Possibly I read too much crime fiction....
Apr. 10th, 2026 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oursinBecause when I read this, I had Further Questions.
London pub thief sold £2.2m Fabergé egg and watch set to buy drugs
I am going, hello?
Enzo Conticello, 29, took the Givenchy bag belonging to Rosie Dawson as she stood in the smoking area of the Dog and Duck pub in Soho, London, on 7 November 2024.
Inside the £1,600 bag was an emerald-encrusted Fabergé egg and watch set belonging to Dawson’s employers, the Craft Irish Whiskey Company.
So, she had these items in her HANDBAG (going full Flora Robson as Lady Bracknell) and
went to the Dog and Duck pub in Soho. She was outside the premises in the designated smoking area, she put her handbag on the ground in between her legs, and a few minutes later she noticed her handbag was no longer there.
We observe that this was a £1,600 Givenchy bag, and while I do not think London is quite the crime-ridden hellhole some social media depicts, I might hang on to this a bit more carefully in Soho even did it not contain my employer's Fabergé.
Dawson had the Fabergé items because she had taken them for display at a work event earlier that evening.
Surely there ought to have been some kind of security procedure involved, like, 'take a taxi and put them back in the safe'?
(Am trying to think of any circumstances in which, in former days, would have been taking precious unique archival and manuscript items out of the building in the first place. When we had them out on display for visiting groups, they got put away pronto.)
I probably read too much crime fiction, but this reads like 'set-up for heist/insurance scam that went pearshaped'.
Holiday
Apr. 10th, 2026 08:41 amosprey_archerStill working on my reviews for the movies I saw over spring break! In my defense, we saw many movies - and it still wasn’t as many as I would have liked, as we only managed to hit up one of the films in the Kate the Great film festival at the Brattle.
However, that film was Holiday, starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, one of the all-time great Golden Age of Hollywood screen pairings. Genuinely shocked that I never saw or even heard of this movie before, given how much I love both of the stars.
However, this is perhaps just as well, since it was wonderful to see it for the first time on the big screen. Cary Grant is Johnny Case, a cheerful businessman who just got engaged to Julia, a girl he met a couple weeks ago at a ski resort. Katherine Hepburn is Julia’s disaffected little sister Linda, who Johnny meets for the first time when he visits Julia’s home… which happens to be the family mansion in the heart of Manhattan.
Yes, Johnny Case has been Crazy Rich Asianed. Going home to meet his fiancee’s family, he discovers they’re richer than God. After some initial doubts, however, the patriarch takes to Johnny, an up-and-coming one man with an extremely lucrative business deal in the pipeline. But then Johnny lets slip his true plan. Once he makes his packet, he plans to quit business and spend a few years traveling the world and finding himself.
Julia and father are appalled. What’s the point of making a huge amount of money except to use it to make yet huger amounts of money? But Linda, who is utterly miserable in her gilded cage, is fascinated. Here’s someone who really wants to live!
You can more or less guess the plot from there, but it’s still a delightful ride, with many excellent side characters. Linda and Julia’s drunk gay brother, like Linda miserable and unable to see a route to escape. Johnny’s friends the eccentric professor and his equally eccentric wife, a double act who easily morph into a triple act when Johnny’s on the scene. There’s a delightful moment when they’re singing “Camptown Races” with Linda, having a real good time in the attic while people pretend to have a good time at the huge stuffy engagement/New Year’s Eve party downstairs.
For a movie called Holiday, this is probably one of the least holiday-aesthetic Christmas/New Year’s movies I’ve ever seen. The characters keep commenting on the unusually warm weather they’re having, presumably to try to cover the fact that they are very obviously filming in southern California, and there’s very little in the way of Christmas trees or other decorations either.
However, as long as you don’t go into the movie expecting to get your Christmas on, it’s a fantastic time. Great chemistry between the leads, fantastic family dynamics, some more serious discussions about money and the meaning of life which give a bit of ballast to the levity. Just a jolly good all around time.
However, that film was Holiday, starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, one of the all-time great Golden Age of Hollywood screen pairings. Genuinely shocked that I never saw or even heard of this movie before, given how much I love both of the stars.
However, this is perhaps just as well, since it was wonderful to see it for the first time on the big screen. Cary Grant is Johnny Case, a cheerful businessman who just got engaged to Julia, a girl he met a couple weeks ago at a ski resort. Katherine Hepburn is Julia’s disaffected little sister Linda, who Johnny meets for the first time when he visits Julia’s home… which happens to be the family mansion in the heart of Manhattan.
Yes, Johnny Case has been Crazy Rich Asianed. Going home to meet his fiancee’s family, he discovers they’re richer than God. After some initial doubts, however, the patriarch takes to Johnny, an up-and-coming one man with an extremely lucrative business deal in the pipeline. But then Johnny lets slip his true plan. Once he makes his packet, he plans to quit business and spend a few years traveling the world and finding himself.
Julia and father are appalled. What’s the point of making a huge amount of money except to use it to make yet huger amounts of money? But Linda, who is utterly miserable in her gilded cage, is fascinated. Here’s someone who really wants to live!
You can more or less guess the plot from there, but it’s still a delightful ride, with many excellent side characters. Linda and Julia’s drunk gay brother, like Linda miserable and unable to see a route to escape. Johnny’s friends the eccentric professor and his equally eccentric wife, a double act who easily morph into a triple act when Johnny’s on the scene. There’s a delightful moment when they’re singing “Camptown Races” with Linda, having a real good time in the attic while people pretend to have a good time at the huge stuffy engagement/New Year’s Eve party downstairs.
For a movie called Holiday, this is probably one of the least holiday-aesthetic Christmas/New Year’s movies I’ve ever seen. The characters keep commenting on the unusually warm weather they’re having, presumably to try to cover the fact that they are very obviously filming in southern California, and there’s very little in the way of Christmas trees or other decorations either.
However, as long as you don’t go into the movie expecting to get your Christmas on, it’s a fantastic time. Great chemistry between the leads, fantastic family dynamics, some more serious discussions about money and the meaning of life which give a bit of ballast to the levity. Just a jolly good all around time.
Takebayashi Fumiko (1888-1966)
Apr. 10th, 2026 07:57 pmnnozomi posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
senzenwomenTakebayashi Fumiko was born in Ehime in 1888, where her father was a stationmaster; her maiden name was Nakahira. Her mother died when Fumiko was eight; her father remarried his late wife’s sister, who became a loving stepmother to Fumiko. When she was fifteen they moved to Kyoto, where she graduated from high school and attempted to elope with a medical student, getting only as far as the station. After that the family moved to Tokyo as Fumiko’s father was promoted; she considered answering an ad for newspaper reporters but was convinced by her family to give it up. She married a businessman and had three children before their divorce in 1912.
After studying acting with Tsubouchi Shoyo for a few months, she was hired as a reporter, writing under the pen name Nadeshiko; her first article was an interview with the actress Shirai Sumiyo. In 1915 she began a series of “undercover reports,” working as a waitress in various inns and full-service restaurants and writing about her experiences there. The series ran to over fifty articles and drew great attention, but Fumiko was fired at the end of 1915 because of her relationship with an executive of the newspaper (married, with at least one other mistress), which became a major scandal, the more so as Fumiko defended herself in print. She took refuge in a Zen temple and considered becoming a nun, until she met the politician Hayashi Kamobei, who became her second husband. They lived on the royalties from collections of her articles; finding that Hayashi was both violent and jealous as well as unproductive, Fumiko fled to Shanghai where she got a new job as a reporter. She did not return to Japan until the police intervened to ensure that they were safely divorced.
After her return home, she was introduced to the flamboyant writer Takebayashi Musoan (by the romance novelist and mountain climber Naito Chiyoko). Musoan invited her to Paris and she went; they were married first, in 1920, with a crowd of literary luminaries at the reception. Fumiko found herself unexpectedly pregnant; her daughter Yvonne (or Ioko) was born in Paris, and Fumiko adored her so much she started making all Yvonne’s clothes herself. This led to a job running the children’s clothes department at the fashion and cosmetics house Shiseido after they returned to Japan, at a high salary; after a year Fumiko left the company and set up on her own as a high-class milliner.
Upon losing home and business in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 (where Fumiko was buried under rubble in the street, though unhurt), the family returned to Paris. Having tried and failed to manage a Japanese restaurant (during its brief period of success, the customers included Sessue Hayakawa), Fumiko began performing as a Japanese classical dancer, achieving great popularity and making friends with Isadora Duncan. In January 1926, however, her business partner shot her in the face during an argument. She survived without serious injury, but this “Monte Carlo Scandal” blackened her name considerably. In 1932, when Musoan ran out of money, Fumiko returned on her own to Japan; she drove a new General Motors Chevrolet from Osaka to Tokyo, and played the lead in a movie directed by Murata Minoru, returning in triumph to Paris the following year.
In 1934, amid a plan to interview the Prince of Ethiopia upon his marriage, Fumiko met the Japanese merchant Miyata Kozo (six years younger than she) in Antwerp, and they fell in love; they were married in Japan in 1936, once she had divorced Musoan. She and Miyata spent World War II on the outskirts of Brussels and Berlin, before being deported to Harbin via the Siberian Railway. Arriving finally in Osaka, she bought two used buses and turned one into their home and the other into a restaurant/café/beer hall which she called Mistinguett. For the rest of her life, she made a living from restaurant management and sewing while traveling as far as Africa (including a trip back to Europe with the writer Uno Chiyo) and continuing to write. She died in 1966 at the age of seventy-seven; her published work included, among other books, three volumes of autobiography, published over a fifty-year span under the names of Nakahira Fumiko, Takebayashi Fumiko, and Miyata Fumiko respectively (they were recently given snazzy new reprints).
Fumiko’s daughter Yvonne, incidentally, married Tsuji Makoto, the oldest son of Ito Noe; her older daughter, adopted by Takehisa Yumeji’s son, became the Japanese-Colombian painter Nobu Takehisa, while Nobu’s sister Eve joined the Takarazuka Revue.
Sources
Mori 2008 Mori Mayumi has written a lot of interesting and useful books and my list for this site also draws heavily upon her work, but wow, the more I reread her, the more I find her mean-spirited and more interested in the men around the women she's supposedly writing about, oh dear. This one takes the cake, drawing on every source she can find to complain about how Fumiko was the next thing to a whore and only interested in the money she could get out of her men. The Wikipedia article seems a whole lot more even-handed.
https://www.oit.ac.jp/news/news/pressrelease10718.html (Japanese) Two volumes of Fumiko’s reprinted autobiography, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and Just Look At Her
After studying acting with Tsubouchi Shoyo for a few months, she was hired as a reporter, writing under the pen name Nadeshiko; her first article was an interview with the actress Shirai Sumiyo. In 1915 she began a series of “undercover reports,” working as a waitress in various inns and full-service restaurants and writing about her experiences there. The series ran to over fifty articles and drew great attention, but Fumiko was fired at the end of 1915 because of her relationship with an executive of the newspaper (married, with at least one other mistress), which became a major scandal, the more so as Fumiko defended herself in print. She took refuge in a Zen temple and considered becoming a nun, until she met the politician Hayashi Kamobei, who became her second husband. They lived on the royalties from collections of her articles; finding that Hayashi was both violent and jealous as well as unproductive, Fumiko fled to Shanghai where she got a new job as a reporter. She did not return to Japan until the police intervened to ensure that they were safely divorced.
After her return home, she was introduced to the flamboyant writer Takebayashi Musoan (by the romance novelist and mountain climber Naito Chiyoko). Musoan invited her to Paris and she went; they were married first, in 1920, with a crowd of literary luminaries at the reception. Fumiko found herself unexpectedly pregnant; her daughter Yvonne (or Ioko) was born in Paris, and Fumiko adored her so much she started making all Yvonne’s clothes herself. This led to a job running the children’s clothes department at the fashion and cosmetics house Shiseido after they returned to Japan, at a high salary; after a year Fumiko left the company and set up on her own as a high-class milliner.
Upon losing home and business in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 (where Fumiko was buried under rubble in the street, though unhurt), the family returned to Paris. Having tried and failed to manage a Japanese restaurant (during its brief period of success, the customers included Sessue Hayakawa), Fumiko began performing as a Japanese classical dancer, achieving great popularity and making friends with Isadora Duncan. In January 1926, however, her business partner shot her in the face during an argument. She survived without serious injury, but this “Monte Carlo Scandal” blackened her name considerably. In 1932, when Musoan ran out of money, Fumiko returned on her own to Japan; she drove a new General Motors Chevrolet from Osaka to Tokyo, and played the lead in a movie directed by Murata Minoru, returning in triumph to Paris the following year.
In 1934, amid a plan to interview the Prince of Ethiopia upon his marriage, Fumiko met the Japanese merchant Miyata Kozo (six years younger than she) in Antwerp, and they fell in love; they were married in Japan in 1936, once she had divorced Musoan. She and Miyata spent World War II on the outskirts of Brussels and Berlin, before being deported to Harbin via the Siberian Railway. Arriving finally in Osaka, she bought two used buses and turned one into their home and the other into a restaurant/café/beer hall which she called Mistinguett. For the rest of her life, she made a living from restaurant management and sewing while traveling as far as Africa (including a trip back to Europe with the writer Uno Chiyo) and continuing to write. She died in 1966 at the age of seventy-seven; her published work included, among other books, three volumes of autobiography, published over a fifty-year span under the names of Nakahira Fumiko, Takebayashi Fumiko, and Miyata Fumiko respectively (they were recently given snazzy new reprints).
Fumiko’s daughter Yvonne, incidentally, married Tsuji Makoto, the oldest son of Ito Noe; her older daughter, adopted by Takehisa Yumeji’s son, became the Japanese-Colombian painter Nobu Takehisa, while Nobu’s sister Eve joined the Takarazuka Revue.
Sources
Mori 2008 Mori Mayumi has written a lot of interesting and useful books and my list for this site also draws heavily upon her work, but wow, the more I reread her, the more I find her mean-spirited and more interested in the men around the women she's supposedly writing about, oh dear. This one takes the cake, drawing on every source she can find to complain about how Fumiko was the next thing to a whore and only interested in the money she could get out of her men. The Wikipedia article seems a whole lot more even-handed.
https://www.oit.ac.jp/news/news/pressrelease10718.html (Japanese) Two volumes of Fumiko’s reprinted autobiography, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and Just Look At Her
Tags:
Quickly jotting down a few proofreading-related notes
Apr. 10th, 2026 07:34 amvriddy1. Tracking writing-related stuff daily so doesn't work for me and my brain. I track wordcounts only monthly for a reason!! Because I was planning to finish this proofreading within two weeks or so, I thought I would therefore update my little chart thing to track by day rather than by week so the chart looks more interesting. It does look cool! But tracking daily means I read high numbers as "This is what I am capable of" and any day in which I could only manage 15 minutes or so as a failure. May have to weeklify this chart after all.
2. Especially because, while finishing within two weeks would be convenient for a variety of reasons, I'm not sure the proofreading will go as fast as I hoped. My thought were: okay, the story is a third longer than it was last time I proofread it, but only the new stuff might sound janky! Well. It's been over a year since the last time I proofread, so sentences give me different feelings now. The first chapter hadn't changed a ton, maybe 600 new words, but I spent 3h on it anyway. Just like the average last round: proofread 10 chapters in a little under 3 weeks, average time per chapter 2h54. I have 14 chapters now. Grumbles, grumbles.
3. Thinking a lot about what I want to learn next. The last couple of years have been about "process" especially around editing, what works well for me in general, how to actually edit a big project, how to manage my stamina through it. Over the last couple of months, I've been learning about structure, and loving it. Like, there will be more to learn there for sure, but for the time being I need to put into practice my new learning until it comes more naturally. While this is happening, I really want to improve how I write sentences. Line editing, I guess? My writing feels very weak there right now, or not where I'd like it to be. It won't be something I apply on the witch (would require a complete rewrite), but it's something I hope to pay more attention to for the Soul Thief. Reflecting too on how I want to learn and how I could organise myself for it. For example, I got a copy of Le Guin's "Steering the Craft" a while back that sounds like it should fit the bill? But I found it very intimidating, and I'm not good at just doing exercises either. It's easier when learning happens as part of a real story. Anyway, whatever I end up doing next, it seems like I'm moving from a "learning process" to a "learning craft" kinda mood, for the next while!
2. Especially because, while finishing within two weeks would be convenient for a variety of reasons, I'm not sure the proofreading will go as fast as I hoped. My thought were: okay, the story is a third longer than it was last time I proofread it, but only the new stuff might sound janky! Well. It's been over a year since the last time I proofread, so sentences give me different feelings now. The first chapter hadn't changed a ton, maybe 600 new words, but I spent 3h on it anyway. Just like the average last round: proofread 10 chapters in a little under 3 weeks, average time per chapter 2h54. I have 14 chapters now. Grumbles, grumbles.
3. Thinking a lot about what I want to learn next. The last couple of years have been about "process" especially around editing, what works well for me in general, how to actually edit a big project, how to manage my stamina through it. Over the last couple of months, I've been learning about structure, and loving it. Like, there will be more to learn there for sure, but for the time being I need to put into practice my new learning until it comes more naturally. While this is happening, I really want to improve how I write sentences. Line editing, I guess? My writing feels very weak there right now, or not where I'd like it to be. It won't be something I apply on the witch (would require a complete rewrite), but it's something I hope to pay more attention to for the Soul Thief. Reflecting too on how I want to learn and how I could organise myself for it. For example, I got a copy of Le Guin's "Steering the Craft" a while back that sounds like it should fit the bill? But I found it very intimidating, and I'm not good at just doing exercises either. It's easier when learning happens as part of a real story. Anyway, whatever I end up doing next, it seems like I'm moving from a "learning process" to a "learning craft" kinda mood, for the next while!
A lonesome highway is a pretty good subject
Apr. 9th, 2026 10:01 pmsovayEntirely apart from it now apparently being business as usual for my killing joke of a government to start wars in whatever sovereign nations it feels like and threaten the annihilation of entire civilizations on capricious deadline, I have had a weird and fairly scrambled week in which I was not able to avoid talking to doctors after all. I can feel suitably noir-poisoned for recognizing some location shooting in The Rockford Files (1974–80) from Desert Fury (1947). The sky this afternoon suggested that it was trying to be autumn.
rushthatspeaks sent me an improbable mammal.
rushthatspeaks sent me an improbable mammal.(no subject)
Apr. 9th, 2026 10:07 pmskygiantsMade a extremely silly decision this past weekend, which was to break up our long drive to and from Philly by Exactly long enough to see one (one) show in NYC on the way down, and another on the way back. Literally put the car in a garage by the theater, went into the show, got the car out of the garage, and kept driving. And to make matters even sillier the show that we saw on the way down was Bad -- and we knew it was going to be! Or at least we had a reasonable suspicion! But were we not going to go out of our way to see Norm Lewis play Villefort in a Count of Monte Cristo musical? Of course we were. The path before us had simply been prepared.
Q: When you say it was bad, do you mean it was a bad musical as a musical, or a bad adaptation of Count of Monte Cristo?
A: Oh, both! Absolutely both.
Q: What made it a bad musical?
A: Well, the music. And the lyrics. They hit exactly every beat on the Musical Sheet while constantly feeling like less subtle knockoff versions of other songs you might know slightly better. The song you might know slightly better is not a subtle one, you say? Well, I guarantee you that songs such as "Dangerous Times," in which the full cast explain that they are living in dangerous times, and "How Did I Get So Far Away [From Me]," in which Mercedes sadly wonders how she has gotten so far away from herself, are less so. When the best you can say of a song is that it felt like pallid diet Frank Wildhorn -- as in, lacking the noted power and vibrancy of real Frank Wildhorn, composer of such deathless works as Death Note: The Musical -- then you know we're scraping the bottom of the barrel. And that's not even mentioning the frenetic stream of mediocre jokes.
Q: And what made it a bad adaptation?
A: I mean I know there are probably people in the past who have said that Edmond Dantès literally did nothing wrong but I want you to understand: in this show, Edmond Dantès literally does nothing wrong. His backstory takes up the entire first act, and by the time we hit intermission I was already like "huh, there's not going to be a lot of time in here for revenge schemes," but I didn't actually understand how dire the situation was going to be until ( this part of the Q&A gets into quite detailed plot spoilers )
Q: So do you regret your objectively silly decision to go out of your way to see this musical?
A: No I do not, not in the least, and I would have regretted missing it. There is something very nutritious in bad theater, I think. It forces you to consider what good theater might look like. Also, the surprise appearance of Lucrezia Borgia was one of the funniest things I experienced all weekend.
Q: When you say it was bad, do you mean it was a bad musical as a musical, or a bad adaptation of Count of Monte Cristo?
A: Oh, both! Absolutely both.
Q: What made it a bad musical?
A: Well, the music. And the lyrics. They hit exactly every beat on the Musical Sheet while constantly feeling like less subtle knockoff versions of other songs you might know slightly better. The song you might know slightly better is not a subtle one, you say? Well, I guarantee you that songs such as "Dangerous Times," in which the full cast explain that they are living in dangerous times, and "How Did I Get So Far Away [From Me]," in which Mercedes sadly wonders how she has gotten so far away from herself, are less so. When the best you can say of a song is that it felt like pallid diet Frank Wildhorn -- as in, lacking the noted power and vibrancy of real Frank Wildhorn, composer of such deathless works as Death Note: The Musical -- then you know we're scraping the bottom of the barrel. And that's not even mentioning the frenetic stream of mediocre jokes.
Q: And what made it a bad adaptation?
A: I mean I know there are probably people in the past who have said that Edmond Dantès literally did nothing wrong but I want you to understand: in this show, Edmond Dantès literally does nothing wrong. His backstory takes up the entire first act, and by the time we hit intermission I was already like "huh, there's not going to be a lot of time in here for revenge schemes," but I didn't actually understand how dire the situation was going to be until ( this part of the Q&A gets into quite detailed plot spoilers )
Q: So do you regret your objectively silly decision to go out of your way to see this musical?
A: No I do not, not in the least, and I would have regretted missing it. There is something very nutritious in bad theater, I think. It forces you to consider what good theater might look like. Also, the surprise appearance of Lucrezia Borgia was one of the funniest things I experienced all weekend.
第五年第八十九天
Apr. 10th, 2026 07:52 amnnozomi posting in guardian_learning部首
水 part 21
淡, mild; 深, deep; 淹, to flood/to submerge ( pinyin )
https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=85
词汇
按, to push; 按时, on time; 按照, according to ( pinyin )
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-4-word-list/
Guardian:
您目睹了凶案现场还这么云淡风轻的, you were an eyewitness to a murder site and you're so calm now
我建议你每一餐都按时吃, I suggest that you eat your meals on time
Me:
小心，水很深。
按照网络的信息，火车来得不按时。
水 part 21
淡, mild; 深, deep; 淹, to flood/to submerge ( pinyin )
https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=85
词汇
按, to push; 按时, on time; 按照, according to ( pinyin )
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-4-word-list/
Guardian:
您目睹了凶案现场还这么云淡风轻的, you were an eyewitness to a murder site and you're so calm now
我建议你每一餐都按时吃, I suggest that you eat your meals on time
Me:
小心，水很深。
按照网络的信息，火车来得不按时。
"seeing her face in town was like springtime coming around" (meredith edwards)
Apr. 9th, 2026 05:46 pmstarandreaAs soon as I said, "I think the dahlias are going to be fine," this happens.
That is, I had largely written off the remaining seven containers of unsprouted dahlias, since by now even the latest starter is six inches tall, and I knew going in that three of the containers had likely duds. I figured four more were unexpectedly the same.
NOPE. What am I going to do with this one? It's in the "spa room" with the ivies for now, as there is no more room on the dahlia shelf in the closet.
( picture )
(Good work, little dahlia. I'm very happy to see you.)
Also, the Solomon's Seal is back in the patio garden! I planted it under the porch (with some ferns) the year after we moved in, so it knows it has to get an early start if it wants any sun before the other plants show up.
(The picture isn't tilted. The Solomon's Seal grows at an angle to lean into the light.)
Plus some crocuses (yay!) and Daphne helping out in the garden like she does.
( sprouts, blooms, and paws )
That is, I had largely written off the remaining seven containers of unsprouted dahlias, since by now even the latest starter is six inches tall, and I knew going in that three of the containers had likely duds. I figured four more were unexpectedly the same.
NOPE. What am I going to do with this one? It's in the "spa room" with the ivies for now, as there is no more room on the dahlia shelf in the closet.
( picture )
(Good work, little dahlia. I'm very happy to see you.)
Also, the Solomon's Seal is back in the patio garden! I planted it under the porch (with some ferns) the year after we moved in, so it knows it has to get an early start if it wants any sun before the other plants show up.
(The picture isn't tilted. The Solomon's Seal grows at an angle to lean into the light.)
Plus some crocuses (yay!) and Daphne helping out in the garden like she does.
( sprouts, blooms, and paws )
23 Nothing But You icons for ships20in20
Apr. 9th, 2026 10:29 pmtinnyAnother Nothing But You set for round 6 at ships20in20! Enjoy!
Teasers:
( 20+3 icons )
I'm happy to receive all kind of comments, including concrit! All icons shareable. Credit for brushes and textures I use can be found here in my resource post.
Previous icon posts:
ships20in20! Enjoy!Teasers:
( 20+3 icons )
I'm happy to receive all kind of comments, including concrit! All icons shareable. Credit for brushes and textures I use can be found here in my resource post.
Seconds to Spare, by Rachel Reiss
Apr. 9th, 2026 12:51 pmrachelmanija
18-year-old Evelyn is on a plane, transporting her father's ashes, when there's an announcement of turbulence. A passenger gets up from her seat, then collapses in the aisle. The plane begins to nosedive, and everything goes white. Then Evelyn is back on the plane, which is no longer nosediving. There's an announcement of turbulence. A passenger gets up from her seat, then collapses in the aisle. The plane begins to nosedive...
Evelyn quickly realizes that she's in a 29-minute time loop. She tries to figure out why the plane is crashing and how to stop it, but gets absolutely nowhere. She talks to other passengers. She steals their food and eats it. She watches every movie on the plane. She learns everything about everyone, except the handsome sleeping teenage boy who never wakes up during the loop. She goes through 400 loops and almost loses her mind. And then, on one loop, the boy wakes up. And on the next loop, he also realizes that he's in a loop...
Like the last novel I read by Reiss (Out of Air, the one with the teenage scuba divers), this book has a great premise. I enjoyed how Evelyn makes herself free with everything on the plane while trapped, and I also enjoyed how she and Rion, the sleeping boy, work together once he wakes up to figure out what's going on. However, it had an issue that more-or-less ruined the book for me. Rion suggests something that somehow Evelyn failed to try in 400 loops, which is to follow one person on the plane at a time, and observe everything they do. It never occurred to Evelyn to watch the flight attendants, and watching one of them reveals exactly what's causing the crash. They try to prevent it in several ways that don't work. Then Rion figures out a clever plan that saves the plane and fixes the loop.
The author clearly wanted to have Evelyn be alone in the loop for a long time. I can see why she wanted that - we get a vivid sense of her frustration and despair - but it makes Evelyn seem useless when she spends ages watching movies and so forth, and then Rion figures everything out almost immediately. This is exacerbated when Rion also comes up with the plan to fix things. This wouldn't have been a problem if they'd been in the loop together much earlier - then they could have bonded while investigating, taken breaks and done the fun stuff that she did alone, and mutually figured stuff out. It would have been more fun to read and felt less sexist, which I'm sure was unintentional but is inevitable when the girl fails at everything for ages, then a boy shows up and both solves the mystery and fixes the problem.
I'll be interested to see if Reiss's third book also has a three word title that rhymes with "care."
Hedjog versus THE MACHINE
Apr. 9th, 2026 04:36 pmoursinSo dr rdrz will be aware of my recent problems with printer, so I finally bit the bullet and after consulting Which Best Buys and so forth, went for an Epson Eco-Tank from John Lewis.
Which arrived at lunchtime today.
And I had anticipated spending hours if not days whining and stressing and beating my head on the ground and wrestling like until Jacob with the Angel to get the thing talking to my system and actually printing/scanning/copying.
Behold me sat sitting here having achieved getting it connected to the Wifi (the Wizard, though, is crap because it assumes that your password is a word rather than numeric, fortunately there was an alternative route), appearing under printers/scanners in my desktop computer settings, and copying, scanning, and printing.
There was a little hassle with printing which turned out to be due to Advanced Printer Settings turning out to have weird Paper Size as default rather than A4, which given that A4 is supposed to be their standard size, was bizarre.
This is positively uncanny, do admit.
Hornblower movies 5 & 6
Apr. 9th, 2026 10:42 amosprey_archerOnward I sail in my Hornblower movie adventures! Five and six are a pair, based on Lieutenant Hornblower, which features a mad captain who is convinced that his lieutenants are plotting to take over his ship. His lieutenants, in increasing fear for their lives, conclude that they’d better take over the ship.
It’s interesting to watch these so soon after reading the books, because you read the books and it seems like there’s plenty of dramatic incident, and then you watch the movies and you go “Ah, the producers decided they needed to juice this up a bit.” Example: in the movies, the entire action is framed by the lieutenants’ trial for mutiny. If they are found guilty they will be HANGED.
Example two: in the book, Captain Sawyer falls down the hatchway, hits his head, and basically is incapacitated ever after. In the movie, he still falls from the hatchway (obviously we’re not going to let go of the question “did Hornblower push him?”), but he recovers! retakes the ship! and then promptly sails it directly under the guns of a Spanish fort, which forces the lieutenants to take action to remove him from power!
While I was reading Lieutenant Hornblower, I entertained myself greatly with the speculation that Hornblower DID push Captain Sawyer. However, upon reflection I’ve decided that if he had pushed Captain Sawyer, literally every promotion would be accompanied by the reflection “This is only happening because I MURDERED my CAPTAIN, truly I am the WORST.” On the other hand, this might explain the great increase in neuroticism between Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and our return to Hornblower POV in Hornblower and the Hotspur? Feels so guilty he can’t even name his guilt…
Okay no, I really think that if Hornblower were guilty he would be naming his guilt to himself incessantly. Maybe he’s just more neurotic because of the stress of serving under mad Captain Sawyer who was convinced that all his lieutenants and especially Hornblower were plotting against him.
ANYWAY. Getting back to the movie adaptations. I can see why these films must have made Bush/Hornblower fans Big Mad. Bush is at long last introduced - and then he’s upstaged at every turn by established movie fan favorite Lt. Kennedy.
Kennedy, not Bush, is the one who is nice to young Wellard after Captain Sawyer whips him for no reason.
When Bush is wounded, Hornblower briefly cradles his head, then the doctor is like “Go away, there’s nothing you can do here,” and Hornblower’s like “okay” and drops Bush like a hot potato. He hotfoots it off to have a chat with Kennedy, who tells him unsteadily that the prisoners have been dealt with… “Is that your blood?” Hornblower asks.
Kennedy mumbles something about how he’s fine.
“IS THAT YOUR BLOOD?”
Kennedy lets his jacket fall open and we see that his white shirt is SOAKED in blood. END OF SCENE.
And then of course Kennedy dies for Hornblower! Shambles into a court, barely able to stand upright on account of his wounds, and insists that he’s the one who pushed Captain Sawyer down the hatch! (As we have seen in endless flashbacks, he wasn’t even in the vicinity.)
Hornblower is not in court that morning, having been decoyed away, which upon reflection doesn’t quite make sense: surely he has to be in attendance at his own capital trial? But obviously we can’t have Hornblower spoiling Kennedy’s dramatic gesture by popping up to yell “That’s a lie! I pushed Captain Sawyer!” (Possibly no one pushed Captain Sawyer! Maybe he just fell! Those hatches have no safety rails. Absolute death traps.)
Anyway, Kennedy is duly sentenced to death. But before they can hang him, he dies of his wounds. Hornblower, of course, is at Kennedy’s bedside, holding his hand as he dies.
One presumes that sometime in the final two movies, Bush will at last have a chance to repair to his sickbed, where Hornblower will tenderly brush his hair from his forehead. But even then, how can he compete with the guy who sacrificed his life for Hornblower? The filmmakers clearly decided to ride the good ship Hornblower/Kennedy into the sunset.
It’s interesting to watch these so soon after reading the books, because you read the books and it seems like there’s plenty of dramatic incident, and then you watch the movies and you go “Ah, the producers decided they needed to juice this up a bit.” Example: in the movies, the entire action is framed by the lieutenants’ trial for mutiny. If they are found guilty they will be HANGED.
Example two: in the book, Captain Sawyer falls down the hatchway, hits his head, and basically is incapacitated ever after. In the movie, he still falls from the hatchway (obviously we’re not going to let go of the question “did Hornblower push him?”), but he recovers! retakes the ship! and then promptly sails it directly under the guns of a Spanish fort, which forces the lieutenants to take action to remove him from power!
While I was reading Lieutenant Hornblower, I entertained myself greatly with the speculation that Hornblower DID push Captain Sawyer. However, upon reflection I’ve decided that if he had pushed Captain Sawyer, literally every promotion would be accompanied by the reflection “This is only happening because I MURDERED my CAPTAIN, truly I am the WORST.” On the other hand, this might explain the great increase in neuroticism between Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and our return to Hornblower POV in Hornblower and the Hotspur? Feels so guilty he can’t even name his guilt…
Okay no, I really think that if Hornblower were guilty he would be naming his guilt to himself incessantly. Maybe he’s just more neurotic because of the stress of serving under mad Captain Sawyer who was convinced that all his lieutenants and especially Hornblower were plotting against him.
ANYWAY. Getting back to the movie adaptations. I can see why these films must have made Bush/Hornblower fans Big Mad. Bush is at long last introduced - and then he’s upstaged at every turn by established movie fan favorite Lt. Kennedy.
Kennedy, not Bush, is the one who is nice to young Wellard after Captain Sawyer whips him for no reason.
When Bush is wounded, Hornblower briefly cradles his head, then the doctor is like “Go away, there’s nothing you can do here,” and Hornblower’s like “okay” and drops Bush like a hot potato. He hotfoots it off to have a chat with Kennedy, who tells him unsteadily that the prisoners have been dealt with… “Is that your blood?” Hornblower asks.
Kennedy mumbles something about how he’s fine.
“IS THAT YOUR BLOOD?”
Kennedy lets his jacket fall open and we see that his white shirt is SOAKED in blood. END OF SCENE.
And then of course Kennedy dies for Hornblower! Shambles into a court, barely able to stand upright on account of his wounds, and insists that he’s the one who pushed Captain Sawyer down the hatch! (As we have seen in endless flashbacks, he wasn’t even in the vicinity.)
Hornblower is not in court that morning, having been decoyed away, which upon reflection doesn’t quite make sense: surely he has to be in attendance at his own capital trial? But obviously we can’t have Hornblower spoiling Kennedy’s dramatic gesture by popping up to yell “That’s a lie! I pushed Captain Sawyer!” (Possibly no one pushed Captain Sawyer! Maybe he just fell! Those hatches have no safety rails. Absolute death traps.)
Anyway, Kennedy is duly sentenced to death. But before they can hang him, he dies of his wounds. Hornblower, of course, is at Kennedy’s bedside, holding his hand as he dies.
One presumes that sometime in the final two movies, Bush will at last have a chance to repair to his sickbed, where Hornblower will tenderly brush his hair from his forehead. But even then, how can he compete with the guy who sacrificed his life for Hornblower? The filmmakers clearly decided to ride the good ship Hornblower/Kennedy into the sunset.
1 movie with stars, 1 game with magical animals, and 2x2 books
Apr. 9th, 2026 02:27 pmschneefinkSome reviews of recent media before I hopefully disappear into a metaphorical cave for a week to study before my next exam; I say hopefully because I already made dumb decisions like staying up late to read fic the last two nights. Ah well. I do need breaks at some points, and I plan to get regular fresh air too.
I watched Project Hail Mary in a theater with friends on Tuesday: two of us had read the book and the other three knew nothing at all about it, which made it extra fun to hear their reactions afterwards. I read the book a few months ago, and unlike the book the movie did live up to all the good things I'd heard about it. That was great. I really like how they adapted it (yes they cut some fun stuff/good additional info but overall I thought they did a great job), I liked the designs and the visuals, it was at times very exciting and dramatic and emotional and funny, and I had a fantastic time.
I've already seen some great fanart on Tumblr and look forward to more of it, fingers crossed.
Only four people of my TTRPG group had time two weeks ago so for a few hours we tried out Sunderfolk (Steam link), a multiplayer turn-based tactical RPG where you play as animals.
I had a lot of fun! I played an arcanist raven with teleportation powers, I loved that. I could do damage as well but my most effective moves were teleporting my allies (a rogue (weasel), a pyromancer (salamander), and a vanguard (kangaroo rat)) into better positions. The story so far is rather simple, you defend the settlement against the ogres, do side-quests and help gather resources for the rebuild; I'm not sure how much I'm meant to think about the implications (like that the animals came from above and with their bright lights took away living spaces from the ogres that are now starving) but I look forward to seeing where it goes.
We're only halfway through act 1 chapter 2, but we already have a date set for next time. This time we had three of us on the couch and one joining online, next time all four will be able to attend in person, even better.
About a week later, same scenario, only four people from my TTRPG group had time – different people this time so we started a new campaign. This time I played the bat bard, and they're absolutely adorable. Gameplay-wise unfortunately I enjoyed the bard much less; we only got to level 3 so maybe it gets better later? The other player who played for the second time also enjoyed his second choice (antelope ranger) much less than his first (pyromancer). There are currently no active plans to continue, but we might if we happen to have that group again.
Dragonoak by Sam Farren #1 + #2, The Complete History of Castelir and The Sky Beneath The Sun:
Rowan, exiled from her village since they discovered she is a necromancer, runs away with a dragon knight and becomes entangled in conflicts spanning multiple kingdoms and races.
My (now ex-)gf recommended this trilogy to me, so I wanted to like it; and maybe that puts it into the category of "would have liked it more if not for my high hopes/expectations," idk. There were parts I liked, prominent among them the amount of queer characters; unfortunately it was neither the pacing nor most of the characters.
( Spoilers )
The Dementia Cascade by L. Lynn Gray (tassosss) #1 + #2, The Dementia: A Space Adventure and Surviving Peace:
Four generation ships fly in formation, still several generations from their target planet; when there are suddenly massive technical issues, solving them requires cooperation, which is made difficult by social and political conflicts.
Like many books with multiple PoVs book 1 had some I enjoyed a lot, some I was neutral about, and some I liked less (I'm currently quickly frustrated by characters with ideological blinkers.) I liked book 2 even better: fortunately for me it focuses on my favorite characters from book 1, and also the most difficult political situation. Namely, Jacks and Antony on Peace, that had a violent uprising deposing a corrupt authoritarian leader in book 1 and the consequences of that in book 2. ( Spoilers )
I watched Project Hail Mary in a theater with friends on Tuesday: two of us had read the book and the other three knew nothing at all about it, which made it extra fun to hear their reactions afterwards. I read the book a few months ago, and unlike the book the movie did live up to all the good things I'd heard about it. That was great. I really like how they adapted it (yes they cut some fun stuff/good additional info but overall I thought they did a great job), I liked the designs and the visuals, it was at times very exciting and dramatic and emotional and funny, and I had a fantastic time.
I've already seen some great fanart on Tumblr and look forward to more of it, fingers crossed.
Only four people of my TTRPG group had time two weeks ago so for a few hours we tried out Sunderfolk (Steam link), a multiplayer turn-based tactical RPG where you play as animals.
I had a lot of fun! I played an arcanist raven with teleportation powers, I loved that. I could do damage as well but my most effective moves were teleporting my allies (a rogue (weasel), a pyromancer (salamander), and a vanguard (kangaroo rat)) into better positions. The story so far is rather simple, you defend the settlement against the ogres, do side-quests and help gather resources for the rebuild; I'm not sure how much I'm meant to think about the implications (like that the animals came from above and with their bright lights took away living spaces from the ogres that are now starving) but I look forward to seeing where it goes.
We're only halfway through act 1 chapter 2, but we already have a date set for next time. This time we had three of us on the couch and one joining online, next time all four will be able to attend in person, even better.
About a week later, same scenario, only four people from my TTRPG group had time – different people this time so we started a new campaign. This time I played the bat bard, and they're absolutely adorable. Gameplay-wise unfortunately I enjoyed the bard much less; we only got to level 3 so maybe it gets better later? The other player who played for the second time also enjoyed his second choice (antelope ranger) much less than his first (pyromancer). There are currently no active plans to continue, but we might if we happen to have that group again.
Dragonoak by Sam Farren #1 + #2, The Complete History of Castelir and The Sky Beneath The Sun:
Rowan, exiled from her village since they discovered she is a necromancer, runs away with a dragon knight and becomes entangled in conflicts spanning multiple kingdoms and races.
My (now ex-)gf recommended this trilogy to me, so I wanted to like it; and maybe that puts it into the category of "would have liked it more if not for my high hopes/expectations," idk. There were parts I liked, prominent among them the amount of queer characters; unfortunately it was neither the pacing nor most of the characters.
( Spoilers )
The Dementia Cascade by L. Lynn Gray (
tassosss) #1 + #2, The Dementia: A Space Adventure and Surviving Peace: Four generation ships fly in formation, still several generations from their target planet; when there are suddenly massive technical issues, solving them requires cooperation, which is made difficult by social and political conflicts.
Like many books with multiple PoVs book 1 had some I enjoyed a lot, some I was neutral about, and some I liked less (I'm currently quickly frustrated by characters with ideological blinkers.) I liked book 2 even better: fortunately for me it focuses on my favorite characters from book 1, and also the most difficult political situation. Namely, Jacks and Antony on Peace, that had a violent uprising deposing a corrupt authoritarian leader in book 1 and the consequences of that in book 2. ( Spoilers )
to audiobook or to not audiobook
Apr. 8th, 2026 08:16 pmladyherenya• The Blonde Who Came In From The Cold by Ally Carter: This is a sequel to The Blonde Identity. It’s a rivals-to-lovers story about two spies who first met at the start of their training. The story alternates between the present – which begins when Alex and King wake up handcuffed together, with no memory of the preceding days – and flashbacks to their previous missions together.
It’s fast-paced, fun and twisty. I really enjoyed reading it… and then haven’t really thought about it since. But I could definitely see myself reading this one again! It’d be fun to reread this and The Blonde Identity back to back.
The only quote I bookmarked was:
• The Maui Effect by Sara Ackerman (audiobook): I have listened audiobooks for a handful of Ackerman’s historical novels now and really enjoyed them in that format. But I took over a month to get through the audiobook of this contemporary romance, because I was not very motivated to prioritise listening to it.
The story alternates between ‘Iwa, a musician and conservationist from Maui who is fighting to protect a mountain forest from a resort development, and Dane, a big wave surfer from California.
I liked both characters, I didn’t mind the romance and there were other bits and pieces I enjoyed, particularly the parts set in Hawai’i, oh, and the details about their dogs. But I found some of the surfing scenes hard to follow. ( Novel-length audiobooks need to be stories I’m happy to linger over, and this wasn’t that sort of story for me. I wasn’t enjoying it enough. )
• The Adventure of the Demonic Ox by Lois McMaster Bujold (audiobook): This novella came out last year and I have been waiting and waiting for my library to get the audiobook, because I know that I enjoy this series more in that format. I had even begun contemplating purchasing the audiobook myself, but hadn’t followed through just yet because $25 seems like an awful lot to spend on 4 hours 32 minutes of audiobook that I might only listen to once. (Usually I end up buying the ebooks to reread, but I like to listen to the audiobooks first.)
This story takes place a handful of years after Demon Daughter and a couple of years after Penric and the Bandit, and it alternates between Penric and his each of his daughters, now aged eleven and twelve, who have accompanied Pen on he wrongly expects will be a straightforward investigation into the case of a possibly-possessed ox.
This was very enjoyable and I liked seeing Pen (and Des) from each of his daughters’ perspectives.
Admittedly I was a little annoyed by the final scenes, which seemed determined to paint Pen’s concerns about his daughters’ respective plans for future careers as overprotectiveness to be overturned. Given his daughter’s ages, I thought Pen’s reactions and opinions were very reasonable ( But this is very much a minor quibble, and not the first time I’ve been aware of this particular difference of opinion between Bujold and me. )
• The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston: Last year when I read A Novel Love Story, I came away thinking about the things that would have made me like it more, and I wondered: Maybe if I hadn’t listened to the audiobook? If I had instead read the whole book to myself in an afternoon, I wouldn’t have had time to analyse Elsie’s choices so critically and wonder why she didn’t consider a particular perspective sooner.
So I read The Seven Year Slip in an afternoon, and that was absolutely the way to go! I’d already finished the whole thing – and found it enjoyable and satisfying – before I started to have any analytical and critical thoughts.
The summer after Clementine has inherited her aunt’s New York the apartment, she comes home one day and discovers the apartment once again filled with all of her aunt’s furniture – and occupied the young man whom her aunt had asked to look after the place seven years before, while she and Clementine spent the summer in Europe. ( I enjoyed their timey-wimey relationship. ) Anyway, there were a few other things I would have liked to see developed more, and that probably could have made me like this book more, but these things didn’t interfere with my enjoyment of the story as I read it.
• And Now, Back To You by B.K. Borison: The companion novel to First-Time Caller is about two meteorologists. Jackson works in radio and Delilah works for the TV station across the street. They are sent into the mountains together to report on an incoming snowstorm.
I had what I suspect was a very subjective and idiosyncratic reaction to this book. The protagonists spend a lot of time in situations that make them uncomfortable. Delilah’s boss is seemingly on a campaign to humiliate her, and Jackson feels incredible anxiety about going on radio without a clear script, let alone appearing on TV.
I found both these things compelling, and I enjoyed seeing the two of them support each. But there’d be a scene that held my interest and then, suddenly, something would make me feel so uncomfortable and/or annoyed I’d put the book down. Sometimes for just a moment – sometimes I’d do something else before picking it up again.
I didn’t work out why. Was I just empathising too much, or was I projecting my own feelings onto the characters and then getting annoyed that they weren’t sharing my discomfort? Both? Probably both.
Like I said, a subjective and idiosyncratic reaction.
It’s fast-paced, fun and twisty. I really enjoyed reading it… and then haven’t really thought about it since. But I could definitely see myself reading this one again! It’d be fun to reread this and The Blonde Identity back to back.
The only quote I bookmarked was:
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so rested. Like the part of her brain that was always worrying had finally turned off. Rebooted. There were no memory-hogging apps running in the background of her mind, and as she pushed herself upright and stretched she felt almost … afraid. Like feeling good because none of your alarms have been triggered and then realising that’s because the alarms are down.
• The Maui Effect by Sara Ackerman (audiobook): I have listened audiobooks for a handful of Ackerman’s historical novels now and really enjoyed them in that format. But I took over a month to get through the audiobook of this contemporary romance, because I was not very motivated to prioritise listening to it.
The story alternates between ‘Iwa, a musician and conservationist from Maui who is fighting to protect a mountain forest from a resort development, and Dane, a big wave surfer from California.
I liked both characters, I didn’t mind the romance and there were other bits and pieces I enjoyed, particularly the parts set in Hawai’i, oh, and the details about their dogs. But I found some of the surfing scenes hard to follow. ( Novel-length audiobooks need to be stories I’m happy to linger over, and this wasn’t that sort of story for me. I wasn’t enjoying it enough. )
• The Adventure of the Demonic Ox by Lois McMaster Bujold (audiobook): This novella came out last year and I have been waiting and waiting for my library to get the audiobook, because I know that I enjoy this series more in that format. I had even begun contemplating purchasing the audiobook myself, but hadn’t followed through just yet because $25 seems like an awful lot to spend on 4 hours 32 minutes of audiobook that I might only listen to once. (Usually I end up buying the ebooks to reread, but I like to listen to the audiobooks first.)
This story takes place a handful of years after Demon Daughter and a couple of years after Penric and the Bandit, and it alternates between Penric and his each of his daughters, now aged eleven and twelve, who have accompanied Pen on he wrongly expects will be a straightforward investigation into the case of a possibly-possessed ox.
This was very enjoyable and I liked seeing Pen (and Des) from each of his daughters’ perspectives.
Admittedly I was a little annoyed by the final scenes, which seemed determined to paint Pen’s concerns about his daughters’ respective plans for future careers as overprotectiveness to be overturned. Given his daughter’s ages, I thought Pen’s reactions and opinions were very reasonable ( But this is very much a minor quibble, and not the first time I’ve been aware of this particular difference of opinion between Bujold and me. )
• The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston: Last year when I read A Novel Love Story, I came away thinking about the things that would have made me like it more, and I wondered: Maybe if I hadn’t listened to the audiobook? If I had instead read the whole book to myself in an afternoon, I wouldn’t have had time to analyse Elsie’s choices so critically and wonder why she didn’t consider a particular perspective sooner.
So I read The Seven Year Slip in an afternoon, and that was absolutely the way to go! I’d already finished the whole thing – and found it enjoyable and satisfying – before I started to have any analytical and critical thoughts.
The summer after Clementine has inherited her aunt’s New York the apartment, she comes home one day and discovers the apartment once again filled with all of her aunt’s furniture – and occupied the young man whom her aunt had asked to look after the place seven years before, while she and Clementine spent the summer in Europe. ( I enjoyed their timey-wimey relationship. ) Anyway, there were a few other things I would have liked to see developed more, and that probably could have made me like this book more, but these things didn’t interfere with my enjoyment of the story as I read it.
• And Now, Back To You by B.K. Borison: The companion novel to First-Time Caller is about two meteorologists. Jackson works in radio and Delilah works for the TV station across the street. They are sent into the mountains together to report on an incoming snowstorm.
I had what I suspect was a very subjective and idiosyncratic reaction to this book. The protagonists spend a lot of time in situations that make them uncomfortable. Delilah’s boss is seemingly on a campaign to humiliate her, and Jackson feels incredible anxiety about going on radio without a clear script, let alone appearing on TV.
I found both these things compelling, and I enjoyed seeing the two of them support each. But there’d be a scene that held my interest and then, suddenly, something would make me feel so uncomfortable and/or annoyed I’d put the book down. Sometimes for just a moment – sometimes I’d do something else before picking it up again.
I didn’t work out why. Was I just empathising too much, or was I projecting my own feelings onto the characters and then getting annoyed that they weren’t sharing my discomfort? Both? Probably both.
Like I said, a subjective and idiosyncratic reaction.
Just two things
Apr. 9th, 2026 09:50 ammaggie33Life in Smokey Blue
It’s a new Japanese BL drama, and one of the leads is played by Takeda Kouhei (Nozue from Old Fashioned Cupcake). It started airing on Gaga, the 1st episode is free and I watched it yesterday. And I loved it.
Takeda Kouhei plays Azuma Sakutaro, who’s 38 years old. He was an ace pharmaceutical sales representative, but now he’s unemployed and living at his sister’s house. One night when he’s drinking at the bar he chances upon Kuji Shizuka, his former coworker and rival from his pharmaceutical company days. Eight years earlier on the day Kuji left the company, they spend one memorable night together, but in the morning Azuma found out that Kuji disappeared without a word. And they haven’t seen each other since.
Two lead actors are 37 and 40 years old, and it feels so nice to watch BL with mature leads. And they look good together (see below) and have great chemistry.
Gohan
This is a Thai movie about a life of a white stray dog and his three different owners, and I really want to watch it. Even though I know it will make me cry buckets, because just this short trailer already made me teary-eyed.
It’s a new Japanese BL drama, and one of the leads is played by Takeda Kouhei (Nozue from Old Fashioned Cupcake). It started airing on Gaga, the 1st episode is free and I watched it yesterday. And I loved it.
Takeda Kouhei plays Azuma Sakutaro, who’s 38 years old. He was an ace pharmaceutical sales representative, but now he’s unemployed and living at his sister’s house. One night when he’s drinking at the bar he chances upon Kuji Shizuka, his former coworker and rival from his pharmaceutical company days. Eight years earlier on the day Kuji left the company, they spend one memorable night together, but in the morning Azuma found out that Kuji disappeared without a word. And they haven’t seen each other since.
Two lead actors are 37 and 40 years old, and it feels so nice to watch BL with mature leads. And they look good together (see below) and have great chemistry.
Gohan
This is a Thai movie about a life of a white stray dog and his three different owners, and I really want to watch it. Even though I know it will make me cry buckets, because just this short trailer already made me teary-eyed.
breaking out of a reading slump
Apr. 7th, 2026 05:39 pmladyherenyaRecently I read a bunch of books by Brigid Kemmerer and now I have started reading yet another.
The first of these was a book I read back in February (and then I read half a dozen other books). But the last four books are ones I’ve read in the last fortnight.
I had not managed to make much progress with the previous book I’d borrowed before my loan had expired. It was a romantic fantasy sequel by an author I quite like, so I really wasn’t expecting to keep putting the book down to reread bits of other books or to check the news or to scroll through social media. Especially as I’ve been doing a lot less of the latter ever since I put an app timer on my phone to limit how long I can spend on That Addictive Algorithm App (aka TikTok).
So I was looking through a list I’d made on Libby for a book that might hold my attention. Way way down in the list was a book I’d added back in 2020, a contemporary young adult fiction novel by Kemmerer. It was available and I finished it within a few hours.
This set me to thinking about the appeal that contemporary young adult fiction still has for me, despite the ever increasing years since I was a teenager in high school. Part of it is that it’s an inherently hopeful genre – protagonists’ circumstances are often guaranteed to change, and moreover, change in ways that grant them greater autonomy and independence, because that’s what happens when one grows up.
Part of it is that there are often lots of big emotions in YA. Maybe that’s because the genre prioritises that sort of storytelling, rather than because teenagers themselves significantly are more emotional, but if I think back on some of the things I felt very strongly about, I’m aware that some of my emotional reactions these days are more muted, tempered by experience and by perspective and by the fact that I now have greater autonomy over my life. There are also genres about adult protagonists that prioritise big emotions but the themes and tone of those narratives can be very different from YA. Because although it’s not hard, per se, to put an adult protagonist in a situation that limits their autonomy and sparks believably big emotions, I think those circumstances are often messier, or even darker, and consequently not so easy to realistically resolve with positive changes. Emphasis on realistically. (Or maybe emphasis on not so easy.)
Another part of the appeal of contemporary YA is that it can focus quickly in on the emotional heart of the story because it doesn’t have to use a lot of words to establish worldbuilding – it can assume that the readers are familiar with the concept of high school and go from there. Sometimes I like worldbuilding, obviously, but sometimes I don’t have the headspace for it.
And I can often relate to the rhythms of daily life of a high schooler – even though this hasn’t been my life for many, many years, that’s still something I have personally experienced, which I can’t always say that about the daily lives of characters who are closer in age to me. I’ve been rewatching some of Set It Up and my sister was commenting on how unpleasant she would find the main characters’ jobs, and I commenting on how different their jobs are from any workplace experience I’ve ever had. (I guess the closest I’ve come to that sort of city, corporate world was catching the same train as a lot of presumably-city corporate people when I was commuting to uni.)
… I did not intend to ramble on so much.
Here’s the review that I wrote over a month ago of Brigid Kemmerer’s non-YA book:
• Warrior Princess Assassin: Earlier this year I was checking my library’s catalogue to see if I could put a hold on the sequel to Kemmerer’s Carving Shadows into Gold yet – I couldn’t, so instead I put a hold on this (unrelated) adult romantasy.
I went into this knowing almost nothing about it – I had an inkling about the tone and direction of the romance, based on a comment I’d seen online, but I knew absolutely nothing else. It turns out that the title doesn’t refer to one person but rather to three. The story begins with the princess, Jory, whose father and older brother have just arranged a marriage alliance for her with the king of a neighbouring country – without consulting her. The warrior is Maddox Kyronan, the king of said neighbouring country, and the assassin is Asher, Jory’s childhood best friend, the son of one of the late queen’s ladies-in-waiting.
I really enjoyed reading this! ( I like how Kemmerer writes conflict between her characters. )
And now, for the contemporary YA:
• Letters to the Lost: This is about an anonymous correspondence between two grieving teenagers. Juliet leaves letters on her mother’s grave, not expecting anyone to actually read them. Declan, who does grounds maintenance at the cemetery as his court-mandated community service, adds a comment of his own to one of Juliet’s letters, not expecting anyone to read it.
This is shades of You’ve Got Mail, which is one of my favourite films. Juliet and Declan both attend the same high school and keep crossing paths in person, and I briefly wondered if it was going to become frustrating, or even unbelievable, that they don’t draw the dots. However, I actually really liked how the story handled it – in context, their reactions to their suspicions and revelations were understandable. Possibly even more so than You’ve Got Mail, given the protagonists’ youth and everything else’ they’re dealing with ( This was a perfect cure for a reading slump. ) Declan and Rev’s very close, very supportive friendship is one of the most interesting relationships in this book – Kemmerer definitely has a knack for writing relationships that I feel very invested in – so I liked getting to see more of their interactions, and I liked how the sequel provides some insight into how things are progressing for Declan (albeit just from Rev’s perspective). There’s also small glimpses of Juliet too.
• More Than We Can Tell: This is about two teenagers who are both receiving unwanted messages and don’t want to talk to their parents about it. Rev has recently begun receiving emails from his abusive father, whom Rev hasn’t seen in over a decade ago. He doesn’t want to (and arguably does not know how to) explain to his adoptive parents how he feels about this contact with his biological father. Emma keeps receiving abusive messages from a fellow player of an online game that Emma built. She doesn’t think telling her parents will help – she expects her gamer father to say that this is just part of the gaming industry that Emma has to deal with, while her mother will use the situation to insist that Emma stop gaming altogether.
I found this very compelling. I had no trouble focusing, either – instead, what I did have trouble with was putting the book down (it was after midnight and I had to work in the morning)! ( Continuing my theme of talking about these characters like they’re real people… )
• Call It What You Want: This isn’t connected to Kemmerer’s previous contemporary YA in any way that I could see, but I could see themes and variations.
It’s about two teenagers who are assigned to work together on a project for Calculus. Rob has been socially ostracised ever since it came to light that his father had committed fraud and mismanaged investments, resulting in lots of Rob’s classmates’ parents losing money, and Maegan has faced social backlash ever since she was caught trying to cheat on the SATs, resulting in lots of her classmates having to resit the exam alongside her. (I kept expecting that bit of backstory to be unpacked more – maybe it would have made more sense if I understood how the SATs work?)
Both of them have challenges on the homefront, too. Rob’s father requires round-the-clock nursing care after a debilitating brain injury. Maegan’s older sister has come home from college unexpectedly and Maegan’s parents have ordered Maegan not to tell anyone that Sam is pregnant, and Sam has ordered Maegan not to tell anyone, not even their parents, who the father is.
It has occurred to me how much I like the way Kemmerer writes dual POV. I often prefer single POV, especially in romantic stories, but in Kemmerer’s stories, having more than one POV is absolutely an asset and I really enjoy seeing things from different perspectives. ( I became invested in Rob’s friendships and I like how Maegan’s relationship with her sister is such an interesting and important part of this story. )
I have now read all of Kemmerer’s contemporary YA and am a little bit disappointed. I can’t remember the last time I read this many contemporary YA books that I liked this much.
I was looking on Kemmerer’s website and I really like the illustrated covers for Letters to the Lost and More Than We Can Tell, and how they capture the characters. (No people on the covers for the editions I read.) I also noted her FAQ says:
Having run out of contemporary YA by Kemmerer to read, I looked at what other books of Kemmerer’s were available on Libby:
• Defy the Night: This is YA fantasy, set in a world plagued by an illness that can be avoided by taking medicine daily. Our heroine is Tessa, an apothecary's assistant, who spends her nights as a masked outlaw, stealing ingredients, concocting the medicine and distributing it to those who cannot afford it. Our hero is Corrick, the king’s younger brother, who is responsible for meting out justice and who has deliberately crafted a reputation for cruelty in order to protect his brother and to maintain stability in the kingdom.
Compared to Kemmerer’s contemporary YA, it took me much longer to become engrossed in the story – not until a particular plot development nearly a third of the way through. ( After that, I was hooked. ) I did come away feeling less invested in the characters and their relationships, probably because this book had to develop political as well as personal tensions and also because the story isn’t over.
But I was less invested, not uninvested. I’d have embarked immediately on the sequel but someone else had borrowed it so I had to wait. I have started it now. So far it’s more palace intrigue than masked outlaw shenanigans and I’m not hooked – yet.
The first of these was a book I read back in February (and then I read half a dozen other books). But the last four books are ones I’ve read in the last fortnight.
I had not managed to make much progress with the previous book I’d borrowed before my loan had expired. It was a romantic fantasy sequel by an author I quite like, so I really wasn’t expecting to keep putting the book down to reread bits of other books or to check the news or to scroll through social media. Especially as I’ve been doing a lot less of the latter ever since I put an app timer on my phone to limit how long I can spend on That Addictive Algorithm App (aka TikTok).
So I was looking through a list I’d made on Libby for a book that might hold my attention. Way way down in the list was a book I’d added back in 2020, a contemporary young adult fiction novel by Kemmerer. It was available and I finished it within a few hours.
This set me to thinking about the appeal that contemporary young adult fiction still has for me, despite the ever increasing years since I was a teenager in high school. Part of it is that it’s an inherently hopeful genre – protagonists’ circumstances are often guaranteed to change, and moreover, change in ways that grant them greater autonomy and independence, because that’s what happens when one grows up.
Part of it is that there are often lots of big emotions in YA. Maybe that’s because the genre prioritises that sort of storytelling, rather than because teenagers themselves significantly are more emotional, but if I think back on some of the things I felt very strongly about, I’m aware that some of my emotional reactions these days are more muted, tempered by experience and by perspective and by the fact that I now have greater autonomy over my life. There are also genres about adult protagonists that prioritise big emotions but the themes and tone of those narratives can be very different from YA. Because although it’s not hard, per se, to put an adult protagonist in a situation that limits their autonomy and sparks believably big emotions, I think those circumstances are often messier, or even darker, and consequently not so easy to realistically resolve with positive changes. Emphasis on realistically. (Or maybe emphasis on not so easy.)
Another part of the appeal of contemporary YA is that it can focus quickly in on the emotional heart of the story because it doesn’t have to use a lot of words to establish worldbuilding – it can assume that the readers are familiar with the concept of high school and go from there. Sometimes I like worldbuilding, obviously, but sometimes I don’t have the headspace for it.
And I can often relate to the rhythms of daily life of a high schooler – even though this hasn’t been my life for many, many years, that’s still something I have personally experienced, which I can’t always say that about the daily lives of characters who are closer in age to me. I’ve been rewatching some of Set It Up and my sister was commenting on how unpleasant she would find the main characters’ jobs, and I commenting on how different their jobs are from any workplace experience I’ve ever had. (I guess the closest I’ve come to that sort of city, corporate world was catching the same train as a lot of presumably-city corporate people when I was commuting to uni.)
… I did not intend to ramble on so much.
Here’s the review that I wrote over a month ago of Brigid Kemmerer’s non-YA book:
• Warrior Princess Assassin: Earlier this year I was checking my library’s catalogue to see if I could put a hold on the sequel to Kemmerer’s Carving Shadows into Gold yet – I couldn’t, so instead I put a hold on this (unrelated) adult romantasy.
I went into this knowing almost nothing about it – I had an inkling about the tone and direction of the romance, based on a comment I’d seen online, but I knew absolutely nothing else. It turns out that the title doesn’t refer to one person but rather to three. The story begins with the princess, Jory, whose father and older brother have just arranged a marriage alliance for her with the king of a neighbouring country – without consulting her. The warrior is Maddox Kyronan, the king of said neighbouring country, and the assassin is Asher, Jory’s childhood best friend, the son of one of the late queen’s ladies-in-waiting.
I really enjoyed reading this! ( I like how Kemmerer writes conflict between her characters. )
And now, for the contemporary YA:
• Letters to the Lost: This is about an anonymous correspondence between two grieving teenagers. Juliet leaves letters on her mother’s grave, not expecting anyone to actually read them. Declan, who does grounds maintenance at the cemetery as his court-mandated community service, adds a comment of his own to one of Juliet’s letters, not expecting anyone to read it.
This is shades of You’ve Got Mail, which is one of my favourite films. Juliet and Declan both attend the same high school and keep crossing paths in person, and I briefly wondered if it was going to become frustrating, or even unbelievable, that they don’t draw the dots. However, I actually really liked how the story handled it – in context, their reactions to their suspicions and revelations were understandable. Possibly even more so than You’ve Got Mail, given the protagonists’ youth and everything else’ they’re dealing with ( This was a perfect cure for a reading slump. ) Declan and Rev’s very close, very supportive friendship is one of the most interesting relationships in this book – Kemmerer definitely has a knack for writing relationships that I feel very invested in – so I liked getting to see more of their interactions, and I liked how the sequel provides some insight into how things are progressing for Declan (albeit just from Rev’s perspective). There’s also small glimpses of Juliet too.
• More Than We Can Tell: This is about two teenagers who are both receiving unwanted messages and don’t want to talk to their parents about it. Rev has recently begun receiving emails from his abusive father, whom Rev hasn’t seen in over a decade ago. He doesn’t want to (and arguably does not know how to) explain to his adoptive parents how he feels about this contact with his biological father. Emma keeps receiving abusive messages from a fellow player of an online game that Emma built. She doesn’t think telling her parents will help – she expects her gamer father to say that this is just part of the gaming industry that Emma has to deal with, while her mother will use the situation to insist that Emma stop gaming altogether.
I found this very compelling. I had no trouble focusing, either – instead, what I did have trouble with was putting the book down (it was after midnight and I had to work in the morning)! ( Continuing my theme of talking about these characters like they’re real people… )
• Call It What You Want: This isn’t connected to Kemmerer’s previous contemporary YA in any way that I could see, but I could see themes and variations.
It’s about two teenagers who are assigned to work together on a project for Calculus. Rob has been socially ostracised ever since it came to light that his father had committed fraud and mismanaged investments, resulting in lots of Rob’s classmates’ parents losing money, and Maegan has faced social backlash ever since she was caught trying to cheat on the SATs, resulting in lots of her classmates having to resit the exam alongside her. (I kept expecting that bit of backstory to be unpacked more – maybe it would have made more sense if I understood how the SATs work?)
Both of them have challenges on the homefront, too. Rob’s father requires round-the-clock nursing care after a debilitating brain injury. Maegan’s older sister has come home from college unexpectedly and Maegan’s parents have ordered Maegan not to tell anyone that Sam is pregnant, and Sam has ordered Maegan not to tell anyone, not even their parents, who the father is.
It has occurred to me how much I like the way Kemmerer writes dual POV. I often prefer single POV, especially in romantic stories, but in Kemmerer’s stories, having more than one POV is absolutely an asset and I really enjoy seeing things from different perspectives. ( I became invested in Rob’s friendships and I like how Maegan’s relationship with her sister is such an interesting and important part of this story. )
I have now read all of Kemmerer’s contemporary YA and am a little bit disappointed. I can’t remember the last time I read this many contemporary YA books that I liked this much.
I was looking on Kemmerer’s website and I really like the illustrated covers for Letters to the Lost and More Than We Can Tell, and how they capture the characters. (No people on the covers for the editions I read.) I also noted her FAQ says:
Do you plan to write any more contemporary YA novels? I get this question a lot, and I’m so touched that readers love my contemporary YA. My best answer at this point is … not right now. I absolutely love contemporary YA, but right now it’s a tough sell (both to publishers and to readers)Interesting, and I guess not really surprising, that contemporary YA isn’t the current hot trend. But I also don’t feel like I necessarily have a good grasp of what is the current trend in publishing, compared to the days when I regularly wandered in and out of bookshops, and I certainly pay much less attention to what is happening in YA land than I once did.
Having run out of contemporary YA by Kemmerer to read, I looked at what other books of Kemmerer’s were available on Libby:
• Defy the Night: This is YA fantasy, set in a world plagued by an illness that can be avoided by taking medicine daily. Our heroine is Tessa, an apothecary's assistant, who spends her nights as a masked outlaw, stealing ingredients, concocting the medicine and distributing it to those who cannot afford it. Our hero is Corrick, the king’s younger brother, who is responsible for meting out justice and who has deliberately crafted a reputation for cruelty in order to protect his brother and to maintain stability in the kingdom.
Compared to Kemmerer’s contemporary YA, it took me much longer to become engrossed in the story – not until a particular plot development nearly a third of the way through. ( After that, I was hooked. ) I did come away feeling less invested in the characters and their relationships, probably because this book had to develop political as well as personal tensions and also because the story isn’t over.
But I was less invested, not uninvested. I’d have embarked immediately on the sequel but someone else had borrowed it so I had to wait. I have started it now. So far it’s more palace intrigue than masked outlaw shenanigans and I’m not hooked – yet.
Shoot like a magnet to the surface of the sun
Apr. 9th, 2026 02:39 amsovayWe just had a blackout! For what looked like blocks around! It lasted exactly as long as it took spatch to light a candle in a yahrzeit glass and me to find a utility bill to call and report the outage. Briefly, stars were visible.
(Today was concerned primarily with taking Hestia to the vet, falling over afterward, and thinking unavoidably about geopolitics.)
spatch to light a candle in a yahrzeit glass and me to find a utility bill to call and report the outage. Briefly, stars were visible.(Today was concerned primarily with taking Hestia to the vet, falling over afterward, and thinking unavoidably about geopolitics.)
In Memoriam (Winn)
Apr. 8th, 2026 10:25 pmcahn5/5. I am having SO many feelings about this book that I am not sure I can actually articulate them all. But also I am very aware that my feelings are entangled partially in, uh, currently being obsessed with a fanon ship that maps super easily on to this one, so you know, as usual, I am not to be trusted about my feelings and I'm very willing to believe that it might not hit quite right if one doesn't happen to be exactly in that situation? Anyway... it's about these two eighteen-year-old boys who start the book at boarding school together in 1914. Sidney Ellwood is half-Jewish, social, charismatic, demonstrative, loves and writes poetry. Henry Gaunt is half-German, intense, introverted, anxious, loves ancient Greek. (...I also have Feelings about characters who quote poetry. And, as it turns out, ancient Greek.) The two of them have strong and more-or-less repressed feelings for each other. (Gaunt's feelings are particularly repressed.)
But. It being 1914, it rapidly starts being about something else than boarding school.
I should probably also mention a huge, extremely gigantic content note for trench warfare and historical levels of wounds and death.
( no spoilers, perhaps mild meta-spoilers, but at least I am more-or-less coherent )
I was so sure that one or both of Elly and Gaunt would die because it struck me as That Kind of heartbreaking book plus which I guess I've been socialized to understand that Teh Gays Always Die (and Carruthers and Sandys died so early on!! :( :( ), and I really REALLY wanted them to have a happy ending, I can't actually think of the last time I've wanted that so much for a couple, and when they got together I felt like, okay, at least they got one happy time before one of them died! All I wanted was for someone somewhere to get some happiness in the end.
The only thing that surprised me was that Gaunt died when the book was only half over. (BURGOYNE.) I was sure then that the next half would be Ellwood writing poetry about him, like Tennyson, or like Sassoon. I was SO surprised when he turned out to have survived! And then my reaction was that the book was now going to find new and exciting ways to break me (true, but not in the way I thought), and I spent most of the second half of the book worried Gaunt would die in some other way, and expressed that I was never going to forgive Winn if Gaunt died, or Ellwood did, without Ellwood finding out that Gaunt was still alive.
I absolutely absolutely adored Hayes and his friendship with Gaunt and his more prickly friendship with Ellwood and the contrast between him and the public schoolboys (who always get promoted over him, the poor guy), and him looking after Ellwood (both physically and e.g. warning him away from Watts) even though he thought Ellwood was looking down on him. I was also convinced he was going to die because I loved him so much (I actually said that I thought he would make it to the end of the war and then die, just to spite me. I actually said this!) And he didn't die but he ended up with BOTH LEGS (or at least 1 1/2) gone! I was like. Winn. Could you not have left him ONE leg?! COME ON. I would rather Gaunt or Ellwood had lost their legs. HAYES.
(Also Hayes panicking to Ellwood and Ellwood trying very very badly to reassure him (no wonder Hayes doesn't want to write him), then Ellwood having that exact panic after he's invalided out, omg)
I absolutely loved that Elly was into poetry and used poetry to basically articulate his emotions (I do the same kind of thing -- a lot of how I understand the world is made up of quotations from novels and poems and songs; my head has been full of Sassoon and Owen writing this post) and that moment when he declaimed Keats at Gaunt and Gaunt had to accept that he was in love with him, except that was when Gaunt knew he was going to die, auuuuugh. And also when Elly lost his poetry and then -- that little glimpse of how he might be getting it back at the end -- auuuuuugh
And also Gaunt and his ancient Greek and how sometimes he just quotes in Greek and I love it
And also I love that Winn doesn't just give us the one side, when Gaunt gets captured by the Germans it's a very stark reminder that although we've been POV English, the English aren't the only ones dying in this war and that even if it's easy for the English soldiers not to see the German soldiers as people and vice versa, they both are. And Gaunt being half-German of course knew this from the beginning, which adds another layer. This line, augh: Had it not been for his khaki uniform, no one should have known he was the enemy.
(And that shattering German POV, for just a minute.)
And also the prisoner-of-war scenes which are almost comic, we needed some of that at that point in the book, and ALSO Pritchard and Devi totally being like oh, yeah, no big deal at all about Gaunt being an "invert," and making ordinary jokes about it like they would about anything else and being totally accepting, instead of all the rejection and awfulness Gaunt's been fearing (and might have gotten from someone else), and that healing something in Gaunt so that he can face his love for Elly and actually tell him that, and be okay with it even if Ellwood can't love him back, I LOVE THIS and I know it's absolutely wish-fulfillment, but we already saw the part where Caruthers basically committed suicide so he didn't have to deal with the terrible consequences of being homosexual (augh!), so yeeeeeah I didn't need that to happen again, that was quite all right.
And then I read the bit where Maud says she's not going to marry Elly and I was cheering for her and also thinking that okay, even if everyone else's life is messed up (I still worried that Ellwood and Gaunt wouldn't find each other again, at this point) maybe Maud is the one character things will work out for, because it would be awful if she married Ellwood
AND THEN THEY DID MEET AGAIN
And they were both so damaged! Except that Gaunt, having been in the POW camp instead of fighting for a while, had recovered a bit mentally if not physically, and Ellwood was completely broken, augh. I had not thought that they would have to deal with shell shock instead of death, but of course they did
And Maud and Gaunt making up, and Maud being supportive and Gaunt apologizing (he really has been awful to her) and them speaking in Greek to each other <3
This bit: "Sometimes I think the War is harder on parents than on soldiers," said Pritchard. Gaunt could tell he was lying, but Gaunt would have lied too, if he had thought of it. And then, having learned from Pritchard, he says it to Mrs. Ellwood AUUUUUGH
(I said this before, but, now that I have the spoilers to back me up: all the little moments of kindness between characters that didn't have to happen, but did anyway, are I think what make me so hopelessly a fan of this book)
I think as we get close to the ending my thoughts just get more and more incoherent as Winn breaks my heart over and over again and I hadn't at all thought it would be because things were more-or-less going to be okay except that they can't exactly be okay but they can be as okay as possible:
Devi being ALIVE
CYRIL ROSEVEARE giving them the Brazil out!
Also: KEATS
Gaunt giving Hayes a JOB (and not a job as his freaking valet, either, not that I don't love Lord Peter but... like, let's let Hayes have a little class mobility here, that's the LEAST we can do)
"I'm not playing, either."
I mean, the rational part of my brain knows that the book is doing a few backflips to give them an ending where they can be alive and togetherand not be Alan Turing (although hi I found while writing this post that Robert Graves actually had the experience of almost dying of a lung wound and being reported dead, like Gaunt, though not because he was a pow, so it's not like she's completely making UP backflips, either) but the rest of my brain does not really care -- I think because we saw all the ways in which things could go wrong, it's a little like Carruthers and Sandys ( :(((((( ) and Aldworth and the Roseveare brothers and Lantham and -- and everyone else -- are the other stories that didn't work, that ended tragically, so in a sense my brain thinks of it like survivor bias; not everyone did die in WWI, or even most of everyone; someone had to survive; it might as well be them.
And also because they didn't survive unscathed. At all. Either physically or mentally. Which also seems -- reasonable, statistically speaking.
Also because no one should be Alan Turing (including especially Alan Turing) and I don't at all mind a universe where my characters ARE NOT (now, can I have a fix-it AU for Turing)
Physically speaking: Sassoon (who admittedly did not get his face shot off) lived until age 81 and Graves lived until age 90 after getting shot in the lung, so my headcanon is that Ellwood and Gaunt lived a very long time together :P
And then that last, awful twist of the knife. OH COME ON, the book was DONE and we were all going to live happily (or at least hopefully) EVER AFTER and now the third Roseveare brother is dead (as he dreamed back in the beginning, that was a shoe I had been bracing to drop for forever and when I finally let my guard down...). (While I was reading about WWII poets... I guess this happened to Wilfred Owen. Augh!)
And the LAST PARAGRAPH which didn't even register for me the first time -- I might not have actually read it properly then, because I was too busy trying not to throw the book across the room because Cyril was dead: Let us, like the soldiers of Waterloo, have our century of peace and prosperity, for we have paid for it in blood.
:(
Well, I'm thinking about that a lot this week.
( Here, have the Sassoon poem 'They', because it's been rattling around in my head for days now )
And I suppose reading this book, now, is: well: I think this should be required reading for anyone who tells the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
But. It being 1914, it rapidly starts being about something else than boarding school.
I should probably also mention a huge, extremely gigantic content note for trench warfare and historical levels of wounds and death.
( no spoilers, perhaps mild meta-spoilers, but at least I am more-or-less coherent )
Major spoilers, starts reasonably coherent but rapidly devolves into word-vomiting
I was so sure that one or both of Elly and Gaunt would die because it struck me as That Kind of heartbreaking book plus which I guess I've been socialized to understand that Teh Gays Always Die (and Carruthers and Sandys died so early on!! :( :( ), and I really REALLY wanted them to have a happy ending, I can't actually think of the last time I've wanted that so much for a couple, and when they got together I felt like, okay, at least they got one happy time before one of them died! All I wanted was for someone somewhere to get some happiness in the end.
The only thing that surprised me was that Gaunt died when the book was only half over. (BURGOYNE.) I was sure then that the next half would be Ellwood writing poetry about him, like Tennyson, or like Sassoon. I was SO surprised when he turned out to have survived! And then my reaction was that the book was now going to find new and exciting ways to break me (true, but not in the way I thought), and I spent most of the second half of the book worried Gaunt would die in some other way, and expressed that I was never going to forgive Winn if Gaunt died, or Ellwood did, without Ellwood finding out that Gaunt was still alive.
I absolutely absolutely adored Hayes and his friendship with Gaunt and his more prickly friendship with Ellwood and the contrast between him and the public schoolboys (who always get promoted over him, the poor guy), and him looking after Ellwood (both physically and e.g. warning him away from Watts) even though he thought Ellwood was looking down on him. I was also convinced he was going to die because I loved him so much (I actually said that I thought he would make it to the end of the war and then die, just to spite me. I actually said this!) And he didn't die but he ended up with BOTH LEGS (or at least 1 1/2) gone! I was like. Winn. Could you not have left him ONE leg?! COME ON. I would rather Gaunt or Ellwood had lost their legs. HAYES.
(Also Hayes panicking to Ellwood and Ellwood trying very very badly to reassure him (no wonder Hayes doesn't want to write him), then Ellwood having that exact panic after he's invalided out, omg)
I absolutely loved that Elly was into poetry and used poetry to basically articulate his emotions (I do the same kind of thing -- a lot of how I understand the world is made up of quotations from novels and poems and songs; my head has been full of Sassoon and Owen writing this post) and that moment when he declaimed Keats at Gaunt and Gaunt had to accept that he was in love with him, except that was when Gaunt knew he was going to die, auuuuugh. And also when Elly lost his poetry and then -- that little glimpse of how he might be getting it back at the end -- auuuuuugh
And also Gaunt and his ancient Greek and how sometimes he just quotes in Greek and I love it
And also I love that Winn doesn't just give us the one side, when Gaunt gets captured by the Germans it's a very stark reminder that although we've been POV English, the English aren't the only ones dying in this war and that even if it's easy for the English soldiers not to see the German soldiers as people and vice versa, they both are. And Gaunt being half-German of course knew this from the beginning, which adds another layer. This line, augh: Had it not been for his khaki uniform, no one should have known he was the enemy.
(And that shattering German POV, for just a minute.)
And also the prisoner-of-war scenes which are almost comic, we needed some of that at that point in the book, and ALSO Pritchard and Devi totally being like oh, yeah, no big deal at all about Gaunt being an "invert," and making ordinary jokes about it like they would about anything else and being totally accepting, instead of all the rejection and awfulness Gaunt's been fearing (and might have gotten from someone else), and that healing something in Gaunt so that he can face his love for Elly and actually tell him that, and be okay with it even if Ellwood can't love him back, I LOVE THIS and I know it's absolutely wish-fulfillment, but we already saw the part where Caruthers basically committed suicide so he didn't have to deal with the terrible consequences of being homosexual (augh!), so yeeeeeah I didn't need that to happen again, that was quite all right.
And then I read the bit where Maud says she's not going to marry Elly and I was cheering for her and also thinking that okay, even if everyone else's life is messed up (I still worried that Ellwood and Gaunt wouldn't find each other again, at this point) maybe Maud is the one character things will work out for, because it would be awful if she married Ellwood
AND THEN THEY DID MEET AGAIN
And they were both so damaged! Except that Gaunt, having been in the POW camp instead of fighting for a while, had recovered a bit mentally if not physically, and Ellwood was completely broken, augh. I had not thought that they would have to deal with shell shock instead of death, but of course they did
And Maud and Gaunt making up, and Maud being supportive and Gaunt apologizing (he really has been awful to her) and them speaking in Greek to each other <3
This bit: "Sometimes I think the War is harder on parents than on soldiers," said Pritchard. Gaunt could tell he was lying, but Gaunt would have lied too, if he had thought of it. And then, having learned from Pritchard, he says it to Mrs. Ellwood AUUUUUGH
(I said this before, but, now that I have the spoilers to back me up: all the little moments of kindness between characters that didn't have to happen, but did anyway, are I think what make me so hopelessly a fan of this book)
I think as we get close to the ending my thoughts just get more and more incoherent as Winn breaks my heart over and over again and I hadn't at all thought it would be because things were more-or-less going to be okay except that they can't exactly be okay but they can be as okay as possible:
Devi being ALIVE
CYRIL ROSEVEARE giving them the Brazil out!
"You don't have to give me your answer now, of course," said Roseveare. "I've already written to my uncle about you, just in case--"
He didn't finish. They both knew what he meant: in case I'm killed before I can help you.
Also: KEATS
Gaunt giving Hayes a JOB (and not a job as his freaking valet, either, not that I don't love Lord Peter but... like, let's let Hayes have a little class mobility here, that's the LEAST we can do)
"I'm not playing, either."
I mean, the rational part of my brain knows that the book is doing a few backflips to give them an ending where they can be alive and together
And also because they didn't survive unscathed. At all. Either physically or mentally. Which also seems -- reasonable, statistically speaking.
Also because no one should be Alan Turing (including especially Alan Turing) and I don't at all mind a universe where my characters ARE NOT (now, can I have a fix-it AU for Turing)
Physically speaking: Sassoon (who admittedly did not get his face shot off) lived until age 81 and Graves lived until age 90 after getting shot in the lung, so my headcanon is that Ellwood and Gaunt lived a very long time together :P
And then that last, awful twist of the knife. OH COME ON, the book was DONE and we were all going to live happily (or at least hopefully) EVER AFTER and now the third Roseveare brother is dead (as he dreamed back in the beginning, that was a shoe I had been bracing to drop for forever and when I finally let my guard down...). (While I was reading about WWII poets... I guess this happened to Wilfred Owen. Augh!)
And the LAST PARAGRAPH which didn't even register for me the first time -- I might not have actually read it properly then, because I was too busy trying not to throw the book across the room because Cyril was dead: Let us, like the soldiers of Waterloo, have our century of peace and prosperity, for we have paid for it in blood.
:(
Well, I'm thinking about that a lot this week.
( Here, have the Sassoon poem 'They', because it's been rattling around in my head for days now )
And I suppose reading this book, now, is: well: I think this should be required reading for anyone who tells the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.