![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
They burned for treason in the king's country as they burned for our Lord high on Calvary
I seem to have lost most of this week to falling down the stairs. I did get to a seminar at the Massachusetts Historical Society, which I enjoyed immensely; it left me with more books I want to read. I had Movie Night with Alison. I lost some time to discovering that much of The Jack Benny Program (1950–1965) has been uploaded to YouTube. And otherwise mostly I did not move, or learned there are directions in which I should not try to.
I did not set off any fireworks for Guy Fawkes Day. I did sing "The Bonfire Carol (Judas Was a Red-Headed Man)," but that was later in the evening at Single Malt & Song. First I met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks and B.—in town for a very flying visit—for lunch at Sapporo Ramen in Porter Square, after which we spent most of the afternoon at the MFA with Aphrodite and other erotic gods; I read the second volume of Kaoru Mori's A Bride's Story (2011) on the Green Line and walked through most of the museum with blue streaks on my face from Rush's hair, which is not being colorfast at present. For my extended birthday, B. gave me a copy of Donald Kingsbury's Courtship Rite (1982), which I have been wanting to read for years; I said from descriptions it had sounded like Ursula K. Le Guin with more cannibalism and they both agreed.
My present from Rush andgaudior was the British first edition of Elizabeth Goudge's The Valley of Song (1951). It is her best and her least-known novel for children; I have never owned a copy, because as far as I can tell there was one printing in the U.K. and one printing in the U.S. and no one has ever bothered with a second edition, even though The Little White Horse (1946) has never been out of print and it's easily the least of the three I've read. It has to be tracked down in libraries. It tends to be stolen from them. It has a particular quality of numinous I'm not sure what to liken to, because its closest relative would have to be C.S. Lewis (Anglicanism, classical myth and English magic, transcendence in the everyday) and he would never have written this book, and this is the edition with the illustrations I remember from my childhood, with the brightly colored dust jacket I've never seen. Best cousins. I did not expect I would ever own it.
This is a good weekend for an extra hour, however theoretical, in which to sleep.
I did not set off any fireworks for Guy Fawkes Day. I did sing "The Bonfire Carol (Judas Was a Red-Headed Man)," but that was later in the evening at Single Malt & Song. First I met
rushthatspeaks and B.—in town for a very flying visit—for lunch at Sapporo Ramen in Porter Square, after which we spent most of the afternoon at the MFA with Aphrodite and other erotic gods; I read the second volume of Kaoru Mori's A Bride's Story (2011) on the Green Line and walked through most of the museum with blue streaks on my face from Rush's hair, which is not being colorfast at present. For my extended birthday, B. gave me a copy of Donald Kingsbury's Courtship Rite (1982), which I have been wanting to read for years; I said from descriptions it had sounded like Ursula K. Le Guin with more cannibalism and they both agreed. My present from Rush and
gaudior was the British first edition of Elizabeth Goudge's The Valley of Song (1951). It is her best and her least-known novel for children; I have never owned a copy, because as far as I can tell there was one printing in the U.K. and one printing in the U.S. and no one has ever bothered with a second edition, even though The Little White Horse (1946) has never been out of print and it's easily the least of the three I've read. It has to be tracked down in libraries. It tends to be stolen from them. It has a particular quality of numinous I'm not sure what to liken to, because its closest relative would have to be C.S. Lewis (Anglicanism, classical myth and English magic, transcendence in the everyday) and he would never have written this book, and this is the edition with the illustrations I remember from my childhood, with the brightly colored dust jacket I've never seen. Best cousins. I did not expect I would ever own it.This is a good weekend for an extra hour, however theoretical, in which to sleep.
no subject
I failed to wish you a swift recovery when you said you fell down the stairs.... but I do hope whatever damage you sustained heals up quickly. That's a very scary and potentially quite harmful (I mean, it can kill people) accident.
no subject
I have mixed feelings about her adult novels; I remember The Dean's Watch (1960) fondly enough that I should re-read it, but the reason I keep The Child from the Sea (1970) around is because it is utter historical crack—co-starring an ancestor of mine and more angst than he ever seems to have experienced in life—and The White Witch (1958) turned out to have been visited by the Exotic Gypsies Fairy. On the other hand, I think you would like Linnets and Valerians (1964) very much. There are three kinds of people in the world, the character of Ezra explains: the gold-hearted, the black-hearted, and the silver-hearted. The first two you can figure out for yourself, but the third are those humans descended from the fairies—not the butterfly-winged childish kind, but what Ezra calls the Silver People, the angels who never took sides when Lucifer warred against God and Michael in Heaven, and so are still abroad in the world today, belonging neither here nor there; and so are their descendants, the fey and quicksilvery, painters, poets, storytellers, singers. Ezra who tells this story is one of the silver-hearted himself.
but I do hope whatever damage you sustained heals up quickly. That's a very scary and potentially quite harmful (I mean, it can kill people) accident.
Thanks. I was more active yesterday than I had been all week and I was still able to get out of bed this morning, so I take it as a good sign.
no subject
Silver-hearted. Like most of my friends here on LJ.
Thanks for the recommendation.
no subject
May this year bring joy.
Be well.
Nine
no subject
And apparently without mortgaging their firstborn. I am very impressed.
no subject
Nine
no subject
no subject
I didn't even realize it had been translated! If you check out either version, let me know what you think.
no subject
no subject
It's excellent. It's one of the most convincingly alien books I've read, including Gene Wolfe and Ursula K. Le Guin—the style is so much more tell than show that it should feel like one long infodump, except the information it's conveying is structured so counterintuitively to the (contemporary, human) reader's first interests, it becomes a form of storytelling in itself. The cannibalism premise is not only fully worked through, but functions differently in different cultures, which almost no one remembers to explore when they come up with a planetwide observance; the religion is complex, splintered, and just as likely to produce ordinary decent or annoying semi-secular people as saints or whackjobs, which almost no one remembers, either. (There are a lot of heresies. One, to which an intelligent and sympathetic protagonist subscribes, is totally, demonstrably wrong. There are ways in which this is not even the correct vocabulary to discuss religion on Geta.) There is a lot of politics, but it's not a novel of intrigue; there are numerous and intricately interdependent relationships, but it's not a romance; it's not even an epic, even though the fate of the planet kind of is at stake. There are ways in which it reminds me of nineteenth-century novels plus the kitchen sink and ways in which it genuinely feels like a document from another world. It is the least shocking treatment of cannibalism and polyamory imaginable. The level of casual violence is very high. There is also philosophy. I can't imagine how Kingsbury's agent sold it.
no subject
In the same light, Benary Isbert's THE WICKED ENCHANTMENT and Chute's GREENWILLOW.
no subject
That's one of the ones I need to re-read.
In the same light, Benary Isbert's THE WICKED ENCHANTMENT and Chute's GREENWILLOW.
Neither of which I've read! Thank you.
no subject
no subject
Might I ask what was the subject of the seminar at the Historical Society?
I'm delighted to hear of the new books. I hope you've got that extra hour of sleep. I may be developing a cold, but am hoping to hold it off with zinc so as to be able to go to your reading on Wednesday without risk of transmitting anything.
no subject
Thank you. All but the very impressive bruise are mostly gone.
Might I ask what was the subject of the seminar at the Historical Society?
Biography. Three historians speaking on both their subjects and the process of writing about them: Dean Grodzins on Theodore Parker, Michael Burlingame on Lincoln, Tony Horwitz on John Brown. I should really know more about nineteenth-century America than I do.
I may be developing a cold, but am hoping to hold it off with zinc so as to be able to go to your reading on Wednesday without risk of transmitting anything.
Awesome! (And for your sake, too, best of luck.)
no subject
You're welcome. I'm glad this is the case, and hope it will soon be more than mostly.
I should really know more about nineteenth-century America than I do.
I sometimes feel that way, myself. Sounds an interesting event, that.
Awesome! (And for your sake, too, best of luck.)
Thank you! So far, so good. Maybe I was just congested on Sunday from not sleeping enough or from being allergic to something weird in the university facility where the Comhaltas meeting I was at on Saturday was held. Or maybe the massive dose of zinc did it.