Concordia discors

- Reading: 66 books to 11 June 2025.

63. Faith Fox, by Jane Gardam, 1996, 3/5: her most depressing novel? My favourite Gardam novels are Bilgewater then Crusoe's Daughter then The Flight of the Maidens (but Old Filth is probably her most popular work).

64. The Geographer's Map to Romance, by India Holton, 2025, fantasy romance novel, 3/5

A "marriage of convenience" romance novel set in a fantasy version of Victorian Britain (supposedly 1890), peopled by characters with 21st century sensibilities and international English language. The plot, such as it was, would have been enough for a much shorter story, and the magical trappings are arbitrary, but the prose is lively and full of in-jokes and meta-humour about romance and fantasy tropes which entertained me enough to read on. I was excessively pleased that the solution was to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, lmao. Warning: if you dislike "only one bed" scenes then be aware that's a running joke and Holton crams in as many examples as possible.

( Quotes and commentary )

P.S. Can confirm Much Marcle is the sort of place where a rain of frogs would seem normal.

65. [Redacted: acquaintances kept telling me this novel is "not good" but that I should read it, with the same delivery as, "This smells terrible... go on, sniff it!" They were correct. 'nuff said.]

Aurora Australis readalong 8 / 10, An Ancient Manuscript by Shellback (Frank Wild), post for comment, reaction, discussion, fanworks, links, and whatever obliquely related matters your heart desires. You can join the readalong at any time or skip sections or go back to earlier posts. It's all good. :-)

Text of An Ancient Manuscript by Shellback (Frank Wild):
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/An_Ancient_Manuscript

Readalong intro and reaction post links:
https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/662515.html

( Links for next week, this week's vocabulary, quotes, and brief commentary )

Survived the Week of Church (Tuesday night, Wednesday night, ten hours on Saturday), and am looking forward to a whole! week! off! work! next week - the expected project go-live date is Thursday that week, so I'm probably going to have to log on for a couple of hours to make updates to student-facing content that can't be done until live day, which is annoying, but I'll get the time back and I've made it clear that anything else launch-related will have to wait until I'm back on the Monday!

In the meantime, there's plenty of tasks that need to be done before we go live, and I'm only avoiding some of them... some tasks are just freakishly intimidating and I can never tell why; half of them only take ten minutes once you actually face them.

The buses took a long time to recover after COVID - there was a phase where it felt like I was waiting 25 minutes every time I caught a bus - but the last year or so things have been much more reliable. Of course, sometimes that doesn't work in my favour, like how my bus home from church reliably arrives three minutes too late for me to catch the bus that stops by my house instead of having to walk ten minutes home. But the other day I was waiting for a bus which was twelve minutes away when I got to the stop... five minutes later it was thirteen minutes away... seven minutes after that it was fourteen minutes away... after that I stopped checking, because I was a little bit afraid of what might happen, and walked home instead.

Mum's started chemo now, and is doing OK-ish. I'm going over to see them on Sunday for Fathers' Day, possibly along with my brother and his tribe, but we'll see. Ticking along!

One day, I'll just take a lot of pictures...

I finished Plutone and decided that, before working on Exia and Starfall, I'd see what's in the shoeboxes and whatnot under my desk. The answer is more projects and a lot of stuff to sort, but I managed to clean up a bit for now. Even if everything is stacked nicer, that's a start. I don't remember what I was going to do with all this non-model paint... and I don't know what I should do with it if it's still good... (I feel like I should just start on murals in my garage or something?)

I have a kit on the way that's hopefully going to be part of a contest entry. I'm not expecting/hoping to win or anything, but I want to challenge myself. The contest also ends right around when iddyiddybangbang is due, so maybe a double-deadline will help? (I have multiple ideas for IIBB, we'll see how this goes?)

Okay, just gonna try to make a quick Spamton timeline with the new info from the new chapters, I'll try and write a longer post later but I just want to try and pin this down.

( Spoilers for the new chapters, obviously )

lj post

It's June.

If you want free "romantasy, PNR, and monster romance" stories arriving daily in July, FaRoFeb's FaRoCation is happening again. As always, there will be quantity. (I usually end up liking one or two of them, and it's free. *shrugemoji*)

A couple of weeks back, I asked at the bank about check registers since my previous check orders hadn't come with them and I'd finally finished my last one (dated 2020 on the back - it has still been 2020 all this time!) and was out. Turns out the check printers stopped sending them and they thought check orders still got them. I ended up ordering a 20-pack off Amazon which will possibly last for the rest of my life. (However, I'd just assume share the wealth and if you need one, lmk. They're a bit on the 'for ants' side which doesn't bother me but might be a dealbreaker for you.)

I also still have those Riverside TrekFest goodies if anyone wants them.

The date for the first Gundam Mobile Base Pop-Up USA Tour stop was announced a couple of days ago, for Kentucky at the end of this month. A not-impossible drive, and I put in for the day off just in case. But a Michigan date has been announced for September so I'll do that instead. It's much closer but I'm not sure the drive is any better. (ha!)

Worked on gutters (not mine) yesterday, and went to an estate sale to look at tools. Ended up getting some fine, fine wrenches and other stuff. Well over $100 in stuff for $10; I almost felt a little guilty. (Almost.)

I officially got the airbrush out of its box and tried it! One hurdle, um, hurdled! It will take a few sessions to figure out exactly what I need as far as a set-up goes, but I will definitely need to liberate one of the extra chairs recently unearthed in the barn.

- Bee log: 2 June, rescued a de-powered female worker Red-tailed Bumblebee, Bombus lapidarius, from inside a library by holding it in my bare hands while it vibrated vigorous warning buzzing. Then, when I put my hand next to lavender flowers outside, the bee grabbed a flower to drink the nectar but wouldn't let go of my hand (probably because my body temperature was warmer than the air temperature). Re-powered bee eventually transferred to the plant before flying away, but not before a librarian had appeared to ascertain why I'd set off the alarms by carrying a tagged book through the detector gates. Librarian was very sympathetic to the bee and wanted to know which book it was "reading".

- Birb log: 27 May, 11+ jackdaws and very low-bowing courting male Wood Pigeon (a few days previously I suspected a Wood pigeon had been taken by a bird of prey but there are 5+ today).
3-5 June, latest I've seen a Goldfinch stripping last year's Teasel heads for seed.
8 June, by behaviour I'd say I've seen at least one juvenile Dunnock and one Blackbird this last week but neither was in pre-adult plummage.

- Citizen science: still biologging &c.

OKAY i've played through the new Deltarune chapters, both pacifist and snowgrave, and there's just SO MUCH to talk about, it's hard to even know where to start, haha. I'll have to see if I can organize my thoughts better with some time to chew on it...

- Current reading quote: "My phrenologist has advised me to get more excitement in life, for the sake of my health".

- Friday Five with questions to warm the cockles of USian market researchers....

1. Have you ever been to summer camp?
No, we didn't have US style summer camps. Going camping (in tents or less often huts) for a weekend or even a whole week (!) with the Scouts / Guides &c used to be a relatively common childhood experience in the UK, and some schools went Youth Hostelling or to outdoor centres (usually owned by local councils before they were mostly privatised) for loosely geography/biology themed field study trips, but I never did. Specialised summer schools for formal study were uncommon, although older posher kids might attend a week or two for music or languages or whatever posh kids do when their parents want rid of them and boarding schools are on hols. Brits also used to have a lot of language student exchange trips with Europe usually organised by secondary schools.

2. Have you ever made a s'more?
I've seen them in USian movies and they appeared to be rubbery pink sugar melted over dry crumbly "cookie" sugar, thus removing the only joy of campfire toasting which is crunchiness. Why would anyone want to do that? I can only assume the level of advertising to children that would be seen as brainwashing anywhere else.

3. Have you ever slept under the stars (no tent/tarp)?
Yes, and so did all the rural kids I grew up with and my entire early adult friend group, and all the women's group members I knew, and all the greens and neopagans I knew (and probably most of the leftists at some point). Why wouldn't anyone living in a temperate climate, with predictable meteor showers &c, want to sleep out? I dislike camping though because it's too much faff for no reward: minimalist bivi bag or middle-aged mo-ho for me, ta.

4. Have you ever had a member of the opposite sex sleep over at your house?
Ah, yes, the two sexes, and the owning of houses. Definitely another question aimed at my demographic, lmao.

5. What type of bed do you have (queen, twin, bunk, etc.)?
A comfy one, obv. Primarily cotton sheets / pillow cases (pillow case can be refrigerated in summer) and duvet with blanket over in winter. And when I was very ill a few years ago I swapped my hot water bottle for an electric heat pad at the foot end of my bed. [insert emoticon of comfy smugness here]

6. Have you had your bumps "read" by a phrenologist?
/jk, that's not a FF question. Have you though? I bet you have! You look like the type!! I can tell from the shape of your head!!1!! (I was persuaded to have a Kirlian photo of myself taken once. I refused to pay extra for a "reading" but the "psychic" insisted on persuing me to the door while earnestly explaining that I had a strong secondary female presence in my "aura" that was watching over me, lmao.)

I’ve been working my way through the library’s collection of audiobooks by Cathy Glass, a long-time foster carer in the UK who writes about her experiences with different kids over the years. So here’s a post about some of those.

Most of them have really generic titles (“Cut“, “Neglected“, “A Terrible Secret”, “Girl Alone“, you get the picture), but the actual writing is detailed and engaging. She comes off like exactly the kind of person you’d want in this job: thoughtful and attentive, firm about setting boundaries but patient and tolerant with some pretty gnarly issues, detail-oriented enough to adapt to the new batch of paperwork and scheduling (so much scheduling!) that every case dumps on her. (Obviously this could just be her talking herself up, but I’ll be an optimist and hope it’s true.)

The overall foster system fails these kids in various ways on a regular basis, but there is some comfort if you jump around in the timeline, you see how much it improves over the years. The first book I read was I Miss Mummy, where Cathy’s oldest son is 14, and there are all these procedures and check-ins and reports. Then I jumped back to Cut, where the son is an infant and the kid is her second foster charge ever — and wow, a social worker basically just rolls up to her house and goes “here, this is your problem now.”

 

I had plans for my first free evening this week, but then got distracted and lost an hour and a half somewhere. It's weird how often that happens. Catching up with the washing up will just have to wait for tomorrow (...or some later date).

A parcel arrived today! I ordered some of the Diana Wynne Jones books I didn't already have; I have most of them already, but decided it was time to fill in the gaps, so I expect I'll be re-reading these this month. I need to catch up with my booklog; I've only read about a dozen books in the last two months, so it shouldn't take all that long, but I keep getting distracted.

I watched the funeral of one of my primary school classmates on Tuesday; it feels very strange for someone I remember as an eleven-year-old to be dead. Having said that, it wasn't any kind of surprise; he had a horrible genetic condition and had spent the last decade in a care home, and at that he outlived his two younger brothers by nearly a quarter of a century. Some people just get a really raw deal. We were never close, but it's impossible not to feel the unfairness of it - especially for his parents, who brought up four children knowing that three of them were unlikely to make it much past puberty. You know these things happen to people, but it's harder to accept when you see them in your own community.

And now I need to go and assemble tomorrow's sandwiches and go to bed at a reasonable hour. The swimming crew are going for coffee tomorrow, so I definitely can't be late!

- To Read shelves, 72 on 1 June, which is down from 90 on 1 Jan 2025.

- Reading: 63 books to 5 June 2025.

56. Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, by Heather Fawcett, 2023, fantasy romance (het), 4/5.
I liked the readable prose, presented mostly as diary entries, and especially the protagonist, but all the she-forgot-herself and voila she's a queen now with a wannabe prince charming waiting to rescue her from her unwanted king was tedious to me. However the author does emphasise, as do traditional folk and fairy tales, that aristocracy is arbitrary, capricious, and cruel, which took the edge off my discontent, lol. I especially enjoyed Fawcett's characterisation of the "common" fae "Poe" who lived in a tree by a hot spring and exchanged gift-for-gift with humans.

( Unnecessary nitpicking which in no way spoiled my enjoyment. )

57. Never Anyone but You, by Rupert Thomson, 2018, novel historical (lgbt+), 4/5.
A historical novel about Lucie Schwob (Claude Cahun) and Suzanne Malherbe (Marcel Moore) which managed to combine the historical and the novel aspects very well.
Warning for the Second World War, plus suicides, and anorexia.

Quote: But they realised they didn't have anything we wanted, and they took our self-sufficiency as a kind of rejection, or even as an expression of contempt. If money, beauty and fame aren't coveted by the people who don't have them, they lose their value for the people who do.

59. Bad Influence, by C.J. Wray, 2025, technically a crime novel, 3.5/5.
If this was What Three Words it'd be heartwarming.popular.tropes.
Warning for spoilery but exceedingly obvious trope wrt elderly protagonists.

60. Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God, by Tony Hoagland, 2019, poetry, 3.5/5.
Specifically post-2016 dissatisfactions from Hoagland, to add to his usual satirical tendencies.

61. God on the Rocks, by Jane Gardam, 1978, literary slice-of-life novel, 4.5/5.
Half a point too Booker for me. :D

62. Oliver VII, by Antal Szerb (translation from Hungarian by Len Rix), 1942, ruritanian farce, 3/5.
I blame James Davis Nicoll. :-)

Aurora Australis readalong 7 / 10, Erebus by Nemo (Ernest Shackleton), post for comment, reaction, discussion, fanworks, links, and whatever obliquely related matters your heart desires. You can join the readalong at any time or skip sections or go back to earlier posts. It's all good. :-)

Text of the poem Erebus by Nemo (Ernest Shackleton):
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/Erubus

Readalong intro and reaction post links:
https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/662515.html

Reminder for next week, An Ancient Manuscript by Shellback (Frank Wild):
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/An_Ancient_Manuscript

( Links, vocabulary, quotes, and brief commentary )

For once in my life, I've had an actual quiet week! It won't last (this week is fairly jam-packed) but I have enjoyed it.

I turned my mattress for the end of the month as usual, but I really think it's dead now. The new side isn't so bad, but the one I've been sleeping on in May has a real canyon in the middle now. I asked my family what I should do, and they have all informed me that I should expect to spend £1500 for a good new mattress, and I might have to delay the purchase for several months while I adjust to the concept and my savings account braces for the impact. But, as they pointed out, I anticipate spending 8+ hours a day on it for the next ten years, and if I cheap out then I can expect to pay for that in other ways. Is that really normal now?? Or are my family just extravagant bed-buyers?

Work has been surprisingly quiet, too; I've actually been looking at some of the lingering tasks on my to-do list, even. Our big project is close to wrapping up - on Friday we were talking about go-live dates in mid-June and I am psychologically unready, but I have to admit that we're nearly done on the outstanding items, so... What will I do with myself once it's finished?? However, tomorrow is first working day of the month, so I'll have two days of reporting to keep me from having to think about it too hard.

I have made minor progress on various tasks at home, and scheduled some more regular reminders to do things (although right now there's a drift of overdue tasks in the to-do list app...). This morning I crosschecked my music collection spreadsheet with my music collection soundtrack folder, and added a considerable number of items; I ought to do the same with the classical and popular folders, which are rather larger, but... I don't want to. Maybe I'll put them on the to-do list.

I also ran out of space on my phone again - ongoing annoyance: phone says it needs to update Firefox (71MB) but can't because there's not enough free space (894MB). I assume there are good reasons to do it this way, but I would really like it if the phone would tell me how much space it needed, rather than my simply having to run around deleting things and trying again until it finally installs. Anyway, this time I ended up moving my entire camera history off the phone onto my computer, going through them and deleting all the really terrible photos, duplicates, pictures of my meter readings / malfunctioning work ticket kiosks / seating diagrams for choir, etc, and then moving the survivors back onto the SD card on my phone. Which was actually quite a useful task in itself, and did eventually free up enough space to update Firefox. I probably need to think about planning for a new phone (this one is over six years old) but I am feeling expensive enough already.

- I accidentally googled kintsugi mouse and found the worst taxidermy shop I've had the misfortune to be tempted to click on.

- Living in Squares, Loving in Triangles is still the best possible title for a book about the Bloomsbury Group, although What Narcissism Means to Me remains my favourite title in any category.

- Devastating book review written in black ballpoint pen inside the front cover of a novel I saw in a charity shop: "I couldn't be bothered finishing this". Also stamped on the same page: "DISCARDED Telford & Wrekin Libraries".

- Nature is odd, but pretty: shell lerps.

I have a habit of making, like, 97-Point Plans for the day and then managing two things and calling it good. That's fine. Though eventually I do need to get some stuff done. But also, my to-do lists end up long because I can't just, like, clean the kitchen. It needs to be doing dishes, cleaning out the fridge, taking trash, etc.

It is not quite the end of the month but I think it's close enough to report in!

( May Intentions )

And June!

( June Plans! )

- Reading: 58 books to 28 May 2025.

54. Cwen, by Alice Albinia, 2021, 5/5, is a trans-inclusive, anti-racist (anti-misogynoir), women-centred, feminist speculative utopian fiction set on an archipelago of small islands that are part of our contemporary British Isles but where 50% of local power has recently been legislated to women. Written in a very readable style, combining serious critique with the mischievousness of the best feminist fiction. Reminiscent of Ellen Galford (especially Fires of Bride updated and improved), probably intentionally although she doesn't get a namecheck unlike Marija Gimbutas, and the backstory of the islands includes a multicultural feminist separatist commune that fails but plants seeds of ideas and actions which I read as acknowledgement of the positive effects of second wave feminism.

The plot, which is unspoilerable, is that a leading local woman Eva Harcourt-Vane has died under not especially mysterious circumstances, after rowing out into a storm at sea, and bequeathed all her worldly possessions away from her three wealthy and politically influential sons who have demanded a Public Inquiry into the results of their mother's utopian feminism. Past and current events are then presented through the device of witnesses to that Inquiry, especially the dozen women who were most involved in Eva's cabal ( / coven / disciples): what they say in public, their private memories, and responses from other community members. There's a large cast of characters, who can be difficult to keep track of while reading, but many of the asides included from the Public Inquiry scenes appear to be intended as a Greek Chorus effect so the persona speaking isn't individually important and when a character does require closer attention in a scene it's obvious in context so readers don't need to track every utterance of every character for overall reading comprehension and enjoyment. There's also a supernatural element but readers can dismiss that as symbolic if they prefer. It sounds dry but the mix works well.

It's interesting that the situation in this novel is convincingly presented as a feminist utopia / gynotopia provoking massive backlash, but then undercut by the evidence given to the Public Inquiry which shows that what happened is not even equality for women e.g.: 50% representation in local government is under-representation; and the women's club isn't as luxurious and doesn't ban men as extremely as traditional men's clubs in the UK; and the reworking of museum exhibits only adds interpretations and accurately re-sexes the skeleton from a chambered cairn; and one woman working in an otherwise male-dominated field is seen as an unacceptable threat to men's livelihoods; &c.

The tone of this book is realistic encouragement: Utopia is here, and the revolution is always now, because here and now are the only possibilities and we should choose to live as much of the gynotopia in our lives as we can (men too, obv, unless you're one of those losers who finds 50% female a scary number).

I LOVED THIS. 5/5. :D

( Quotes and language use )