There and back again

[dolorosa_12]

I'm back from a week in Germany, visiting Matthias's family. The whole thing was a whirlwind of Covid tests, hanging out with niece and nephews (a five-year-old, a nearly three-year-old, and a six-week old), picking apples, and sitting out in the sunshine in various bucolic settings, and it left me exhausted and gave me a very bad cold. (I'm pretty sure it's not Covid but will know for sure when the results of yesterday's PCR test are given to me this evening. Edited to add that I've just received the result, and it was negative as I expected. As I was saying to various people, I'm the only person on earth who'll still get a cold in spite of lockdowns, working from home, spending virtually no time indoors with strangers, and wearing facemasks while surrounded by others wearing facemasks.) It was good that we went — Matthias's family really, really wanted us there — but I'm glad to be home and able to catch my breath for a few days before work begins again next week.

While in Germany, I read three books:

Dial A For Aunties by Jessie Sutanto, a lighthearted and madcap tale of romance, wealth and family about a young Indonesian Chinese-American woman who runs a wedding business with her mother and three aunts, and who is trying to juggle her love life, her plans for the future, the massive society wedding she and her relatives have been hired to organise — and the dead body stashed in her aunt's catering fridge. The book is a great blend of ridiculous, soap operatic shenanigans and family dynamics, bossy, interfering aunties, and exploration of 'women's work' in immigrant communities.

Elatsoe by Darcy Little Badger, a YA novel with a very 1990s/early 2000s urban fantasy vibe (except that it's set in more rural locales) in which supernatural beings live openly among ordinary humans, and magical/supernatural abilities are a part of everyday life. The book draws heavily on Native mythology (specifically Lipan), and is at once a coming-of-age adventure story and a book whose villain is whiteness and settler colonialism. I found the worldbuilding fun, but the story itself frustratingly clumsy in terms of execution for reasons I can't easily articulate.

Blood and Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson is the first in her series of historical mysteries set in Georgian England. I'd accidentally read the series out of order (the second book first), but the stories are self-contained enough that it didn't matter. This book was mostly set in Deptford, which was at the time a port town whose wealth came from slavery, and the mystery hinges on enslavement, the abolitionist movement, and the lives of black people in Britain, both enslaved and free. It was a great book, with a story well told, but the subject matter is — as you can probably tell from the description — pretty heavy, so bear that in mind.

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I very much enjoyed (in the sense of boggling and laughing with much schadenfreude) this Guardian long read about a group of cryptocurrency millionaires attempting to set up a libertarian paradise at sea without a clue as to how any of it would work. The results were predicatable, and the author skewers those involved with precision and scorn.

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There's a love meme doing the rounds, and I think we could all do with a dose of anonymous praise. My thread is here, and please feel free to drop links to your own threads in the comments.

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I will end this post with the observation that I have spent a frustrating and absurd amount of time over the past two days attempting to identify the designer of safaahathot's amazing dress, and so far it has been entirely fruitless.

Comments

[senmut]

Glad it was good a visit, bad for the cold.
I join you in that, though, as I have still been plagued by my allergy-induced sinus colds that mutate.

[dolorosa_12]

Ugh, I'm sorry to hear that! It's so ghastly to be ill when taking so many precautions to avoid getting sick in the first place!

[isis]

Haha, I read that Guardian article also, and I agree, it was a lot of "ooh cool let's do this!" without actually THINKING IT THROUGH.

[dolorosa_12]

Wannabe self-sufficient libertarians seem famously incapable of thinking things through, or of possessing the self awareness required to alert them to the fact that they are in no way as self-sufficient as they believe.

[pauraque]

That failed libertarian utopia on the high seas is almost as good as the failed libertarian utopia that was taken over by bears. If we get a few more libertarian utopias going, I think there's potential for someone to publish a whole anthology.

[dolorosa_12]

I remember reading about the overrun-with-bears failed libertarian utopia and having a similar reaction. As I said above to isis, wannabe self-sufficient libertarians lack the self awareness to recognise that they are, in fact, hopeless at self-sufficiency, and need taxes to pay for the things they are unwilling or incapable of doing themselves.

[chestnut_pod]

Oof, may the cold tire out quickly!

You've added the Guardian piece and the mystery novel to-read list… such sweet sorrow…

I felt much the same way about Elatsoe: specifically, that it was being marketed as YA but was clearly MG? If you'd asked me how old the protags were, I would have said perhaps 11, *not* 17.

[dolorosa_12]

I'm glad to have added more things to your to-read list, and highly recommend both pieces of writing.

Regarding Elatsoe, I think yours is a common complaint — as I often do when underwhelmed by a book, I went to the Goodreads page and found a string of reviews saying the book read more like middle grade. I'm inclined to agree — it has that sense of middle grade adventure story, where plucky and curious children solve a mystery and save the world/their community, and where pluckiness and resourcefulness are enough to propel them through the plot without too many difficulties.

[oracne]

Blood and Sugar sounds interesting, and I hadn't heard of it before!

[dolorosa_12]

It was great, and the second book in the series is excellent as well. I'm glad to have alerted you to its existence.

[naye]

So glad your trip went well, despite the hassle! Hope that you feel better soon. ♥

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you! I'm feeling a bit better already, although still not 100 per cent.

[falena]

I'm glad your trip was good, sorry to hear about the cold, but at least it's just a cold.

What a coincidence, I've just read (or rather listened to) both Blood and Sugar and Daughters of Night and loved them both, the best historical thrillers I've read in a long while, though as you said Blood and Sugar was kind of heavy because of the subject matter. The ending of Daughters of Night left me a bit frustrated, though, I hate open-ended endings. I've been trying to make up my mind as to how things will go between Captain Corsham and Caro, I hate not knowing the 'canon' answer, lol. It'll bug me forever.

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you, and yes — very relieved that it's only a cold!

I'd spotted on Goodreads that you'd read Blood and Sugar and Daughters of Night — they're really great, aren't they? I'm hoping that the cliffhanger ending means that there will be more books in the series so that we know how things unfold with the Corshams!

[merit]

The dress looks potentially vintage (or maybe just pre-2010) so maybe she thrifted it? It has an amazing print though!!

[dolorosa_12]

I think you may be right, or otherwise a very small designer. I love the print so much!

[scintilla10]

Haha, that Guardian article made for excellent schadenfreude-y reading. :D

Your trip sounds lovely! Too bad about the cold. <3

[dolorosa_12]

Didn't it just? They were so utterly without a shred of self-awareness, and the whole trainwreck was a delight to read.

The trip was great, but the cold not so much.

[dhampyresa]

I very much enjoyed (in the sense of boggling and laughing with much schadenfreude) this Guardian long read about a group of cryptocurrency millionaires attempting to set up a libertarian paradise at sea without a clue as to how any of it would work. The results were predicatable, and the author skewers those involved with precision and scorn.
I'm assuming it turned out like the town chronicled in A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear?

[dolorosa_12]

Pretty much exactly the same (in fact when I first read about it my immediate thought was the self-sufficient libertarian utopia overrrun with bears — libertarians' experiments in self-sufficient utopias always end in ridiculous disaster).