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We never said you'd come back home
I started my day with a dentist's appointment and got home in the evening to discover three contradictory letters from our health insurance that I will have to call them about on Monday. The first congratulates us on being eligible for coverage. The second regrets to inform us that we're not. The third is a bill that ends by thinking it owes me four dollars. I am beginning to think we have blown through Kafka and into Beckett.
Fortunately, the mail had also brought the CD I had ordered last week of Zeal & Ardor's Stranger Fruit (2018), the full-length follow-up to last year's breathtaking Devil Is Fine (2017). Musically it's more wide-ranging than its predecessor, moving forward in time with its inspirations—gospel choirs, funk and soul—without losing the project's original anchor of blast beats and field hollers, not just black but Black metal; it's not an exercise in history or even in pastiche but the past's hands gripping the present by the throat, telling it to listen up. I did. It's worth it. Not all of the sixteen tracks on Stranger Fruit land with the same force, but even the less successful experiments have something to recommend them, if only that furious breakage of time. Songs like "Gravedigger's Chant," "Don't You Dare," "Row Row," "You Ain't Coming Back," "Stranger Fruit," and "Built on Ashes" are indispensable.
Reflex (1981) has a decent claim on being my favorite Dick Francis novel I've read so far and I am deeply disappointed there appears to be no fic for it on AO3.
Fortunately, the mail had also brought the CD I had ordered last week of Zeal & Ardor's Stranger Fruit (2018), the full-length follow-up to last year's breathtaking Devil Is Fine (2017). Musically it's more wide-ranging than its predecessor, moving forward in time with its inspirations—gospel choirs, funk and soul—without losing the project's original anchor of blast beats and field hollers, not just black but Black metal; it's not an exercise in history or even in pastiche but the past's hands gripping the present by the throat, telling it to listen up. I did. It's worth it. Not all of the sixteen tracks on Stranger Fruit land with the same force, but even the less successful experiments have something to recommend them, if only that furious breakage of time. Songs like "Gravedigger's Chant," "Don't You Dare," "Row Row," "You Ain't Coming Back," "Stranger Fruit," and "Built on Ashes" are indispensable.
Reflex (1981) has a decent claim on being my favorite Dick Francis novel I've read so far and I am deeply disappointed there appears to be no fic for it on AO3.
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Ooh, is that the one with all the photography stuff? I feel there should be more Francis fic generally - I think there is some for To the Hilt, which is more slashy than most.
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It is! And it's good photography stuff, written in such a way as to give you an idea of the protagonist's talent—the kind of eye he has, the kind of subjects he's interested in—as opposed to having to take it on faith. I also enjoy reading about photography as a technology, which is less true of books like the one that's about wine.
I feel there should be more Francis fic generally - I think there is some for To the Hilt, which is more slashy than most.
I saw some of those on AO3. Otherwise there's a very small fandom for the Sid Halley books and then a couple of one-offs. I had just sort of assumed there would be more.
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Why is that your favourite? Doesn't have to be a long involved answer, just curious. (I haven't read enough -- 2 or 3 -- to have a favourite yet.)
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Enjoy!
Why is that your favourite? Doesn't have to be a long involved answer, just curious. (I haven't read enough -- 2 or 3 -- to have a favourite yet.)'
I have not read all of Francis' novels myself, although I'm probably about two-thirds of the way there.
I like the characters and I like the plot. The protagonist of Reflex is a professional jockey and amateur photographer who starts to shift this ratio over the course of the novel, partly due to circumstances and partly as his ideas of himself change; his mother was a very beautiful, very charming, very young addict who would leave him for weeks or years with whichever friends she could sweet-talk into child care (the longest, most loving, and most formative being the gay couple who taught him photography) until she died when he was seventeen or so, since which time he has been an entirely self-sufficient, rather closed-off adult with the kind of competent, solitary life that is more stable than satisfying. It's just sort of happened to him. He's unaccustomed to going looking for anything. His childhood taught him to accept whatever came and make the best of it. So the action plot starts when one of his fellow jockeys asks for practical assistance after the sudden death of his father, a racetrack photographer whose talent everyone admired and whose personality nobody liked; and the emotional plot starts when he's summoned by his estranged grandmother with an imperious request to find the half-sister he'd never known he had; and the process of pursuing these investigations (both far beyond what he expected of either himself or the setups) requires him to accept less and look more, actually discover that he wants things and try to figure out what to do about them. I like the protagonist as a character as well as an arc; some of Francis' narrators feel like lenses on the plot and this one doesn't. I really like that despite the narrative's preoccupation with family, the one he eventually forms for himself has almost nothing to do with blood. And the reason I went looking for fic is that while the protagonist does explain mildly at one point that "If I take someone to bed, she's female," by the end of the novel he is basically in an OT3 with one publisher (female, love interest) and one solicitor (male, second lead) with whom he has been through all sorts of shenanigans and close shaves. The solicitor has surprisingly good silly-ass camouflage; the publisher is just used to being the smartest person in the room; there is no clash. They're balanced well in the narrative. I believe in everyone's bonding. [edit] Also it holds up well to re-read, which is what I was doing with it this afternoon.
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I got them originally from
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Argh. Good luck! Or whatever it is you need at this point, I'm not even sure.
(I remember having a conversation with the DWP people about why they had added an imaginary six thousand pounds to my total in the bank, and apparently it was somehow an entirely rightful imaginary six thousand pounds but not anything I could live off.)
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Thank you. I'll take luck! Reason appears to be working less well than I'd hoped it would.
(I remember having a conversation with the DWP people about why they had added an imaginary six thousand pounds to my total in the bank, and apparently it was somehow an entirely rightful imaginary six thousand pounds but not anything I could live off.)
That seems extremely unfair. When you have surprise money in the bank, it should at least be real.
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Well, that was what I thought, but apparently not!
*packs up some luck and sends it over*
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Hope it went okay?
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Yes, thank you. It was not a pleasant experience, but nothing bad is happening to my teeth.
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Thank you! I feel like when I used to write all-night papers to PJ Harvey's Rid of Me.