The Land of Nowhere

Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones. Reread of a book I read many times in my teens and early twenties, but this was my first time reading it in quite a while. It is still a very good book, though I don't love it as unreservedly as I did when I was a teenager. (Also it is the source of my username :-)) Things I noticed in this readthrough: I find Tom's "heroic driving" far more alarming now that I actually know how to drive a car. I'm also thinking about how things look from Seb's point of view, which I didn't before because he comes across as such an unlikeable character. I was wondering if the detail that he's a fan of Michael Moorcock is supposed to suggest that he's a Moorcock protagonist seen from the most unflattering viewpoint, but as, thanks to this book, I have never had any desired to read Moorcock, I can't say. (That said, Seb actually has decent taste in rock music! I find the Doors' Riders on the Storm to be evocative of the same themes as Fire and Hemlock, and wonder if it was an influence.)

The Fair-Haired Eckbert, Puss in Boots, The Midsummer Night by Ludwig Tieck, in English translation by various translators, available on Wikisource. I've for a while entertained the extremely aspirational idea of writing historical fantasy about the Mendelssohn siblings, and as part of that project I've been reading fantasy/fairy tales by German Romantic authors whose poems Fanny and Felix put to music. (A previous installment of this was Eichendorff's The Marble Statue, which I never wrote up.) The Fair-Haired Eckbert is one of these, and generally worked for me as a weird fairy tale, despite over-the-top plot twists and being the sort of tragedy where the characters alwasy make the worst possible decisions. But the main thing I got from it was from looking at the song part in German, and learning the excellent word Waldeinsamkeit.

Puss in Boots was recommended by a friend on Discord, after I mentioned reading Tieck: it is a comedy-satirical meta-theatrical adaptation of the fairy tale, published in 1797 but not staged until 1844 (I can see why -- it seems like a hard play to stage! but I think it will be fun to do as a group readaloud.) Tieck is just much more enjoyable when he's not taking himself too seriously.

The Midsummer Night, or Shakespeare and the Fairies is 16-year-old Tieck's Midsummer Night's Dream fanfiction, which he was prevailed to publish late in life, and is pretty good for that. (I wish I knew more about the Mary C. Rumsey who translated it.)

Homer's Daughter, Robert Graves. cahn's Odyssey read reminded me of this book, which I enjoyed when I was younger; and while I should in fact reread the Odyssey, I was visiting my family and looking for a paper book to pick up, so I started this; the premise is that our protagonist is a young Sicilian princess who is going to go on to write the Odyssey, basing certain parts on her own life. I'm liking it as much as I remembered it (especially once I got past the info-dumpy prologue), and enjoying how many details of women's work it weaves in to the events of the story. (I know now that Graves shouldn't be taken seriously as a scholar of ancient mythology, but it still makes for interesting worldbuilding and story.)

The Incandescent, Emily Tesh. For years I have been complaining about the lack of SFF written from the point of view of a teacher, and Emily Tesh probably wasn't listening but she wrote this book anyway! Tesh taught classics at a boarding school for two years, and the worldbuilding of her boarding school in a world very much like ours only with magic is very much informed by that experience -- this is the sort of book that has a lot to say about education in our world, while also having creative and thought-provoking worldbuilding. It's not quite the type of story about a teacher that I wanted, but I hope it will lead to more of these.

(Also, I do still need to read Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic, which is the only other example I know of a fantasy novel from the point of view of a teacher.)

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Kate Douglas Wiggin. I think I started reading this book as a kid, but didn't get very far into it -- I certainly knew it existed, but what I didn't realize until osprey_archer reviewed a biography of Kate Douglas Wiggin was that it was by the same person who wrote "The Birds' Christmas Carol", a story that did make a big impression on kid-me. So I thought I'd give Rebecca another try. It's very readable, and clearly was a major influence on L. M. Montgomery (it predates Anne of Green Gables). But because of that I keep comparing it to other books of its genre that I read younger and have more emotional attachment to. And while maybe I might have loved it if I'd gotten into it as a kid, as an adult it just feels like "another one of those".

Memories and Adventures, Louise Héritte-Viardot, translated by Emma-Sophia Buchheim. Louise Héritte-Viardot is my newest discover of a forgotten woman composer, thanks to the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective having just released a recording of her Piano Quartet No. 1. I'd already heard of her mother Pauline Viardot-Garcia, also a composer as well as a charismatic opera star and friend of George Sand, who used her as the model for her protagonist Consuelo. (I've previously written here about my reading of Consuelo and its sequel, which are absolutely wild books to read, especially knowing almost nothing about them.) Sand convinced young Pauline that marrying the older writer and theatre director Louis Viardot was a good career move, and their marriage was generally happy even though Pauline was not in love with Louis.

As a result, Louise grew up in a household frequented by major literary, artistic, and musical figures, many of whom were in love with her mother, and also got to accompany her mother on visits to perform for aristocrats and royals. Louise played hide-and-seek with Prince Friedrich of Prussia, the future (briefly reigning) Kaiser Friedich III. The early part of her memoirs is full of charming childhood memories of famous people who befriended her, and also includes a section defending her family against rumors about their involvement with Turgenev, who lived with or near them for many years.

The memoirs give a good sense of Louise as a strong-willed, intellectually ambitious woman constantly pushing against the limitations of the role of women in her time -- she mentions learning the Greek alphabet as a child as part of a desire to read the classics in the original, never fulfilled. As a composer she was mostly self-taught, and the main feedback she got from the older composers she knew was to keep on doing her own thing. She expresses confidence that she was a good and successful composer, though her career was held back by bad luck and prejudice against women: "I have composed over 300 works, and I supppose they will all be published in good time, though I care very little about it". I wish she'd cared more, since as it happens only a handful of these survive!

Like her mother, Louise married young a much older man; her memoirs are unclear as to how she chose her husband, but unlike her mother, she was not happy in her marriage : she followed him to a diplomatic appointment in South Africa, but returned to Europe a few years later and lived apart from him, financially self-supporting with her own career, for the rest of her life, during which she traveled around Europe. As a result, Louise's husband barely appears in the memoirs. The later part of the book is in the genre of peroid travel memoir that inspired Marie Brennan's The Memoirs of Lady Trent, though unlike Lady Trent Louise is smugly superior to everyone she encounters who is not a Western European. Of the travel adventures my favorite was the section where a teenage Louise accompanies her mother on an operatic tour of the British Isles, acting as a backstage factotum and dealing with all sorts of theatrical mishaps in front of a humorless English audience that takes Opera Very Seriously. Also I was struck by this quote from the chapter on "Russian Illogic", which seems apt to our times.

"The Russian Government has built new universities at a great expense. No sooner are they opened than they are closed again for fear they should be frequented by young people with revolutionary ideas. That is Russian logic."

I've been doing some interesting reading lately, but also it's been a long day, so this will not go into as much detail as I'd like.

Network Effect, Martha Wells; this is an excellent book, my favorite of the Murderbots, but I don't have any specific comments.

Tintinnalogia, or the Art of Ringing by Richard Duckworth and Fabian Stedman and Campanalogia, or the Art of Ringing Improved by Fabian Stedman. Since I'm currently working on ringing Stedman Doubles in tower, I thought I'd take a look at Stedman's original books on the art of change ringing from the 1600s. Bell ringing actually hasn't changed that much! Things I was entertained by include this example of why peal composers do not make the best poets and the random (non-ringing related) combinatorics problems in the intro of Campanologia, e.g.:


A man having twenty Horses, contracts with a Brick-maker to give him one hundred pound Sterling; conditionally that the Brick-maker will deliver him as many Loads of Bricks, as there are several Teams of six Horses to be produced out of the aforesaid twenty to fetch them, and not one Team or Sett of six Horses to fetch two Loads. The Brick-maker might be thought to have made a very advantageous bargain, but the contrary will appear.


Poet and Merchant, A Picture of Life from the times of Moses Mendelssohn, Berthold Auerbach, translated by Charles Timothy Brooks. I asked sherbertilluminated on tumblr for recs of "bad" 19th century biographical novels, and was recommended this 1840 novel about the 19th century Jewish German poet Ephraim Kuh, which is actually pretty good, and quite readable once you get through the first chapter. Since I know nothing about the protagonist or any of the other historical characters, except for a bit about Moses Mendelssohn and his gentile BFF Lessing, I'm not bothered by historical inaccuracies. I'll have more to say about it next week, I'm sure.

A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett. This had a satisfying ending, but I didn't find it as compelling as The Tainted Cup. Still invested in Ana and Din and their very strange world, and staying along for the ride! Also amused that these books are both leviathanpunk (in the sea monster sense) and Leviathanpunk (in the Hobbes sense).

Life of Moscheles, Charlotte Moscheles. Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870) was a composer, pianist, and conductor, who knew almost everyone who was anyone in classical music in the first half of the 19th century, including Salieri, Beethoven, Lizst, Chopin, the Schumanns, Rossini, but is particularly known as a close friend of Felix Mendelssohn. I was idly browsing the unsungcomposers.com forums, where someone mentioned that there was an entertaining biography of Moscheles by his wife, so I picked this. It does have fun tidbits, but it is also very much a Victorian biography of the sort that draws heavily on diaries and letters without doing much to investigate interesting questions like what Moscheles' relationship was with religion: he was raised Jewish, continued to practice as a young adult, but at some point converted to Anglicanism. I'm not actually sure I should have finished this rather than find a modern biography that puts the material in context, but I do plan to do the latter. Also, as you can tell from the title page where she is only named as "his wife" Charlotte is very much a self-effacing Victorian helpmeet and angel of the house, and you only get to see tiny snatches of her as a person here and there. (The book, like Moscheles, is not very generous to Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel as a composer, and at one point gets her age wrong (confusing her with Rebecka?). So while it's always pleasant to spend time with the Mendelssohn family this is not the place to look for Fanny.)

All Systems Red, Artifical Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, Martha Wells. I'm intrigued by the trailer for the new Murderbot TV series, which I hope lives up to its promise. In preparation, I'm rereading the books, and they're still good! (I expect I'll get more out of rereading the most recent ones, which I've only read once.) I think that part of what makes the books fun to read is that while Murderbot is a bundle of anxiety and self-blame, it is also fantastically competent at its job.

I haven't been on top of book posts because Wednesdays are my busiest day; possibly I should move to another day of the week.

The Clouds, Aristophanes. Readaloud. I'm glad I read this, but I didn't find it as much fun as Lysistrata. Partly I'm just uptight about bathroom humor. But also the plot is basically: father sends his son to Socrates's Thinkery to get an education, and the son comes back apparently brainwashed, with weird ideas about about (grammatical) gender, liking all sorts of inappropriate literature, and generally lacking respect for his elders, and the father burns down the Thinkery in revenge. Which is certainly relevant to the present moment, but not in a fun way.

Wind and Truth, Brandon Sanderson. I finished Stormlight Arc 1! This book generally provided a solid conclusion to that arc while setting things up for the second half of the series, but it wasn't my favorite of the series. I am interested enough to keep reading this series but probably won't reread any of the Arc 1 books.

The Shadow Rising, Robert Jordan. I prefer the Wheel of Time show to the books, because I only have so much tolerance for Jordan's weird gender politics and his male POV characters thinking about how women are inscrutable/being annoyingly and unnecessarily chivalrous. But I'm also the sort of person who prefers to read the book before watching. I most recently set aside the series in the middle of book 4, but the show has now almost caught up to the point where I was in the books, so I took this book along on a recent trip and finished it. There are things I liked, and I'm glad I read this in preparation for the show, but I expect I'll enjoy the show more.

Macbeth, William Shakespeare. Readaloud. I've lost count of how many times I have been in readalouds of this play, and I'm not even counting playing Banquo when I was 13. But it is a very, very good play to read aloud, and I am not yet tired of it. This time we did the whole thing with only 5 people, which was intense.

Rhythm of War, Brandon Sanderson. Reread. I finished Stormlight book 4! Lots of stuff happened at the climax, the details of which I had only vaguely remembered. A major part of the second half of the book is about resistance during occupation, which hits differently now than it did in December 2020.

Wind and Truth, Brandon Sanderson. Not a reread -- finally made it to the new book! I'm partway into Day Two (of ten) and stuff certainly has been happening. Not sure where things are going, but hoping for interesting worldbuilding reveals.

Edward III, William Shakespeare with an unknown coauthor. Readaloud. Like King John, this is a history play with some very good bits that doesn't quite hang together as a whole. Edward III is not a good person, as we especially see in the first half, but he is ultimately a successful king in the sense that he gains territory.

Arms and the Man, George Bernard Shaw. Readaloud. This was good fun, even if I was rooting for no one to get married.

Oathbringer and Rhythm of War, Brandon Sanderson. Rereads (only another 900 pages until I'm done rereading Stormlight, at which point I'll be rewarded by getting to read the last volume for the first time!). I'm getting to the point in the series where I'm finding there's a lot of plot that I've forgotten from my first read, though I remember some vague outlines.

Given Our History, Kristyn J. Miller. So I have been complaining for over two decades now about the lack of books about homeschooled kids/teens with a storyline other than "protagonist transitions to public school". And well, my generation is adults now, and we were all told to "write what you know" (though many of us ignored that and wrote fanfic/speculative stuff anyway) so it's not like there aren't people capable of writing this. Anyway I learned about this book from ladyherenya, and apparently the way to get a story about homeschooled teens published is to include it as the backstory in a second-chance romance! I enjoyed the detailed backstory that was clearly grounded in the author's experience; the problem is that the present-day academic setting does not feel grounded in the same way (this is partly that the book is doing the thing that books do with trying to act like COVID never happened, but it's not just that). I liked the protagonist's relationship with her younger sister, but the characterization of the love interest felt underdeveloped.

Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson. Started this, but as it's a giant brick of a book did not bring on my holiday travel. One note here is that I now know Shakespeare's history plays much better than when I last read any of the Stormlight books, and it's interesting to reflect on the Alethi political plots with that context (two of the major viewpoint characters are the uncle and cousin of a king who inherited young).

The Iliad, Homer, translated by Emily Wilson. Read some of this during travel -- so far I'm appreciating it but not blown away. It is interesting to read with the thought of "did this character/bit have an analogue in Perhaps the Stars?", but also this feels like too much intellectual effort to bring to the book on a first read.

The Queen's Gambit, Walter Tevis. Reread. I have only seen the first episode of the TV series (I mostly watch stuff with my partner, and it's not his sort of thing). However, my dad was a fan of Walter Tevis, and recommended Mockingbird to me when I was maybe 15 or so, and I enjoyed it. A bit later in my teens, I found his copy of The Queen's Gambit lying around, and felt slightly transgressive sneaking a read.

Anyway, I reread it now, and it was as readable as ever, I liked some of the character/coming-of-age stuff, and I can see how it was written to be adaptable to the screen. But also, at its heart it's a sports movie about chess, and I feel ambivalent about the sports movie genre because of the focus on young people who are The Best, but part of how any competitive endeavor goes is that most people who do it are not The Best.

Symposium, Plato, translated by A. D. Lindsay. Group readaloud. This is still my favorite Platonic dialogue, not least because of all the fun bits.

Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson. About 2/3 of the way through. So much plot has happened, so much more to go!