tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-102121682024-03-18T14:28:05.448+00:00Tamaranth's Creative ReadingTamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.comBlogger1944125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-38009869531815443702024-03-10T11:19:00.140+00:002024-03-18T09:56:28.330+00:002024/039: Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes — Rob Wilkins...it was frequently said that no train anywhere in Britain was permitted to run until it was established that at least one passenger on board was reading a Terry Pratchett. [loc. 370]Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes, by his assistant and friend Rob Wilkins, is always honest, sometimes sentimental and frequently very amusing. It shows us a man fuelled, to some extent, by anger, and perhaps Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-10798418352936973502024-03-09T11:17:00.009+00:002024-03-15T14:33:09.825+00:002024/038: The Night Watch — Sarah WatersHow long did they have to go on, letting the war spoil everything? They had been patient, all this time. They’d lived in darkness. They’d lived without salt, without scent. They’d fed themselves little scraps of pleasure, like parings of cheese. Now she became aware of the minutes as they passed: she felt them, suddenly, for what they were, as fragments of her life, her youth, that were rushing Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-47540791518475919852024-03-05T09:12:00.018+00:002024-03-14T07:51:04.320+00:002024/037: Checkmate in Berlin — Giles Miltonthe most pressing issues facing the city’s traumatised population, including law and order (there was none), Nazis in hiding (there were many) and the challenges of governing a city in which the entire infrastructure had collapsed. [loc. 1706]I'm coming to rely on Milton for straightforward accounts of historical events, peppered with fascinating anecdotes: Checkmate in Berlin, which deals with Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-16589432536315848542024-03-03T09:12:00.015+00:002024-03-13T08:15:07.670+00:002024/036: In the Heart of Hidden Things — Kit WhitfieldWe build our houses with sense and geometry and plough our fields with toil and patience, and all the while, a blink away are the People, dancing and tearing, gifting and stealing, snatching up fury and scattering light, feeding on air. [loc. 48]In a rural, pre-industrial setting with strong overtones of England, three generations of Smiths are walking through the forest with a friend of the Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-75086406238490324322024-03-02T09:12:00.085+00:002024-03-12T07:06:27.223+00:002024/035: Home: A Time Traveller's Tales from Britain's Prehistory — Francis Pryor...what we might loosely term ‘religion’ was increasing in importance. But instead of being removed from daily life to somewhere less accessible, more and more remote, more liminal, it was brought closer to home, because that was where it was needed. [loc. 3445]I've read and enjoyed a couple of Pryor's other books (Britain BC and Scenes from Prehistoric Life: From the Ice Age to the Coming of theTamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-6353039803033609182024-03-01T10:38:00.000+00:002024-03-12T14:45:19.838+00:002024/034: The Mars House — Natasha PulleyJanuary had a bizarre out-of-body moment where a detached part of his brain said: You’re very cold, it’s Monday, and a senator is arguing about you with a mammoth. On Mars. [loc. 4929]When London floods, America is on fire and at war, and most countries aren't accepting immigrants or refugees. January Stirling, principal dancer at the Royal Ballet, is offered a place on a ship to Tharsis -- whichTamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-60804818626110806042024-02-29T10:52:00.120+00:002024-03-08T07:56:54.761+00:002024/033: Medea — Rosie HewlettAtalanta once told me the world would make me the villain of this story, but she was wrong.The world tried to make me the victim, so I became its villain. [loc. 4372]]This is the second modern retelling of Medea's story that I've read in the last year (the first being Rani Selvarajah's Savage Beasts, which transplants the story to 17th-century India): I may avoid further novels based on this Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-70462385976300834902024-02-27T08:22:00.130+00:002024-03-07T09:32:31.083+00:002024/032: Langue[dot]doc 1305 — Gillian PolackI need a medievalist. Right away. [loc. 230]An account of a, primarily Australian, research trip to medieval Languedoc, told mostly from the viewpoint of historian Artemisia Wormwood. Artemisia (who chose her own surname after divorcing her family, for reasons which are explained late in the novel) is out of work -- and in urgent need of funds -- when she's approached by an old friend who has a Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-49359147060911463832024-02-26T08:33:00.059+00:002024-03-06T08:57:37.792+00:002024/031: Klara and the Sun — Kazuo IshiguroOur generation still carry the old feelings. A part of us refuses to let go. The part that wants to keep believing there’s something unreachable inside each of us. Something that’s unique and won’t transfer. But there’s nothing like that, we know that now. [p. 277]Klara is an AF, an Artificial Friend. We first meet her in the shop, waiting to be bought. While she's part of a window display she Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-41966897929135968782024-02-25T08:31:00.088+00:002024-03-05T08:46:30.256+00:002024/030: Old Man's War — John ScalziThe reason we use force when we deal with other intelligent alien species is that force is the easiest thing to use. It’s fast, it’s straightforward, and compared to the complexities of diplomacy, it’s simple. [p. 166]Widower John Perry celebrates his 75th birthday by saying goodbye to Earth, his life and everything he's ever known. He enlists with the Colonial Defense Forces, who have technologyTamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-52205078816935032112024-02-20T07:20:00.064+00:002024-03-04T08:49:24.196+00:002024/029: Disturbance — Jenna ClakeThere was not a box in which to write: I have been casting spells with my teenage neighbour and I think I might be losing control. [loc. 1639]The nameless narrator of Disturbance is in her mid-twenties. She has moved to a small town to escape her abusive ex. She's still frightened that he will track her down, or that he's dead and haunting her. It does seem that there is a presence sharing her Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-26920864414198961572024-02-19T07:13:00.075+00:002024-02-28T08:20:15.691+00:002024/028: Almost Surely Dead — Amina AkhtarShe’d say [a prayer] and then clap three times and blow air on me. Phook marring, it was called. She said it would keep all the scary things away when I was little. But it didn’t. She was the scary thing in my life, and the prayer never kept her away. [loc. 1315]Dunia Ahmed is the subject of a 'true crime' podcast series: she's been missing for over a year, after several very public attempts on Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-67113326190336537532024-02-18T13:38:00.017+00:002024-02-27T08:24:34.117+00:002024/027: The Hunter — Tana FrenchHer dad and Rushborough are the only weapons she has, or is ever likely to get, against this townland. They're locked and loaded, ready to her hand. She didn't go looking for them; something laid them in front of her ... [loc. 2389]Second in the Cal Hooper series, this is set about two years after The Searcher. It's a long hot summer, drought laying waste to the Irish countryside. Cal is now in aTamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-62065298923996530552024-02-16T12:35:00.000+00:002024-02-26T12:36:42.580+00:002024/026: Half a Soul — Olivia Atwater“You are standing in a viscount’s back garden in your unmentionables, washing your dress in a fountain. Have you truly no concept of the strangeness of your situation?” Dora paused, looking down at her dress where it soaked beneath her hands. Oh, she thought. He’s probably correct. [loc. 709]Ah, publishers, so keen to pull in an audience: 'Bridgerton meets Howl's Moving Castle!' I am not at all Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-74495611559629704962024-02-15T07:46:00.084+00:002024-02-23T07:04:08.137+00:002024/025: The Mad Emperor: Heliogabalus and the Decadence of Rome — Harry SidebottomThe entire thing was invented by the author of the 'Augustan History', who gives the game away, probably intentionally, when he writes that the tale was spread by men who were marginalised at court because of their small penises (don’t worry, we will come back to the importance of cock size in politics). [loc. 2403]The emperor known as Heliogabalus -- perhaps best known from Alma-Tadema's The Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-26452878292284384802024-02-14T07:45:00.099+00:002024-02-22T07:41:54.680+00:002024/024: Black Dove, White Raven — Elizabeth Wein...'one of them told me that if you were born to a slave before 1916 then you are automatically a slave too. They are still a lot of old laws in place.’‘Good thing you were born in 1919,’ I said. He turned to look at me and he was crying. ‘1916 is the Ethiopian date,’ he said. ‘You know how the Ethiopian calendar is a little over seven years behind?' [p. 182]Elizabeth Wein's World War 2 novels (Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-57024255222597985522024-02-13T07:44:00.042+00:002024-02-21T08:50:19.452+00:002024/023: Terec and the Wild — Victoria GoddardTerec could not see the magic, but he could feel it: heavy, weighted nets intended to catch every stray bit of magic and weave it into the beautiful totality that was called, in glorious simplicity, the Pax Astandalatis [loc. 42]A short novella set in Goddard's Nine Worlds series, Terec and the Wild portrays the turning point in the life of Terec, who's a very minor character (though dear to a Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-30780596980097471392024-02-12T08:43:00.074+00:002024-02-20T08:53:41.604+00:002024/022: Fortune Favours the Dead — Stephen SpotswoodThis city’s full of monsters, thieves, and assholes. And that’s just City Hall.” [loc. 3789]First in a series of murder mysteries set in 1940s New York. Willowjean ('Will') Parker ran away to the circus as a teenager, and has accumulated a host of useful skills including lock-picking, highwire-walking and knife-throwing. The latter of these brings her to the attention of Ms Lillian Pentecost, 'Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-88843299527554699382024-02-11T08:42:00.101+00:002024-02-19T08:34:14.022+00:002024/021: The Conductor — Sarah QuigleyThe rehearsal room stretched to accommodate the music, and the music filled the whole city, and the empty fields and desolate woods beyond. It rained down on Russian and German soldiers crouched in their trenches, stripping them of both fear and purpose — and then, surely, everything would be all right again... [loc. 3948]Another novel about the Siege of Leningrad, to follow The Lost Pianos of Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-76186930845598035572024-02-10T18:09:00.001+00:002024-02-16T07:55:19.466+00:002024/020: What The River Knows — Isabel Ibañez“Magic has been slowly disappearing everywhere,” Mr. Hayes said. “And here in Egypt, the remnants of magical energy manifested in curious weather patterns—famines, desert storms, and so on—but we have also found that some items, pot shards and the odd sandal, also have the hallmarks of old-world magic. [p. 71]Inez Olivera, a young woman of good family living in 1880s Buenos Aires, is nineteen Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-68870152912769161962024-02-07T11:34:00.042+00:002024-02-15T07:37:59.021+00:002024/019: The Siege — Helen DunmoreWords are regaining their meanings, after years of masquerade. Hunger means hunger, terror means terror, enemy means enemy. It’s not like trying to read mirror-writing any more. Everything gets clearer day by day, as siege and winter eat into their lives. The coils of Soviet life are losing their strength. There’s only the present left, and it has burned away both past and future. There’s only Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-64066694669710279132024-02-06T11:34:00.101+00:002024-02-14T08:02:14.338+00:002024/018: The Lost Pianos of Siberia — Sophy RobertsConfronting memory and repression, I knew that however hard I wanted my piano hunt to celebrate all that is magnificent about Siberia, much of what I was looking for was tied up with a terrifying past. I needed to heed the warning I was given by a brave Russian journalist early on: you have to know why you’re ignoring things you don’t want to hear, what should be remembered, and why people fall Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-2812997302931371212024-02-05T11:33:00.098+00:002024-02-13T08:47:11.888+00:002024/017: Gogmagog: The First Chronicle of Ludwich — Jeff Noon and Steve BeardA spell was underway. From the dank soil, from the memories of the witches of Dark Eden, from the gardener priests of the Wodwo clan as they huddled round their campfires in the days of snow and iron. From the flow of sap, from the river's tides. From the Deep Root. Aye, and from the dreams of the Old Ones, as they fell to earth in Year of First Arrival. [loc. 676]Jeff Noon published the four Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-69537598815221555382024-01-31T08:21:00.119+00:002024-02-12T08:07:46.695+00:002024/016: The Final Girl Support Group — Grady HendrixTeenagers talk like this, right? Even if it’s ugly in retrospect. I didn’t know there was a bloody engine inside his head just waiting for someone to turn it on. [loc. 2505]Lynnette is the sole survivor of an infamous massacre. She's in group therapy with a number of other 'final girls', each of whom has survived contact with (and most of whom have then killed) a monster. Hendrix bases Lynnette Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10212168.post-40233243898582251142024-01-30T09:57:00.009+00:002024-02-08T09:18:22.780+00:002024/015: Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise — Katherine Rundell...children’s fiction necessitates distillation: at its best, it renders in their purest, most archetypal forms hope, hunger, joy, fear. Think of children’s books as literary vodka. [loc. 127]Rundell's essay on the experience of reading children's books as an adult, and rediscovering the hope, the subversion, the miracles that overcome chaos. Rundell is immensely eloquent, and uses her own Tamaranthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404232531650393068noreply@blogger.com0