minutia_r | Reading

Recent travel means that I haven't done much beyond keep up with my book club. (But there's a new Una Silberrad on Gutenberg, so maybe you'll hear about that next week.)

Chroniques Du Pays Des Mères, Élisabeth Vonarburg. So much is going on here, sometimes heavy, but with occasional comic relief. The secret ritual! Archaelogical expeditions! Ancient artifacts and books that are recognizable to the reader (and sometimes let us know that the protagonist has no idea what she is doing, Schliemann-style). Our protagonist is starting to learn that men are people too... We are clearly building up to a climax but I'm not exactly sure how it will play out.

yuuago

So I found myself thinking that I should read more poetry. Because my writing is at its best when I'm regularly reading poetry.

The problem is that I don't actually enjoy most poetry. In most cases I can find myself appreciating it from a technical point of view at best, but the vast majority of stuff I pick up leaves me completely cold.

But I should probably read more of it. For, like, skills reasons.

This thought came to me while I was eating some beets. My doctor has informed me that I should eat more beets for health reasons. Like, beets specifically, above all other vegetables. And so, I am dutifully eating more beets in more things, even though I don't actually want to eat them that often.

I feel like there are some parallels here.

delphi

Another theatrical streaming plug:

The pro-shot of The Importance of Being Earnest, starring Ncuti Gatwa, Sharon D. Clarke, and Hugh Skinner, will be streaming on Youtube from March 12th to 18th!

Watch on YouTube

A bit from the show:

Watch on YouTube

National Theatre at Home has been one of my favourite streaming services for a long time now, with the way it bring UK theatre to someone like me (not in the UK, also not living in a place that gets much in the way of touring shows), and I'm really happy they're releasing this one for free on a bigger platform.

delphi

If anyone's interested in checking out some queer comedy theatre with a slate of great trans and gnc performers:

The Joy Who Lived: March 31st to April 12th

You can find a list of shows by date or you can browse by category. Shows are running both in person in Los Angeles and as live streaming events that are also available to view up to two weeks afterwards. I tuned in a while back for their fundraising show, a chaotic live runthrough of the Ocean's 11 script called Gender Heist, and it was a heck of a good time.

osprey_archer

I’m posting Wednesday Reading Meme a day early this week, as tomorrow I am heading out on my Massachusetts trip! Not planning to take my computer with me so probably will not post until I return, bearing news of a Katherine Hepburn film festival, fancy tea at the Boston Public Library, and (if all goes well) a visit to a maple sugaring operation.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Eliza Orne White’s I, the Autobiography of a Cat, a charming book from 1941, with adorable illustrations by Clarke Hutton (one features a cat batting at an ink pen; cats never change). A cat tells us about his life with a lovely old lady in her beautiful home, where our cat accompanies her on her daily walks around the veranda. (She is blind so uses the veranda rail as a guide, and he walks ahead so she can stroke him from time to time.) Delightful. Always happy to read another book in cat POV. My main contemporary source is Japanese works in translation, but there was clearly a boom in this sort of thing in mid-century American children’s publishing.

I also finished E. Nesbit’s The Wouldbegoods, which perhaps suffered very slightly because I didn’t read The Treasure Seekers first (mostly because I spent the entire book wondering “Who is Albert and why are the Bastables staying with his uncle?”) but overall a pleasant read about children getting up to shenanigans in Edwardian England. Loved the bit where the children decide to walk to Canterbury like the pilgrims of old.

What I’m Reading Now

Zipping through Sarah Tolmie’s The Fourth Island, which is a delight! There is a fourth (magical) island of Aran, where lost people wash up from time to time, and the locals help them build houses and fit into the local community. A little bit Dinotopia although without the dinosaurs.

What I Plan to Read Next

Plotting my trip reading! I have four books on my Kindle: Patricia C. Wrede’s Caught in Crystal, Andrea K. Host’s Stray, George Gissing’s New Grub Street, and Kaje Harper’s Nor Iron Bars a Cage.

osprey_archer

We begin Hornblower and the Hotspur with Horatio Hornblower standing at the altar with his blushing bride Maria, desperately informing himself that they’re not married just yet! There’s still time to run for it! Only he can’t bring himself to commit the cruel act of leaving her at the altar, so instead he stands there like a lump and gets married.

This is one of the most inexplicable marriages I’ve ever encountered in fiction. It appears that Maria confessed her love for Hornblower and Hornblower was unable to think of any response except “Will you marry me?”, despite the fact that he doesn’t love her, in fact doesn’t think he should ever marry, and lives in dread of passing his temperament on to his children. (I should note that he is in no way honor bound to her before the wedding: she’s not pregnant with his child and he didn't seduce her. He didn't even flirt with her! He just existed in her general vicinity and she fell for him.)

He then spends the rest of the book asking himself “What would a good husband do?” and then enacting the part of a good husband, in much the way that he sometimes enacts the part of a good captain.

littlerhymes and I discussed many possible explanations for Hornblower’s behavior, none of which were entirely satisfactory, but to be fair, what WOULD be a satisfactory explanation?

1. Hornblower is a deeply closeted gay man who is marrying Maria for reasons of social pressure. However, there seem to be plenty of bachelors in the Navy, so it’s unclear how much social pressure he would actually be experiencing, especially since he seems to have no family clamoring for grandchildren/an heir.

(Whether or not he’s gay, there is alas little evidence here that he sees Bush as more than an excellent lieutenant, although Bush is clearly still nuts about Hornblower. The bit where Hornblower fails to mention his own act of heroism in a letter to the Gazette and Bush is like “It isn’t RIGHT, sir.” And also the bit where Bush is tells Hornblower he’s worried about Hornblower’s health and Hornblower is like who cares about this SACK of MEAT that is my BODY.)

2. Hornblower is SO deeply repressed that he can’t cope with the fact that he is experiencing the weakness of having a human emotion (“love”), but actually does love Maria on some level. He keeps feeling surprising upswellings of tenderness for her. Also, he castigates himself severely every time he DOES experience an emotion (or also human weaknesses like “sleepiness” or “hunger”), which I feel has probably damaged his ability to recognize emotions at all.

But even if he loves her, he clearly doesn’t have a lot of respect for her. Might love her purely in the sense of feeling an animal attraction, and also gratitude for the fact that someone cares about him? He muses at one point that it’s strange to be going to sea with someone on land who gives a damn about him.

3. Hornblower doesn’t think that he deserves nice things, so he marries Maria to make sure that he will have a wife who is ill-suited to him, as he deserves.

Oh, also there are some sea battles and stuff. Hornblower is sent with the fleet to capture some Spanish ships carrying a fortune and then has to hare off chasing another ship at the opportune moment so he doesn’t get a share of the massive amount of prize money. But then the Crown takes the money anyway so he actually would have gotten nothing even if he had been there.

I’m pretty sure these Spanish treasure ships formed the basis for a similar incident near the end of Post Captain, only you better believe Jack Aubrey was on hand to win his part of the prize money. I finished Post Captain confident than Jack could pay off his debts and marry Sophie, but now it looks like maybe he won’t be getting the money after all…?

We will find out in HMS Surprise, but not for about a week, as I am setting off on a trip to Massachusetts on Wednesday!

littlerhymes and I will resume our sailing voyages once I return.

yuuago

Saw somebody refer to Squidgeworld Archive as "Squidward" and now I will never be able to read it as anything else for the rest of my days.

delphi

Fandom 50 #2

Continuing my list of fifty Canadian songs I love from the past fifty years, here's 1978's:

Trinque l'amourette by La Bottine Souriante

Watch on YouTube

delphi

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

shadaras

mm, in service of Remembering To Post, a bit from the thing I'm working on right now:

Quail and Olive’s does serve both quail and olives, but turns out to be named for the proprietors, a married Orcish couple who tease them about being on a date until Rhei waves their hands and says “We’re friends” in an exasperated tone that, wonder of wonders, convinces them it’s true.

Later, most of what Mouse remembers is that Rhei keeps pushing more onto Mouse’s plate and hands them the wrapped bag of leftovers—“to share with your father”—because they had ordered far more than it was possible for two people to eat. Mouse doesn’t remember the taste, just the warm light and the way Rhei banters with Olive and smiles at Mouse, including them even though Mouse barely speaks aloud, too overwhelmed by the richness of the food and the way they’re assumed to be a person and not a slave.

Rhei leads them back through Adrium’s streets, calling a glowing orb to their hand to light their path. At Mouse’s start—Adrium is not a city of mages but a city of merchants—Rhei says, “Elf blood,” rather apologetically. “El sighs over the odd array of spells I’ve learned to cast, but light is useful and not too hard.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Mouse says, because Rhei seems to expect some response.

“If you want to learn, you can. Not from me,” Rhei adds a moment later, laughing. “I’d be shit at teaching magic. But Tsarra—she’s the magic-user on retainer at the House—or El probably could teach you the basics. Don’t worry about it right now, there’s no rush, but— It’s an option, should you desire it.”

Desire is something too big for Mouse to consider right now. They’ve desired little things in the past—clean new clothes, a full night’s rest, a piece of cake—but the only big thing they could think of is the freedom they have just begun to attain. They nod, say nothing, and let the strange feeling of possibility bubble through their chest. It feels like anxiety and anticipation, and Mouse can’t look too closely at anything but the longing to see their father again.

(otherwise: work is work, school takes too much time and is sometimes very visibly "we need to say you've been in this building for X number of hours" more than "we have specific things to teach you", and Daylight Savings Time stealing an hour throws off my bodyclock so much.)

jadelennox

I am enjoying this Clarkesworld subscription. Snail mail once a month full of stories! And my favorite part of the subscription has been the recurring Morag and Seamus stories by Fiona Moore (all free online). I believe it's every one of her Clarkesworld stories from "The Spoil Heap" on. The list on the site is reverse chronological, so if you want to read in order, scroll down to "The Spoil Heap" and read up from there.

While very different, they remind me in vibe of Naomi Kritzer's "The Year Without Sunshine". One of my difficulties with some hopepunk is that it can ignore hard truths—which, I admit, is sometimes what I want! But like "The Year Without Sunshine", the Morag and Seamus stories don't pretend mutual aid can create Abundance™️, or outcompete bad and selfish actors, or defeat natural disasters, or solve medical and ability needs, or create entire post-scarcity planets or large societies where goodness reigns. In fact, the Morag and Seamus stories specifically roll their eyes at people who think we can achieve fully automated luxury gay space communism.

They're just about people (and possibly robots) figuring their shit out, in myriad ways. Some are helpers and some aren't; some make family in all kind of ways; nobody's sure what the future holds. Helpers beget helpers, greed begets problems, the world moves on, Morag and Seamus grow potatoes in Wales.

delphi

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

jadelennox

I was writing up a navel-gazing post about grief (tl;dr turned out I think "oh MM would like that!" more often than I would have suspected) and it somehow spiraled into how I could make beautiful and accessible no-Javascript footnotes CSS given the Dreamwidth CSS restrictions. This resulted in me, among other things, reading the DW codebase to see all the CSS restrictions, and then finally after a couple of hours getting my perfect CSS, even though it's completely useless because it will only work when reading in my journal style.

(ETA: That's only because I'm being a perfectionist about placement for the purposes of this exercise, and DW doesn't allow absolute positioning in inline HTML.)

(Also even making this post resulted in me reading the code for Perl's Text::Markdown since I couldn't remember which code block syntax it used.

Hyperfixation FTW!

( CSS, FWIW )

resonant

( Cut for pet death )

yuuago

Things I did this evening:

- Got a vaccination for tetanus and Hep A/B because I was outdated on both
- Ordered takeout for the first time ever
- Cleaned my fountain pen because it was skipping a bit
- Zoned out for an hour while trying to make my grocery list

I think it'll be an early bedtime tonight.

skygiants

Sometimes you read a book at exactly the wrong time, and you're like 'god this stupid big fat fantasy novel. Why are you six hundred pages. Why is everybody Sexy. What's the point of you. I'm tired' and sometimes you read a book at exactly the right time and you're like 'thank god! actual worldbuilding!! somebody had a good time getting weird with this! please tell me more about how weird you're getting!!' and I think I could easily have gone either way on Tessa Gratton's The Mercy Makers depending on the four books I'd read just previous as well as the time of the moon. But as it happened, at the point I read it I was really hungering for something, ANYTHING that felt like it actually cared about depicting a unique and distinctive society with characters that felt like they actually belonged in that society, and The Mercy Makers gave me that in spades, so I ended up really high on it! I had a great time! Please understand that I mean it lovingly when I say that it felt like a visual novel high fantasy dating sim!

-- this is a bit disingenuous for me to say, I haven't actually played more than a bit of any of the long visual novel high fantasy dating sims I'm thinking of, but I have read extensively through

alias_sqbr's write-ups of them and the book profoundly reminded me of something like [

alias_sqbr's description of] My Vow To My Liege, where a player character has to play a lot of really dramatic political games to decide the fate of the kingdom, while surrounded by Hot People, and different elements of the plot will play out depending on which Hot Person she's closest to --

Okay, so we are in a fantasy empire that is built around a central religion that values Balance and forbids Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques. Our heroine Iriset, of course, is an atheist who's wildly gifted with Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques, and is also the daughter of a criminal mastermind. Iriset and her father have carefully crafted a secret identity illusion so that everyone thinks that someone else is the Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery Mad Scientist Genius and that the famous criminal mastermind's daughter is just a nice girl who's not really involved, so that when her father eventually gets arrested -- as indeed is the inciting incident of this book -- Iriset can hopefully stay free and rescue him instead of also getting arrested herself as a famous magical heretic.

For some reason, however, after her father's arrest, Iriset -- whom everyone knows is a criminal heiress but, once again, thinks is a nice and sweet criminal heiress who's not really involved, rather than an amoral heretic mad scientist -- is sort of non-consensually invited to become one of the handmaidens of the Emperor's hot sister as part of complex political schemes, so she spends the rest of the book in the palace, where she meets the following hot people:

- the Emperor, an earnest and well-intentioned young man who is really devoutly religiously dedicated to maintaining the Balance of the Status Quo
- the Emperor's sister, Iriset's boss, whose job as per official tradition for the Emperor's sibling is to be a priestess who placates the religion's divine devil-figure by going and being really sexy at a shrine every day, but has political visions and ambitions for the Empire far beyond her Sexy Role
- the Emperor's fiancee, a very sweet princess from neighboring island kingdom, who is a fundamental element of the Emperor's sister's overarching plans for an empire that expands through marriage alliance instead of conquest
- a mysterious, suffering, untrustworthy fairy sort of creature who has been publicly imprisoned behind the Emperor's throne for the past several hundred years and is now just sort of a standard part of the decor

In addition to these obviously romanceable characters, Iriset also has an existing criminal boyfriend on the outside of the palace who she's attempting to get in touch with and coordinate with about Operation Rescue Her Dad, and she also meets a palace maid and a fantasy-nonbinary magical architect (uses one of several archaic gender forms) who in the dating sim version of this would probably be secret or hidden routes.

The first, like, two hundred pages or so of this six hundred page book are mostly just Iriset wandering around the palace, trying not to be too obviously a heretical mad scientist, building various schemes for father-rescue and trying not to get distracted by much she would quite like to bang any or all of these hot people. And, again, at another time I might have gotten bored, but at this point in time I was really just enjoying the slow rich worldbuilding. It's weird! It's interesting! Everyone always wears elaborate masks and facepaint except for the foreign princess who's confused by the whole system, and we've reinvented a different kind of four humors system so everybody's like 'well of course she would act this way, she's got too much ecstatic force in her system', and the political conversation about marriage reform refers to the law that forbids conquered peoples within the Empire from marrying within their own ethnic group for a certain number of generations, and there are several archaic genders that are no longer used and people have chat about how actually we should bring them back because two is an imbalanced number and four would be much more balanced -- what I'm trying to get at is that it feels like the people in this book think in ways that are shaped by their world, and not by ours. The plot in its actual happenings is constantly contriving itself so that Iriset will be pushed into a position where, eventually, she'll have to Rebel Against Empire, but the thought patterns that get us there feel distinctive and grounded in the world and setting that Gratton has built.

But eventually, of course, we are going to have to get some plot and it is obviously going to have to involve Chekhov's Heretical Plastic Surgery and messy identity porn. ( the rest is spoilers )

delphi

Fandom 50 #1

I'm trying another March to March round of Fandom 50 (the challenge where you try to make fifty themed posts in a year), and this time around I thought I'd focus on Canadian music. As a bit of extra fun for myself, I'm going to try to find one song I love per year from the past fifty years—and as it happens, 1977 gave us one of my all-time faves.

We're Here for a Good Time (Not a Long Time) by Trooper

Watch on YouTube

yuuago

All right! Bidding is open in the FTH charity auction! Hooray. It closes 8PM EST March 07.

My offering page is over here and as a reminder I'm offering up to 5k of Hetalia, Promare, and basically any fandom I've written before.

The list of all fandoms is over here if you want to see what else is on offer.

Very excited! I haven't done much browsing yet; only bid on one thing, and was outbid almost immediately. Will have to take a closer look once I have a moment. :V

osprey_archer

A wild episode of Books I’ve Abandoned appears! I kept on slogging through Maeve Binchy’s A Few of the Girls on the grounds that it’s a short story collection and therefore might eventually cough up a story I like, but finally decided it was just too many downer stories about people in bad friendships and bad marriages and bad adulterous relationships.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Getting my St. Patrick’s Day on with Eve Bunting’s St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning, which I actually picked up on account of the illustrator, Jan Brett. This was one of Brett’s earliest books and the publishers clearly gave her a very limited palette to work with, just black and white and yellow and green (and a yellow saturated to the point of orange for the Irish flag). She does the best with what she has, but how fortunate for us all she has more colors to work with in her later books!

But her characteristic attention to detail is still visible here: the stone walls in the green fields, the multitude of toothsome sweets in the Mrs. Simms’ Half-Way-Up Sweetshop, the sleepy boy and his sleepy dog curled up in the rocking chair once they’ve walked all the way up Acorn Mountain and all the way back in their very own St. Patrick’s Day parade.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve begun E. Nesbit’s The Wouldbegoods, and am happy to report I find the Bastables much less stressful than the children in The Phoenix and the Carpet, possibly because the Bastables don’t have a magic carpet that might just strand them in Outer Mongolia. Capable of getting up to plenty of mischief without magical aid however! They are about to fill a lock to float a barge, under the impression that this will be a good deed, but I strongly suspect that the barge is simply going to float away downstream.

What I Plan to Read Next

My coworker lent me John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis.

jadelennox

by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Do not care if you bring only your light body.

Would just be so happy to sit at the table

and talk about the menu. Miss you.

Wish we could bet which chilis they’ll put

on the cubes of tofu. Our favorite.

Sometimes green. Sometimes red. Roasted

we always thought. But so cold and fresh.

How did they do it? Wish you could be here

to talk about it like it was so important.

Wish you could. Watched you on the screens

as I was walking, as I was cooking. Wished you

could get out of the hospital. Can’t

bring myself to order our dish and eat it

in the car. Miss you laughing. Miss

you coming in from the cold or one

too many meetings. Laughing. I’ll order

already. I’ll order seven helpings, some

dumplings, those cold yam noodles that you

like. You can come in your light

body or skeleton or be invisible I don’t even

care. Know you have a long way to travel.

Know I don’t even know if it’s long

at all. Wish you could tell me. What

you’re reading. If you’re reading.

Miss you. I’m at the table in the back.

(via.)

Current Mood: And I am not resigned.

Profile

minutia_r

November 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30

Page Summary

landofnowhere - wednesday books have been away
yuuago - I GUESS
delphi - The Importance of Being Earnest - Streaming March 12-18
delphi - The Joy Who Lived
osprey_archer - Wednesday Reading Meme on Tuesday
osprey_archer - Book Review: Hornblower and the Hotspur
yuuago - (no subject)
delphi - Post and Jam: Trinque l'amourette by La Bottine Souriante (1978)
delphi - Six Sentence Sunday
shadaras - it's the vibe of a sunday six even if it's more than six sentences
jadelennox - short fiction rec: Morag and Seamus stories
delphi - What I'm Reading: Rivages lointains | Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Anaïs Flogny (2023)
jadelennox - ADHD with the knockout 🎉
resonant - Cat farewell
yuuago - (no subject)
skygiants - (no subject)
delphi - Post and Jam: We're Here for a Good Time (Not a Long Time) by Trooper [1977]
yuuago - FTH offerings - Bidding open
osprey_archer - Wednesday Reading Meme
jadelennox - Poem: "Miss you. Would like to grab that chilled tofu we love."

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Mar. 12th, 2026 03:52 am