It's been a good, restful weekend, all of which was sorely needed. Matthias brought a cold back with him when he returned from Germany last Sunday, which hit me like a truck on Tuesday, and I was sick for most of the rest of the week. I preemptively cancelled all bookings for swimming slots and fitness classes, and even stopped doing yoga (although I suspect I would have been able to manage that). Beyond that, I just did the bare minimum. For the most part, I feel recovered by now, but it was good to have an excuse to stay at home and nest.

I cooked the usual wintry stodge — congee on Friday night, covered in an excess of chili oil, a thick tomato-y vegetable stew last night, Polish goulash tonight — so most afternoons have begun with something bubbling on the stove. I lounged around under a blanket, rereading old favourite books (of which more later), and watching biathlon out of the corner of my eye. Apart from a trip into a cafe in town which sells mulled wine, I basically haven't left the house since Thursday. Last night Matthias and I watched Polite Society — a film we've had our eyes on for a while, a comedy in which a British-Pakistani teenager becomes increasingly suspicious that her sister's fiance and his overbearing mother are not all they seem, and chaos and hijinks ensue. It's the work of the same writer who was behind We Are Ladyparts, and written with the same affectionate humour and focus on the relationships between women and girls.

I had meant to spend time writing a second Yuletide treat (the main assignment, and one treat are finished), but somehow that ended up being a lot of time spent on Dreamwidth, with posts that generated a lot of comments. A reminder, for those who missed them on Friday, that I have one post up where people can share their fandomtrees sign ups and holiday love meme threads, and another post up acting as an kind of all-purpose recs collection. Feel free to add your own contributions.

I also managed to transcribe the last four old newspaper book reviews from 2005 to my reviews blog ... so now I just have the years 2006-2013 to go! It should get easier soon, though, as the later years I still have in Word documents, whereas the earlier articles were either saved to desktop on an old computer, or written in now-incompatible file formats. As always, I feel a bit amused at the self-righteous certainty with which I wrote, and the way that I constantly asserted my own narrative tastes and preferences and ~thoughts about literature as if they were objective facts. The reviews are as follows

Weaving a magic thread (on The Curse of Zohreh by Sophie Masson)
Magic: the garden variety (on Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier)
Love and dreams for better things (on Alyzon Whitestarr by Isobelle Carmody)
A fantasy novel like a pebble set (on The Well of Tears by Cecilia Dart-Thornton)

Suffice it to say that my tastes have changed a lot since 2005.

Nowhere is this more starkly illustrated than in my experience rereading, back to back, six Sharon Penman historical doorstoppers in quick succession. Penman debuted with an extremely partisan account of the life and rule of Richard III, and then wrote a trilogy about the Angevins and Poitevins, and another trilogy about medieval Welsh princes, the Norman-English monarchy, and Simon de Montfort, and it's these latter trilogies that I've been rereading. I remember absolutely loving these books when I was in my early twenties, and being filled with admiration for (what I saw as) Penman's meticulous research and attention to detail. She certainly researched the books thoroughly — in the sense of knowing which historical figure was where, doing what, when, and day-to-day minutiae of medieval material culture — but their flaws are much more apparent to me now. They're aggressively heterosexual (in a way which I suppose was much more common in historical fiction published in the 1990s and early 2000s), and although Penman is conscious of the fact that medieval sources could be partisan and untrustworthy, her own firm opinions about certain historical figures introduce their own kind of bias which is understandable, but of which I don't quite believe she was ever fully conscious. If she likes or admires a character, they display modern sensibilities, challenging (even if only in the privacy of their own mind or marriage) religious and sociocultural certainties of their era, so as to make them more likeable to Penman's perceived 21st-century readers' capacity for empathy. I don't always mind this kind of thing, if I feel the author is conscious that they're doing it, but I'm not convinced that Penman was, and, if challenged, would have protested about her in-depth research and so on.

I also just remember finding all the central relationships in these novels to be the height of romance and tragedy, whereas now — although I still enjoy the endless messy Plantagenet soap opera — it's as if I enjoy the story of these historical figures while trying to ignore Penman's writing and interpretation, which makes for a strange reading experience.

It's been an interesting experience, that's for sure!

My project of backing up all my old newspaper book reviews continues, and I've now managed to post everything up to the end of 2004. I still feel the same tendencies I deplored initially — the penchant for treating my own preferences and tastes as facts rather than opinions, and to make sweeping statements without much evidence to back them up — are there, although I'm not sure my opinions of the specific books reviewed would have changed much in the intervening twenty years, just my manner of expressing such opinions!

The reviews are:

Bleak glimpse forward to a decaying world — review of Jackie French's Flesh and Blood dystopian YA novel

A magical, mythic tale — my review of Sophie Masson's In Hollow Lands (children's fantasy literature inspired by Breton mythology and medieval history)

Rich avenues wandering the streets of Quentaris — a review of several books in the shared world Quentaris children's fantasy series

Convict tale full of twists and treats — a review of Jackie French's Tom Appleby, Convict Boy (children's historical fiction)

Comforting reminder of a simpler world — my first foray into the newspaper's Sunday 'Borrowers' column (in which reviewers wrote about older books that might be borrowed from the library, in this case Rumer Godden's The Greengage Summer)

Only one has the magic touch — a review of more Quentaris books and other Australian children's fantasy novels

Depth and quality to keep every child happy — a round up of books I recommended parents buy their children for Christmas/summer holiday reading

It would be interesting to revisit some of these books (the Rumer Godden in particular), since I'm absolutely certain I would interpret them in very different ways, even if my overall opinion of their quality is likely to remain the same.

The current snowflake_challenge is one that I always find incredibly stressful: I don't really collect fannish merch (other than ... physical books? Dreamwidth icons?), and I'm completely incapable of taking decent photos of anything that isn't a) a tree or b) a body of water.



So, with that disclaimer out of the way, here is the prompt:

In your own space, post the results of your fandom scavenger hunt. earch in your current space, whether brick-and-mortar or digital. Post a picture or description of something that is or represents:

1. A favorite character
2. Something that makes you laugh
3. A bookshelf
4. A game or hobby you enjoy
5. Something you find comforting
6. A TV show or movie you hope more people will watch
7. A piece of clothing you love
8. A thing from an old fandom
9. A thing from a new fandom

My photos can be found on Instagram. Edited to add that the bad-quality photos were stressing me out so much that I deleted the whole photoset from Instagram, so the link here will no longer work. The descriptions of the photos remain below.

I have merged several categories.

1. A favourite character — Noviana Una from Sophia McDougall's Romanitas trilogy. This is the back of a t shirt which is possibly the only piece of fannish merch I own, a quote from McDougall's book referencing Una. (A picture McDougall drew of her own character, plus this quote, forms my default Dreamwidth icon.)

2. and 3. Something that makes me laugh + a bookshelf — a small portion of the Terry Pratchett section of our bookshelves. This is only a small portion of our collection as a whole — my copies are all still at my mum's place in Australia, and many of Matthias's copies are still in Germany. At some point, we will have all the copies in the one place and may have to discard the duplicates.

4. and 5. A game or hobby I enjoy + something I find comforting — swimming swimming swimming. I am, as I have said many times, half woman half ocean. Swimming is the only thing that stills the sea inside.

6. A TV show or movie I wish more people would watch — Babylon Berlin

7. A thing from an old fandom — the final lines of Northern Lights, the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. This isn't my oldest fandom, but it was my first experience of fandom as an online community, and the HDM forum I joined still remains my gold standard for online fannish spaces. It was the perfect welcome and introduction to fandom-as-shared activity.

8. A thing from a new fandom — the extant books from Pat Barker's Briseis-centric Iliad retelling trilogy.

I read three more short stories yesterday. All are free and online at the Tor.com website.

( Short fiction )

This month has been a bumper one for TV viewing, with some really excellent shows in a variety of genres. And, given the shows I've got on the go currently, this looks set to continue in December. The shows we finished this month are as follows:

Trøm, a Scandi noir set in the Faroe islands, partially in Faroese. The mystery centres on the murder of a young anti-whaling activist, and draws heavily on local tensions between industry and activists, as well as on tensions within and between various families. It's a pretty conventional crime drama, and the characters verge on stock characters — the appeal here is the setting and the language, rather than anything groundbreaking in terms of the story.

Industry, a drama which Matthias describes as a blend between Skins and Billions: beautiful young people doing terrible things as they attempt to succeed in London's financial services industry. There's constant backstabbing and double crossing, everyone uses each other, and everyone handles eye-watering amounts of money while slowly dying inside. This is not a show to watch if you want a story about good and kind-hearted people.

Babylon Berlin, the fourth season of an amazing German noir show set in the dying years of the Weimar Republic. This is at this point a candidate for my show of the year, and I was so impressed by the latest season that I wrote a longer review over at dolorosa12, my longform reviews blog.

Trainwreck, a three-part documentary on the ill-fated Woodstock '99 festival. I was dimly aware of the existence of the festival after the fact, but although I was a teenager in 1999, I had no idea of its existence at the time it was happening. The story of the festival is a familiar mixture of ineptitude, hubris, arrogance, and sheer destructive selfishness and — much like Dashcon or Fyre Festival — the sort of slow-motion car crash you watch in horror from between your fingers.

Andor, the latest Disney+ Star Wars show, impressed me immensely. It's an impeccably cast, impeccably shot, impeccably written blend of spy thriller and political drama — the story of how small actions of individuals and groups can both inadvertently and deliberately create an anti-fascist resistance movement, while at the same time showing how slowly and easily authoritarian oppression can take hold and worm its way into everything until the point that it's impossible to stop without violent, organised resistance. I thought it was fantastic.

The English is a western set in the late 19th century, in which an English woman mourning the death of her son and a Native tracker finished with an adult lifetime spent as a tracker for the US army join forces on their respective revenge quests, which end up being interwoven. What it reminded me most of was, weirdly, medieval chivalric literature, especially Malory — the characters wander through landscapes charged with meaning, encountering a variety of strange figures (many of whom pop in and out of the story) who require their help, or bring violence to them. The show was gorgeous to look at, made some clever points (mainly — as is to be expected — about colonisation), and had a deep sense of grief and melancholy.

And those are the shows I've completed this month.

I'm aware I owe responses to a lot of people's comments, but realistically it's not going to happen until the weekend at this point.



However, I do have time to write a quick response to today's snowflake_challenge prompt:

In your own space, create something.

I've been enjoying the flood of creations streaming across my circle over the past day — lovely icons, fragments from fic WIPs, and in general such a burst of creativity that it makes me smile.

Work this week has hit me like a freight train, and I always find that's not particularly conducive to writing, particularly fiction, so I'm choosing to interpret this challenge slightly differently. I've spoken at various points throughout the challenge of my enjoyment of longform blogging and a wish to see more of it, so I thought I'd do my own part to make that happen.

The result is a review of Ada Palmer's book Perhaps the Stars, and the Terra Ignota series in general. As always, when it comes to reviews on my reviews blog, I'm happy for comments either here on Dreamwidth, or on the reviews blog itself.

It's the end of the month, so it's time for another viewing wrap-up.

( Five TV shows )

( Four films )

I've spent most of today gardening, reading (I'm about midway through Rustick Exile by L.A. Hall, and am very much enjoying this series — a gentle, rambling slice-of-life piece of historical fiction, as if the characters from the TV show Harlots kept a journal, and had a much happier time than they do in the show!), and sleeping. It's one of those days where the more I rest, the more tired I feel — thankfully I'm still on holiday, with nothing more demanding to do than the need to cook dinner in the next half hour.

Today's book meme prompt asks for:

6. A book where you were dubious about the premise but loved the work

( My answer )

( The other days )

I managed to make myself feel low-level irritated in three different ways before I'd even left the house. I really need to learn that avoiding Twitter isn't enough: I need to leave all social media alone at the start of the day and just read books. (The culprits: a Facebook friend who seems to have a) gone full tankie and b) whose often justified criticism of the US sometimes tips into full on Putin apologia; and various hot takes from fandom journalists which never fail to grate. I think I need to just accept that while I love detailed meta, and in-depth reviews, fandom journalism almost universally irritates me.)

I tried to put all this from my mind by trudging out to the market in the rain, picking up bits and pieces of fruit and vegetables, cleaning and tidying parts of the house, and combing through the RHS website for planting instructions for a range of different vegetables. The former owners shared a detailed list of the vegetables they grew — they had a two-year rotation in each of the four garden beds, so we'll plant the same things they did in 2019 this year, then the 2020 stuff in 2022, and hope for the best. It was very soothing to think of digging in the soil, making compost, and growing and harvesting all that abundance.

Someone further down the road sells their homegrown vegetables from their driveway: cauliflower, potatoes, carrots, zucchini, onions, leeks, and cauliflower. It's almost enough to abandon our weekly veggie box delivery, although I'd want to be confident that they're going to continue making things available all year round. In any case, I bought some cauliflower, and made cauliflower and potato soup, using rosemary from our garden, and it was delicious.

I've read just two books so far this week. The first was Wings of Fury by Emily R. King. This is a retelling of the story of Zeus's overthrow of the Titans fron the point of view of three young women caught up in events. It suffered from a problem I'm finding all too common in a lot of recent fantasy fiction — ostensibly adult characters, in a setting where if anything people are treated like adults at a much earlier age than they are in the 21st century, reacting to the situations in which they find themselves as if they are 21st-century teenagers. I also feel that in books like King's, which are attempting something of a feminist slant on very misogynistic settings, there are two options: write a very sanitised book aimed at children, or write something that really leans into the darkness and horror. Wishy-washy YA middle ground just ends up seeming half-hearted. I dug into this in greater depth over on dolorosa12 in regard to Iliad retellings a few years ago.

The second book I read was the third Bridgerton novel, An Offer from a Gentleman, which so far was my favourite of the series. I'm not really sure why. I'm not a huge romance reader, aside from the odd KJ Charles book, and the tropes in this particular book are not normally ones that appeal to me. Having thought a bit more about it, I'm enjoying the Bridgerton series more for the depiction of the eponymous family than any of the romances. I really like stories about siblings who are each other's friends and obviously enjoy each other's company, and that's certainly true here.

It's set to be a rainy, snowy weekend, so there's definitely time for a lot more reading, although I'm not sure what I'll pick up next.

Today is a public holiday, and I had initially thought I would end up spending it at home, watching the rain fall. But the weather forecast changed, and it was sunny enough to go on a little wander through the fields to Coton, a village nearby, and sit outdoors in the beer garden of the pub. Here's a photoset, with bonus swans.

August has been a weird month for me, compared to the preceding five months of lockdown. I don't know if it was the heat, or my own mental exhaustion, but I felt myself slowing down, and, with the sole exception of swimming, had really limited energy to spare on anything. As a result, I've barely read anything, and barely finished any TV series.

Most of what I read was rereads, many of which have been mentioned in previous posts, apart from Samantha Shannon's new Bone Season novella, 'The Dawn Chorus'. I read this for the first time so recently that my review of it still remains the newest post on my reviews blog: basically, it combines two of my favourite things: a relationship with a massive power imbalance, and lots of hurt/comfort. In other words, it is my kind of book, hence the reread only a month after I read it initially. The only other book I read this month not mentioned in a previous blog post is Crimson Angel, the thirteenth book in Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January mystery series. I like the books in this series set in New Orleans, but I also enjoy those that give insight into the wider world — as this one does, being set partially in Cuba, and Haiti. The plot, as always, was vaguely ridiculous (hidden treasure, scandalous family secrets, murderous pursuit), but I read these books for the characters and setting, and am quite forgiving of the melodramatic plots that form the scaffolding for the former.

In terms of TV, I've only finished watching two things: the latest series of Lucifer (an utterly ridiculous, over the top delight), and The Deceived, a modern-day gothic BBC miniseries which leans heavily on the plot and tropes of Rebecca. Parts of it take place in Cambridge (the heroine is a student having an affair with her university lecturer), and Matthias and I delighted in yelling at the TV: 'That's not how Cambridge works! That's not how any of this works!' I was mostly watching for the settings: Cambridge, and the wilder, beautiful parts of Donegal in Ireland.

In the time I've been writing this post, the sun has completely left our garden, everything is a lot colder, and a definite chill has entered the air. I will finish things off, therefore, so that I can close the doors into the courtyard, put on warmer clothing, and do a bit of yoga to warm up!

In almost every fic exchange in which I have participated, I have requested the same thing: post-canon hurt/comfort with Paige and Warden from Samantha Shannon's Bone Season series.

And now I don't have to request it again, because the author herself has written it: an excellent little novella called The Dawn Chorus, which bridges the gap between the third book in the series, and the fourth, which is due to be published next year.

I am really loving this trend of authors writing what amounts to professional fanfic of their own series in novellas. As well as Samantha Shannon's book, Aliette de Bodard published Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders, a post-canon novella in her post-apocalyptic Dominion of the Fallen series in which my favourite pairing of characters, fallen angel Asmodeus and his Vietnamese dragon prince husband Thuan solve a murder mystery, uncover corruption in the dragon kingdom under the Seine, and finally get a chance to work together instead of at cross purposes.

What I appreciated most about the two novellas was the space they afforded to their characters' emotions and explorations of their relationships. This is why I describe them as 'published fanfic' — one of the things I love most about fanfic is that character or relationship studies are so often at the heart of the writing, but you don't see this in most published fiction, unless it's romance. I'd love to see it in more SFF series.

I've reviewed both novellas together over at my reviews blog. As always, I welcome comments and discussion either here on Dreamwidth or at the original post.