A Certain Slant of Light

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Elizabeth Wein’s The Pearl Thief, which features ( exuberant spoilers )

What I’m Reading Now

At last I started The Ordinary Acrobat and I’m quite enjoying it! I had not realized that a memoir about attending a circus school was a thing that I wanted in my life, but it totally is and it’s just as fascinating as it sounds. And also it has made me want to learn how to juggle.

I found myself pining for the bucolic world of Miss Read, so I went ahead and borrowed the last two Miss Reads in my mother’s collection: Thrush Green and Winter in Thrush Green. Will I be forced to turn to the library to supplement my Miss Read needs? Perhaps! Although probably I should give James Herriot a try first - I think he’s got a similar thing going on in his tales of life as a country vet, in the quirkily amusing yet tranquil English countryside.

What I Plan to Read Next

Now that I’ve almost finished reading down my pile of books-I-own-but-haven’t-read, I’ve decided that it’s time to make some serious progress on my to-read list. Perhaps Emily Arsenault’s The Leaf Reader? I quite enjoyed her earlier novelThe Broken Teaglass, and it sent me on a fruitful search for more mystery novels about unraveling literary puzzles. Or maybe some more Jon Krakauer…

I’ve already borrowed Sara Pennypacker’s Summer of the Gypsy Moths from the library, though, so probably I will read that first.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I finished Gene Stratton-Porter’s A Girl of the Limberlost, which I actually quite enjoyed! Given that my last experience with Stratton-Porter was Her Father’s Daughter, this surprised me, but I think Stratton-Porter didn’t get on her racist eugenicist hobbyhorse until she moved to California.

A Girl of the Limberlost is quite a bit pre-California. Our heroine Elnora Comstock lives on the edge of the Limberlost Swamp with her mother, who is still wildly pining for her husband who drowned in the swamp soon after Elnora’s birth (sinking into the bottomless deeps of a pool while Mrs. Comstock stood on the edge, watching but unable to help - there is a certain melodramatic pulpy quality to all this, it’s great) and resents Elnora because she believes Elnora, I am not certain how, prevented her from saving her husband.

Mrs. Comstock is an arrestingly terrible mother. She is an unpredictably terrible mother, so sometimes she makes Elnora a delicious lunch with spice cake and cured ham and Elnora peeks at it repeatedly on the way to school because she believes that here at last is some concrete proof that her mother loves her at least a little (ELNORA I WANT TO HUG YOU), and sometimes she sends her daughter to her first day of high school in an outdated calico dress without warning her in advance that she’ll have to pay fees for her classes and school books, because she figures that humiliating herself in front of her classmates will teach Elnora a good life lesson about... I don’t know. Not trusting her mother?

Fortunately, Elnora is a budding young naturalist who has been collecting moths for years, which she sells to a local collector - the Bird Woman - and thereby funds herself through high school. The naturalist sections are really well done (Stratton-Porter herself wrote natural history articles for magazines); I kind of want to read a book about moths now.

What I’m Reading Now

Still working on Constance Fenimore Woolson’s Anne, which looks even worse in light of A Girl of the Limberlost. Stratton-Porter is sufficiently confident in Elnora’s excellence that she can surround her with interesting female characters; she even has sympathy for Elnora’s eventual romantic rival. Woolson has so little faith in Anne (who, poor child, is not allowed to have opinions or faults or much emotion at all) that she seems to believe she can only sell her as a heroine if she constantly runs down every other woman in the story and also women in general.

Women, it seems, are essentially creatures of vanity and whim: “A man, however mild, demands in a home at least a pretense of fixed hours and regularity; only a household of women is capable of no regularity at all, of changing the serious dinner hour capriciously, and even giving up dinner altogether.”

I strongly suspect that the reason men invariably demanded a fixed dinner hour, at least in houses with women present, is that the dinner hour was not their responsibility. They just had to wave a hand and demand it, and huff and puff and blow the house down if it wasn’t done.

I’ve also continued Black Dove, White Raven; it turns out (of course) that I quit right before it got interesting the first time I tried it. War looms with the Italians! And I am really enjoying all the detail about Ethiopia - it’s sort of humbling to realize how absolutely nothing I know about it.

Plus, Elizabeth Wein always has gorgeous descriptions of flying.

What I Plan to Read Next

Oh my God, ALL MY HOLDS came in at the library all at the same time. Carney’s House Party (a Betsy-Tacy companion novel), A Tangle of Gold (Jaclyn Moriarty’s latest book), In the Labyrinth of Drakes (the latest Isabella Trent novel), AND it turns out the library has Glimpses of the Devil, which is the book where M. Scott Peck finally reveals all the details of the exorcisms that he alluded to with cruel vagueness in People of the Lie!

I WANT TO READ ALL THESE BOOKS SO MUCH THAT I CAN’T DECIDE WHERE TO START. Although probably it should be Carney’s House Party because that’s an interlibrary loan and therefore really needs to go back on time.

What I've Just Finished Reading

Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, which... I don't know. He goes on and on about how some things are simple impossible to communicate in words, and I agree with this to some extent, but at the same time, I feel like he could probably communicate a lot more with words if he were just a bit more precise and concrete and not so airy-fairy.

Possibly this as as much a problem with the translation as Rilke himself, though.

Even if I found the book as a whole rather underwhelming, some of his observations were food for thought. Like this one: "Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them."

I wouldn't go so far as to say that criticism is useless - but I think there's also something to be said for just being with a work of art, and just being with it and not reflexively picking it to pieces. And, also, to understand a work of art, I think one has to be in some sympathy with its basic project: someone who thinks fantasy or YA or romance or literary fiction is by its very nature worthless tripe is not going to have anything very useful or interesting to say about it.

Or this quote: "Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."

I can't decide if this is beautiful and inspiring, or hopeless tripe. Or somehow both at once. I think it's more true (to the extent that it is true) about the things that frighten us in ourselves, that we believe to be our flaws and weaknesses.

What I'm Reading Now

Black Dove, White Raven, which is not grabbing me like the other Elizabeth Wein books I've read. It's interesting, but there's no feeling of urgency to it, despite the fact that the prefatory letters make it clear that Teo is in dire straits. But it's hard to remember that while reading memories about Em and Teo's childhood.

What I Plan to Read Next

I have a small stack of books from the university library: Eugenia Ginzburg's Within the Whirlwind and A. R. Luria's The Making of Mind and The Man with the Shattered World. It's hard to choose from such an embarrassment of riches!

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera, but I have a post in the works about that so I shall not detain you here.

Also Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife, because Emma recommended it to me. It’s a recently published adult book, which puts it rather out of the way of the things I normally read. I quite enjoyed it - I mean, in the way that you enjoy a book that’s really pretty depressing - and that set me to thinking why I don’t read recently published adult fiction more often.

Ultimately I think it’s just that there isn’t time to read everything, because there are so many books in the world. You have to pick and choose which genres you’re going to focus on.

Also, I seem to have a talent for striking on recently published adult novels that are lovely but very sad. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is also beautifully written, but still a total downer. A life without the ability to enjoy food! So sad!

What I’m Reading Now

Elizabeth Wein’s Rose Under Fire. ( Spoilers )

What I Plan to Read Next

J. K. Rowling’s new mystery novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling. I didn’t really like the later Harry Potter books, but I loved the first few and I’m awfully fond of mysteries, so I’m hoping I’ll love this too.

SPEAKING OF MYSTERIES. Did you know that Jane Langton - who wrote The Diamond in the Window and, my most favorite, The Fledgling - wrote mystery novels about the Transcendentalists? I DIDN’T. So excited about this!

It is a misty, misty morn! I meant to get up and be productive, and indeed I did eventually, but it took a while because I was up until two last night on account of having two pots of tea in the evening.

Not all to myself, mind. My parents brought me a box of Belgian chocolates (did I mention they went to Belgium? They went to Belgium. "You always go the best places when I'm in school," I said wistfully.

"Do you even know anything about Belgium?" asked my dad.

"They have chocolate!"

"Anything else?"

"...more chocolate?")

Anyway, having acquired this box of Belgian chocolates, it was clearly imperative to have my friends over for a Belgian chocolate tea party. Sadly the photos didn't come out very nicely - let's face it, the interior of a chocolate box is only visually interesting when you're trying to decide which one to eat - but it was a lovely party. We discussed whether or not ghosts count as undead. Rick said no, I said yes, provided they're the kind of ghost that can talk to you and still has feelings and such, rather than just a ghost that mechanically repeats the same movements as if they're in a movie.

And, as all loyal Scooby Doo fans know, if you find the second type of ghost, you should probably start looking around for the projector anyway.

You know what would be great for a non-Scooby supernatural investigation show? If the show split half and half between supernatural and non-supernatural causes. It would add an extra layer of interest to the investigation to have to put serious work into deciding if this one was really a ghost, or just a vengeful relative or disaffected teenager with a projector.

***

Also also! fic_corner stories are live!!!!! And I have TWO, OMG, both for Crown Duel, but filling different prompts! I haven't read them yet, because I am reading the dullest book ever for my nineteenth-century US history class - I shouldn't complain too much, this is the first bad book we've read - so I'm going to let myself read the stories when I hit milestones in the book.

I will link those once I've read them. (Also, any other recs I have for the exchange. WANT TO READ EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW.) For now, here are the stories I wrote:

Ivy and Thorns, Ella Enchanted, G. “The language of flowers,” said Manners Mistress, looking over the finishing school garden with a dreamy smile that usually meant she was thinking of the king and queen. “Ah! Is there a language in the world sweeter, more delicate, more suitable for gentle maidens than that of our petaled sisters of the garden?”

At finishing school, Ella and Areida learn about the language of flowers. Hattie, as usual, gets in the way.

I enjoyed writing all of this - Areida's sweetness, Ella's defiance, musings about how Ella's curse works - but I think my very favorite bit was writing Manners Mistress. My friend Emma betaed it for me.

The Persistence of Memory, Code Name Verity, G. “Did you ever read A Little Princess?” Julie asked. “I loved to pretend to be Sara Crewe." Maddie remembers playing pretend with Julie.

Betaed by our most excellent rymenhild, who pinpointed brilliantly why it wasn't quite gelling. I think it does now!

Dear Scribbler:

Hello! Mere words cannot contain my excitement for this exchange. Fanfic about children’s books! If there were chocolate involved, it would contain all of my favorite things in the world.

So basically I am going to be pretty easy to please. I like most things: gen, het, femmeslash, slash, OT3s, ridiculous adventure. Deliciously bittersweet fic is delightful, and so are fluff and rainbows and fun. I don’t really want anything more explicit than PG-13, though, even if the characters are aged up.

Likes
- Characters who understand each other, even if they sometimes drive each other up the wall
- Loyalty, especially characters doing stupidly amazing things out of loyalty for each other
- Characters who are passionate about something (aside from just each other) – who love their work, their art, their stamp-collecting, anything
- Hurt/comfort fics
- Friendship
- Witty banter
- “Five things…” stories

Dislikes
- Character death

( Specifics for the fandoms: American Girl: Rebecca, Code Name Verity, Crown Duel, The Egypt Game, Queen’s Thief )

The Yuletide reveal is come upon us! At last, I can share my fics.

The main story

Erlkönigs Tochter, Princess Tutu, Fakir & Ahiru & fairytales. Betaed by isiscolo and asakiyume and also one of my RL friends, because I was having vapors about whether it worked.

I got the prompt for this and the beginning and end more or less fell out of my head. (Incidentally, this is the second time I’ve used the same twist end for a Yuletide story, so probably I ought to retire it.) The middle, though, was hell on wheels to write: the bloody story just kept accruing fairytales. But I think it turned out well, in the end - and it makes sense even if you don’t know the original, which is quite an achievement for a Princess Tutu tale!

The treats

Fidelity, Cairo Time, Juliette/Tareq.

One thing I love about Yuletide is that it lets me write for fandoms I would never think of otherwise - and not only would I never have written this, but I wouldn’t have seen the movie at all if I hadn’t read about it in someone’s Yuletide letter. The filmmakers managed to take one of my least favorite themes - infidelity - and make a quiet, lovely movie. I tried to match its tone in this fic.

Dream a Little Dream, Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity, Maddie/Julie.

This is quite a last minute story. It was Christmas Eve, I wanted to write one last Yuletide story, and I had all these feelings about Code Name Verity, and...this happened. The idea for the story had been rattling around in my head since I read the book: near the end Maddie comments that Julie taught her how to foxtrot, and I went “Where is this scene! I WANT THIS SCENE.”

I meant this to be fluffily flufftastic, but multiple people commented that it made them cry, so...apparently that’s as close as CNV gets to fluffy?

The Winebearer, Classical Roman RPF in SPAAAAAAACE, Julius Caesar/Nicomedes of Bithynia. Betaed by carmarthen.

...I kind of want to write “The Further Adventures of Caesar in SPAAAAACE.” Bad brain! No cookie!

I had a great time writing incredibly arrogant Caesar, even though I wrote myself a corner with it. I got to the part where Caesar is on his knees, went “Crap, there is no way this is not ending porntastically,” glowered at the fic for a while, and then...wrote the porntastic scene.

I had splendid weekend! I have spent it being gloriously unproductive (unless reading Code Name Verity counts - more about that later). For lo! I have seen a cornucopia of friends.

1. Emma and Ryan were in town! We had pides and fried rice and chocolate brioche, and I got Emma to watch Phoebe in Wonderland, which she liked, which relieved me greatly, because it's one of my favorite movies. I also lent her a stack of books, including Code Name Verity, which I did not own until last Friday.

2. I think I convinced my friend Becky to do Yuletide! I am a Yuletide pusher; people mention they write fanfic and I get a manic gleam in my eye and cry "YOU MUST DO YULETIDE YOU MUST YOU MUST!" Crossing my fingers that she actually signs up.

3. My parents just got back from New Zealand! And also it is my mother's birthday, so I drove up and we had dinner, and it was delightful.

And they brought me a copy of the newest Obernewtyn book, The Sending! Which is apparently not the last Obernewtyn book. I think this is the third or fourth Obernewtyn book that was supposed to be the last book, only to unexpectedly mutate into two books in the writing. It is frustrating.

Anyway, I exercised superhuman restraint and did not bring it back with me, because otherwise I would have done nothing all next week but read it, and I already went on my fiction-reading spree with Code Name Verity.

CODE NAME VERITY, you guys. I want to write an actual review of it, except I'm not really coherent about it yet, because the last third pretty much gutted me.

I read about half of it on Thursday evening, and said "Well, this is good, and it is grim, but everyone promised me harrowing and I don't feel harrowed yet, and also I'm exhausted, so I'm going to sleep."

And then the next day I finished it, and by God was I harrowed. By the last bit I was putting the book down every few pages and hopping around the apartment, because I had too many feelings and couldn't sit still, and when I finished I hied myself to the library, through the rain, because I simply could not have the book in the house any longer.

Half an hour later I bundled Emma into the car, spent forty minutes detouring three times around construction, to buy a copy at Barnes and Nobles, which I promptly lent to her.

(This burst of generosity may get in the way of my epic Code Name Verity/I Capture the Castle post-war crossover fic. Epic, you guys. I have so many FEELINGS and they MUST BE CHANNELED.)

( SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS, normally I am totally blase about spoilers but you really, really want to read this book unspoiled )