Dream with Our Eyes Open

I have not been reading as much Yuletide as I should, but I have found some great stories amidst what I did read:

The Voices of Small Bears (1050 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Rating: General Audiences
Summary: Make no mistake, a family was here.
My take: . A lovely series of vignettes that adds up to a portrait of Toby and her family of choice.

five to one against (5209 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Summary: How Molly and Nightingale discovered haemomancy.
My take: A very strong Molly POV fills out her role in the series.

Cemetery Polka (2073 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: The Sandman (Comics)
Rating: Mature
Summary: They regard each other, for a long moment. Behind her large glasses, Larissa’s eyes are unblinking, but her clasped hands betray her, the fiddling of her thumbs against each other. She wets her lips, pursed and full and pink.
Death is mortal, tonight.
My take: That last line sums it up. Gorgeous bittersweet f/f.

the rain falling on the sunshine (2029 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Rating: General Audiences
Summary: In the garden; after the war.
My take: The Secret Garden is a Yuletide perennial (hah!) if there ever was one, and this topic has been done many times before, but this is a nice take on it, with little bathos and a lot of genuine feeling.

The Rock and The River (17442 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away
Summary: Chihiro takes magic and bends it around herself to make a place in the world.
My take: Spirited Away can generate overly cute fic as well as pieces with genuine mythical power. This is one of the latter. There's genuine human sadness and pathos amidst the many quiet wonders.

Intermission (24398 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Stand Still Stay Silent
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Summary: Emil tries to rebuild his life and help Lalli adjust to their new home in Sweden after their return from the Silent World. Slight canon divergence from the end of the First Adventure.
My take: This is a lesson in how to write romantic fanfiction: the myriad bits of everyday (and not so everyday) life, the tight third-person POV, and the genuine human reactions give the eventual breaking of the tension real power, leavened in the last bits with in-character humor.

I bought Paper Girls, vol. 2, at the local bookstore. This shop actually used to be part of the local Politics & Prose mini-chain, and it's physically in the Takoma location of the local mini-chain restaurant Busboys & Poets. But P&P has abandoned this little shop, and now it's on its own: even more incentive to buying things there. Sadly, they were sold out of Monstress, vol. 2.

In Paper Girls, things are still very chaotic. Our intrepid 1980s paper delivery girls, who had encountered aliens and/or time travelers in vol. 1, have now encountered one of their number as an adult. Apple computers and other Apple consumer electronics are playing a big and weird role in all this. I'm still not sure what's going on, but the whole thing is starting to give off a 20th Century Boys vibe, and it would not surprise me to find out that it's in dialog with that manga series.

I also re-read Marguerite Henry's Gaudenzia, Pride of the Palio. If you were a horse-crazy kid, you probably read Henry's Misty of Chincoteague, at the very least. Giorgio Tierni is the eldest son of an Italian farmer, but all he wants to do is ride and train horses. He works hard for his father in hopes of someday achieving this dream. His story becomes intertwined with that of a mare who was bred from the local breed of working horses but with a pedigreed Arabian sire. The breeder had hoped to end up with a horse who could win the Palio of Siena, a race with medieval origins that is run on the streets of the city itself. But the mare, Farfalla ("Butterfly"), is dismissed as too lightly built for the rigor of the race, and ends up an abused and overworked cart horse.

In the end, of course (the title gives it away), she is is re-named Gaudenzia ("Joy of Living") and becomes a champion of the race for which she was bred, but this is a story of the journey that takes her there, and how Giorgio became involved. It was always my favorite Henry horse story, and I enjoyed it this time as much as I ever did. Note that this is essentially a true story, although Henry tells it as fiction. See Gaudenzia's official Palio page, in Italian. Note that Vittorino, "Little Victor," was Giorgio's professional name as a fantino, that is, a Palio rider. The contradas are the city districts, each of which acts as a faction for the race. Their names are those of the heraldic charges that stand for each: Onda = wave, Lupa = wolf, etc. The medieval pageantry of the race was almost as enticing to me, as a child, as the horse story. Henry lays out the details of the Palio and its culture very clearly and beautifully, with a couple of artful info-dumps that are prize examples of how to do such a thing well.

The Exchange at Fic Corner is a gift exchange for fic based on children's and YA books and short stories from picture books to edgy teen novels. The FAQ can be found on Dreamwidth (and I think on LJ still).

So I had these dates ALL WRONG:

June 18th - June 27th - Sign-Ups
June 28th - Assignments Sent Out
August 21st - Deadline for Stories
August 28th - Collection Goes Live (Hmm, I need to ask the mod - it looks like they changed that date ... sometime the first week of September, at any rate)

Tag Set (on AO3)

Sign Up Form (on AO3)

Good timing for a Yuletide warmup, perhaps?

Yeah, it's late: it's been a complicated week. But I didn't want to wait all the way until next week.

What have you just finished reading?

Just finished Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead, which was excellent. No less than three significant female characters, none of whom is just anyone's love interest, one of them a person of color (who is an awesome supernatural investigator and magician); magical courtroom drama; high-speed chases through a steampunkish city at night; a vampire ship's captain; gods dying and resurrected; an evil adversary who is a loathesome, charismatic, and brilliant slimeball; a nerdy chain-smoking young priest whose alter-ego is a club-hopping city boy; and much more. I'm looking forward to the next volume, which is actually to some degree a prequel.

What are you currently reading?

ann_leckie's Ancillary Justice, which is awesome. At the moment (about 25% of the way into it), it's equal parts mystery and anthropological SF. Leckie's style is very smooth and assured.

Also still making my way through Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm on my phone.

Finally, I'm also doing a re-read of canon so that I can beta a couple of stories.

What do you think you'll read next?

Beats me! It occurs to me that I have some volumes of Doctorow and Marie Brennan about, which I bought some time ago for a charity auction. I should probably check them out, especially the Brennan (the Doctorow was bought more with my husband in mind).

What have you just finished reading?

Marjorie Liu's Dirk & Steele books are beginning to become like potato chips for me: bet you can't read just one!

On oyceter's rec, I tried Shadow Touch next. Suddenly, for me, Liu has gone from the rather tentative romance author about whom I was "Eh … OK" in Tiger Eye to being very recognizably the author of the Hunter Kiss urban fantasy series (which I have enjoyed very much thus far). I really enjoyed this book, although it was so much harder-edged (particularly in the early scenes in the mysterious research facility) that I got a bit of mental whiplash.

Oyce's other rec was Eye of Heaven. About halfway through it, I suddenly remembered a series of RPG characters I played in my early 20s who were very much like the heroine of this story. Oh yeah! Anyway, the male lead in this book was one of the secondary characters whom I had especially liked in Tiger Eye. There is a lot of complicated Plot Stuff that's building up across the entire series and that is reminiscent of some of the plot elements of the Hunter Kiss series, making me wonder whether subsequent books in Dirk & Steele are going to have transdimensional world hopping and demons too. I'm amused by some of the reviews I'm reading of these: apparently people who like the more typical sorts of romances find these not romantic enough and too violent. Oh well … de gustibus non disputandum est.

I was at Small Press expo for the last 90 minutes of the event the other week, and one of the things I picked up on a blitz through the dealers' room was Back to the Grind, the first collection of Jamie Noguchi's webcomic Yellow Peril. I was attracted initially by the picture of lead character Kane on a recognizable Metro train on the cover and ended up talking to Noguchi, who drew me a cartoon on the inside of the book to go with his autograph. I enjoyed this and will have to catch up on Kane's more recent adventures online.

AND … I finally finished E. Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods! Arrrgggh. Nesbit generally seemed to respect her juvenile characters, but not in this volume. The kids are constantly getting into scrapes that are, to me as an adult, completely transparent. You can see the foolish errors coming from the first couple of paragraphs of any given adventure, and the eventual denouments are equally predictable. Also, I get tired of narrator Oswald's constantly put-downs of the girls in the little gang, and even though tomboyish Alice is usually described more kindly than the others, she still comes in for a lot of criticism and patronization. It's quite different from the children in the Five Children and It and its sequels, where eldest sister Anthea was a valued member of the group and little Jane's pouting and lack of fortitude were attributed to her age more than to her sex.

What are you currently reading?

Fanfiction, mostly. As noted elsewhere, I've been loading a lot of old favorites onto my iPad Mini.

I'm also about halfway through volume 3 of the manga House of Five Leaves. I'm enjoying it to some extent, but the art style is driving me nuts. I'm having a lot of trouble telling about half of the male characters apart, and that means I lose a lot of the impact of the various little criminal episodes and character revelations.

I have downloaded Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead, which I had on my Amazon wish list (I don't remember whose review got me interested) and which was on sale for $2.99, as well as (free) The Count of Monte Cristo, which (shockingly, I suppose) I have never read, and which lady_ganesh recommended. Also, smilaraaq just passed me a steampunk romance to try ... it's by Meljean Brook, whom lawless523 was just recommending the other week.

What have you just finished reading?

Volume 4 of the manga Bunny Drop (re-read) and the omnibus volume 5 of Gunslinger Girls, where the mangaka is working overtime to stomp on our hearts and smash those suckers flat. (Have I mentioned that the latter series is shounen by its magazine classification? That seems weird to me. Although I am glad that young teen boys are being exposed to the concept of tough, adventurous girls, even if they are brainwashed cyborgs.)

What are you currently reading?

Still Limping through The Wouldbegoods by E. Nesbit and nibbling away at C.J. Cherryh's Russalka. Also some re-reading for a writing project. Plus, I have started vol. 3 of the manga A Bride's Story.

What do you think you'll read next?

Volume 2 of House of Five Leaves. volume 8 of Ooku by Fumi Yoshinaga, and volume 1 of Durarara! are in the pipeline from Amazon, along with Ashes of Honor (vol. 6 of Seanan McGuire's October Daye series).

What have you just finished reading?

Saladin Ahmed's Throne of the Crescent Moon and E. Nesbit's The Treasure Seekers. (I kept forgetting I had the latter on my phone, when I was faced with a stack of dead-tree books.) Last week, I also finished Emilie and the Hollow World by Martha Wells.

I liked the Ahmed, but I kept getting tripped up by some writing practices I dislike. One was the constant switch in viewpoints within a scene, which I associate to some degree with amateur writing. He got better about this as he went on, to where at the end, he was switching scene by scene and signaling more clearly what was going on with the viewpoint. There were also a couple of times that things happened presumbly for Deep Plot Reasons, because in context they made no sense and had me going "Where the hell did that come from?"

The Wells was good. Emilie is sort of a Tremaine Valiarde junior: she's not super-emotional and she is very competent, although not absurdly so (especially given her age). It's a sort of wish fulfillment fantasy of the type that classically stars an intrepid young boy (child gets to go on huge adventure, child is treated with respect by adult fellow travelers and gets to strut her/ his stuff), and it features airships and mysterious underground civilizations.

The Nesbit was ... OK. It has the didactic and sentimental moments of the magical Nesbits but without the delicious magical absurdities. I enjoyed the slightly out-of-kilter voice of its unreliable narrator, but YMMV.

What are you currently reading?

I'm doing a re-read for a writing assignment, which will go undisclosed for now..

What do you think you'll read next?

I have Neil Gaiman's Ocean at the End of the Lane, which I forgot to include in my Amazon order for our trip but picked up in Chatham, MA, where we went for a day of shopping and lunch out when the weather was very rainy.

What have you just finished reading?

Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. I enjoyed it, although it had the trappings of its time: for example, one female human character who wasn't someone's secretary or mom. I was surprised by the ecology theme, which I don't remember becoming much of A Thing until the the end of the 1960s (book was published in 1962). It even had a big evil nature-exploiting company. The Fuzzies are pretty clearly the ancestors of Cherryh's Hisa (in Downbelow Station) and, as some others have pointed out, probably also of the Ewoks. The set-up also made me think of LeGuin's The Word for World Is Forest, although this is a much lighter take. I was feeling fairly offended at the notion of humans "adopting" Fuzzies ... until Piper hit me with the wham line at the end. OK, then! :-)

I also finished my research reading. Some of it was pretty cool. I'll have to remember to bring up the details later.

What are you currently reading?

I'm re-reading Noel Streatfeild's Dancing Shoes (a/k/a Wintle's Wonders), which is a straight-up comfort read. I'm also making my way through a couple of tour books for our trip.

What do you think you'll read next?

I really don't know! Anyone have any suggestions for anything that I could download to the phone for free? Feedbooks has a lot of stuff, but I'm not sure about most of it. It's not that I don't have any money to spend on reading material: I'm leary of using my phone for a financial transaction, frankly. Has anyone used Paypal for this purpose?

What have you just finished reading?

Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones (re-read), Anne's House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery.

Enchanted Glass is, as I remembered it, OK, but rather flat, especially in comparison with classics such as The Homeward Bounders. Fire and Hemlock, and even The Lives of Christopher Chant (the Chrestomanci books are not super-favorites of mine, in general).

What are you currently reading?

Richard K. Morgan's The Steel Remains and Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery. Also, I'm doing some nonfiction reading for story research, which will remain unspecified for now.

What do you think you'll read next?

That MS is sucking up a lot of time and brainpower. I'll probably continue on my Montgomery kick: Feedbooks seems to have all of the Anne series for download. And I'm still working on the Morgan book. I was amused at my reactions to the smartass protagonists' reactions to their opponents in the combat scenes that just occurred: I was grinning and almost snickering. Too much Fritz Leiber at an early age, I suppose.

I first read Roller Skates (1937) at around age 11, and The Year of Jubilo (1940) somewhere in junior high school (that is, middle school). I'm blogging them here because of Yuletide.

In New York City in 1890, 10-year-old Lucinda Wyman is the youngest of five children. Her four older brothers range from a teenager in prep school to a grown man who's headed out west for a career in mining. Lucinda, a book-loving tomboy, is an afterthought, considered at best an amusing pet and at worst an annoying duty, understood only by her Irish nursemaid, Johanna, and her beloved Uncle Earle. When Mrs. Wyman becomes ill and needs to recover in a milder climate, Lucinda is left behind to stay with Miss Peters, a teacher at her school, and Miss Peters' seamstress sister.

The Misses Peters prove to be ideal guardians from Lucinda's viewpoint. Once her lessons are done, she's allowed to roam at will along the streets of New York, usually on her roller skates. She makes friends with a number of people of whom her parents - and even more so, her bossy and uptight Aunt Emily - would not approve, including the cab driver who first takes her to the Miss Peters' boarding house, a local policeman, the son of an Italian immigrant fruit seller, the four-year-old daughter of the impoverished family upstairs, a girl of her own age who is the grandchild of a married couple of actors, and a mysterious "Asiatic" woman whom Lucinda calls "Princess Zayda."

During the course of the year, Lucinda learns a great deal about life - and death. Tragedy strikes twice, and by the time her parents are due home, she isn't the same child she was. The ending is bittersweet: at least one other blogger was convinced, as a child, that Lucinda killed herself, because she says that she doesn't want her next birthday, and that she wants to stay 10 always.

When the story resumes in The Year of Jubilo, Mr. Wyman has died, but even before that, his businesses were failing. Mrs. Wyman, thirteen-year-old Lucinda, and the three sons who still live at home can no longer afford to live in New York. They still own a summer home in Maine, and the family moves there permanently. Every member of the family suffers at first from loss of Mr. Wyman and of their well-to-do lifestyle, but they gradually start to make a go of it. The boys take up lobster fishing (they sell the lobsters to restaurants as far as Boston) and gardening, Mrs. Wyman turns to housekeeping and mending, and Lucinda takes up cooking (with predictably comical results at first) and whatever else she can talk her brothers into letting her do.

Lucinda faces a great deal of resistance from her brothers, especially her next-older brother Carter, who is bitter at being pulled from his prep school. Although some of Lucinda's growing maturity here is depicted as her becoming less of a hoyden, she still remains very much a stubborn and decidedly un-meek person - and a passing remark by the narrator at one point indicates that she eventually goes to college, which was not a given even for a girl of the upper middle class at the time.

Roller Skates won the Newbery Award in 1937 and is thus still in print in paperback. The Year of Jubilo is more difficult to find, but I bought a copy for less than $10 from AbeBooks.