I'd just settled into the glass half empty

[sovay]

The thing that was hideously wrong with my e-mail is no longer hideously wrong. It's still a little confused about where everything is filed, but it appears not to have lost any data and this makes me orders of magnitude happier than the situation as I left it this afternoon. Backups and rebuilds were involved. I am feeling a little superstitious around it, but sending out messages all the same.

In any case, I had a lovely afternoon with rushthatspeaks. We made pandan-green onde onde with palm sugar and the dough behaved with perfect courtesy the entire time, which was confusing but infinitely preferable to the oobleck experience of last time; we guessed it was because we weren't making them during a thunderstorm. gaudior came home with the car in the evening and we got takeout from the next-to-last day of the pop-up version of DooWee & Rice and watched two more episodes of Hannibal, which continues to be just a beautiful show. We might even finish the first season before the second is done airing. I am having to avoid all sorts of things on people's Tumblrs.

I am re-reading Heart-Beast (1992), which is not among Tanith Lee's best. It may actually be among her worst—I must have liked it better than Vivia (1995), because I didn't find that one when I unpacked, but I'm guessing it was a close race or a lingering sense of completism. (I loved the cover for Vivia, but then I found out it was Charles August Mengin's Sappho (1877) and I could get it for free on the internet or the better kind of Romantic calendar, and somehow I didn't feel the need to keep the book around for it anymore.) It starts out terribly Orientalist, passes through an extendedly gory riff on the landing of the Demeter which Rush tells me Lee did better in the story about the vampire ship anyway, and then settles into a mode that in a better novel would have been Fuck You Thomas Hardy, except that would have required Lee to write a semi-convincing English countryside. Which this really isn't, even if there's lambing season and stoats in the fields. She's written better werewolves and the women obsessed with them. But this novel was packed up with too much of my other fiction in the winter of 2006, and I haven't read it since, so I'm reading it now. And then I will re-read some Tanith Lee I actually love. I wish I could find more of my Moorcock than An Alien Heat (1972), and I am beginning to worry that Naomi Mitchison's To the Chapel Perilous (1955) ended up in some box of non-books, because it hasn't surfaced yet, but on the other hand I've found anthologies I didn't remember buying and a significant run of Phyllis Ann Karr, so I'm still pretty happy. I just need to figure out where the nonfiction is going to go.

Comments

[intothespin]

I have also been in a Tanith Lee reading/rereading mood, but I have been putting it off to finish the books I'm already in the middle of, which include Solution Three. Our reading is synchronous this week.

[sovay]

but I have been putting it off to finish the books I'm already in the middle of, which include Solution Three. Our reading is synchronous this week.

Heh. Is Solution Three in print, or are you just lucky?

[intothespin]

It has been on my TBR shelves for a while. Although I have also been lucky in finding OOP Mitchison sometimes.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've seen Mengin's Sappho. She's one of the stars of the Manchester City Art Gallery.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I am very glad to see you are watching Hannibal. We must chat about it, sometime.

[sovay]

Hannibal. We must chat about it, sometime.

Please! We're about halfway through the first season; we just watched "Coquilles" and "Entrée." I've been informed that Eddie Izzard as Dr. Gideon is doing a pitch-perfect impersonation of Anthony Hopkins' Dr. Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, only without any of the terrifying charisma, which is exactly what you want from a Chesapeake Ripper copycat. (I feel somewhat at a disadvantage having started this show without any knowledge of Demme's Silence of the Lambs—although I adored Michael Mann's Manhunter—but I can appreciate meta when it's pointed out to me.)

[sovay]

She's one of the stars of the Manchester City Art Gallery.

I will visit her if I'm ever in Manchester.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

I'm glad the e-mail's back to normal!

I wasn't impressed by Heart-Beast either; Lee-by-numbers. Vivia I don't remember very well, apart from its bleakness. Have you read When The Lights Go Out, though? It came out around the same time as these two and beats the hell out of both. A decaying coastal resort, sea-bound ghosts, and a sort-of Flying Dutchman.

[sovay]

I'm glad the e-mail's back to normal!

I'm not using horrible webmail! It's really refreshing!

Vivia I don't remember very well, apart from its bleakness.

Vampirism, but not done as interestingly as she had many, many times elsewhere. Also I would have appreciated it a lot more with an actual Greek setting.

Have you read When The Lights Go Out, though? It came out around the same time as these two and beats the hell out of both. A decaying coastal resort, sea-bound ghosts, and a sort-of Flying Dutchman.

Yes! I have it in hardcover, which I must have gotten from a used book store despite the lack of markings; I think of it as the same vintage as Reigning Cats and Dogs (which I was also disappointed by—Tanith Lee, how did you bollix up the Whitechapel murders as a ritual of warring Bast and Anubis, how?) and Elephantasm (which uses its Orientalism to a purpose, Heart-Beast; it can be done) and I love it. There are some weird elements around Hesta's mother, but it has great seaside. And I like Hesta, and I like Janey, and I like the ocean, and I like Skilt. Its cast of completely fucked-up people who are nonetheless doing all right is like the nicer version of the Scarabae.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it's no longer hideously wrong, and that ye had such a good afternoon, complete with well-behaved dough.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. I would consider that an advantage to not be familiar with Silence of the Lambs since that movie has so imprinted the Anthony Hopkins Hannibal into the psyche (AV Club review of Hannibal Rising encapsulated the book as "Hannibal had a messed up childhood. Thanks for the money, Anthony.") that it's hard to watch other versions of Hannibal.

Although the episode with the young FBI agent going to meet Hannibal is a definite riff on Clarice Starling.

I'm really loving this season too.

Have you already seen the recipe blog - http://janicepoonart.blogspot.com/

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Heart Beast was the first Tanith Lee book I ever read and it hooked me on her as a writer. I have absolutely no idea if I would like it now. Maybe not. THere are times when I do find myself reading Tanith Lee books and going "Oh come on, a sociopath hero who is quite beautiful and above petty humanity, again???"

[sovay]

I would consider that an advantage to not be familiar with Silence of the Lambs since that movie has so imprinted the Anthony Hopkins Hannibal into the psyche (AV Club review of Hannibal Rising encapsulated the book as "Hannibal had a messed up childhood. Thanks for the money, Anthony.") that it's hard to watch other versions of Hannibal.

I'd seen Brian Cox in Manhunter; I considered him very good, especially in how low-key he was, but not definitive. I am enjoying the hell out of Mads Mikkelsen. He popped up on my radar almost ten years ago in a weird little Danish comedy called Adam's Apples (2005) that my brother liked; then he was in Casino Royale (2006), so at least people knew his name; I saw him some more non-English films; and now the entire internet has a crush on him. I'm cool with this.

Have you already seen the recipe blog

No—is this from a member of the production team?

[sovay]

such a good afternoon, complete with well-behaved dough.

We have more rice-based recipes we want to make now, as opposed to more rice-based recipes we're eyeing with deserved suspicion.

[sovay]

Heart Beast was the first Tanith Lee book I ever read and it hooked me on her as a writer.

That's fair. I would not talk you out of your introduction to a writer. Mine was Black Unicorn in childhood, and then in high school I hunted down all four of the Secret Books of Paradys through interlibrary loan and they actually changed the inside of my head.

"Oh come on, a sociopath hero who is quite beautiful and above petty humanity, again???"

Heh. Yeah. Every now and then it's a heroine!