Beyond Selidor

This weekend has involved more putting one foot in front of the other. The weather has been freezing, but gloriously sunny, and I've tried to spend as much time as possible outdoors.

Matthias and I caught the train to Waterbeach (the next village down the train line) yesterday afternoon, and walked for about half an hour until we got to the little brewery in an industrial estate on the outskirts of town. This brewery opens up roughly once a month — usually in summer — but had for whatever reason elected to open on the first weekend in March. There was a food truck selling bao, the place was heaving with people, and it was a nice change of scenery. We wandered back at around 5.30, breaking the journey home with Nepalese food and some of the most comically incompetent service I've ever experienced in a hospitality venue. The food was nice, and I was more amused than annoyed, but it was a bit ridiculous.

This morning I was out at the pool, and then took great pleasure in hanging laundry outside for the first time this year, under the blue, clear sky. Other than that, I've been reading, wandering around town, and preparing tonight's dinner, which involves marinating a whole duck according to a recipe which my Indonesian cookbook assures me is Indonesian, and which my Malaysian cookbook assures me is Malaysian, and which I will therefore settle on describing as 'southeast Asian'.

In terms of reading, this week I finished four books: one much-anticipated new release, and three rereads of Australian YA novels from my youth.

The new book was The Dark Mirror, the fifth in Samantha Shannon's dystopian Bone Season series which involves individuals with clairvoyant powers being persecuted by their dictatorial government, and the various growing revolutionary movements seeking its overthrow. As with every new book in the series, The Dark Mirror expands this alternative world (here we spend time in free countries that have not yet been taken over by the authoritarian regime: Poland, Czechia, and Italy), and moves into a new genre (in this case, it's definitely a war novel). And as with all the other books in the series, the strongest elements are the things that drew me to it in the first place: the relationships, the thoughtful and nuanced way that Shannon portrays people who are surviving trauma, and her heroine's slow transformation from fugitive criminal to revolutionary leader. Shannon has been criticised in the past for info-dumping in these books, and I have to admit I lost patience for this in places (there are about five or six different organisations/networks, all of which have their own slang and jargon for everything, not all of which needs to necessarily be listed in detail on the page), but in general I found this a solid addition to the series.

The rereads were as follows:

Mandragora (David McRobbie), a haunting, supernatural story about two teenagers in a small Australian town who uncover lost artefacts from the 19th-century shipwreck whose survivors founded their settlement — artefacts which, when exposed to view, begin to curse the town in the same way they cursed the ship previously.

Witch Bank (Catherine Jinks) — the name, if you are Australian, is an absolutely groan-worthy pun — in which a mousy young teenage school-leaver takes up secretarial work in the head office of a big bank, and becomes part of a network of women with magical powers. (As a side note, the absolute specificity of this was delightful to me: it's not just set in Sydney, it's set in very, very specific parts of Sydney, such that I know exactly which bank building the fictional office in the book is meant to stand in for, and such that the literal street where my mum and sister live gets name-checked in places.)

Beyond the Labyrinth (Gillian Rubinstein), in which a troubled, choose-your-own-adventure-stories-obsessed teenage boy, and the daugher of a family friend encounter an alien anthropologist who's been sent to their small coastal town to study the local Indigenous population pre-European settlement, but somehow ends up arriving two hundred years later. This was, quite honestly, really really weird. I had no memory of any of it (other than the choose-your-own-adventure stories element), and clearly only read it once when I was a child, unlike other Rubinstein books which I've reread obsessively for over thirty years. It's very subtle — the boy's dysfunctional family is written in a way that doesn't immediately leap out at you, but creeps up disturbingly over the course of the book — in a way that I feel wouldn't pass muster in contemporary YA publishing.

Two things which struck me really forcefully when reading all these three books back to back: they rely on a cultural understanding that is highly specific to Australian society at a very specific time (all these small regional towns with local history museums with paid curators and public libraries and paid local government jobs and thriving high streets, all those administrative jobs in the bank that could be taken by school-leavers with no qualifications, and so on), and there is so much casual racism that thankfully would probably not get past the editorial stage these days (so many instances where every character who is not a white Australian of British origin gets described in racialised terms while the white people don't, plus a whole lot of benevolently intended noble savage stereotypes in Beyond the Labyrinth). Time most definitely marches on.

It's time for another snowflake_challenge prompt.



Search in your current space, whether brick-and-mortar or digital. Post a picture (a link to a picture will be fine!) or description of something that is or represents:

( Answers behind the cut )

Thank you for writing for me!

I'm pretty easygoing about what type of fic you want to write for me. I read fic of any rating, and would be equally happy with plotty genfic or something very shippy. I read gen, femslash, het and slash, although I have a slight preference towards femslash, het, and gen that focuses on female characters. I mainly read fic to find out what happens to characters after the final page has turned or the credits have rolled, so I would particularly love to have futurefic of some kind. Don't feel you have to limit yourself to the characters I specifically mention — I'm happy with others being included if they fit with the story you want to tell.

Feel free to have a look around my Ao3 profile, as it should give you a good idea of the types of things I like to read. You can also look at my Yuletide tag, which includes past letters, and recs posts of my previous gifts and other fic I've enjoyed in previous Yuletide colletions.

( General likes )

( DNWs )

Fandom-specific prompts:



( The Bone Season — Samantha Shannon )

( The Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay )

( The Pagan Chronicles - Catherine Jinks )

Don't feel you have to stick rigidly within the bounds of my prompts. As long as your fic is focused on the characters I requested, I will be thrilled to receive anything you write for me, as these really are some of my most beloved fandoms of the heart, and the existence of any fic for them will make me extremely happy.

It's the end of the month, and I am really done with winter. I normally don't mind this time of year, but January in 2021 has mainly be rain, mud, and gloom — none of the crisp, clear, icy winter weather that I enjoy. Nonetheless, Matthias and I spent the one nice hour of the day out walking along the river, and if you follow me on Instagram (ronnidolorosa, you can see some of the weird and wonderful sights we encountered, via my Stories (before they disappear).

I've finished off the month with an uptick in reading: the first two books in Barbara Hambly's James Asher vampire series (combining two of my favourite things: vampires, and Barbara Hambly; lirazel, you were absolutely right, I adore these books!), and a memoir by Huma Qureshi called How We Met. The latter was a gentle, sweet book about how she and her husband fell in love. She is the daughter of Pakistani (and Muslim) immigrants to the UK, her husband is a white British man, and she was raised fairly conservatively, with expectations of an arranged marriage after university. What felt really refreshing about her experiences is that hers is not the story of a woman 'escaping' the restrictions of an oppressive religion and culture (to be clear: I don't think that Islam, or Pakistani migrant communities in the UK are such a thing, just that this is normally the cliché of how relationships such as Qureshi's and her husband's are portrayed). Instead, her now-husband converted to Islam, and her story is one of two people bringing their own experiences, backgrounds, and values together, to build something new, without needing to give up deeply-held, deeply-felt beliefs. Qureshi makes it clear that the pressure to marry was damaging to her, but that she had no desire to rebel against the norms of her family and community, and resists setting up a dichotomy between her religious and cultural background, and discarding all that for 'rebellion' and 'freedom' — for her, although her choice of husband led to a challenging situation, choosing him was not an act of rebellion and instead it enabled her to find the married happiness expected by her family.

Finally, I read one of my most anticipated books of 2021, The Mask Falling, the fourth in Samantha Shannon's amazing Bone Season fantasy dystopia. I reviewed it on my longform reviews blog:

The Mask Falling is a perfect midpoint to this brilliant dystopian series. It broadens and deepens our understanding of this richly imagined world, and every new corner explored feels lived-in and redolent with history. Old characters return after several books’ absence, and we have a clearer view of their roles and motivations. We meet new characters who draw Paige’s story forward. She and Arcturus finally have the time to think about their relationship — shared traumas, deceptions, power imbalances and all. And the book ends on a cliffhanger that had me both cursing Shannon’s diabolical genius, and applauding her skill at drawing so many different threads together into such a intriguing tapestry.

The day is somewhat running away from me, so I will leave things here, as I have a bit of cooking to do (meal prep for next week, turning a huge bunch of green chilli into shatta — a delicious pickle from Sami Tamimi's Falastin cookbook — and dinner), and Matthias and I need to move our belongings from the spare bedroom into the main bedroom. (We'd been sleeping in the spare room until our new bed was delivered and assembled, which happened yesterday.) If there's time I might reread Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver, which feels appropriately wintry. I also need to make time at some point to go through the new Festivids collection (thanks for the link, goodbyebird!).

I hope you've all had good weekends!

This month was a bit of a slow one for me in terms of reading, but it started off well. My problem now is that I'm in a bit of a reading slump, don't want to just indiscriminately spend money on new books, but can't borrow anything from the public library (they're doing click and collect, but you can't choose the books — instead you have to tell the library the genres you like to read and they'll make a selection for you). In any case, this is what I've read in July.

( Some books, some short stories )

What have you all been reading?

[For context, I am currently rereading the first book in Samantha Shannon's Bone Season series. My husband Matthias has read this book, but not any others in the series.]

Me: It's been ages since I've read this book, and I forgot so much that happened! And Warden is so mean to Paige in this book!
Matthias: Yeah, I've always wondered why you love their relationship so much. It's completely Stockholm Syndrome-y.
Me: Matthias, that is why I like it!

I mean, to be fair things change very quickly from those inaspicious beginnings in that book, and the characters do eventually get around to discussing the messed up way in which they met, but if you're not into that sort of thing the first book would be extraordinarily offputting.

Everyone who requested letters with recipes from me a while back should either have received, or will receive their letters soon — I posted the last of the batch today. I enjoyed writing them and have more stationery and stamps, so at some point I'll put up another post asking for recipients.

I'm at the point where I've finally caved and admitted that the only fiction I feel mentally capable of engaging with is historical mysteries with heavy h/c elements, which means Benjamin January, Roma Sub Rosa, and Ovidia Yu's series set in 1930s Singapore. I took a look at the 500-page 'literary' novel that I'd been planning on reading next, and just went nope and retreated back to the cosy, comforting and mildly formulaic.

The prompt for Day Twelve of the fandom meme is as follows:

L: Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves.

I'm struggling a bit with this one, because I don't spend a lot of time in fandom thinking about characters who aren't my favourites.

I'll talk about Jaxon Hall from Samantha Shannon's Bone Season series. He's not really the type of character that I warm to, although he seems to be the favourite for most of the fandom. However, I love (and find hilarious) his unwavering commitment to doing things for The Aesthetic™. Going about dressed in full on 2050s Victoriana? Absolutely. Writing the definitive guide to clandestine, illegal supernatural abilities solely so that he can rank his own ability highest in the hierarchy, and then funding an illegal printing press to distribute it, deliberately styling it as an underground Victorian pamphlet? Of course. He's completely ridiculous and over the top, especially given he runs an illegal syndicate of petty criminals with superpowers and should be trying to stay under the radar.

( The other days )

I often talk about needing more hours in the day, and on the one day of the year where that is possible, I certainly made the most of it. I've been able to get a lot done, in addition to the usual bits of grocery shopping, cleaning and so on that I always do on the weekend.

Saturday poured with rain, and it was freezing to the point of almost being sleet, so I stuck close to home, apart from a quick trip into town to the market. Matthias spent most of the day writing an assignment for the cataloguing module of his librarianship degree, so I elected to spend Saturday writing as well. It was lovely and companionable to sit there, typing away at our respective assignments. In my case, this was Yuletide. I always aim to write multiple treats, and this year the sheer volume of fandoms I love in the tagset makes me even more enthusiastic about this. It will be hard to narrow it down!

So far I've written one (completed, but not uploaded) treat, about a third of my main assignment (along with an outline for its remainder), and done a lot of very weird research for another treat. I normally finish assignments before working on any treats, so I will not be touching the second treat beyond this preliminary research until the assignment is finished.

I also did one of my periodic sweeps of Ao3, where I check if any new fic in my main fandoms (all of which are tiny, inactive book fandoms, most of whose fic, if it exists at all, has been written by me). Normally this is an entirely futile exercise, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that someone had written Warden/Paige fic for the Bone Season series. I've been requesting fic for this pairing in exchanges for several years without success, so it was a wonderful treat to find this there unexpectedly. I don't think there are any Bone Season fans here among my Dreamwidth circle (the only people I know who like it are people on Tumblr, and a handful of my real-life friends), but I link to it here in any case.

J'attendrai (2459 words) by LaReinadeEspadas
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Bone Season - Samantha Shannon
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Paige Mahoney/Warden | Arcturus Mesarthim
Characters: Paige Mahoney, Warden | Arcturus Mesarthim
Summary:

I looked for any other signs that he knew the significance of the day, but unsurprisingly found none in my Rephaite cohabiter. It’s not like immortal beings had any reason to celebrate birthdays.

Reading the fic reminded me how much I love the series, so I've spent most of Sunday morning curled up on the couch in the sunshine, rereading The Song Rising. I'm not sure the story of a brave, doomed revolution brought down by the inability of disparate groups of oppressed, dispossessed people to make common cause was a wise choice, given the state of the world, but it seemed to be what my brain wanted.

Now Matthias and I have just come back from running, and I'm sitting here with a cup of tea, catching up with Dreamwidth and trying to decide between doing a bit of yoga (probably not), or getting started on the chicken and dumplings (this Smitten Kitchen recipe) I'm planning to make for dinner.

*

I can't talk about what's going on in the world. In the country of my birth, the country in which I grew up, the country which is now my home, anywhere, everywhere. I just can't. Words recoil from it. I return, as always, to Calexico, who, as always, have the words to give voice to this horror. Everywhere you look you only see red, indeed.

Not much to report this week, just two novels read - Runemarks and Runelight by Joanne Harris. These were solidly written, with nothing obviously wrong with them, and yet both failed to grab me, and I read the second more out of a sense of duty than interest.

I think I'm going to have to say that Harris' interpretations of Norse myth simply don't work for me. I read her Gospel of Loki last year, and it, like these two books (which imagine a Europe shaped primarily by Norse, not Roman influence, in which Ragnarök has already happened), failed to resonate. I think part of the problem is that in books about gods (whatever the mythology), I'm wanting something very specific which most authors either fail to deliver, or aren't interested in writing. I touch on it in this review of The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon, which does what I want in terms of supernatural-human interactions. Basically, what I want is a reflection on humanity, intense, complicated relationships between humans and deities, and, if possible, some kind of tense readjustment of human characters' moral landscapes once the beings they worship as fairly distant, abstract ideas become part of their world as physical realities. (If this happens in reverse - if gods and supernatural beings are forced to adjust their understanding of human beings once they spend time in close proximity to humans - then so much the better.)

I realise this a very specific requirement, and that I'm basically taking Harris to task for failing write the story I wanted to read, so if post-apocalyptic retellings of Norse myth are your thing, I advise you to read other reviews rather than taking my word as an accurate evaluation of the qualities of these books. For me personally, however, they were a disappointment.

It appears that I didn't write anything on LJ/Dreamwidth for the entire month of April. I'm not sure exactly why that was, although I will say that I had Matthias' family staying for two weeks, which made it very difficult to find a spare moment. His sister and her fiancé stayed with us for one week, and his parents were here for two weeks, although they stayed in their caravan in a camping site nearby. The fiancé had never been to Cambridge before, so we did a bit of sightseeing, including going up onto the roof of my college chapel, from where you can see the whole of Cambridge. To get there you have to climb this very claustrophobic, winding spiral staircase. It's worth it when you get to the roof, though.

Anyway, after they left, Matthias went to Aberystwyth for four days. He's just started doing an MA in library and information studies there (via distance learning), and you need to attend a week-long course there every year. The rest of the coursework is done by distance. I really, really dislike being home alone. I find it almost impossible to sleep and generally feel unsafe at night. I can cope with it when I live in an apartment building, or at least on the upper floor of a house, but our house is single-storey, which is just about the worst for me. But Matthias had a good time on his course, and met all the other people in his cohort, who all seem a very interesting bunch. They're mostly in their 20s or 30s, and tend to have done at least a BA (and in some cases an MA and PhD) in some kind of humanities field and come to librarianship indirectly, like him. I'm interested to see how he goes with the course, as I'm keen to do it myself in a few years' time (once I've recovered from the exhaustion of doing a PhD!).

On Friday, I went to London to hear Samantha Shannon (author of The Bone Season, the first of a series of novels about a dystopian London where people have supernatural abilities) in conversation with Andy Serkis and Jonathan Cavendish, whose film company has the rights to adapt the first book. I did a write-up on Tumblr. The event was mostly awesome, although there was one sour note. One of the main characters in The Bone Season is an otherworldly being called Warden. He's not described in much detail in the book, aside from mention of him having 'dark, honey-gold'-coloured skin. People in the audience were asked to suggest actors who fit their mental image of him. Those suggested were Tom Hiddleston and Cillian Murphy. I think you can figure out why those are appalling suggestions, but in any case, I was heartened to see that most of the fandom seems to support me in perceiving Warden as just about anyone other than a white actor. What was even more encouraging is that Samantha Shannon herself agreed with me and said she was committed to fighting against whitewashing in any adaptation of The Bone Season. I will be very disappointed if a white actor is cast as Warden, and will not see any film in which this is the case.

Yesterday, our department hosted the annual colloquium which we share with Oxford. It's for students of Celtic Studies at both universities to present papers on aspects of their research, and alternates between Cambridge and Oxford as a location. I found it interesting to note that when we went around introducing ourselves at the beginning, all the Oxford students said their individual college affiliations, whereas the Cambridge people all said the name of our department rather than our colleges. It's a subtle indication of how we perceive ourselves, I guess.

The conference was good fun, particularly as I didn't have to give a paper this year. I just relaxed and hung out with all my friends, most of whom I hadn't seen in over a month. My supervisor was there, and we were talking about my decision to leave academia and work in libraries. She asked me if I missed research, and I realised that I didn't miss it at all. Most people I know who work in academia have this drive, this single-minded obsession with whatever they research (in much the same way as authors have this drive to tell stories). I've never had it, and I guess that's another indication that I was never cut out to be an academic.

I finally succumbed to the lure of 8tracks. I'm ridiculous enough about music as it is, so I guess it was only a matter of time before I joined. If you're on there, you should add me. I've already made one playlist.

We Own the Sky from dolorosa_12 on 8tracks Radio.

In other musical news, the new Seven Lions EP, Worlds Apart, is simply glorious.