Team Garden

[dolorosa_12]

I've spent a lot of today in the garden. Matthias and I have now filled two out of the four vegetable patches — with seeds for parnsips, beetroot, and romanesco cauliflower. The other two beds will be seeded in May with peas, butternut pumpkin, and zucchini. I've also transferred a lot of the windowsill seedlings into the outdoor container garden.

The whole place is in full bloom.

I've finished up one book this weekend so far — Seven Devils, a feminist space opera by Laura Lam and Elizabeth May. The two authors describe it as being like 'Fury Road in space,' although it felt more Firefly-esque from my perspective. It was a fun, solid book with a group of found family resistance fighters trying to overthrow an evil empire, but it was enjoyable rather than groundbreaking.

On to the book meme, which asks for:

18. A book that went after its premise like an explosion



From one jointly-authored book to another: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. I like both authors separately, and their first work together — a f/f epistolary time-travelling spy novella, told in lush (one might say lurid or purple) prose — is a delight. The novella seems to be a bit of a divisive one — enjoyment seems to depend on whether you find their exuberant use of language to be beautiful or overwhelming, but for me it really works.

El-Mohtar describes it as Florence + the Machine’s LUNGS album if you assume (IMO correctly) that all the songs are sung to women, which definitely works for me. When I reviewed the book several years ago I described it as a love letter, told in love letters, to the notion of the letter itself, and I think that's still what I feel about it.



19. A book that started a pilgrimage

20. A frigid ice bath of a book

21. A book written into your psyche

22. A warm blanket of a book

23. A book that made you bleed

24. A book that asked a question you've never had an answer to

25. A book that answered a question you never asked

26. A book you recommend but cannot love

27. A book you love but cannot recommend

28. A book you adore that people are surprised by

29. A book that led you home

30. A book you detest that people are surprised by

Comments

[rekishi]

I'm so mad that I couldn't get into This Is How You Lose the Time War. It's a novella, it should have been a quick read even for me, but I just couldn't get into it. At all. It's all over fandom spaces but it just doesn't work for me. Which is such a shame. Meh. -.-

[dolorosa_12]

As I say, I think the novella is something you either love or you hate — there's no middle ground, and the prose is really over the top, to the extent that many people find it intrusive.

And I know what it's like to detest books that are absolutely beloved by fandom — I could list so many that, for me, fall into this category!

[rekishi]

Yes,over the top, thank you. I couldn't pinpoint it exactly but that fits.

It's maddening though. Blargh.

[chestnut_pod]

They sure did go 110% with that one! I wish so hard that someone would publish a proper collection of El-Mohtar's short stories, which are perennial favorites.

[dolorosa_12]

It's completely over the top, but in a way that works for me.

I love El-Mohtar's short stories, too, and I would be all over any resulting anthology. I suspect one will eventually be published — her short fiction seems to be pretty well received and acclaimed.

Have you read her collection of poetry, The Honey Month? It's not quite a collection of short fiction, but it does at least bring a lot of her work together.

[chestnut_pod]

She won the Nebula *and* the Hugo, I think, for once of her shorts last year — I was surprised she wasn’t offered a contract right then! It seems inevitable, though, you’re right.

I have not read The Honey Month, but I really should! It’s a cool concept.

[corvidology]

I miss gardening as I grew up doing it with my dad but it's just too bloody hot here for me to want to be outside long enough to get it done.

[dolorosa_12]

That seems fair enough — I wouldn't want to be doing a lot of physical activity outdoors in hotter weather. Despite having grown up in Australia, my internal sense of temperature has entirely adjusted to a UK climate!

[merit]

Ah, I'm one of those who found the prose a touch overdone. Though I still hope that El-Mohtar will try longer form. And I did promise myself to read the Craft Sequence in order...

[dolorosa_12]

It really is basically purple, and I can see why it would put a lot of people off.

I suspect El-Mohtar is building up to a novel (she has this joke that she always tells in panels/interviews that when she was a child, she thought all writers began with poetry, then moved on to short stories, then increased the length to novels, and reading between the lines I think she's saying that her own publishing trajectory will follow those youthful aspirations).

The Craft Sequence is great!

[lirazel]

I do think they went a bit too purple with the prose, but I enjoyed it enough to overlook that. But that's why it's a 4-star for me and not a 5-star.

Yay garden! That's lovely!

[dolorosa_12]

I only gave it four stars as well, for exactly the same reason!