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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.
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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.
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Mendelssohn and Victorian England, by Colin Timothy Eatock. A couple weeks ago I fell down the rabbit hole of the archives of Not Another Music History Cliche by the late Linda Shaver-Gleason, which is delightful (especially if you enjoy feeling superior to ignorant musical snobs). From there I looked up Shaver-Gleason's Ph.D. thesis on Mendelssohn's legacy in England, from which I found this book.

There was a decent amount I knew already from previous reading, but this book helped me put it in context. It makes for an interesting comparison with Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, in its exploration of the social status of musicians, Mendelssohn's breakthrough into musical society as a "gentleman musician", and his transformative influence on English culture. A passage that stood out:

Although clearly a foreigner, Mendelssohn was the living incarnation of a particularly English set of ideals: he was brilliantly talented and well educated, yet modest and hard working; businesslike, but not too businesslike; affluent, generous, charming and endowed with good taste. He enjoyed the camaraderie of his fellow men, and was also fond of the company of women – in the most proper and morally upstanding way. He was a gentleman.


Also interesting that while relatively recent (2009), it's just old enough to describe Fanny's Easter Sonata as being lost. But really the most important thing about this book is that it alerted me of the existence of Charles Auchester.

Charles Auchester, Elizabeth Sara Sheppard. already reviewed here.

Nettle & Bone, T. Kingfisher. Only just started this, but it's compelling so far. Looking forward to reading more.
landofnowhere: (ex libris kurt hensel)
Charles Auchester(Gutenberg Volume 1, Gutenberg Volume 2) was a popular Victorian novel, blurbed by Disraeli, which Louisa May Alcott described in her diary as "charming, - a sort of fairy tale for grown people. First published in 1853, it was still in print as late as 1928, but these days is remembered, if at all, as a historical curiosity -- it has 0 reviews and only one rating on Goodreads, though it does a bit better on LibraryThing, where it has 2 reviews.

And I can see how this happened -- because, what Charles Auchester is, more or less literally, is teenage Victorian idfic for the Felix Mendelssohn fandom. [ETA: having done further biographical research, I now have some doubts as to the "teenage" aspect, see here]

Now I should be clear here, that when I'm talking the Felix Mendelssohn fandom, I don't mean Felix Mendelssohn the well-biographed historical figure, who we now know through the many letters of his preserved by friends and family. No, I mean Felix Mendelssohn the Victorian celebrity, the royals' favorite composer and darling of high society, playing concerts to devoted crowds, idolized only more after his death in 1847 at the age of 38. I want to say "what if Leonard Bernstein was a Beatle", but those two are too far in the past -- I think that of cultural phenomena I've lived through that feels closest is the enthusiasm about Barack Obama leading up to his becoming president.

So yeah, this book is celebrity RPF, and the Chevalier Seraphael (yes, that is his name), while clearly based on the historical Felix Mendelssohn, is different enough (for instance, this is a version of Felix without Fanny) had no trouble thinking of him as his own character. Those who knew Mendelssohn during his life understandably found the Seraphael rather cringe, such as the reviewer in The Athenaeum, who "could not escape the thought of what would be Mendelssohn's own hilarity and astonishment could he have seen this alleged portrait of himself". The publisher tried to sell it as a roman à clef, and encourage people to speculate on which personage wrote it, but in fact, the pseudonymous "E. Berger" was Elizabeth Sara Sheppard (translating her last name into French), an imaginative clergyman's daughter who taught school after her father's death, and wrote this novel in a fury of inspiration as a teenager in the years surrounding Mendelssohn's death, though it was not published until a few years after that.

Which makes sense to me -- there is, apparently, a certain type of lonely gifted young person, enthusiastic about music, who takes herself very seriously, who, on learning what Felix Mendelssohn was like as a young man, wishes they could be friends -- and uses that wish to fuel her creativity and try to write her wishes true. I know, because I was one such, and when I was 13 wrote a time-slip story where a character went back in time to take the place of Fanny Mendelssohn. (As an adult who knows much more about Fanny I am embarrassed by having overwritten her with my boring OC, but that is not the point I'm making here...) So, on learning of the existence of this book, I immediately went "oh, a kindred spirit, I *must* read this!"

Which I did, and it was worth it. I admit there are many ways in which this is not a good book -- it is quite Victorian, leans on some problematic tropes about genius, the pacing is odd, and the prose sometimes lacks lucidity -- but I can see the appeal and charm of this glorious mess, which is the sort of story, and setting, and characters, that could inspire a fandom -- and I would almost sort of like to see this fandom happen.

ExpandReview follows, some vague thematic spoilers but the one major plot spoiler is under a separate cut. )

Anyway, I found this book fun and interesting to read with the protocols of "this is teenage fanfic and I'm going to bring my inner 13-year-old", though I suspect that people more knowledgeable about music might find it more frustrating. This was also an experiment in writing a long in-depth book review rather than quick Wednesday reactions, and it was more time-consuming so I probably won't do it as much, but if you enjoyed it and would like more reviews of this sort let me know! (Also I could totally see myself writing fic for this fandom -- it has some advantage over writing actual 19th century classical composer RPF.)
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I did a Discord "radio show" on Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel today (yay for being given a chance to rave about my special interests!), and used preparing for this as an excuse to fall down a research rabbit hole. So have some links:

The Mendelssohn Family (1729-1847) from Letters and Journals, Sebastian Hensel -- I've discussed this here before, I should get back to reading it.

The Letters of Fanny Hensel to Felix Mendelssohn translated by Marcia J. Citron -- the whole book isn't available, but there's really quite a lot in the online preview.

Mendelssohn family website lots of biographical info on the various notable members of the extended family!

Hensel Pushers": project to make all of Fanny's music available for free online!

Anna Shelest plays Das Jahr -- Fanny Mendelssohn's most ambitious piano work.

Cholera Cantata: the oratorio Fanny wrote in memory of the 1831 cholera epidemic.

Twenty-five years with Fanny Hensel by Marcia J. Citron -- sorry, this one is behind an academic paywall, but it's really good as a perspective on feminist music history.

The "Suppression" of Fanny Mendelssohn by Marion Wilson Kimber -- a hot take on Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and feminist music history, by a musicologist who has an ongoing feuid with the author of of the previous article linked above.

(Personal musings on Felix's relationship with Jenny Lind moved to a locked post.)
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I've been distracted by various stuff and not reading that much for the last few weeks, but here's an update!

Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir. That was a strange ending -- but I enjoyed spending time with the characters. Will definitely be reading Alecto the Ninth when it comes out, and probably rereading the rest of the series first for clues.

The Mendelssohn Family (1729-1847): Volume 1: From Letters and Journals by Sebastian Hensel, translated by Carl Klingemann. This is a really nice book to dip into here and there, letters of a smart, caring family -- when I picked it up earlier I was most interesting in young Felix and Fanny, so started from there, but this time I started from the beginning -- I got maybe a bit more of Hensel's editorializing and Jewish respectability politics ("we're the nice enlightend Jews, not like *those Jews*") than I needed, but still an interesting perspective and an enjoyable read.

It recently occured to me that Mendelssohn family RPF / Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell crossover would be really interesting, and this has sparked many ideas, which I'm not sure I'm up to writing. But JS&MN is just such a very British-centric book, that I'm curious to take the view on it all from Germany. ([personal profile] mrissa just recommended two books by Andrea Wulf, on the origins of German Romanticism and on Alexander von Humboldt, which both seem relevant to this project).

Related: my favorite Mendelssohn family member of the moment is Dorothea Mendelssohn-Veit-Schegel, who divorced her first husband to marry Friedrich Schlegel, prominent Romantic man of letters whose brother translated Shakespeare into German, and became a novelist and translator in her own right. Particularly intrigued by her "Geschichte des Zauberers Merlin", a German translation of the Merlin legends, and the first modern version of the Merlin myth to include Niniane/Nimue -- this article makes it sound very interesting!
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I skipped last week, so some of these reviews are not as fresh as I'd like

Happy For You, Claire Stanford. So I don't usually have "not enough dystopian tech company" as a complaint about books, but this time I do! But this is the world we live in, where "protagonist works at a dystopian tech company" can just be one element in a basically realistic novel.

The Mendelssohn Family (1729-1847): Volume 1: From Letters and Journals by Sebastian Hensel, translated by Carl Klingemann. Despite my minor obsession with the Mendelssohn family (and Fanny in particular), I hadn't read this before: This is the original biography of the Mendelssohn family with lots of primary sources, by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel's son. Which is great, because he just wants to show you the Mendelssohns as people, and they are lovely people, close-knit intellectual families are my jam, and you get a sense of the intellectual milieu they grew up in: the house, with Alexander Humboldt experimenting on magnetism in the garden where the kids also put on Shakespeare plays with their neighbors. I have been noodling with writing Mendelssohns RPF, and this was the right thing to read for that. This go around I only read the section with young Felix/Fanny, but I will be back for more!

Be The Serpent, Seanan McGuire. Book 16 in the October Daye Series -- so far I'm only 5 or 6 chapters in, but a lot has happened, including confirming a theory that A and I had been floating. Excited to get back to it and see where it goes!
landofnowhere: (ex libris kurt hensel)
A 20-year old Felix Mendelssohn, writing home to his family on his first visit to England in 1829, just having seen Hamlet at Covent Garden. (I think the "Kemble" here must be Charles Kemble.)


In the evening I went with Rosen Mühlenfels and Klingemann to Covent Garden: 'Hamlet'. I believe, children, that he was right who said that the English sometimes do not understand Shakespeare. At least this representation was extravagant; and yet Kemble played Hamlet, and in his way played him well. But alas ! that way is crazy and ruins the whole piece. His appearing, for instance with one yellow and one black leg, to indicate madness, his falling before the ghost in order to strike an attitude, his screaming out the end of every little phrase in that regular applause-exacting high tone of his, his behaving altogether like a John Bull Oxford student and not like a Danish crown prince, all that might pass. But that he should not the least enter into poor Shakespeare's intention as to killing the king, and therefore coolly skip that scene where the king prays and Hamlet comes in and goes out again without having made up his mind for the deed (to my taste one of the finest passages of the piece), and that he constantly behaves like a bravado, treating the king in such a way that he deserves to be shot down at once, for instance during the play on the stage threatening him with his fist and shouting into his ear the words that he should have quietly dropped--these are things not to be pardoned. Of course Laertes and Hamlet do not jump into Ophelia's tomb and wrestle there, for they never guess why they should do so : and at the end when Hamlet falls down and says 'The rest is silence' and I expected a flourish and Fortinbras, Horatio actually leaves the prince, hastily comes forward to the lamps and says 'Ladies and gentlemen, to-morrow evening The Devil's Elixir."'

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Alison

July 2025

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