Yuletide reveal

For this Yuletide I wrote a treat for laulan: Make it Better, Year of the Griffin, Diana Wynne Jones: Wizard Claudia, Costamaret Distinguished Professor of Quantitative Enchantment, Dean of Students, Head of the Committee on Diversity and Interspecies Accessibility and Member of so many others, gets a tap on the window from an old griffin friend.

The story behind this: a few days before Christmas, rachelmanija posted to encourage people to write treats for Yuletide! I haven't really written fiction of any sort in years, I'd been meaning to try some fanfic ever since I got more involved with Dreamwidth. So this seemed like a good chance to try it out, especially once I found a request that fit well with a fanfic idea I'd already had (an older version of the YotG gang dealing with the challenges of academia), but the suggestion to focus on Claudia and Elda helped me focus the story and give it an actual arc.

I enjoyed writing it quite a bit -- and will try to make time for more fic exchanges in the future. This story is definitely very much "write what you know"; stressed academic POV comes very naturally to me, but I hope to expand my range in the future.

book catchup over the holidays

I missed last week's booklogging for Christmas, so let's catch up.

How To, Randall Munroe. This was entertaining! How to do all the things, with rocket science. Yay xkcd.

New Grub Street, George Gissing. I started reading this in the fall, but took a break because it was all about Reardon's depression and self-sabotaging. I'm glad I took a break, but also glad I reread it. Though I discovered that it was not quite the book I remembered; I'd forgotten most of the bits about characters being depressed and mainly remembered the more interesting bits. I'm most fond of Dora and Whelpdale as characters, but I am very sad that ( Read more... )

Year of the Griffin Diana Wynne Jones: reread bits of it for Yuletide treating, though did not have time for the full thing. Still the same book I remembered it being, but then I've read it so many times.

A History of Children's Books in 100 Books Roderick Cave and Sara Ayad: Christmas present to the family. Skimmed/read out of order: some interesting stuff in here, mostly what it says in the title. Interesting fact I learned from it: Andrew Lang's Fairy Books were actually written by his wife.

The Call by Edith Ayrton Zangwill. Reread, just started, will save the full review for next week. This book was written in 1924, so is in the US public domain as of today! However, as far as I can tell there is no public domain version online. Which is too bad, as it should be better-known!

It has been republished a couple times in the last two years. If you want to read it, you probably want the $9 ebook amazon link, publisher's site rather than the $140 scholarly edition.