The city is hidden superstition
Nov. 5th, 2023 02:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12This weekend — and week in general — has certainly been less busy than the last one! It was good to have two days devoted to the usual weekend things — trips to the gym and the swimming pool, wandering around the cathedral with takeaway coffee, reading, cooking, and household chores. On top of that, I managed to finish the first draft of my Yuletide assignment. It's definitely not ready to post, but the words are there, ready to be edited into their final form.
Last night Matthias and I went for dinner at this place, a former stately home-turned-expensive-hotel-and-wedding-venue. The restaurant is in the hotel's orangerie, meaning one wall is entirely glass windows, with views across the fields over the river and railway tracks and back into town, with the cathedral looming over everything. Last night, we also had a clear view of the fireworks, which was certainly better than watching them in the rain and paying £8 for the privilege. The restaurant is certainly the best one in town (if I'm stretching the definition of town to include the outlying villages), but is also the most expensive, so definitely something for special occasions.
I've read a lot this week, but mostly it's been rereads of stuff from my childhood collection. The only new-to-me book was something I've been trying to get my hands on for years: Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison, which was being recommended left and right a few years ago by professional SFF types as a formative work of their youth. It's out of print, I tried to order it from a secondhand seller only for them to refund me and say that the copy they had listed was in too poor condition to sell, and for a while I despaired of ever reading it, when I suddenly realised that I work for a massive network of university libraries and it would make sense to check if they had any copies available. Of course they did, and I finally got a copy of the book in my hands.
It's a weird, hard-to-describe little book — memorable more for the mood and emotions it evokes than the plot and characters, which are respectively meanderingly fairy tale-like, and folklorically flat and symbolic, with occasional flashes of psychological depth. We follow the heroine Halla as she is cast out into a forest in early childhood, raised by bears and dragons, contends with gold- and glory-hungry heroes, encounters gods and valkyries, and travels south through eastern Europe to medieval Byzantium, where she speaks with chariot horses and rats, corrupt religious and earthly rulers, and desperate petitioners seeking help at the heart of empire. It has its own internal logic, with the supernatural brushing up against everyday life in a way that causes little surprise or confusion for the characters, and is written with exquisite clarity and beauty, its effects rippling out long after its words have been read, like stones in clear water. I'm really glad to have been able to read it at last.
I'm at a loss as to what to read next, and will procrastinate on the decision by going upstairs to do yoga in the last lingering afternoon sun, and then cooking a bunch of different dishes from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's Jerusalem cookbook for dinner.
Last night Matthias and I went for dinner at this place, a former stately home-turned-expensive-hotel-and-wedding-venue. The restaurant is in the hotel's orangerie, meaning one wall is entirely glass windows, with views across the fields over the river and railway tracks and back into town, with the cathedral looming over everything. Last night, we also had a clear view of the fireworks, which was certainly better than watching them in the rain and paying £8 for the privilege. The restaurant is certainly the best one in town (if I'm stretching the definition of town to include the outlying villages), but is also the most expensive, so definitely something for special occasions.
I've read a lot this week, but mostly it's been rereads of stuff from my childhood collection. The only new-to-me book was something I've been trying to get my hands on for years: Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison, which was being recommended left and right a few years ago by professional SFF types as a formative work of their youth. It's out of print, I tried to order it from a secondhand seller only for them to refund me and say that the copy they had listed was in too poor condition to sell, and for a while I despaired of ever reading it, when I suddenly realised that I work for a massive network of university libraries and it would make sense to check if they had any copies available. Of course they did, and I finally got a copy of the book in my hands.
It's a weird, hard-to-describe little book — memorable more for the mood and emotions it evokes than the plot and characters, which are respectively meanderingly fairy tale-like, and folklorically flat and symbolic, with occasional flashes of psychological depth. We follow the heroine Halla as she is cast out into a forest in early childhood, raised by bears and dragons, contends with gold- and glory-hungry heroes, encounters gods and valkyries, and travels south through eastern Europe to medieval Byzantium, where she speaks with chariot horses and rats, corrupt religious and earthly rulers, and desperate petitioners seeking help at the heart of empire. It has its own internal logic, with the supernatural brushing up against everyday life in a way that causes little surprise or confusion for the characters, and is written with exquisite clarity and beauty, its effects rippling out long after its words have been read, like stones in clear water. I'm really glad to have been able to read it at last.
I'm at a loss as to what to read next, and will procrastinate on the decision by going upstairs to do yoga in the last lingering afternoon sun, and then cooking a bunch of different dishes from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's Jerusalem cookbook for dinner.
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Date: 2023-11-06 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-07 09:00 am (UTC)