cahn

This was my first full weekend back home after returning from Australia, and it was very much a return to normality in the best possible way. Yesterday rained on and off (the BBC weather website, which always errs on the side of apocalyptic, had been making dire warnings, but in the end there were just a few short bursts of heavy rain), unfortunately coinciding with the times I was walking to the gym, to the library, and home. Today was clear, still, and bitterly cold.

While I was struggling through my first fitness classes in the three weeks (today, my arms and legs ache), Matthias was struggling through the rain to pick up this year's Christmas wreathe, which is now hanging on the front door, bright with happy bursts of red berries. Other than those morning excursions, we spent the remainder of Saturday indoors, with the biathlon on in the background, grazing, and drinking Australian coffee (me) and Australia tea (Matthias).

Saturday night films are back on the agenda with a bang: The Menu, a blackly comedic horror film about a small group of people transported to an isolated island for an exclusive degustation menu with a celebrated chef, who end up getting a lot more than they bargained for. Horror is not my first-choice genre, but this was excellent and very, very clever (if not at all subtle). As well as the constant threat of violence, the true horror of the story is the characters unmoored and bewildered by the excruciating situation of social conventions overturned. ( Possibly spoilerish? )

This morning I walked through the chilly stillness of the morning to the pool, which was uncharacteristically empty for a Sunday morning: I had the fast lane to myself for the entire 1km swim, which has never, ever happened to me. That good start seemed to set me up for the day, which mostly involved working on the first of my planned Yuletide treats, interspersed with yoga, and a walk along the river with Matthias.

The evening promises cosy cooking, and cosy TV: the perfect close to a great couple of days.

I'll finish this post with a couple of fannish events whose sign-up periods are closing soon.

The first is the reccing event that goodbyebird is running:

Welcome to Rec-Cember, the month long multi-fandom reccing event. Let's recommend some fanworks! Let's appreciate and comment on those fanworks!

rec_cember . intro . sign ups

Sign-ups close today.

Second is fandomtrees, the multifandom gift fest that runs over the end of this year and the start of the next. The sign-up post is here, and you have until 5 December to sign up.

This is a belated attempt to catch up on some book logging, and consists of stuff read while flying to, from, and within Australia, plus on some Australian train journeys. As most of the flights took place at night, I didn't read as much as I could have given the time available, so I feel this list is somewhat shorter than expected.

In any case, I read five books.

The first two were the latest to me in the Clorinda Cathcart series, Dramatick Rivalry and Domestick Disruptions. This series by LA Hall is written from the perspective of the journal entries of a comfortably well-off courtesan in 19th-century London, and the various aristocrats, wealthy businesspeople, intellectuals, scientists, playwrights, theatrical actors, Bow Street Runners, and other interesting fictional luminaries who end up in her circle. The books are written with a wryly observant tone, and each contains various high- and low-stakes challenges and conflicts that are cleverly resolved by the end. I find them extremely relaxing to read — cosy fiction is a hard sell for me, but this series works well in that regard, although I'm making my way through it quite slowly, as I find two books in succession is enough for a while.

In general, my brain focused better on nonfiction during long-haul flights, so I spent a lot of time reading Diary of an Invasion (Andrey Kurkov), which is what it says on the tin: the author's experiences in the first few months of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Kurkov is an accomplished Ukrainian author of both literary and historical detective fiction, but in those intense, frightening first few months of the full-scale war, he turned his talents to memoir, documenting his family's flight from Kyiv to the west of the country, when it felt as if the entire country and wider world held its breath, and every action was harnessed to survival, until the dawning realisation that Ukraine had withstood and pushed back against the first blow, but that what remained would be an almost unfathomably difficult military, diplomatic, economic and psychosocial marathon with no end in sight. I remember those times well: shock and outrage warring with wild hope and optimism, typified by this Onuka song. Kurkov has since followed these initial reactions with a memoir about the long years of the ongoing war, which I will certainly be seeking out.

From history to historical fiction, with Cecily (Annie Garthwaite), the first in a series of novels about the Wars of the Roses from the perspective of Yorkist matriarch Cecily Neville. This book follows Cecily from the early years of her marriage, her years manoeuvring from behind the scenes to further her husband's political ambitions, his battlefield defeat and execution, and the dawn of a new day with Cecily's eldest son Edward on the throne. I'm pretty familiar with this period of history as depicted in popular fiction, and Cecily didn't really bring anything new to the party, but I enjoyed it all the same. In terms of vibe, it's essentially Hilary Mantel meets Sharon Kay Penman: lyrical writing that luxuriates in the interiority of its protagonist's mind, and uncritically Yorkist partisanship. The term grates, but Cecily Neville really is Garthwaite's precious blorbo who can do no wrong: the most politically savvy, the one whose read on every situation is always right, whose only misfortune is to live in a time in which those skills and that intelligence must instead be harnessed to advance the cause of the men in her life, rather than on her own behalf.

Finally, I picked up Kate Elliott's latest epic fantasy doorstopper: The Witch Road, the first of a secondary world duology in which Elen, a low-ranking courier at the edge of a vast empire is suddenly thrust into an unwanted spotlight when she is required to accompany an imperial prince and his retinue on a perilous journey. Elen and her travelling companions contend with challenges both political and supernatural, in a sweeping road trip peopled with a fantastic cast of characters. Kate Elliott's considerable strengths as a writer: the meticulous world-building that gives us a fictional world that feels at once three-dimensional and lived-in, and her devastatingly perceptive depiction of the tensions inherent in navigating profoundly power-imbalanced relationships (on a national, communal, and interpersonal level) are on full display here, and I enjoyed this almost as much as I enjoyed my favourite of her series, the Crossroads trilogy.

That's it for reading so far, although I did trudge through the rain to pick up a library book today, so I may have more to say about books tomorrow. But for now, I'll draw this post to a close.