Alchimie's Journal

I do still exist, just the end-of-school busy and then I took a glorious vacation to Montreal and Quebec, all of which will be written about in due time. That time is not now, because my refrigerator must be replaced and all the laundry folded and tomorrow is the first day of Shakespeare Camp for my daughter, who is both terrified and hoping that she will somehow get to play Puck. But the time will come (later tonight? tomorrow?), and in the meantime I hope you are all well.

I ought to be making phone calls, but the cat is lying on his back in my lap, with his front paws curled elegantly over his chest and his back paws up in the air, and he is making small snerking noises and falling asleep, and meanwhile my phone is over on the other side of the room, so clearly attacking the to-do list is not meant to be right now. How could I possibly dislodge such a fine catten? I will write about books instead -- or about my reading, which is rather a different thing.

I read three very early Joan Aiken at once, one collection of short stories for children (More Than You Bargained For), one children's novel (The Kingdom and the Cave), and one adult almost-but-not-quite neo-gothic (The Silence of Herondale). They all had their charms, especially the middle one as it features a talking cat and Aiken wrote it at 17, but I do not seem to fall in love with Aiken the way other people do. I regret not having found more of her in childhood, as I did have the Wolves then and adored it but it was the only one of hers I could find and when I tried rereading it I just could not with all the imperilled children, whereas as an imperilled child(ren) it was quite satisfying. I did not dislike any of these three, but I want more numinous in my children's fantasy and less topical humour about the NHS, and the neo-gothic was fine but the plot furniture got in the way of the book I wanted to read about the very sensible Canadian heroine making a home for herself in an English village. It is not something wrong with the books, it is a mismatch between what they do and what I want, so... will I try a few more? Likely, they are interesting even when they do not work for me.

I finished The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan which was fantastic, easily one of the best books I have read this year -- modern Irish post-collapse of Celtic Tiger, focusing on one village, everyone speaks for themselves and about everyone else, it is well weighted, even the melodrama is not melodramatic.

I continued to read approximately 5 pages a night of A Succession of Bad Days because I do not want it to end; it keeps hitting so precisely into my experience and thinking that I am almost embarassed to talk about it, although I did manage to enthuse enough to a friend that he has bought and read the entire series thus far while I centimetre my way along.

Right now there is also a book called The Roof-Tree by James Kenward, from the 1930s, which pretends to be the history of "steep-roofed farm-houses in the Kentish Weald" but it is not actually history, it is fairy-tale, and reminds me very much of Eleanor Farjeon. The fairy-tale is quite accidental, I am sure Kenward really believes what he says about the universal builder who is the same man every generation but I am not worrying about that, I am enjoying his prose and his drawings and as much as I can ignoring his misogyny, which is of that particular irritating kind that cannot imagine a woman has ever been anything other than one particular stereotype, in this case the nagging house-proud woman whose sole work is in cleaning; even when he mentions anglo-saxon women spinning he seems to think of it as frippery rather than as necessity for survival. It is annoying but I am liking the parts I like so much that I am putting up with the annoyance for the good, which is so often the case.

And, lastly, Speaking of Jane Austen by Sheila Kaye-Smith and G. B. Stern, from 1943 -- they were both prolific 20thc women writers, but I have not read any of their novels yet. This book is just what it says, the two of them talking about Austen's novels both individually and together, quite fannish in their opinions and conjectures and imaginary letters Austen's minor characters might have written and arguments over whether or not Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a realistic character (Kaye-Smith) or impossibly rude, much ruder than any human being would ever actually be and thus caricature and a failure (Stern). It is marvelous fun, I cannot think why it is not in print, I would think any Austen fan would enjoy reading this earlier generation of fannishness. I am not finished yet but I am particularly loving the chapter in which they are focusing on little details, such as the change in the meanings of words over time (which of course has changed still more in the 70+ years since this was written) and would Mr. Knightley be able to put up with Mr. Woodhouse and why is Richard used for all the boring male characters when to Stern it is a name rich with romance? I may end up buying a copy of this.

I have a large stack of physical books on the Souls and the Coterie ready to read next, but they might have to be returned to the library and then requested again due to the current flurry of tasks and the forthcoming vacation in which I will probably only read ebooks.

I read this back in April and I still cannot figure out what I think about it; I think in order to have a proper understanding of it I will need to read it again, but I do not like rereading books very quickly, so it will have to wait for some time to have passed. And yet in the meanwhile I keep turning it over in my mind and having thoughts about it, and as my Goodreads review started to get out of hand in meanderings and musings and speculations, I am bringing them here. This post will contain spoilers, but I will put it all behind a cut tag to protect the unwary.

( Various thoughts with spoilers )

I just thought of this and I do not know if it holds up; I suppose I will find out when I reread. I hope it does, Hamlet as puzzle boxes is immensely appealing and besides, I do feel that itch in my sense that Leckie is doing something very intentional but that I could not see it so the book would not come together. It would be so pleasant to have figured it out!

'Tis May, the busy month of May, in which school & other activities for my children have a last flurry before they wind down for summer. Thus there are celebrations for the children and celebrations for the volunteers and a week of teacher appreciation and a few last field trips and fundraiser forms are due and yearbooks are on sale and there's open house and a school art night, and next year's Girl Scouts must be organised in various ways (memberships renewed, girls confirmed, new uniforms explained, camping trips booked far in advance), and there's a book fair and one last round of Scholastic book orders and the day camp schedule for summer must be finalised -- everything is happening each day that must happen, more or less or exactly, but it is quite full, even more so than usual.

As for me, myself, I am reading around the edges and trying to prioritise sleep and planning a trip to Montreal & Quebec City in early June, but I do not really know what I think about anything except getting the next things done and then stopping thinking about getting things done to breathe more deeply.

By no means comprehensive, but a start at catching up, perhaps.

Semi-Recently Finished

The March North by Graydon Saunders (graydon) was fascinating all the way through; it reminded me of Glen Cook's The Black Company except a much more functional and pleasant world in which people actually have some concern for the lives of others. There is a lot of very dense worldbuilding happening, so I read it slowly and was glad to have the time to piece things together. It will definitely be worth rereading to see the characters through the larger view of understanding their world better.

What Matters in Jane Austen by John Mullan was enjoyable to the end; I had many new thoughts about Austen's novels and ended up with a few related books I am now reading.

Lisa & Co. by Jilly Cooper ended up really pleasing me in spite of itself; the stories are all from the 60s and 70s and very early 80s, and Cooper's point of view on people and class and romance and such is mostly not anything like mine, but she surprised me by taking her one story with a queer character equally seriously to the rest (even though it had many problems, but the actual humanity of the queer character was not in doubt which frankly surprised me from the period), and there is just something satisfying in her various female characters dumping men who want them to be domestic goddesses in exchange for men who appreciate their brains and ambitions and so forth. Definitely not solid reading matter, but it was an enjoyable digression and did some good and no harm.

The Penguin Pool Murder by Stuart Palmer, which I read due to sovay's
excellent review of the 1932 movie based on the book. As a book it was all right, but the author seemed to take the female lead seriously when she was explaining about how she was "only a woman" and thus couldn't understand what the detective was thinking or planning. The movie sounds much better in that regard, so I may look for it online, although I am not very good at sustained visual media.

On the Go
I am mere pages from the ending of Love in a Different Key by Marjorie Franco, which is an early 80s YA-ish novel about a girl who plays piano and first romance. I think it is meant to be a serious coming-of-age tale but I found its handling of mental illness problematic, although it may well have been good for the time.

I am reading two Joan Aiken books for children at once -- one is More Than You Bargained For, a 1957 collection of short stories, some of which I have read elsewhere, and the other is The Kingdom and the Cave which is thus far written from the POV of a palace cat who is just now, some chapters in, admitting it might be good to have a human to help with unravelling the local mysteries. They are both enjoyable and I am considering trying my daughter on them, although they might be too slow-paced for her tastes.

In adult fiction I am about halfway through The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan, which is a multivoiced novel about rural Ireland after the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, focusing in and around a murder and the assumed murderer. It is very, very good, and unless it somehow falls apart in the second half it is goiing to be one of the best things I have read thus far in the year.

Finally, I am reading graydon's second novel (A Succession of Bad Days) just like I read the first -- a few pages each night before I sleep -- but with perhaps triple the enjoyment, as people learning how to do sorcery is one of my best beloved things to read about when it is done anything like well, and this does it extremely well indeed.

I am not even trying to list my upcoming, it is too hard to pick and choose, they will just appear as they do, like mushrooms.

Long, long ago I posted about how I was watching Absolute Duo, and I still am. It is very much the sort of thing a teenage boy might enjoy, with a lot of exciting combat and people summoning weapons out of their bodies and evil organisations plotting against one another, all of it tied together by the fact that people fight as pairs -- thus Duo -- and the pairs are intensely emotional relationships, since they rely on one another to survive. Writing it out like that, this clearly goes back to my (well, someone's, perhaps not mine) obsession with the Stepsons in the Thieves World anthologies oh those many years ago when such things were being written -- I do not remember it in much detail since it is 30 years on, but there were male mercenaries who worked in pairs, right-side leader and left-side follower (and perhaps also sword and shield?) and some of the pairs were lovers and there was much excitement and drama and angst about who was paired with whom, how they were loyal or betrayed, what it meant that the immortal god-warrior paired with a particular unlikely someone (a mage?) whom others thought might be unworthy... as I try to write about it all the names come flooding back, people loved it dearly in our early teens. So while Absolute Duo is not marvelous, there is enough in it to engage and feed the imagination, and while the amount of fanservice is not appreciated, it is also not to the point where we cannot ignore it to focus on the things that are more interesting. I have just finished episode 8, so it is moving in towards its climax, and while it is not something I would likely watch on my own, it is pleasant with the overlay of the particular teenage boy in our system who enjoys it.

I would like to write more but really, I must, must read a little bit to settle myself and then sleep.

It has been a phenomenally busy last few weeks, with Spring Break (trampoline park, playdate at bounce houses, day-long family beach/boardwalk trip), a succession of bad colds (really only one bad cold but we took turns having it, spouse is still in the last stages of it), a camping trip for the Girl Scouts with all the associated preparation and anxiety, a slew of extra time at the school for performances (adorable) and picnic lunches (pleasant) and Earth Day events (crowded but fun), the various holidays (Pesach and Easter) and oh yes, somewhere in there I did the taxes and other such housekeeping tasks which are necessary but time-consuming.

Now, at last, it is a Monday and I do not have anything scheduled for the day until I pick up the children after school. I have a plate with raisin toast and a slightly dry blood orange, a cup of coffee with more available if I wish it, and a refrigerator absolutely bursting with leftovers so that I will not need to make lunch or dinner. It is sunny outside but not yet hot and my immune system seems to have reached a truce with the pollen so I can have the windows open as I sit here writing and reading and thinking and listening to music. I am looking forward to catching up with all of your days; I have missed this space.

Life is continuing apace with the usual things in it; I have dealt with another round of upset stomachs, organised and run another Girl Scout meeting, attended one child's concert, helped the other child finish her large project which is due tomorrow (and which she did admirably on both in planning and execution), and in the cracks between read a little and watched some American Idol. Sleep is still very lacking but spring break is next week, and I am not ill this time, so hopefully it will be a good mix of fun things with my children and getting to sleep later than usual because it is vacation and we do not have to be anywhere at specific times. Spouse is recovering by leaps and bounds and it is very pleasant seeing his playful side return as he feels better & better post-surgery.

Smol daughter and I did another farmer's market run on Sunday and acquired more grapefruit, some beautiful little cherry/plum tomatoes, fava beans for my spouse (they are one of his favourites), and five baby plants: a jalapeno, a farmer's eggplant, a Hungarian magyar pepper (suitable for drying and grinding for sweet paprika but I will doubtless just eat them raw), a Black Beauty tomato and a Haley's Purple Comet tomato -- this last one is smaller, the Black Beauty fairly large. When we got home we had lunch on a blanket in the backyard by smol son's request, then weeded our planter box and large pots and planted the various seedlings. I am hoping they do well.

Actually upon a Wednesday! Will wonders never cease?

Recently Finished
The Anatomical Shape of a Heart by Jenn Bennett -- There was a lot that I enjoyed about this, but in the end I found myself irritated that the heroine did not have any friends (so that the plot rotated entirely around the love interest), and even more irritated that there was a character with schizophrenia used as plot furniture, especially since I did not recognise Bennett's take on schizophrenia as accurate. I would still try another of hers, but grrr.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson -- A mostly successful modern middlebrow, although I would have liked to see an actual conversation between our middle-aged romantic leads (one of whom is of Pakistani descent) about the overt racism they are encountering in the course of their romance. On the other hand, Simonson clearly knows it is there and has the female lead speak to it, and a direct conversation about it would be out of character for both of them, so all in all I would say it is promising and I am looking forward to her second novel, although based solely on the title (The Summer Before the War) I think it must be historical rather than contemporary, so I am wondering if she will introduce period issues around race, gender and class, or will it be purely cosy?

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse -- I appreciate so much that Roanhorse is writing from her own cultural traditions, but this type of urban fantasy is not at all my genre. I am glad I finished it so that I may talk with people about it, but I do not think I will read the next.


On the Go
A Gilded Vanity by Richard Dehan -- The various rich people continue to scheme and marry for money and figure out how to compromise young titled Scotsmen so that rich marriages can occur and there's at least one secret marriage waiting until the woman reaches 21 so they can announce it to the world, and the various older women are as clueless as Emma in the titular film about who is actually involved with whom, and the prose continues to be so purple it is nearly ultraviolet. I am still enjoying it very much because I do not have to take a single word seriously.

The March North by Graydon Saunders -- This will be on the go for a while, I hope, because I am reading this two or three pages at a time each night before bed, and it is marvelous. It falls into the same category as Karr's At Amberleaf Fair despite being a different sort of book on most every axis, so now I am reconsidering what category that is -- I used to call it 'books in which nothing happens' but now I think it is 'books with something interesting on every page'. I foresee a post about this category sometime in my future.

What Matters in Jane Austen by John Mullan -- Mullan is asking small & deliberate questions of Austen's books, such as "which characters are seen and never allowed to speak?", and I am finding the results interesting. He does not have an overarching thesis, all of this is not done in support of a central goal, but that is part of what I am enjoying in it, because the individual questions yield their own small fruits.

Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley -- I finally started on this after having it about to go for months and am delighted to discover that it is (at least in part) about Wallis Simpson! I am only 100 pages in thus far but feeling enthusiastic about it; the combination of layered levels of story and historical fiction about the 1930s containing people I previously researched at length is wonderful, and Findley is a remarkable writer on the sentence level for me.

Lisa & Co. by Jilly Cooper is absolute cotton candy from the late 1960s and thus has bizarre gender and sexual assumptions on every page; I am reading it like speculative fiction, alternately intrigued and appalled by the world-building.

Upcoming
I have a few books of Leonard Cohen's poetry, from early in his career before he had settled into life as a songwriter, and I am looking forward to them.

Villain by Yoshida Shuuichi is a mystery translated from the Japanese and has also been on my TBR forever, so it is definitely coming next unless the stress takes such a turn that I cannot read any novels in which bad things happen to anyone.

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie! Except it is going to be another 'something interesting on every page' book so I might wait until I finish the Saunders above, except when I do finish the Saunders I will want to read the second and third of them, so... I am not sure. I want to read this so that I can join in the conversation but also I want to savor it, decisions decisions.

There are any number of other possibilities but they will not coalesce until I move through some of the ones I am working on right now. How delightful it is to think I will never run out of books!

Saturday, and I am a little sore and tired but on the whole well, and although it is brisk outside it is sunny, pleasant after some days of rain, and dry enough that my children are even now out back playing. A friend just had a birthday and is coming over tonight so we (mostly spouse) are making turkey chili and a diabetic-friendly chocolate cream pie for him, along with cake for other people and goat ribs because smol daughter and I have been doing weekly farmer's market trips on Sundays and last week we bought goat.

After ordering the BPAL imps last night I remembered that long ago a friend had given me a scent that had not particularly worked for her, so I went and found it in my drawers -- it is The Hanging Gardens, discontinued in 2012 which says something about how long I have had this vial of it, but it still smells good although I would guess it has changed and faded over the time? The internet tells me that it is "date palm, ebony, fir, pomegranate, plum, two pears, quince, fig, and grapevine with plumeria, three gardenias and dry rose." I cannot sort out any of these scents from it, which I would assume is due to my lack of experience; to me it is just floral, although not overpoweringly so. I put some on my wrist and it was fine, fading over the day, but nothing special; I may wear it again while I wait for my order to come but I would not be buying it were it available.

However! I put some on my smol son's wrist for him to try, and on him it blazes to life, suddenly going from a sort of blur of pleasant flowery smells to something vibrant, like a stained glass window with the sun behind it, lots of reds and greens -- yes, I know this is visual, my sensory system does what it will, and what it did here was absolutely beautiful bright colours winding together. I said in shock, "It smells so much better on you than it does on me!" and he said, "Don't say that, it makes me feel bad for you!" And I said that he did not need to feel bad, that is was exciting to learn something new, and we smelled it on my wrists and then on his and then went about the business of his bedtime, but goodness, that was something; it is one thing to read about scents changing on people due to body chemistry and another thing to experience it so directly.

Tomorrow will be the farmer's market, and perhaps a very simple bread -- I have made bread in the bread machine, and breads which do not require kneading, but I would like to try a simple kneaded loaf -- and I must help smol daughter get started on the large school project which is due in two weeks; all the pieces have been acquired so now it is just the crafting, which she will do herself but I provide encouragement and companionship and finding the craft glue and such. I am also hoping we might make it out to the park tomorrow en famille, but I am not certain what the weather will do.

I have written this on and off through the day and now it is time to clean the table off for dinner!