Spring and Plans and Books
Sep. 29th, 2021 04:34 pmSpring: the person who weedeats our lawn came today, and the smell of grass is all around our deck. I've cleared around the herb patch, and prevented the neighbors from entirely destroying our grape vine in their compost-heap-building zeal; the potatoes my sister ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seahearth planted are still alive amid the weeds, the guava she bought but didn't plant (on account of starting to dig a hole for it and finding a whacking great concrete post there) survived complete neglect from the rest of us and I've now planted it: apparently three weeks of living in lockdown is the length of time it takes for me to start caring for the garden. (Of course the day I planted the guava the weather turned freezing and a wind came up; we'll see how it does).
Plans: I'd flown back from staying with friends in Dunedin the morning New Zealand's second lockdown started, which was very lucky timing; lucky, also, that I went into the lockdown feeling remade by good conversations, very ready to be contained at home with a new writing schedule and audio recording plans. Exactly the kind of plans I make every fortnight or so, except these ones have pretty much been working for a month and a half. Contributing factor: my flatmates R and N dislike their jobs and seemed generally less stressed and happier while they were working from home - in fact, during lockdown both of them decided to quit those jobs, though neither of them have reached the point where that actually happens yet - and the flat was more social than it's been in ages. (I keep wanting to use the word 'sintered' for things, because it's a good word, 'form fragments into a solid by heat or pressure without causing them to melt'. Faience is sintered vitreous frit. Our flat has been somewhat sintered).
Today has been a partial failure in terms of writing productivity - which is to say it would've been an above average writing day three months ago. (My imagination turns up a fantasy monster, and then half a paragraph later my recent reading/listening* says, "What do you mean by 'monster', Jack, is it anything coherent, what kind of being is this?" and I wander off down google rabbit holes until I'm reading about the use of gendered language to describe cats, which is all useful in its way, but not as useful as I planned. On the other hand I've been inclined to wander about the house singing and dancing, which is always nice. That mood when I sing something wrong and find myself thinking not, "That was wrong, sigh," but, "That felt wrong, which must let me tell me what would feel right, aha, yes it does."
(I should inquire of the downstairs neighbors whether they dislike loud overhead singing. We're not even really at the 'borrow a cup of sugar' level so much as 'nod amiably when we meet in the garden, occasionally discuss grape vine', and the fact that my flatmate R's ex has serendipitously moved in down there means that we're unlikely to arrange any shared meals or similar - but as someone who's so far lived upstairs from three households and downstairs from none, it would be worth my checking in about daytime volume levels).
and Books: for the last couple of months I've been reading only books I already own, specifically only books from the three shelves at the end of my bed -- that bookcase turned out to divide neatly, when I set about sorting it, into three read shelves and three unread shelves. This is an answer to a sense of mismatch between my eternal desire to acquire more books and my actual rate of reading books. Also, I've been carrying most of these around for three houses now, and gone through so many winnowings that the ones which survive I'm really consistently interested in or excited by. (Or, in some cases, feel a vague sense of duty towards: all the better to be pushed to actually read those or else choose to get rid of them).
Favorite so far: Maureen F. McHugh's China Mountain Zhang, it's been one of those books that I've been assuming I'd like when I got around to it for at least five years, and not doing so, because all I knew about it was 'near-future sf mosaic novel' and those are apparently not my 'read this book soon' keywords. 'Maureen F. McHugh' is now one of my 'read this book soon' keywords.
Other favourite: Tanith Lee's Forests of the Night. Retellings of fairy tales that never quite were; retellings of fairy tales that were, but didn't have so many vampires before. The author's note to one story, 'The Tenebris Malgraph,' says it was inspired by a dream, and it's remarkable how much it has that feel: it hangs together as a narrative, but also, wait, fishing mutated fossils out of an irradiated lake as a pastime for the rich owners of private yachts? Yes, that makes total sense, surely the story doesn't need to go into any explanations. With those moments when you look at something in a dream and know something about it which a straight description wouldn't explain. Also bits of strikingly effective poetic language (and some other bits which don't hit that mark for me at all; I do see why I read one story from this book two years ago and stopped). Reading this story caused me to stay up three hours writing an entire first draft of a story myself, which has no relation to the content of this one but some, perhaps, to its atmosphere. Also, Lee tends to throw in an unusually wide range of plausible human reactions to things, as exemplified by the story where a demon turns up outside a house full of servants who are having a dull, bad day, and they all cheer up immensely because now they have something to do, and run around busily sprinkling holy herbs and chanting exorcisms for the rest of the morning. I've had that sort of day, where a sudden minor crisis turns out to be more fun than whatever I was going to do instead - though the story is no comedy, and the demon not, in the end, minor. People don't tend to come out of the stories in this book uncomplicatedly happy.
I was disappointed, but then realised I shouldn't have been, to not especially like Delaney's Babel-17 or his Empire Star. The problem is, I started with the books he was writing twenty years later. Interesting things are going on in both of these,** and I'd probably have done better picking either of them up before reading Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, a book I like so much it's easy for me to forget what hard, dull going I initially found it. At first, Delaney's descriptions didn't make me imagine anything. But then I got myself on board that book, and liked it so very much... I will probably like both of these more if I read them again.
And I feel relatedly but less so about The Lathe of Heaven, a book I really like, more than either of those two Delaneys, but also it's odd to come back around to an early non-favourite Le Guin book.
What's now on the to-be-read shelves? A bunch of Penguin classics, probably old family copies, which fall victim to the way I tend to judge books by their covers: these are small and worn and hard to read the titles of from across the room. (But so was China Mountain Zhang). Books I expect to like but haven't gotten around to yet, an Anthony Price mystery, Deeplight, some Margaret Mahy - including the essay collection of hers which set this reading project off, because I found it in a second hand shop having not known it existed, and suddenly thought, "Right! I now have so many good books in my house that I'm bringing the shutters down, no more, this is sufficient." And one history of China and one of Wales, which I've had since I was a teenager, and the Popol Vuh, the Mayan book of the dawn of life and the glory of gods and kings, ditto, and some books I bounced off once (like The Covert Captain, a good-seeming queer historical romance which I should definitely read in a state of not having broken up with anyone two days ago) and some books I expect to enjoy most if I read them aloud, but I don't actually have that many moments of, "Hey, I feel like reading aloud to myself," which is the mood in which I mainly read poetry and also, apparently, Hobbes' Leviathan, which I picked up in a bookshelf for the Terra Ignota connection expecting to put it right back down again, and then bought when I discovered how magnificently cranky Hobbes is.
...also I keep buying new books. I am not reading them, I am only buying them. The original theory was that I'd keep a running book rec list and not get any of them till whenever I finish these three shelves, but then lockdown happened, I discovered how many books are cheap on TradeMe and, well, I haven't been counting but the replacement rate of unread books is still at least 1.
*Friends at the Table Friends at the Table Friends at the Table
**I've noticed myself using 'interesting' in a slightly weaselly way to say 'I'm not going to think about or articulate anything just here, but I think I probably could have.' Here, 'interesting' is shorthand for 'I started to write a paragraph about a cool idea that gets referenced on a slightly ungainly number of Empire Star's pages, and then wondered if that ungainliness hadn't been deliberate, realised I'd have to reread it to tell, and stopped.'
seahearth planted are still alive amid the weeds, the guava she bought but didn't plant (on account of starting to dig a hole for it and finding a whacking great concrete post there) survived complete neglect from the rest of us and I've now planted it: apparently three weeks of living in lockdown is the length of time it takes for me to start caring for the garden. (Of course the day I planted the guava the weather turned freezing and a wind came up; we'll see how it does). Plans: I'd flown back from staying with friends in Dunedin the morning New Zealand's second lockdown started, which was very lucky timing; lucky, also, that I went into the lockdown feeling remade by good conversations, very ready to be contained at home with a new writing schedule and audio recording plans. Exactly the kind of plans I make every fortnight or so, except these ones have pretty much been working for a month and a half. Contributing factor: my flatmates R and N dislike their jobs and seemed generally less stressed and happier while they were working from home - in fact, during lockdown both of them decided to quit those jobs, though neither of them have reached the point where that actually happens yet - and the flat was more social than it's been in ages. (I keep wanting to use the word 'sintered' for things, because it's a good word, 'form fragments into a solid by heat or pressure without causing them to melt'. Faience is sintered vitreous frit. Our flat has been somewhat sintered).
Today has been a partial failure in terms of writing productivity - which is to say it would've been an above average writing day three months ago. (My imagination turns up a fantasy monster, and then half a paragraph later my recent reading/listening* says, "What do you mean by 'monster', Jack, is it anything coherent, what kind of being is this?" and I wander off down google rabbit holes until I'm reading about the use of gendered language to describe cats, which is all useful in its way, but not as useful as I planned. On the other hand I've been inclined to wander about the house singing and dancing, which is always nice. That mood when I sing something wrong and find myself thinking not, "That was wrong, sigh," but, "That felt wrong, which must let me tell me what would feel right, aha, yes it does."
(I should inquire of the downstairs neighbors whether they dislike loud overhead singing. We're not even really at the 'borrow a cup of sugar' level so much as 'nod amiably when we meet in the garden, occasionally discuss grape vine', and the fact that my flatmate R's ex has serendipitously moved in down there means that we're unlikely to arrange any shared meals or similar - but as someone who's so far lived upstairs from three households and downstairs from none, it would be worth my checking in about daytime volume levels).
and Books: for the last couple of months I've been reading only books I already own, specifically only books from the three shelves at the end of my bed -- that bookcase turned out to divide neatly, when I set about sorting it, into three read shelves and three unread shelves. This is an answer to a sense of mismatch between my eternal desire to acquire more books and my actual rate of reading books. Also, I've been carrying most of these around for three houses now, and gone through so many winnowings that the ones which survive I'm really consistently interested in or excited by. (Or, in some cases, feel a vague sense of duty towards: all the better to be pushed to actually read those or else choose to get rid of them).
Favorite so far: Maureen F. McHugh's China Mountain Zhang, it's been one of those books that I've been assuming I'd like when I got around to it for at least five years, and not doing so, because all I knew about it was 'near-future sf mosaic novel' and those are apparently not my 'read this book soon' keywords. 'Maureen F. McHugh' is now one of my 'read this book soon' keywords.
Other favourite: Tanith Lee's Forests of the Night. Retellings of fairy tales that never quite were; retellings of fairy tales that were, but didn't have so many vampires before. The author's note to one story, 'The Tenebris Malgraph,' says it was inspired by a dream, and it's remarkable how much it has that feel: it hangs together as a narrative, but also, wait, fishing mutated fossils out of an irradiated lake as a pastime for the rich owners of private yachts? Yes, that makes total sense, surely the story doesn't need to go into any explanations. With those moments when you look at something in a dream and know something about it which a straight description wouldn't explain. Also bits of strikingly effective poetic language (and some other bits which don't hit that mark for me at all; I do see why I read one story from this book two years ago and stopped). Reading this story caused me to stay up three hours writing an entire first draft of a story myself, which has no relation to the content of this one but some, perhaps, to its atmosphere. Also, Lee tends to throw in an unusually wide range of plausible human reactions to things, as exemplified by the story where a demon turns up outside a house full of servants who are having a dull, bad day, and they all cheer up immensely because now they have something to do, and run around busily sprinkling holy herbs and chanting exorcisms for the rest of the morning. I've had that sort of day, where a sudden minor crisis turns out to be more fun than whatever I was going to do instead - though the story is no comedy, and the demon not, in the end, minor. People don't tend to come out of the stories in this book uncomplicatedly happy.
I was disappointed, but then realised I shouldn't have been, to not especially like Delaney's Babel-17 or his Empire Star. The problem is, I started with the books he was writing twenty years later. Interesting things are going on in both of these,** and I'd probably have done better picking either of them up before reading Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, a book I like so much it's easy for me to forget what hard, dull going I initially found it. At first, Delaney's descriptions didn't make me imagine anything. But then I got myself on board that book, and liked it so very much... I will probably like both of these more if I read them again.
And I feel relatedly but less so about The Lathe of Heaven, a book I really like, more than either of those two Delaneys, but also it's odd to come back around to an early non-favourite Le Guin book.
What's now on the to-be-read shelves? A bunch of Penguin classics, probably old family copies, which fall victim to the way I tend to judge books by their covers: these are small and worn and hard to read the titles of from across the room. (But so was China Mountain Zhang). Books I expect to like but haven't gotten around to yet, an Anthony Price mystery, Deeplight, some Margaret Mahy - including the essay collection of hers which set this reading project off, because I found it in a second hand shop having not known it existed, and suddenly thought, "Right! I now have so many good books in my house that I'm bringing the shutters down, no more, this is sufficient." And one history of China and one of Wales, which I've had since I was a teenager, and the Popol Vuh, the Mayan book of the dawn of life and the glory of gods and kings, ditto, and some books I bounced off once (like The Covert Captain, a good-seeming queer historical romance which I should definitely read in a state of not having broken up with anyone two days ago) and some books I expect to enjoy most if I read them aloud, but I don't actually have that many moments of, "Hey, I feel like reading aloud to myself," which is the mood in which I mainly read poetry and also, apparently, Hobbes' Leviathan, which I picked up in a bookshelf for the Terra Ignota connection expecting to put it right back down again, and then bought when I discovered how magnificently cranky Hobbes is.
...also I keep buying new books. I am not reading them, I am only buying them. The original theory was that I'd keep a running book rec list and not get any of them till whenever I finish these three shelves, but then lockdown happened, I discovered how many books are cheap on TradeMe and, well, I haven't been counting but the replacement rate of unread books is still at least 1.
*Friends at the Table Friends at the Table Friends at the Table
**I've noticed myself using 'interesting' in a slightly weaselly way to say 'I'm not going to think about or articulate anything just here, but I think I probably could have.' Here, 'interesting' is shorthand for 'I started to write a paragraph about a cool idea that gets referenced on a slightly ungainly number of Empire Star's pages, and then wondered if that ungainliness hadn't been deliberate, realised I'd have to reread it to tell, and stopped.'
