perlmonger | Reading

2025/183: Empire of Shadows — Jacquelyn Benson

The stela was clear evidence for the existence of a previously unknown Mesoamerican culture… and Ellie had the map to the heart of it tucked into her corset. [p. 178]

London, 1898: archivist Eleanor Mallory finds herself unemployed after a suffragette protest. ("Just one little arrest, which they aren’t even pressing charges for!") Awaiting her dismissal, she finds an ancient map concealed by her supervisor.( Read more... )

Current Mood: cheerful

tamaranth

2025/182: Strange Pictures — Uketsu

Adults can draw what they see, the real thing, in their pictures. Children, though, draw the “idea” of what appears in their heads. [p. 82]

Translated from the Japanese by Jim Rion, this short illustrated novel seems at first to be three tenuously-connected novellas. The first begins with a blog on which a man posts some pictures drawn by his wife, who died in childbirth. Each picture has a number... The second story is about a small boy who draws a picture of the apartment block where he lives, and scribbles out the windows of his home. And the third pertains to a grisly unsolved murder mystery, and the implications of the sketch found with the corpse. Gradually, it becomes clear that these are all the same story, or at least all revolve around the same individual.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: thoughtful

tamaranth

2025/181: Murder Most Foul — Guy Jenkin

Even in Deptford, you can’t carry bodies far in daylight... [loc. 1402]

In which William Shakespeare is suspected of the murder of Christopher Marlowe, and makes common cause with Marlowe's sister Ann (formerly Will's lover) to find out who really killed Marlowe, and why. Well-researched, witty historical whodunnit with a credible denouement and some excellent dialogue (Jenkin is an award-winning scriptwriter) and lots of period detail. Also, set in my neck of the woods...

The premise sounded excellent, but didn't quite ring true for me.( Read more... )

Current Mood: exanimate

spiralsheep

- Film: I watched a documentary, The Golden Spurtle, about the international porridge making championship held annually for the last 30+ years in Carrbridge village in the Scottish Highlands, and the film is an ideal combination of quirky Scottish villagers, international porridge-cooking contestants, and Australian filmmakers. 5/5 would watch again.

- Film: on 11-11-25 at 11am I saw Alan Bennett the Musical, sorry, I mean The Choral, which is about a northern English choral society in 1916. It tackles some (still) controversial themes, mostly class related, but also manages to comfortably embrace cliches such as The Scene Where Everyone Sings and, of course, Let's Do The Show Right Here. The themes are outsourcing of labour by the English ruling classes: the hardest and most dangerous physical labour historically demanded from the white working class, the emotional and sexual labour expected from women, and interestingly the outsourcing of conscience to homosexuals and non-white people. I have to admire Bennett's enduring passion for satirising hypocrisy, and his ability to be simultaneously amusing and devastating. My only reservation is the character assassination of Edward Elgar but I took that more as social commentary about selling one's soul to The Establishment in exchange for "honours", which Bennett has earned the right to make due to turning down at least two we know of including a knighthood. 4/5 but once was enough.

Quote of the film is itself a quotation: “A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful [...]” - well-known German person Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

- Pleasing occurrences: Mr Crepehanger Radiographer who did my scan can kiss my optimist ring cos my next neurology appointment has been adjusted from only a two month gap to the more usual three. \o/

( - Accountability catch-up )

tamaranth

2025/179-180: Plum Duff and 'The Saint of the Bookstore' — Victoria Goddard

... it had been said -- it had been believed -- that much of the old, deep magic of Alinor before the coming of the Empire was gone.
The Fall of the Empire had made it clear that that magic was only quiescent... [Plum Duff, loc. 126]

Reread, because (as per the final line of my February 2023 review of Plum Duff) the seventh book in the series really is due soon... I note that on first reading, I found this wintry novel, full of solstice cheer and ancient traditions and the threat of the Dark, less enjoyable than the 'cosier, more mannerist' novels that preceded it. I do think it feels as though the scope of the story is expanding rapidly: but given the miracles and wonders of the previous pair of novels, that makes more sense to me this time around.( Read more... )

Current Mood: hopeful

spiralsheep

Armistice, by Paul Dehn*

It is finished. The enormous dust-cloud over Europe
Lifts like a million swallows; and a light,
Drifting in craters, touches the quiet dead.

Now, at the bugle’s hour, before the blood
Cakes in a clean wind on their marble faces,
Making them monuments; before the sun,

Hung like a medal on the smoky noon,
Whitens the bone that feeds the earth; before
Wheat-ear springs green again, in the green spring

And they are bread in the bodies of the young:
Be strong to remember how the bread died, screaming;
Gangrene was corn, and monuments went mad.

----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- -----------
* Yes, the same Paul Dehn as Mrs Ravoon - he had quite the range.

tamaranth

2025/178: Nothing But Blackened Teeth — Cassandra Khaw

One girl each year. Two hundred and six bones times a thousand years. More than enough calcium to keep this house standing until the stars ate themselves clean, picked the sinew from their own shining bones. [loc. 238]

Talia has always wanted to get married in a haunted house: when she announces her marriage to Faiz, their wealthy friend Phillip flies the couple and their friends -- Cat the narrator and Lin her ex -- to Japan, and sets up a sleepover in an abandoned mansion. They have "“booze, food, sleeping bags, a youthful compulsion to do stupid shit... and a hunger for a good ghost story”" [loc. 202]. And they have a setting rich with stories about dancing girls buried in the walls, and a legend of an aborted wedding where the groom died en route.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: sore

tamaranth

2025/177: Starling House — Alix E Harrow

It’s something about the way the shadows fell in Eden, after Eleanor died. It’s the way everything soured: the river ran darker and the clouds hung lower; rich coal seams went dry and healthy children sickened; good luck went bad and sweet dreams spoiled. [p. 49]

When Opal's mother died, Opal lied her way into becoming her brother Jasper's legal guardian. In the decade since then, she's been working hard at awful jobs to try to raise enough money for him to go to a decent school. She's haunted by dreams of the car crash that killed her mother, and by half-forgotten fragments of the book she loved as a child: 'The Underland', by Eleanor Starling. And she's strangely drawn to Starling House, the Gothic mansion on the edge of town. ( Read more... )

Current Mood: nervous

dougs

We are supposed to speak good of the dead.

Are you familiar with Raspberry Ripple ice cream? It's a pale, bland, almost unflavoured frozen dairy dessert, cut through with narrow seams of deep red which savage the blandness.

( We are supposed to speak good of the dead. )

perlmonger::metalog

2025/183: Empire of Shadows — Jacquelyn Benson

2025/182: Strange Pictures — Uketsu

2025/181: Murder Most Foul — Guy Jenkin

In which we do the show right here

2025/179-180: Plum Duff and 'The Saint of the Bookstore' — Victoria Goddard

In which there was an Armistice

2025/178: Nothing But Blackened Teeth — Cassandra Khaw

2025/177: Starling House — Alix E Harrow

We are supposed to speak good of the dead.

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July 2013

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