Down in the cellar, you're getting into making poisons

Happy Monday! My day so far has chiefly contained a doctor's appointment, wrestling with health insurance, and a steep learning curve of WordPress. Have some assorted news.

1. Strange Horizons has a new look! Check it out.

2. On November 15th—that's in three weeks—I will be reading with Kij Johnson at the Brooklyn Commons Café as part of the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings. Probably from my most recently accepted fiction, maybe some poetry as well. If you are at all in the area, come and hear!

3. On January 7th—that's next year—I will be reading at the United Photo Industries Gallery as the part of the closing event for Viktor Koen's Bestiary: Bizarre Myths & Chimerical Fancies. That will very definitely be the poem I wrote for the exhibition catalogue. More information as we approach.

4. Reproduced from comments with rydra_wong, because I never got around to it on my own journal:

I never reviewed Lady with a Past (1932) at all, but it's worth your time if you can catch it. It's almost a screwball comedy, except that the majority of its dialogue would not have passed muster post-Code; its pacing is a mess and it needed either a different ending or to get there much more smoothly; but it also contains the not-so-secret weapon of Constance Bennett as a bookish, socially awkward heroine who decides to jump-start her social life by pretending to a scandalous reputation and hires Ben Lyon's cheerfully upfront ne'er-do-well ("I'm careless, shiftless, and extravagant") to squire her around Paris with just the right balance of salaciousness and class. She got the idea from watching the skyrocketing popularity of a woman who was acquitted of poisoning her husband; to give you an idea of the film's tone, she muses quite seriously on whether she would have to get a husband herself in order to poison him or whether poisoning just anybody's husband would do. The central and charming irony is that she doesn't actually alter her personality a jot, but now she's perceived as mysterious and fascinating instead of gauche and unapproachable and soon she's got suitors of all nationalities swarming her at parties, including her best friend's brother (David Manners) who once jilted her without knowing it after drunkenly proposing to her the night before. The strongest stretch of the film simply has these three characters bouncing off each other: Bennett is delighted to find her lack of small talk taken for smoldering enigma, Lyon is as good as his word in both his ability to play her latest louche flame while being genuinely supportive of her and his tendency to run up staggering bills in liquor and clothes, and Manners, when he drops dutifully by to look in on the wallflower, is blown off his feet by her newfound popularity and then wickedly shut out when he tries to get a courtship in edgewise. It's not a lost classic, but I found it a lot of fun. I need to see more of Constance Bennett than Topper (1937) and I still like Ben Lyon, who on the strength of this movie and Night Nurse (1931) looks like a character lead to me. I keep forgetting what happened to him beyond marrying Bebe Daniels and moving to the UK. I really enjoy David Manners so long as he's not appearing in Dracula (1931).

There is no fifth thing; I am heading off to meet nineweaving, sartorias, and skogkatt in Harvard Square. I leave you with some pre-Code people.

Though your hair is blue, we think another world of you

Meeting up with nineweaving, sartorias, and skogkatt at Burdick's was delightful, especially since the group included Skogkatt's mother and later two other writers who may or may not have livejournals. I brought home several packages of chocolate ghosts and bats for my mother, in preparation for the annual Halloween party. derspatchel and I made omelets for dinner while two small cats watched with rapt attention (nobody has to feel sorry for them, they got turkey). Since more than half of the kitchen is still in storage and we have not yet received the replacement stove, I made oatmeal cookies afterward using a mixing bowl, a large fork, and a toaster oven; the results made me feel very accomplished, and after the third and a half cookie, very full. I cannot be the only person who sees the totally normal place-name "Torridon" and tries to remember which one of the Highlords of the Kencyrath that was.