books and trivia
Oct. 3rd, 2025 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomiMany thanks for help and advice in my previous post. Of course as soon as I told myself I would start on query letters, a ton of day-job work fell on my head (not that I can complain, but still), but I am trying to move a little forward every day.
Orchestra news. For a while I was kind of dreading it, because of the senior bassoonist, an older lady who nagged me unmercifully about all the things I was doing wrong. She was quite right! And also she wasn’t doing it to be unkind, she was genuinely well-intentioned and concerned with helping me improve, but I found it very stressful and unwelcoming. So one week she texted me and said “can we talk before rehearsal tomorrow” and I thought, oh dear, she’s going to suggest I leave the orchestra because I’m just not good enough. So I went, full of trepidation, and the first thing out of her mouth was “Actually I’m leaving the orchestra.” (I was good, I didn’t say “what do you mean you’re leaving?!”) So she has moved on for reasons of her own, and we parted friends, and now I have some last-minute Dvorak Sixth (or Doboroku as it’s called among Japanese musicians) parts to learn. I can’t play the damn thing, but it’s a wonderful piece, an old friend from way back, and the second bassoon part is full of delicious low notes and it’s extremely exhilarating (and exhausting, but never mind that). Wish me luck, sigh.
If you are (by whatever definition) multilingual, how does your brain sort out what languages you think in when? I’ve never sat down and analyzed it, but I think I’m pretty predictable, English is my baseline, drifting into and out of Japanese depending on context and convenience. (When visiting my mom this summer, I had to have various practical conversations with people like electricians, bank tellers, and so on, and I kept rehearsing them in my head in Japanese and then reminding myself that no, they would actually take place in English.) Chinese creeps in here and there around the edges; more than once in moments of minor frustration I’ve caught myself saying “Aiyaaa mō!” which is Chinese and Japanese garbled together (but expresses my feelings very well). (The farmboys have also been helpful in providing innocuous but satisfying Chinese phrases for these moments, from 我真服了 to 完蛋了 and 玩儿呢!)
Music: Fourth movement of the Schubert Great symphony, which starts with a breath-holding “something is about to happen!” feeling and quickly moves into straight-up excitement. (For those who liked the Beethoven jazz a couple posts ago, I feel like Schubert gets into his own version here, even if not quite as syncopated, complete with walking bass.)
Jiang Dunhao song of the post: 轻轻 sung live, a folk-song-ish original lovely to listen to (and look at).
The overlap between Chinese and Japanese can occasionally be comical. A-Pei was very amused by the names of a couple of Japanese baseball players I passed on to her, 太贵 and 好贵, in Japanese the quite ordinary male first names Daiki (or Taiki) and Yoshiki (or Yoshitaka), in Chinese respectively “too expensive” and “quite expensive.” We haven’t found Chinese names that sound equally bizarre in Japanese yet, but I’m sure there are some.
Stack of new books! Behind cut: Brenchley, Cook, Edwards, Harrod-Eagles, Matuku, Samatar, Wells, Whiteley/Langmead.
Photos: One butterfly and some (?) goya vines, plus many from a visit to an ex-brothel. Y and I went on a tour of this beautiful old building which is now a fancy restaurant; the neighborhood around it has been a red-light district for a century and is not friendly to passing strangers with no business there (not in the sense of dangerous as far as I know, but you’ll get glared at, and the tour guide warned us not to stare rudely or take photographs on the street). The building itself was restored a few years back and is now stunning inside; don’t miss the sleeping cat imitating the one at Nikko Toshogu, or the round flower inlays (with mother-of-pearl), which are on the ceiling, luckily it’s a tatami room so you can just lie down on the floor and gaze. 
Be safe and well.
Orchestra news. For a while I was kind of dreading it, because of the senior bassoonist, an older lady who nagged me unmercifully about all the things I was doing wrong. She was quite right! And also she wasn’t doing it to be unkind, she was genuinely well-intentioned and concerned with helping me improve, but I found it very stressful and unwelcoming. So one week she texted me and said “can we talk before rehearsal tomorrow” and I thought, oh dear, she’s going to suggest I leave the orchestra because I’m just not good enough. So I went, full of trepidation, and the first thing out of her mouth was “Actually I’m leaving the orchestra.” (I was good, I didn’t say “what do you mean you’re leaving?!”) So she has moved on for reasons of her own, and we parted friends, and now I have some last-minute Dvorak Sixth (or Doboroku as it’s called among Japanese musicians) parts to learn. I can’t play the damn thing, but it’s a wonderful piece, an old friend from way back, and the second bassoon part is full of delicious low notes and it’s extremely exhilarating (and exhausting, but never mind that). Wish me luck, sigh.
If you are (by whatever definition) multilingual, how does your brain sort out what languages you think in when? I’ve never sat down and analyzed it, but I think I’m pretty predictable, English is my baseline, drifting into and out of Japanese depending on context and convenience. (When visiting my mom this summer, I had to have various practical conversations with people like electricians, bank tellers, and so on, and I kept rehearsing them in my head in Japanese and then reminding myself that no, they would actually take place in English.) Chinese creeps in here and there around the edges; more than once in moments of minor frustration I’ve caught myself saying “Aiyaaa mō!” which is Chinese and Japanese garbled together (but expresses my feelings very well). (The farmboys have also been helpful in providing innocuous but satisfying Chinese phrases for these moments, from 我真服了 to 完蛋了 and 玩儿呢!)
Music: Fourth movement of the Schubert Great symphony, which starts with a breath-holding “something is about to happen!” feeling and quickly moves into straight-up excitement. (For those who liked the Beethoven jazz a couple posts ago, I feel like Schubert gets into his own version here, even if not quite as syncopated, complete with walking bass.)
Jiang Dunhao song of the post: 轻轻 sung live, a folk-song-ish original lovely to listen to (and look at).
The overlap between Chinese and Japanese can occasionally be comical. A-Pei was very amused by the names of a couple of Japanese baseball players I passed on to her, 太贵 and 好贵, in Japanese the quite ordinary male first names Daiki (or Taiki) and Yoshiki (or Yoshitaka), in Chinese respectively “too expensive” and “quite expensive.” We haven’t found Chinese names that sound equally bizarre in Japanese yet, but I’m sure there are some.
Stack of new books! Behind cut: Brenchley, Cook, Edwards, Harrod-Eagles, Matuku, Samatar, Wells, Whiteley/Langmead.
Chaz Brenchley, Rowany de Vere and a Fair Degree of Frost and Radhika Rages at the Crater School: Latest in the Crater School series. The Rowany novella is very slight and not very interesting, although I do enjoy her voice. Radhika is really fun, I think the best one so far; certainly it’s nice to see even one non-white character turn up, although I do feel like the setup suggests she would in fact run up against a lot worse than some well-intended microaggressions at school, but it is nice also to imagine a school where people are decent enough that that doesn’t happen. (Maybe next time around we could have, you know, non-Christian characters too, or some actual f/f?) Oh well, I love Radhika herself, complex and entertaining, and I love the ensemble cast. (I actually nominated this series for Yuletide, only nominations closed just a day or two before I read this installment…oh well.)
Ida Cook, The Bravest Voices: Courtesy of a post by cyphomandra. Autobiography in which two opera-obsessed English sisters, one a budding romance novelist, become friends with the great singers of their time and also save a large number of people from the Nazis, all improbable but all true. Ida’s voice is delightful (I’m sorry there wasn’t a chapter from her sister Louise, just to find out what her writing voice would have sounded like) and the opera parts are as fascinating as the rest, and inextricable. I think the best description is something like “Betsy and Julia Ray crossed with Naomi Mitchison in 1934 Vienna.”
Erin Edwards, Finding Hester: Also from somebody’s DW post but I can’t remember whose? Account of an online community’s successful attempt to track down Hester Leggatt, one of the people involved in the WWII Operation Mincemeat spy incident. It’s my period and I enjoyed it (and was envious and admiring of the research work), but felt that it was definitely written for people who have already read and/or seen Operation Mincemeat, given its wealth of details on background characters but very little about the incident and its principal players itself. Also I found the references to the Discord group a little tiresome; either take the traditional route and just keep the researcher(s) in the background of the text, or take steps to involve the reader more with the community (pocket introductions to the members, excerpted conversations, etc.). That said, the chapter which actually quotes Hester’s letters and diaries was a delight (reminding me a little of Olivia Cockett, another wartime civil servant with a mind of her own having an affair with a married man).
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Before I Sleep and Easeful Death: Latest two in a very long mystery series which is one of my comfort reads. Not a whole lot new and amazing, but as always the characters feel real, the language is good, and there are dumb puns. Not pleased with Atherton’s latest girlfriend, I think he should have stayed with Emily; on the other hand it’s delightful to see Slider’s daughter Kate coming into her own.
Steph Matuku, Migration: Also from cyphomandra. This felt like two or three distinct books jostling together, and I had trouble assimilating “interpersonal struggles at military high school” with “end and new beginning of the world, at great cost.” I think I would have gotten over that if I’d felt more invested in the characters. I liked Farah and most of her friends fine, but you never get to know them in the way of characters who live in your head later on, they’re sketched in such broad strokes and generalized characterizations, plus the minor characters sort of fade in and out of frame as if there was a limit to the page count each of them was allowed. That said, it is really interesting worldbuilding (which would probably be more meaningful to me if I knew NZ better), and you could make several more books out of the possibilities there. It occurred to me that the whole thing might work well as a ballet.
Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque: Beautifully written, sad, thoughtful memoir/essay about traveling with a Mennonite research tour in Central Asia and being half German-Swiss Mennonite and half Somali. Predictably, I enjoyed the meditations on language a lot, as well as the small details of the places she visits. “The Mennonite game”—figuring out, when one Mennonite meets another, what their degrees of separation are (usually very few) and how—is what I’d call a lovely piece of worldbuilding if it were fiction.
Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol and Exit Strategy: I think I was right to start from the end of the series, I didn’t enjoy these quite as much as the others I read, although I will probably go back to reread. My problem with Rogue Protocol in particular was that it’s either everyone in sight being unhappy and/or unnerved, or action scenes, or both, and “too many action scenes” is one of my perennial complaints about books I otherwise really like, see also Rivers of London. Exit Strategy suffers from the same action-scene thing, but I enjoyed it more because the characters are more fun; also I like the way Murderbot teaches itself new skills, sometimes deliberately and sometimes under stress, which build on each other as they come into use.
Aliya Whiteley and Oliver K. Langmead, City of All Seasons: Elegant writing and a satisfying ending, but not quite suited to my id; a little too fairy-tale-ish for me.
Ida Cook, The Bravest Voices: Courtesy of a post by cyphomandra. Autobiography in which two opera-obsessed English sisters, one a budding romance novelist, become friends with the great singers of their time and also save a large number of people from the Nazis, all improbable but all true. Ida’s voice is delightful (I’m sorry there wasn’t a chapter from her sister Louise, just to find out what her writing voice would have sounded like) and the opera parts are as fascinating as the rest, and inextricable. I think the best description is something like “Betsy and Julia Ray crossed with Naomi Mitchison in 1934 Vienna.”
Erin Edwards, Finding Hester: Also from somebody’s DW post but I can’t remember whose? Account of an online community’s successful attempt to track down Hester Leggatt, one of the people involved in the WWII Operation Mincemeat spy incident. It’s my period and I enjoyed it (and was envious and admiring of the research work), but felt that it was definitely written for people who have already read and/or seen Operation Mincemeat, given its wealth of details on background characters but very little about the incident and its principal players itself. Also I found the references to the Discord group a little tiresome; either take the traditional route and just keep the researcher(s) in the background of the text, or take steps to involve the reader more with the community (pocket introductions to the members, excerpted conversations, etc.). That said, the chapter which actually quotes Hester’s letters and diaries was a delight (reminding me a little of Olivia Cockett, another wartime civil servant with a mind of her own having an affair with a married man).
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Before I Sleep and Easeful Death: Latest two in a very long mystery series which is one of my comfort reads. Not a whole lot new and amazing, but as always the characters feel real, the language is good, and there are dumb puns. Not pleased with Atherton’s latest girlfriend, I think he should have stayed with Emily; on the other hand it’s delightful to see Slider’s daughter Kate coming into her own.
Steph Matuku, Migration: Also from cyphomandra. This felt like two or three distinct books jostling together, and I had trouble assimilating “interpersonal struggles at military high school” with “end and new beginning of the world, at great cost.” I think I would have gotten over that if I’d felt more invested in the characters. I liked Farah and most of her friends fine, but you never get to know them in the way of characters who live in your head later on, they’re sketched in such broad strokes and generalized characterizations, plus the minor characters sort of fade in and out of frame as if there was a limit to the page count each of them was allowed. That said, it is really interesting worldbuilding (which would probably be more meaningful to me if I knew NZ better), and you could make several more books out of the possibilities there. It occurred to me that the whole thing might work well as a ballet.
Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque: Beautifully written, sad, thoughtful memoir/essay about traveling with a Mennonite research tour in Central Asia and being half German-Swiss Mennonite and half Somali. Predictably, I enjoyed the meditations on language a lot, as well as the small details of the places she visits. “The Mennonite game”—figuring out, when one Mennonite meets another, what their degrees of separation are (usually very few) and how—is what I’d call a lovely piece of worldbuilding if it were fiction.
Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol and Exit Strategy: I think I was right to start from the end of the series, I didn’t enjoy these quite as much as the others I read, although I will probably go back to reread. My problem with Rogue Protocol in particular was that it’s either everyone in sight being unhappy and/or unnerved, or action scenes, or both, and “too many action scenes” is one of my perennial complaints about books I otherwise really like, see also Rivers of London. Exit Strategy suffers from the same action-scene thing, but I enjoyed it more because the characters are more fun; also I like the way Murderbot teaches itself new skills, sometimes deliberately and sometimes under stress, which build on each other as they come into use.
Aliya Whiteley and Oliver K. Langmead, City of All Seasons: Elegant writing and a satisfying ending, but not quite suited to my id; a little too fairy-tale-ish for me.
Photos: One butterfly and some (?) goya vines, plus many from a visit to an ex-brothel. Y and I went on a tour of this beautiful old building which is now a fancy restaurant; the neighborhood around it has been a red-light district for a century and is not friendly to passing strangers with no business there (not in the sense of dangerous as far as I know, but you’ll get glared at, and the tour guide warned us not to stare rudely or take photographs on the street). The building itself was restored a few years back and is now stunning inside; don’t miss the sleeping cat imitating the one at Nikko Toshogu, or the round flower inlays (with mother-of-pearl), which are on the ceiling, luckily it’s a tatami room so you can just lie down on the floor and gaze.
Be safe and well.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-03 03:22 pm (UTC)Mainly my brain is a fairly random mishmash of German and English, with some contexts being more on one side or the other because all my vocabulary is in one language. (If I want to talk about my job in English, or about transformative fandom in German, I have to think hard about my vocabulary; it doesn't come naturally. *g*) And some Chinese fragments, set phrases that creep in, yeah.
A-Pei was very amused by the names of a couple of Japanese baseball players I passed on to her, 太贵 and 好贵, in Japanese the quite ordinary male first names Daiki (or Taiki) and Yoshiki (or Yoshitaka), in Chinese respectively “too expensive” and “quite expensive.”
Hee! That is hilarious. :D
And those photos are amazing, what a gorgeous, gorgeous building! Are there pictures available online? I would love to see more of it.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-05 01:35 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, I know exactly how this works!
what a gorgeous, gorgeous building! Are there pictures available online?
This site https://hyakuban.jp/ is all in Japanese, but it should be visually gratifying!
no subject
Date: 2025-10-05 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-03 05:09 pm (UTC)Re: languages: I seem to have three drawers in my head. First, English, which is tidy and well-behaved. Then, Spanish, which comes to the forefront remarkably quickly when I am in a completely Spanish-speaking (or Italian-speaking, lol) environment (in Spanglish environments, which are also pretty common for me, English stays dominant and I often find myself wanting to listen in Spanish and respond in English -- something I've heard is common for "heritage speaker" kids of the third generation, which is interesting to me). The third drawer is "everything else," and it lives in chaos. It's kind of one big melange of words which my brain thinks might be useful in a situation where unfamiliar languages are being spoken. Trying to have a conversation in Hebrew, for example, means constantly reminding myself not to use Spanish grammar or Quechua vocabulary. It just doesn't seem to neatly tuck itself away down here at the third tier.
Delighted that you enjoyed The White Mosque! So many interesting stories packed in, all of which would honestly make good worldbuilding.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-04 03:43 am (UTC)Mostly it results in multilingual garble when I'm alone and trying to practice a language I'm deeply rusty in, or long awkward silences if I'm trying to produce a sentence for someone else and desperately shoving the wrong languages' words back into the bag to rummage again for the right ones.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-05 01:38 pm (UTC)yeah, in hindsight I don't think she would actually have asked me to leave, just because bassoonists are such a scarce resource that even bad ones are better than nothing, but it's certainly less stressful. and I'm so glad you like Dvorak 6!
in Spanglish environments, which are also pretty common for me, English stays dominant and I often find myself wanting to listen in Spanish and respond in English -- something I've heard is common for "heritage speaker" kids of the third generation, which is interesting to me
oh, this is fascinating! and yeah, I've encountered a number of second- and third-generation heritage-speaker kids who work that way.
The third drawer is "everything else," and it lives in chaos. It's kind of one big melange of words which my brain thinks might be useful in a situation where unfamiliar languages are being spoken. Trying to have a conversation in Hebrew, for example, means constantly reminding myself not to use Spanish grammar or Quechua vocabulary. It just doesn't seem to neatly tuck itself away down here at the third tier.
YES THIS. At various different times in my life I've been passably competent in both Korean and French, but now if I try to speak either one I have to fight down Japanese and/or Chinese first...
no subject
Date: 2025-10-03 08:46 pm (UTC)You'd already sold me on it, but this sealed the deal! I'm amused/charmed that the ebook is available from Mills & Boon.
The dial of my brain is stuck on English these days, but I used to default to Mandarin when counting -- an artefact of having done my early arithmetical education at Chinese school. The numbers also make better sense than in English, of course.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-05 01:40 pm (UTC)Let me know what you think! (Do you know from Betsy Ray, of Betsy-Tacy fame? I don't know how widely popular those books have been outside the US.)
I used to default to Mandarin when counting -- an artefact of having done my early arithmetical education at Chinese school. The numbers also make better sense than in English, of course.
True! I have the opposite effect--I mostly think in Japanese at orchestra rehearsal because that's what everyone is speaking, but I count rests and measure numbers in English automatically.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-04 03:37 am (UTC)Mostly English, but French creeps in here and there. It particularly does in work contexts, because I work with a lot of Francophones, and some of the websites and programs I use are in French. (I'm a French-to-English translator working from America but for a Canadian company where my particular team is all native English speakers but about 90% of the company is native French speakers translating English-to-French, and of course everyone in the company is bilingual or multilingual.) So, like, on my work computer I have my Word set in French, but on my personal computer I have it set in English, and I do find there are command paths I think of in French. Recently for various reasons I've been spending a lot of my work time in a Teams channel where everyone else uses mostly French, and that's definitely encouraged it to creep in. Anyway, there are some terms and phrases where the French floats to the surface more, or if I hear anyone speaking French (including on tv) it takes a certain amount of work to remember that I am not necessarily in a context where everyone will understand if I start drifting back and forth between languages, lol. It's like... I think primarily in English, but the French is generally right there to be dipped into, and if I've been using or hearing it I'll start dipping back and forth. Not so much for reading it, since when I'm reading it I'm generally translating into English at the same time, even if it's just mentally and recreationally.
There are other languages I've studied but speak much less well and don't spend every workday immersed in, and my brain doesn't do the same floating back and forth thing. But there are certain words and phrases that my brain has latched onto, and they'll slip into my thoughts occasionally too. Arabic, in particular. And I count on my fingers in ASL; I have to make a conscious effort to use both hands to mime a number to someone else.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-05 01:44 pm (UTC)it takes a certain amount of work to remember that I am not necessarily in a context where everyone will understand if I start drifting back and forth between languages, lol.
oh dear yeah, but those contexts are so much fun ;)
And I count on my fingers in ASL; I have to make a conscious effort to use both hands to mime a number to someone else.
oh, neat! Japanese has finger-counting for six to nine in a way that English doesn't do, and I had a lot of trouble not using it when I was in the US this summer. One-handed counting sounds very convenient, though.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-05 11:43 am (UTC)Well, the only ones I need every day are German and English, and they both just come out fluently, whenever I need them to. They tend to get mixed up a little, depending on topic, e.g. I cannot do fannish discussions in German, English words will creep in.
Whenever I need one of my less fluent languages, it very much depends on how much practice I've had and there's always a kind of adaptation period. E.g. if I suddenly need to talk French and have not heard any in a while, Chinese will jump ahead and I won't be able to think of any French words whatsoever. And vice versa. It'll usually take me a bit - less in personal conversation than if I just want to watch a movie or something - anything from five minutes to thirty minutes until my brain finally manages to unearth the right pathways, and I'll be more or less fine from there. (Still not fluent, that's the whole problem, lol. ;))
I was good, I didn’t say “what do you mean you’re leaving?!”
Lol. :D But good that she told you, and good that you are now free of a nagging neighbor in the orchestra. I remember having one squee-harshing neighbor in choir last year, and it was so annoying. I go there because the atmosphere is always uplifting, not to constantly get annoyed.
Good luck learning the new ... position?
Love the pictures! That's a very flowery brothel indeed! :D
no subject
Date: 2025-10-05 01:47 pm (UTC)Now I really want to hear what a fannish discussion among you and Dora and the other German speakers around here would look/sound like, lol. Lots of familiar words with extra capital Letters and German endings?? ;)
if I suddenly need to talk French and have not heard any in a while, Chinese will jump ahead and I won't be able to think of any French words whatsoever.
oh yes, this so much! I have this with Korean.
I go there because the atmosphere is always uplifting, not to constantly get annoyed.
Exactly! I'm doing this for fun, not to be obsessive about how well or badly I play. (She really was well-meaning, she wasn't trying to be a bully or anything, but it was still a lot.)
and thanks for good wishes!
no subject
Date: 2025-10-05 02:59 pm (UTC)My first instinct was to say no, but of course you're absolutely right. We use English words within a German sentence, so they do get declined the way they would be if they were German words. That is totally a thing. Although it's not eminently noticeable because foreign nouns are treated as mostly immutable, i.e. the main cases all sound the same, and you'd avoid using them in cases that would require declension, but it's less practicable with verbs, so those will have to flex whether they want to or not. :D So: in principle, yes.
Now that you mentioned that, I have a Polish colleague who writes down things she wants to ask me and I always get to see her notes when she does. It's all in Polish, with lots of English or German words thrown in, with Polish endings. It's funny to me. :D
no subject
Date: 2025-10-07 11:19 am (UTC)lol, nice turn of phrase! Explanation appreciated.
It's all in Polish, with lots of English or German words thrown in, with Polish endings.
I love this!
no subject
Date: 2025-10-28 11:04 pm (UTC)I'm glad you liked The Bravest Voices and I am very amused at the thought of Migration working better as a ballet (it definitely needs some major structural work).
Those flower inlays are incredible. Are they intended for the brothel staff to have something to stare at while working ? (!!!)
no subject
Date: 2025-10-29 01:36 pm (UTC)I am very amused at the thought of Migration working better as a ballet (it definitely needs some major structural work).
I don't know where that came from, I just thought, there are a lot of big physical set pieces and characters defined in broad strokes and big concepts, why not?
Those flower inlays are incredible. Are they intended for the brothel staff to have something to stare at while working ? (!!!)
That did occur to me! Honestly could not say (I didn't dare ask). But there was also a fancy inlaid ceiling in the downstairs room that I think had been an office/dining hall etc., so most likely just a kind of beautiful flex, if you will.