Trying to catch your heart is like trying to catch a star

[dolorosa_12]

This has been a good weekend, with lots of nice things:

Fresh zucchini and beetroot from the garden, and lots of grazing — every time I go out there I help myself to blackberries from the neighbours' overgrown mess of a garden, and new peas from the vegetable patch, and fennel seeds from the herb garden.

Yoga every day.

Walking out with Matthias, notasapleasure, her husband and their two giant rescue greyhounds to one of the nearby villages, where we sat out in the garden of the pub and ate Thai food for dinner. Here's a photoset.

ladybusiness linked to one of my old blog posts in a recent links roundup. Since I'm really struggling with longform blogging at the moment, it's nice that my older longform posts are still resonating with people.

But mostly, it's just been books, and books, and books. They've all been very different:

Grave Importance, by Vivian Shaw, the final book in her Greta Helsing trilogy, in which the heroine is a doctor to supernatural creatures, and everyone is competent and trying their hardest to do the right thing.

Daughters of Night, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, a historical crime novel set in 18th-century London. The tone and content reminded me a lot of the TV series Harlots.

'Enemies to Lovers', by Aster Glenn Grey, a f/f romance novella in which the two women are fandom nemeses. Enjoyment of this will depend on your tolerance for the presence of every fandom cliché in the book, but its evocation of transformative fandom rang true to me, although I found it almost quaint that the two characters' dislike of each other hinges on conflicting tastes in the portrayal of their favourite fic pairing, rather than moral panic over supposedly 'problematic' content vs a ship and let ship attitude.

A Ghost in the Throat, by Doireann ní Ghríofa, an autobiography that interweaves the author's experiences as a mother in twenty-first-century Ireland with the story of the (female) creator of an eighteenth-century Irish poem. My summary could not do this book justice — it's about 'women's work,' the quiet, painful ordinary labour of everyday life, about family, and about the act of creation (of art, and of life).

Cold Bayou, by Barbara Hambly, another of her Benjamin January mysteries. This one hinged on wealth, and inheritance, and the complicated family trees of the wealthy French families around which Benjamin and his own family orbit, and involved all my favourite characters (above all Dominique and Chloë) having to work together, so it's definitely among my favourites of the series so far.

The Light of the Midnight Stars, by Rena Rossner, a fantasy novel about sisters, survival and magic in medieval Hungary and Romania, drawing on fairytales, folklore, and Jewish mythology. I'll read pretty much any work built on these elements, and Spinning Silver and The Wolf and the Woodsman are among my favourite fantasy novels of all time, and The Light of the Midnight Stars occupies a similar space in terms of reclaimation of antisemitic tropes and painful history. However, I would say that it is much less hopeful in the conclusions it draws than these other two books, and allows its characters much less happiness.

I hope your weekends have been lovely!

Comments

[bruttimabuoni]

This sounds pretty wonderful as a weekend!

I really liked the first Laura Shepherd-Robinson, must pick this one up too.

[dolorosa_12]

It was a great weekend — just the perfect mix of things.

Amusingly enough, I haven't actually read the first Laura Shepherd-Robinson, as my husband borrowed the second book from the library without realising it was the second in a series. My understanding is that they basically stand alone, with some overlap of characters, so it wasn't too much of a problem. But now I have to go back and read the first book!

[merit]

It is probably my Australian-ness but fandom is handled so... awkwardly by so many writers, I just get cringe most of the time. Indirectly, I can handle.

I really must try to read Rena Rossner this year.

[dolorosa_12]

I find it a bit cringeworthy too, to be honest. It was amusing in this book because the author was so clearly in fandom (and pretty intensely so, given the detail and specificity of all the fandom stuff), whereas when it's written in such a way that it's obvious the author is outside of the fannish community and doesn't quite understand it I end up finding it annoying.

I definitely think you'd enjoy Rena Rossner.

[chestnut_pod]

That sounds like a lovely weekend, and I'm glad you've been spending time with good books.

[dolorosa_12]

It definitely was a great weekend — exactly the right mix of activities!

[trepkos]

It's nice to see cows left with their calves. We never see that in Jersey.

[dolorosa_12]

I didn't even notice that until you pointed it out — how lovely!

[lirazel]

So glad to hear it's been a good time for you!

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you!