Delicate embroidery

[dolorosa_12]

I can feel myself tumbling unstoppably towards a really bad downswing of the mood, but there's still swimming, and cooking, and coffee, and chatting with the people in the bakery down the road, and wandering along the river, and I suppose that will have to be enough. Above all things, I suppose, there are books.

I've read three new-to-me books since last week:

Julia (Sandra Newman), a retelling of Nineteen Eighty-Four from — as you might imagine — Julia's point of view. This was the second book my dad gave me for my birthday; for the Orwell-ish context of all this, see last Sunday's post. This book is firming up something in my mind that I probably need a full post to articulate, but, in short: I don't need or want things to be demystified and every loose end explained. I found it interesting to read Newman's take on the inner lives of women in totalitarian Oceania — somewhere Orwell's imagination never travelled — but I don't have any interest in every little unexplained mystery or weird piece of trivia being spelled out for me. Not every plot hole needs to be filled, and not every contradictory piece of worldbuilding needs to be explained. That's not how I engage with fiction — sure, I like to read fanfic that speculates on missing moments or tries to explain things that don't make sense, but I don't view the process as being some kind of quest to collect trivia and memorabilia or gathering reasonable explanations to make every single gap make sense. Does the story itself make sense, does the truth it's trying to tell ring true, do the characters' choices and reactions to the consequences of those choices seem explicable and in keeping with what the story has told us of their characters? That's what I want, in essence. I link to this a lot, but Jeannette Ng's post about The Rise of Skywalker really gets to the heart of what I'm driving at here. So as you can probably tell, this book — though competently told and with some interesting components — just felt unnecessary, explaining and contextualising things which didn't need to be explained or contextualised.

The Town (Shaun Prescott) was given to me as a gift by lowercasename. We've known each other a very long time, and although we first met on a Philip Pullman fan forum, we first really connected as friends over a shared love of dystopian and post-apocalyptic Australian fiction, and in a sense we've been engaged in an ongoing conversation about this kind of fiction for over fifteen years. This book was one that lowercasename gave to me with the comment that 'I think you have to be Australian for this book to make sense,' and in many ways he's right. The story is about the stultifying experience of living in a decaying regional Australian town, and how this intersects with white Australians' uneasy relationship with the land, and with history. Prescott does an incredible job not only of portraying a very specific type of place while never providing a specific context, but also slowly building an atmosphere of horror: the wrongness starts out subtly, and by the end it's overwhelming. It's really well done.

Embroidered Worlds (ed. Valya Dudycz Lupescu, Olha Brylova, Iryna Pasco) is an anthology of Ukrainian speculative fiction, by authors from within Ukraine and from the diaspora, some originally in English and some in translation. I contributed to the Kickstarter for this last year, and my copy arrived in early January, along with a gorgeous bookplate. As with all multi-author anthologies, some stories are better than others, and some speak to me more than others, but it was definitely worth a read. My favourites were probably 'Geddarien' (R.B. Lemberg), in which a Yiddish-speaking Jewish community is able to play music that makes the buildings of Lviv come to life and dance, talk to them, and open up portals to other places, and 'Neptune's Day' (Ostap Ukrainets, transl. Oksana Katsanivska), a satirical Groundhog Day-style time-loop story about the sinking of the Moskva cruiser during Russia's current invasion.

Onward to snowflake_challenge: Make a list of fannish and/or creative resources.

I was going to link to the usual fandom resources I always highlight on these things — fandomcalendar for keeping track of exchanges and other events, recthething for an active recs community, fffriday for a comm focused on f/f relationships in fiction, and so on, but then I had another idea. One of my favourite works of fiction of all time is Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series, but I struggle to summarise coherently what it's all about in a way that both encompasses everything, and lets potential readers know what they're in for. Luckily for me, though, hamsterwoman has done a brilliant job of this in a recent post, which I thought I'd recommend here for anyone who is interested in checking out this exquisite series. There are even fanfic recs and icons!

Speaking of icons, that's another thing I thought I'd highlight here: I've recently seen a number of people asking about good sources of Dreamwidth icons, so I thought I'd list the main places I go for such things. There are two fairly active comms: icons (fandom icons, but also stock icons for stuff like food, drinks, seasonal, holidays, flowers, colours etc), and fandom_icons (mainly specific fandoms). I also know several people who are fairly active icon makers, and over the years I've ended up with a fair few icons by peaked, svgurl, and misbegotten, so you may be interested in looking at their icon posts as well.

Feel free to add your own icon-related suggestions in the comments!

Comments

[author_by_night]

Embroidered Worlds (ed. Valya Dudycz Lupescu, Olha Brylova, Iryna Pasco) is an anthology of Ukrainian speculative fiction,

That sounds really interesting!

I should check out the icons. I desperately need new ones. So thanks!

[dolorosa_12]

As I say, it's an uneven collection, as all short story anthologies are, but there's lots of good stuff within it!

Happy icon hunting!

[lebateleur]

Thanks for those thoughts on Julia, which is something I've been on the fence about reading. I was hoping it might improve on what I don't care for about Orwell as a novelist, but since I prefer stories that have room to breath by not having everything spelled out for readers, this might not be for me.

[dolorosa_12]

Honestly, I wouldn't have read it apart from the fact that I'd been given it as a gift. Like you, I want stories to leave some space for mysteries, whereas it was as if the author felt the purpose of the book was to leave nothing unexplained.

[muccamukk]

"I wish f/f Friday was more active," she said, despite reading lots of f/f and NEVER EVER remembering to cross post reviews there, on Friday or any other day.

I need to work on that.

[dolorosa_12]

I'm in this picture and I don't like it!

[wearing_tearing]

I just found inkonic today for icon communities! I also really love insomniatic and magicrubbish icons <3

[dolorosa_12]

I like magicrubbish too! I wasn't familiar with the other two comms, but I've subscribed now, so thanks for sharing them.

[wearing_tearing]

You're welcome! They're both wonderful.

[hamsterwoman]

I hope you are able to pull out of the downward mood, or glide through it as smoothly as possible <3

'Neptune's Day' (Ostap Ukrainets, transl. Oksana Katsanivska), a satirical Groundhog Day-style time-loop story about the sinking of the Moskva cruiser during Russia's current invasion.

Fascinating! I don't think I'm ready to read fiction about the current war in Ukraine, but that's so interesting that it exists. (I expect the translator explained this, but "Neptune's Day" was a staple of Soviet -- and maybe post-Soviet, IDK -- summer camps, with a water-centric Carnivale kind of deal, with costumes and water-based mischief and campers dunking the counselors, so that's my immediate association with that title.)

And thank you for the signal boost (and the kind words!) on the TI post :) Hope it proves useful!

[dolorosa_12]

I actually didn't know that allusion with 'Neptune's Day', and had assumed it had something to do with the type of missile used in sinking the ship (which was apparently a locally-produced weapon called 'Neptune') — but with that extra bit of context, I suspect the title was inspired by both the missile and the summer camps. My understanding of that story in particular is that the author wrote it at exactly that early stage of the war (i.e. April 2022), and it went viral as it captured a particular popular sentiment; it then got translated and included in this recent anthology. I can totally understand not wanting to read any fiction about the war, though.

There's already at least one person in the comments here saying they might try Terra Ignota on the basis of your post, so I'd say it's already proved useful!

I hope you are able to pull out of the downward mood, or glide through it as smoothly as possible <3

Thank you.

[hamsterwoman]

I suspect the title was inspired by both the missile and the summer camps.

That does sound very likely! (for my part, I didn't know what the missile was that sank it)

There's already at least one person in the comments here saying they might try Terra Ignota on the basis of your post,

yay! :D

[monksandbones]

I'm sorry about the mood downswing, and I hope it doesn't last too long.

But the main thing I came to say is that I really enjoyed hamsterwoman's rec post for the Terra Ignota books. I don't read Sci-Fi very often but they sound fascinating enough that I'm thinking about taking another rare jaunt into the genre!

[dolorosa_12]

That's excellent to hear! I'm sure hamsterwoman will be very pleased, and I hope you enjoy the series if you give it a try.

I'm sorry about the mood downswing, and I hope it doesn't last too long.

Thank you.

[hamsterwoman]

I am indeed very pleased to hear that! :) Glad the post proved useful, and I hope you enjoy Too Like the Lightning!

[laurenthemself]

The Town sounds amazing, I'm going to request it from the library. The description makes me think of Rosalie Ham's books, which I adore.

Thanks again for the icon tips!

I hope that if the mood downswing is inevitable that it is at least short.

[dolorosa_12]

I wasn't familiar with Rosalie Ham, but having read a couple of plot summaries, certainly the setting sounds similar, although The Town is contemporary whereas Ham's books seem to be historical. In any case, I hope you like it.

I hope that if the mood downswing is inevitable that it is at least short.

Thank you, and I'm glad the icon tips were helpful.

[chestnut_pod]

I will have to ask my old MA advisor if she has read this anthology! I imagine she will be excited to hear about it, if not.

Many wishes for an upturn in mood <3

[dolorosa_12]

I'm always glad to help another reader find a book they might enjoy, so I hope your advisor finds the Ukrainian anthology interesting!

Many wishes for an upturn in mood <3

Thank you.

[svgurl]

I'm sorry you're experiencing a mood downswing and I hope it doesn't last long. *hugs*

Thank you for mentioning me! I'm really glad that you have liked the icons I've made. ♥

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you for making them!