Book Round-up

Possession by A.S. Byatt: I've lost track of how often I've read this. This time, I reflected a lot on the fate of the female characters and they way their artistic or scholarly ambitions are stifled and redirected to safer outlets by men. In the Victorian age, Blanche's life is curtailed by both contemporary mores and financial struggles (and, like Val, her own self-sabotaging choices), whereas poor Ellen, neither a writer nor a scholar, wanted to be both poet and poem. Christabel did make a life for herself as a poet, but it required great sacrifice on her part. In the 1950s Beatrice wanted to write about Ash, but was told she would be more suitable to work on Ellen's diary, and in the 1980s Val was assumed to be riding Randolph's coattails (in part because of her tendency to sabotage herself rather than risk fighting for what she wants). Maud and Leona do have thriving academic careers, but they still regularly face the vestiges of a sexist world with ideas about what's appropriate for women.

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers: A Lord Peter Wimsey mystery set at an advertising firm in the early 1930s. It's both a good murder mystery and a sharp satire of advertising and marketing (an industry that has apparently barely changed). I've read a couple others in the series, Gaudy Night and Strong Poison (in that order), and they are good enough that I should just read them all in order.

The Things we Never Say by Elizabeth Strout: A gorgeous, heartbreaking novel about the ways we hold part of ourselves back, even from those closest to us. Most of the novel takes place in the months before the 2024 election, and the fear and dread is palpable (especially in hindsight), but Strout never lets us forget that what matters are the relationships people have, the small mercies and kindnesses and annoyances. Her depictions of flawed people are deeply humane.

Strangled Prose by Joan Hess: this 1987 cozy mystery, the first of a series, is set in a book shop and it is ... not great. The politics are very much of their time (ie, occasionally appalling). It tries for quippy and clever but rarely succeeds, and Claire's interactions with the investigating officer (clearly a future love interest) swing wildly from rage to flirting to contempt to evasiveness. Worst of all, Claire is absurdly snobby about romance novels; an odd position for a character who owns a bookshop or an author who writes cozy mysteries. Perhaps it was intended ironically, but if so it was not clear.

Just for the Summer by Abby Jiménez: a find from a little free library near my mom's house (I feel guilty about taking it all the way to New York, but I intend to drop it off in the one on my block). I thoroughly enjoyed this sweet, thoughtful romance, especially the fact that Jiménez makes it clear that the cure to Emma's complex PTSD is therapy, not the love of a good man.

Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson: Oh my gosh did I love this. This story about a man who keeps abandoning his children, and the children who meet up and go on a road trip to find him and get some answers, is heartbreakingly poignant, heartwarming, funny, and a little weird. Wilson has a facility with language, creating off-kilter sentences that have probably never been written before but make perfect sense. Given my love for this and Nothing to See Here, I need to read the rest of his novels.

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

No one can accuse Kuang of writing the same story over and over; each novel I've read has been completely different than the one before, and Katabasis is no different. Cambridge grad student Alice, a student of the arcane arts, makes a journey through Hell* to find her recently-deceased thesis advisor so he can provide her the letters of recommendation she needs to obtain a teaching position. The absurdity of such a quest gives you an idea of the nature of the book -- a sharp satire of academic politics and overachieving students. It's funny, too; I laughed out loud at the list of academic sins of pride ("Had more of a comment, not a question").

It's tempting to compare this to Kuang's other novel in an academic setting, Babel. That novel bluntly tackled colonialism in a bleak story that illustrated the many evils caused by greed and prejudice. Katabasis's stakes are much smaller, but Kuang uses them to illustrate pettiness and cruelty of academic life under a professor who revels in the power he has over his students. Unlike Babel, where magic causes real world harm, and could cause real world good, magic doesn't seem to do anything useful here, which is perhaps the source of the cruelty ("Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small"**). As Alice wends her way through Hell, we learn more and more about the psychological and physical indignities and assaults Professor Grimes subjected her to, and the way she tolerated it because of her drive to succeed and her fear that he would blackball her. Part of her journey, then, is coming to terms with that abuse and realizing how miserable her life had become in the name of academic achievement.

She's not the only one caught up in such a toxic environment; the members of this Cambridge school have a gnostic world view, not just in the search for hidden or lost knowledge, but in the way the mind is elevated far above the body. It's a mindset not unexpected for people who are focused on intellectual achievement above all else, but it does open the students up to neglect -- going without food, sleep, or fresh air for days or weeks -- and even abuse. 

It's not anything new; the idea that the spiritual (or intellectual) world is superior to the material world has been around for millenia, and is present today amongst the transhumanists hoping to live forever and the techbros striving to hack their bodies. But the life of the mind is not enough, and people eventually crave food, touch, pain, pleasure, movement, physicality. Humans are not meant to be divided like this, and this is the lesson Alice must learn as she scales mountains, becomes close to Peter (who's on the same quest), hungers for whatever scraps of food she can get, and revels in physical battles.

It's not a spoiler to say that by the end Alice has reevaluated what she wants out of life, and I'm not sure that she will be able to overcome her own flaws and hang-ups so easily, but the novel ends on a lovely little note of hope, of having a wide-open future ahead.

 

 

*This Hell is not the Christian Hell, although in borrows many elements from it while incorporating myths and literature from other traditions as well to get at universal truths. The sections Alice must travel through don't line up perfectly with the seven deadly sins, for example, but Kuang depicts those sins in a surprisingly orthodox manner; the realm of Desire is squalid, pathetic, and sad, Pride is petty and pointless; and Anger is futile.

**Laurence J. Peter. 

Knotted Pearl Treasure Necklace

 

I thoroughly enjoyed making a knotted pearl treasure necklace. The inspiration was from one of The Beadshop's videos, and the first step was rooting through my jewelry box and bead supplies for the appropriate charms and pendants. It was hard to limit it to five! Deciding on the pearls was easier; I had a string of fresh water pearls with the slightest lavender cast waiting to be used for a special project. Once everything was decided, the necklace came together quickly.

Left to right: 

A broken earring, from the late-90s trend of colored crystals and sparkly everything.

A fancy button I found on the street when I lived in Boston, and probably the closest I will ever come to owning something from Ferragamo. I miss Boston.

The pendant my father gave me the night before my wedding. It came on a gold collar but neither simplicity nor grey and gold were my style, so it languished. A few years ago I repurposed the gold collar to hold a cameo pendant and Mother and Child medal that used to belong to my mom and a white "pearl" pendant that belonged to my grandmother, making the collar a family affair and much more likely to be worn. I'm glad I've now found a place for my father's pendant, too. (No elegant, minimalist jewelry for me!)

A vintage French (I think) miraculous medal. This came from a tin of vintage notions from French General; they now mostly sell textiles and notions for quilts and other sewing arts, and I miss the jewelry kits they used to put together.

A gemstone pendant left over from the first iteration of my tiny, occasional jewelry-making business. I've been half-heartedly selling jewelry for a long time! I just can't bring myself to do any marketing and research to make a real go of it (there's a reason I became a lawyer, and then a librarian; I'm allergic to "business").

Cross Stitch Diary Part 3

 I'm way behind in showing off my stitching. As always, thanks to The Daily Stitchuation for inspiration.

 A red heart for Valentine's Day.

A Star of David for the Bar and Bat Mitzvah we went to.

An ashen cross for Ash Wednesday.

A stack of books for my February reads. 

A tooth because there were lots of dental appointments earlier in the year. 

A pi pie for Pi Day.

a Clover leaf for St. Patrick's Day.

A cross for Good Friday.

A bunny for Easter. 

Corn because I read Men of Maize. 

A tomato pincushion because I've been doing a lot of mending. 

A tabby cat (standard issue) for Porcupine.

Daffodil and lilac blossom for Spring. 

A drop of blood because I gave blood.

Grogu because we saw The Mandalorian and Grogu.

Frida Kahlo's eyebrows and crown of flowers because I saw the Frida and Diego exhibition at the MoMA.

A priestly collar because my brother (a priest) came to visit. 

A soccer ball for the World Cup (yay Spain! Boo Argentinian poor sportsmanship!).

 

Phew! This project is now about a year old, but I plan on continuing it until I run out of fabric. 

Woven Fringe Earrings

 Joan Williams's project in the autumn 2023 issue of Belle Armoire Jewelry caught my eye immediately -- Czech glass on a miniature rug woven from cotton floss, inspired by the saddle blankets horses wear.

 

Lacking a mini loom, I made one from a large matchbox:

I enjoyed the weaving so much, however, that I'm seriously considering getting a proper loom of that size (the matchbox worked, but the warp threads had an annoying tendency to slip off at inconvenient moments).

Lacking glass beads in a suitable color, I instead created a little stack from brass discs, fordite beads, and size 8 seed beads to anchor them in place. Finishing was easier than I expected, too; a blunt needle made it easy to hide the thread ends under the wefts on the back.

These earrings were a lot of fun to make; I bet a bracelet would be, too!
 

Book Round-Up: Where Does the Time Go?

 Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher: Kingfisher's novella is a decidedly unusual retelling of Sleeping Beauty, with a heroine who is about as far from a Disney princess as you could imagine. Instead of the usual tropes, the story focuses on the folk idea of changelings and how that can devastate a family. It's melancholy and touching, odd and funny. 

Around the World in Eighty Games by Marcus du Sautoy: du Sautoy is a mathematician with a longstanding fascination with games, and here he gives an overview of the history of gaming. As you might guess from the title, he covers games from every part of the globe and as far back as the third millennium BC. His insight into why humans play games was good, although when he strayed into meaning-of-life philosophy he fumbled a bit.

The Art of Vanishing by Morgan Pager: This was an interesting premise -- painted figures come to life when people aren't watching, and some people can even enter the paintings -- but the resulting story was just ok; The pacing was better suited to a thriller (this wasn't) and the love story wasn't very strong.

The Mythmakers by John Hendrix: An interesting graphic novel on the fruitful (and fraught) relationship between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, with digressions into the nature of myth, fairy tales, and folk tales. I had known about the Inklings, of course, but reading about the deterioration of their relationship (due to religious and literary differences, changing life circumstances, and human frailties) was sad. One hopes they are now reunited, their friendship restored to its full glory.

Golden Age Bibliomysteries by Otto Penzler, ed.: A collection of mysteries set amongst librarians, booksellers, and collectors. Sometimes the bookish element was a McGuffin, other times integral to the plot. Stories by Lawrence G. Blochman, Anthony Boucher, and Cornell Woolrich were standouts. 

Hellboy v. 5-7: Love 'em. With volume 5, the initial storyline is over -- Hellboy is no longer fated to bring about the apocalypse and he's no longer a member of BPRD. Instead we get his adventures, past and present, along with Mignola's trademark folk horror and humor. 

Untitled Red/Pink/Orange Thing

 This project has been on my mind for years. I'm using the techniques in Effie Mitrofanis's gorgeous Threadwork: Silks, Stitches, Beads & Cords. 

The first step was gathering fabrics and threads.

 Four years ago I mounted linen gauze (from some expensive curtains my cats wrecked 🙄) into a frame, tacked on a base of sheer rose fabric from an old camisole, and layered on rectangles of dupioni silks. I used a running stitch in matching pearl cottons to hold the silks in place.

 

Last year I tacked on a rose motif from a fancy scrap of polyester fabric. I couched Japan gold around the edges, filled in background sections with chipwork, and stitched the center spaces between petals with metallic ribbon. 

 Initially, I was disappointed that I didn't have any gold purl for the chipwork (this project is purely from my stash), but I like the way the silver looks.

 A couple of weeks ago I twisted silk scraps into ropes and coiled those ropes into spirals, twisting, coiling, and couching them down as I worked. What a pain in the ass that was! It made me realize I really need a proper stand for this frame. Or a third arm.

 

This past week I kind of went overboard beading a sun motif in the upper corner, using tiny scraps of folded silk (straight from Mitrofanis's book), sequins, bugle beads in two sizes, and lots and lots of seed beads. 

 

I'm ready for a break from this project, but I have a couple of ideas for it still -- I want to use more scraps to create a vine with more flowers and leaves along the bottom, and I think I will embellish the rest of the background with lots of tonal embroidery. But who knows where inspiration will take me!