassion for these women but she never lets them off the hook for the way they benefit from the system they're in.

Exactly so. She doesn't shy away from depicting the horrors of that time and place (for many people, it was basically a dystopia), and she doesn't take the easy out of having some of her white characters express views that would make them more sympathetic to a 21st-century audience (which is what a lot of authors of historical fiction do, which always feels like a cop out to me). Instead, she's much more interested in exploring the ways that people of that time found to accommodate themselves to the profound injustices of their milieu, all the little excuses and justifications and ways they looked away (as well, of course, as the various ways her black protagonist and his friends and family find to carve out spaces of joy, community, and resistance from the margins).

I got far enough for the Ammar poem and it did things to my insides!!!

I know, right? Especially given the context in which Ammar originally composed that poem: a lament for all that was about to be lost, and a howl of grief that the beauty, learning, culture, and feats of engineering of Al-Rassan were about to be forgotten — and here's his poem, centuries later, remembered!

[lirazel]

You mentioned a disappointing ending--you still think the series is worth reading for me as an adult despite that ending?

she doesn't take the easy out of having some of her white characters express views that would make them more sympathetic to a 21st-century audience (which is what a lot of authors of historical fiction do, which always feels like a cop out to me

Yes. And it's important that Hannibal, the one white character who can move between the two worlds, is on the outskirts of society and mired in poverty. No one else has that freedom, and he has it specifically because he's poor and marginal.