in winged words

liseuse — Wed, 27 May 2015 20:45:18 GMT

What Are You Reading (Actually On A!) Wednesday:

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading?

The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson.
So, I bought this aaaaaages ago and then my aging computer and ereader stopped playing nicely together, so I had it sitting on my computer and was unable to actually read it. Which was immensely frustrating. New shiny tablet, however, let me download it and I am now reading it and I am loving it. There is assumed bisexuality and polyamory and it is about the power and role of art and how technology and life interact.

What did you recently finish reading?

Nineteen Seventy Four (Red Riding Quartet, #1), by David Pearce.
I was enjoying this when I wrote my last Reading Wednesday post and then I carried on reading it and got sort of progressively less thrilled. The problem is that it was very true to its particular setting and time, and that is just miserable. So so so much sexual violence - which, I know, hasn't gone away, but written perfectly for the 70s in the North and it was just grim. Maybe not the sort of book to finish reading when your mother has just died and your emotions are raw? I might read the others in the quartet at some point in the future but right now I'm not actively seeking them out.

Funeral Games, by Mary Renault.
I did enjoy this, even though it broke my heart a few times. What was fascinating was seeing how fractured the book was, and its characters were once the centralising, organising, charismatic force of Alexander was gone. The memory of him and his style of leadership only carries people so far and then it all disintegrates.

Merivel: A Man of His Time by Rose Tremain.
I can't make up my mind about this. There were parts of it that I felt did work and worked very well, and then parts that seemed incredibly indulgent and a bit ploddy or just unnecessary - there's a strange sexual encounter in a cart that served very little purpose. But, for fluffy historical fiction it was fine.

What do you think you’ll read next?

I was hoping that the answer to this would be Kate Atkinson's latest, A God in Ruins which is a semi-sequel to Life After Life, which I loved. But! I just checked the library reserve list and I am number 21. Which might be a good thing, because I suspect I need to re-read Life After Life before A God in Ruins or I'm going to be really confused.

liseuse — Mon, 11 May 2015 12:54:23 GMT

I don't really know how to phrase any of this. I don't have the right words, and I don't even know if there are any right words. My mother died on Friday afternoon. She passed away at home, in her own bed, where she wanted to be. I wasn't at home, I was at work. But I got home as soon as I could, and I'd said good bye and that I loved her in the morning before I went to work.

I feel like I'm trapped in one of those dreams that are long and horrible and you wake up miserable but you can't remember the dream so you don't know why you're so miserable.

My mother was difficult and irascible and she wasn't easy to love. But I did. I loved her so much, and now she's gone. I keep wanting to ask her things - just practical things, the sort of question that you have and you just go "oh, I'll ask mum" but I can't.

Any thoughts or prayers are very much appreciated. Comments are open but I doubt I will be able to answer them.

(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Seventeen

liseuse — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 22:51:23 GMT

Air and Angels

Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught;
Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;
Then, as an angel, face, and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure, doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere;
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.

- John Donne

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Sixteen

liseuse — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 20:47:00 GMT

The Last Night in Mithymna

Wind heaving in the trees.
My room quiet and warm.
Me on a thin mattress
looking at the full moon.
The sky black around Her face.
The trees a different black
beneath. Content at last
with this world that matches
my life inside and out.
Heave and renewed heave
inside and out,
and the gentleness.
Lying alone in a cotton slip
at ten of the night in July
and a bare bulb hanging down
turned on. My bare feet
warm where they cross
at the ankle.
The cloth over the broken window
swells and goes flat
and swells again.

- Linda Gregg

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Fifteen

liseuse — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 21:29:24 GMT

The Clock in Literature

“Would you mind
If I headed up early?”
Says the husband
To his young wife.
“Follow when you like.”

Later that evening
The beautiful face
And exquisite limbs
Will rise from the table
Of the Southern inn
Having been spied
By the antihero
Across the room
Reading an indifferent book.

Oh, quick —
Let a storm kill the light!

But you might as well say it
To a wall.
We can’t change
A single
Silver setting, or
Even by one day
Reduce
The bright full moon.

The clock in literature
Holds that moon.

“I know I can’t say
A single thing to stop you,”
Says the old man at table
To the suddenly risen girl.
“But sleep on it, will you?”
Not now —
Not ever.

The clock in literature
Holds the ancient rune.

“I wonder if I might
Have a word with you,”
Says the antihero
To the lissome
Dark-eyed angel.

- Aram Sorayan, in Poetry (March 2015).

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Fourteen

liseuse — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 19:37:08 GMT

Unpacking a Globe

I gaze at the Pacific and don’t expect
to ever see the heads on Easter Island,

though I guess at sunlight rippling
the yellow grasses sloping to shore;

yesterday a doe ate grass in the orchard:
it lifted its ears and stopped eating

when it sensed us watching from
a glass hallway—in his sleep, a veteran

sweats, defusing a land mine.
On the globe, I mark the Battle of

the Coral Sea—no one frets at that now.
A poem can never be too dark,

I nod and, staring at the Kenai, hear
ice breaking up along an inlet;

yesterday a coyote trotted across
my headlights and turned his head

but didn’t break stride; that’s how
I want to live on this planet:

alive to a rabbit at a glass door—
and flower where there is no flower.

- Arthur Sze, from poets.org.

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Thirteen

liseuse — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 21:09:23 GMT

A Miracle For Breakfast

At six o'clock we were waiting for coffee,
waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb
that was going to be served from a certain balcony
--like kings of old, or like a miracle.
It was still dark. One foot of the sun
steadied itself on a long ripple in the river.

The first ferry of the day had just crossed the river.
It was so cold we hoped that the coffee
would be very hot, seeing that the sun
was not going to warm us; and that the crumb
would be a loaf each, buttered, by a miracle.
At seven a man stepped out on the balcony.

He stood for a minute alone on the balcony
looking over our heads toward the river.
A servant handed him the makings of a miracle,
consisting of one lone cup of coffee
and one roll, which he proceeded to crumb,
his head, so to speak, in the clouds--along with the sun.

Was the man crazy? What under the sun
was he trying to do, up there on his balcony!
Each man received one rather hard crumb,
which some flicked scornfully into the river,
and, in a cup, one drop of the coffee.
Some of us stood around, waiting for the miracle.

I can tell what I saw next; it was not a miracle.
A beautiful villa stood in the sun
and from its doors came the smell of hot coffee.
In front, a baroque white plaster balcony
added by birds, who nest along the river,
--I saw it with one eye close to the crumb--

and galleries and marble chambers. My crumb
my mansion, made for me by a miracle,
through ages, by insects, birds, and the river
working the stone. Every day, in the sun,
at breakfast time I sit on my balcony
with my feet up, and drink gallons of coffee.

We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee.
A window across the river caught the sun
as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony.

- Elizabeth Bishop, from poemhunter.

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Twelve

liseuse — Sun, 12 Apr 2015 11:39:31 GMT

Safety in Numbers

The enthusiasm with which I repeatedly declare you my one
And only confirms the fact that we are indeed two,
Not one: nor can anything we do ever let us feel three
(And this is no lisp-like alteration: it’s four
That’s a crowd, not a trinity), and our five
Fingers and toes multiplied leave us at six-

es and sevens where oneness is concerned, although seven
Might help if one was cabalistically inclined, and “one”
Sometimes is. But this “one” hardly means one, it means five
Million and supplies not even an illusion of relevance to us two
And our problems. Our parents, who obviously number four,
Made us, who are two; but who can subtract us from some
mythical three

To leave us as a unity? If only sex were in fact “six”
(Another illusion!) instead of a sly invention of the seven
Dwarves, we two could divide it, have our three and, just as four
Became two, ourselves be reduced to one
– Actually without using our three at all, although getting two
By subtraction seems less dangerous than by division and would also
make five

Available in case we ever decided to try a three-
some. By the way, this afternoon while buying a six-
pack at the Price Chopper as well as a thing or two
For breakfast, I noticed an attractive girl sucking Seven-
Up through an angled and accordioned straw from one
Of those green aluminum containers that will soon litter the four

Corners of the visible world – anyway, this was at five
O’clock, I struck up a conversation with a view to that three-
some, don’t be shocked, it’s you I love, and one
Way I can prove it is by having you experience the six
Simultaneous delights that require at the very least seven
Sets of hands, mouths, etcetera, anyway more than we two

Can manage alone, and believe me, of the three or four
Women that ever appealed to both of us, I’d bet five
To one this little redhead is likeliest to put you in seven-
th heaven. So I said we’d call tomorrow between three
And four p.m., her number is six three nine oh nine three six.
I think you should call. What do you mean, no? Look, if we can’t
be one

By ourselves, I’ve thought about it and there aren’t two
Solutions: we need a third party to . . . No, I’m not a four-
flusher, I’m not suggesting we jump into bed with six
Strangers, only that just as two plus three makes five,
Our oneness is what will result by subtracting our two from three.
Only through multiplicity can unity be found. Remember “We Are
Seven”?

Look, you are the one. All I want is for the two
Of us to be happy as the three little pigs, through the four
Seasons, the five ages, the six senses, and of the heavenly spheres
all seven.

- Harry Mathews, in Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics.

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Eleven

liseuse — Sat, 11 Apr 2015 22:30:05 GMT

SECOND DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE

I am wearing my librarian costume.
Yes, I saved it from the fires.

In the future, when we say antiquity, we mean
state fairs and musicals. We mean affairs

of state, amusement. You left me a message
to say you were sad but you understood
which state I was coming from and I’m wondering

now which state you meant. West of us?
Or did you mean a state of mind?

I don’t have states of mind, I only have sweater sets.

I get dressed up and then I undress. I’d show you,
but this is a dispatch, I’m the dispatcher.

The calls come into my call center and
it’s my job to say, what’s the future

of your emergency?

Our new state flag is an aurochs,
not to celebrate extinction, but

to celebrate the wild part of us that died
in 1627. They moved her skull to Stockholm.

I wear my state flag like a dress.

- Leigh Stein, indigestmag.com.

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Ten

liseuse — Fri, 10 Apr 2015 21:04:08 GMT

The Flames

You used to lean
on that cot rail
and wait
with the vigour of a flame
to leap into my arms
two feet tall and two years old
a sagging nappy
archless feet soft as cats' tongues
and trodden underneath
a thick and clammy waterproof
warm from sleep
the sheet ruched at the end
toys heaped confused
neglected as the dead
a duck stuck in the corner
I could see the basket of your ribs
your hands were opened
and all your bones and life
leapt up to mine

you row daily up the river now
‘The Amazon’ they call you
tall and cheeky
legs long as oars
you're taller than I am
and I still feel the spot
your head grated in my hip
you were lit inside my body
as a torch I carried you
now burning changing
you flare
into the light

- Kate Llewellyn

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Nine

liseuse — Thu, 09 Apr 2015 20:17:31 GMT

The Beautiful Librarians

The beautiful librarians are dead,
The fairly recent graduates who sat
Like Françoise Hardy’s shampooed sisters
With cardigans across their shoulders
On quiet evenings at the issue desk,
Stamping books and never looking up
At where I stood in adoration.

Once I glimpsed the staffroom
Where they smoked and (if the novels
Were correct) would speak of men.
I still see the blue Minis they would drive
Back to their flats around the park,
To Blossom Dearie and red wine
Left over from a party I would never

Be a member of. Their rooms looked down
On dimming avenues of lime.
I shared the geography but not the world
It seemed they were establishing
With such unfussy self-possession, nor
The novels they were writing secretly
That somehow turned to ‘Mum’s old stuff’.

Never to even brush in passing
Yet nonetheless keep faith with them,
The ice queens in their realms of gold –
It passes time that passes anyway.
Book after book I kept my word
Elsewhere, long after they were gone
And all the brilliant stock was sold.

- Sean O’Brien, from The Guardian, Poem of the Week, March 16th

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Eight

liseuse — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 20:03:55 GMT

IV.
REX TREMENDAE

Between reality and the imagination
I stir the supernatural into the natural
the natural into the supernatural.
The brew is bitter and I am afraid.
Memory believes nothing is more terrible.
So I ease my mind with distractions,
white horses pushing snow into form:
a pure, eternal bed to lie upon.
But I am cold, the bed is big. I am alone,
I see rows of beds beside me though no one
is resting upon them. I pray to the Lady
of Silence, receive no answer. Before the
poem ends I want to roll off the bed into
assurance wrapped in warm blankets.
The sun comes out to tease. Forgetting
possibilities I scoop snow over my bare
body and find the coldness warm enough
to suffice. Dark pieces of dullness fly
about my head chanting "there is nothing
false. Love is always." What is the country
of this distance that keeps me home from
myself? Rain dissolves magic dust in the air
of my consciousness. I breathe sunshine
into hope between the showers. The
thunder rumbles its timelessness into winter
afternoons turned spring. When is the night
over? King of Fearful majesty, save me.

- Elaine Woodruff, in Before the Burning, (New York: Mellon Poetry Press, 1994), p. 28.

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Seven

liseuse — Tue, 07 Apr 2015 20:57:17 GMT

Morrison Hotel

I wanted to piss you off, you and your Andy Warhol
cat with his white wig huffing in the window for 45
minutes to catch a leaf from a cherry tree,

running from room to room singing his closed-
mouth kill song. You wanted me to bake a cake,
wanted me to be that kind of woman, leaning

over the table, yellow dress hiked to my waist
in that angled kitchen, Greek bakery calendar
with its blue Christ and stations of the cross

watching over us from the grease-specked wall.
I practiced 7 hours a day, burned my tongue
on coffee meh meli, Bach partitas bleeding

through my fingers as you tightened the knot
in your tie, glared over the business section
of the newspaper. When I left, I took a cab

downtown. You followed, carrying the cat
in a hatbox. That afternoon we visited Linda
in Chicago-Read, locked up after auditions,

for flagging an airplane on the runway.
Linda took our photo with a Polaroid.
The yellow dress stuck to my thighs

in the heat, your hand resting on my hip
as though it belonged there, as though
it had been there all along.

- Rebecca Loudon, in Wicked Alice, 2005, p. 25, (wicked alice on tumblr)

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Six

liseuse — Mon, 06 Apr 2015 15:06:43 GMT

Rilke: The Apple Orchard

Come just after the sun has gone down, watch
This deepening of green in the evening sward:
Is it not as if we'd long since garnered
And stored within ourselves a something which

From feeling and from feeling recollected,
From new hope and half-forgotten joys
And from an inner dark infused with these,
Issues in thoughts as ripe as windfalls scattered

Here under trees like trees in a Dürer woodcut -
Pendent, pruned, the husbandry of years
Gravid in them until the fruit appears -
Ready to serve, replete with patience, rooted

In the knowledge that no matter how above
Measure or expectation, all must be
Harvested and yielded, when a long life willingly
Cleaves to what's willed and grows in mute resolve.

- Seamus Heaney, in District and Circle, (London: Faber & Faber, 2006), p. 68.

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Five

liseuse — Sun, 05 Apr 2015 22:41:41 GMT

Dark Place

Somewhere inside me lies
a large, mutt-breed dog.
His eyes are usually closed,
or fluttering in search
of a dream.
Sometimes one will open,
just a slice,
and slide from left to right to left.

Is this normal?

I think of him mostly
in the space
above my diaphragm,
curling when I step
too near,
muscles so tight
that he looks like another beast.

On Fridays I throw him
leftovers,
but he makes no noise.
When I pull my quilt tight
I listen for movements
and hearing none
wonder at kicking his face into a bite.

Is this normal?

- Lindsey Holland, in You too can have this beautiful life, (White Trash Intellectuals: Coventry, 2004), p. 50.

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Four

liseuse — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 22:11:17 GMT

Lessons

You never were good at it, anyway.
Catalyst, chemical — words are little
help, a poor match, are insubstantial.

So skip the lessons for the beach,
the landscape all horizon but for
the uprights of sand-whipped post,
Gormley effigy, the trivet of the rig.

They could’ve explained it this way:
in these gritty fields, the bleached
shoulders of sheep scatter the ploughlines.
Even inland, these million shells are blown

in from the dunes in translucent pink
and mauve and striped taupe light enough
to let the wind fill and take them.

Or like this, with burnt gorse and pitchy
salt-stained hands. When the boys touch lighters
to the scrub you get the exchange of energy
birthing that red leap of flame. This is elementary.

But above you, a white sky – nothing. And out there
the chalky flash of the sea thundering over the beach,
pouring itself endlessly from beaker to beaker
held up to the pale light to look for changes.

- Martha Sprackland, from Magma Poetry.

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Three

liseuse — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 20:52:00 GMT

Deadman's Shoes

Last night your ghost walked in at two,
tall, calm as a father with his evening drink,
turned his back and sat to peel one sock off,
then the other. I hardly stirred, just matched
your usual sigh to my own intake of breath,
and slept on, near you, comforted;

but woke late and looked for your shoes
dropped in first position on the carpet.
The deadman's brogues we bought
that day in Brighton, inners stamped
with the outline of an instep. I wanted,
very much, to put my hands inside them.

- Kate Clanchy, in Slattern, (Picador: London, 2001), p. 46.

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day Two

liseuse — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 16:15:28 GMT

Moules à la Marinière

We scoured the secret places of the creek,
Parting blistered fronds of bladder-wrack
To find the concupiscent clusters, rocked
In their granite crêche. Jack-knives prised
The molluscs out. Slick blue-blacks bruised
Slowly dull; and the sea expunged our tracks.

Bouquet of Muscadet, bouquet garni recall
The tuck and chuckle of mussels in a bucket
Behind the door. Damp and aromatic,
Steam insinuates itself into all
The kitchen clefts, and clings in briny beads
Above the flame where mussels chirp and wheeze.

I pour on wine; it seems they beg for more,
The beaked shells yearning wide as if in song -
Yet dumb - and lewdly lolling parrot-tongues.
Cream licks the back of a spoon and drawls a slur
Of unctuous benediction for this feast.
We smooth our cassocks; bow our heads; and eat.

It rained all night as though to wash away
A brininess that tanged the atmosphere:
Dreams - of forbidden fruit, of fruits de mer
Wrenched from their secret beds, of tastes that lay
Like sea's after-sting on the tongue. Still lingers
A trace of guilt. I wash my salty fingers.

- Elizabeth Garrett, in The New Poetry, ed. by Michael Hulse, David Kennedy, and David Morley (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1993), pp. 273-4.

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(Inter)National Poetry Month, Day One

liseuse — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 13:21:12 GMT

Happy 1st of April! This means the start of (Inter)National Poetry Month, and my yearly attempt to post a poem every single day.

Archangel Birches
2007

The black Russian birches
only turn silver forty feet up,
where their italic trunks
arc into the rainlike gauze
of their trembling world of leaf:
a line of them two hundred years old
at least, set to outlive us all,
shedding late-evening dusk
my ancestors would have known
that mid September in 1917
when they left the ship
in a wind cold off the Dvina.
That's all I find: between
the trees and the docks,
a deep tank of birch-light,
a green gloom lit with stars,
and the swaying proof
they once walked through it.

- Henry Shukman, Archangel, Cape Poetry (London: 2013), p. 36.

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liseuse — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 16:30:22 GMT

What Are You Reading (Actually On A!) Wednesday:

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading?

Barcelona, Robert Hughes. Yes. Still. Yes. I know.

The Persian Boy, Mary Renault. Yes. Still. Again, yes. I know.

Soul Music, Terry Pratchett.

What did you recently finish reading?

Miss Garnet's Angel, Salley Vickers. Overall I really enjoyed this. Mostly because of Vickers' deft sketching of how alienating Catholic iconography and decoration, and faith, can be to people who haven't been dragged up with it, or who haven't studied it. I enjoy quiet novels where nothing much happens and I enjoy explorations of the apocrypha and faith and how we tell and re-tell stories and what they come to mean. I did think, however, that the Sarah and Toby plot was slightly over dramatic.

Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett.

What do you think you’ll read next?

Shrug.

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liseuse — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 15:22:27 GMT

What Are You Reading (Actually On A!) Wednesday:

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading?

Barcelona, Robert Hughes. I have made significant progress thanks to train journeys! Currently I am thinking a lot about the multiplicity of identities - there is a gentleman Hughes talks about who was a socialist, editor, and inventor of submarines. Three things that taste great together. I also think that if you're going to be a military engineer you deserve the name Prosper Verboom. I mean, come on, if you stress it in a certain way you get Prosper VerBOOM.

The Persian Boy, Mary Renault. I didn't take this on any of my train journeys so it hasn't gone anywhere fast.

What did you recently finish reading?

Autumn Term by Antonia Forest. I do enjoy a school story, and this one was delightfully stuffed full of things and events and happenings.

What do you think you’ll read next?

Well, I would have said The Marlows and the Traitor by Antonia Forest, because I enjoyed Autumn Term, but I'll have to keep an eye out for it in secondhand bookshops as all copies seem to be available at £100+.

This entry was originally posted at http://liseuse.dreamwidth.org/739566.html. You can comment here or you can comment there using OpenID or your DW account.

liseuse — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 17:09:17 GMT

What Are You Reading (Actually On A!) Wednesday, the Yeeeeesh It's Been A Long Time Since I Did One Of These edition, #2:

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading?

Barcelona by Robert Hughes. I will finish this eventually. I will. I did make good progress with it today.

The Persian Boy by Mary Renault. My ereader ran out of charge and I put it on the chair, thinking 'I need to charge that' and then covered it with wool. So, it is now charging! And I will get back to it!

Autumn Term by Antonia Forest. I am a sucker for a school story, and picked this up in the charity shop the other day.

</b>What did you recently finish reading?</b>

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch. As is usual with these books I had to go back and re-read the conclusion - everything tends to happen all at once, and I find myself going "hang on, what?" A+ use of trains, author, A+.

London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing by Travis Elborough. Elborough managed to make a quite fascinating story a fairly dull reading experience. I am all in favour of learning about priests building bridges and terribly puritanical architects, but it all felt like a very very long prologue for the actual story of the bridge's sale.

What do you think you’ll read next?

I rarely know the answer to this.

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liseuse — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 13:21:43 GMT

Things:

1. My phone got very soggy a while ago and has been very cranky since then. Currently it won't let me read text messages. I mean, it tells me they exist, and I occasionally get a little preview of them, but the actual message is being hidden from me. I *think* it's somehow assigning them a different date, so they'll be hidden back in the conversation. I have upgraded, so in theory I should get a new phone sometime soon and then I won't have to use three clicks to get out of apps and my screen won't flash on and off.

2. I don't usually get many AO3 kudos emails, but I must have got recced somewhere because I've had a few of those delightful ones where clearly someone is just going through and reading everything you've written.

3. I'm having that irritating 'I've got a giftcard and no idea what to spend it on' problem. It's aggravated by being for Amazon. Though, being honest, I do a really bad job of avoiding Amazon. But yes, I got a gift card for them, and apparently there is nothing in the world that I want to buy.

4. Apparently my dad was a member of the Salford Players at the same time as Ben Kingsley. BEN KINGSLEY. This conversation came about because he rang me on Monday because I'd told him not to bother on Sunday because I would be watching someone I knew at university on TV - Nikesh Patel in Indian Summers - and we were chatting about it. I mentioned that I knew Nikesh, and my dad asked me if I thought he'd be changing his name, to which I said 'well, I doubt it. Why?' in a tone of utter confusion - not at the idea of changing a name, but because I couldn't work out why my dad was asking me. And then he drops the 'well, when I was in the Salford Players, there was this very good gentleman called Krishna Pandit Bhanji' bombshell.

5. Yesterday (and this morning) I mostly listened to Stornoway's Zorbing (youtube link).

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liseuse — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 16:03:25 GMT

What Are You Reading (Actually On A!) Wednesday, the Yeeeeesh It's Been A Long Time Since I Did One Of These edition:

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading?

Barcelona by Robert Hughes. This is mostly on hiatus because I have things I need to get through before the library wants things back.

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch. I think I enjoy these less because of the actual plots (which tend to not make much sense if you think about them too hard) but for the characters. Peter is a snarky joy, and the bit-characters for each installment are wonderful. This go around we've got Dominic, a gay PC with a gentleman!farmer boyfriend.

The Persian Boy by Mary Renault. Currently the war against Alexander is going exceedingly badly.

What did you recently finish reading?

The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution by Deborah E. Harkness.

This was a very interesting, well written, look at Elizabethan science. More fascinatingly, it was also about the power struggles going on with merchant companies and between immigrant populations and grouchy English scientists/botanists/clockmakers. Ah, plus ça change.

The Enchantment Emporium (Gale Women, #1) by Tanya Huff.

I really liked this urban fantasy novel, set in Canada, about Alysha Gale, one of a large family of witches, who inherits her dubiously dead grandmother's shop, and then PLOT HAPPENS.

Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault.

I enjoyed this a lot, and I was so so amused by all of Hephaistion's feelings. He just has so many!

A Departure by Tom Ward. I have had this sitting on my kindle app for ages, and I finally opened it on the way to the airport last month because it was dark in the car and I needed something to read on my iPod. I only finished it at the beginning of this week. Eh, it was okay? I mean, it was competently written but I think I'm wearying of 'unexplained disaster befalls the earth, motley group assemble, some of them survive' and Ward tried to cram a lot of things in. So we had a little bit of a discussion about resources, a little bit of religion, a little bit of politics, a little bit of romance, a little bit of grief and it all added up to a fairly forgettable whole.

What do you think you’ll read next?

I got London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing by Travis Elborough from the library so I need to get to that.

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liseuse — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 16:24:11 GMT

The Letter Meme x2, via laceblade who gave me a T, and woldy who gave me an S:

Something I hate:

Tinking: or, when you make a mistake in your knitting, and end up having to un-knit it to get back to that point so you can fix it. To be perfectly honest, if I'm knitting socks or something like that, I don't tend to bother unless it's a huge error. Baby blankets? I inevitably end up having to tink back most of a row, or several rows, and it just makes me want to cry.

Spitting: I can, VERY GRUDGINGLY, make an exception for people playing a sport. But, people who spit when walking down the street? The inside of my head is just full of vicious vitriolic invective.

Something I love:

Twitter. One of the criticisms of twitter that I see all the time is 'I don't care what people had for breakfast! Or about their bus journey!' and ... I don't really get it. I *like* hearing about what my friends think about the advert they've just seen, or the cute person in the library, or the terrible cup of coffee they've just had.

Swimming. I haven't been in ages, and I need to get back to the pool. I used to swim a mile every week - pre my shoulder being knackered - and the aim is to get back to that.

Somewhere I've been:

Tobermory, the Isle of Mull. For some reason we ended up going to the Isle of Mull after we'd moved to the Isle of Wight. Because, obviously, you might as well add a couple of hundred miles to that drive.

Salford, Greater Manchester. This is where my dad's side of the family is from and some of them still live. My dad went to Salford Grammar, the same school as Albert Finney - not at the same time. My mother used to work at Hope Hospital (once Salford Union Infirmary, then Hope, now Salford Royal)

Somewhere I'd like to go:

Tunisia.

Sardinia.

Someone I know:

Father Thomas, who taught use to ice skate when we were in middle school.

S., who taught one of the critical theory courses I took as a 2nd year undergraduate and who everyone remembers very fondly. He isn't dead, we just don't interact with him any more because we graduated and left.

A film I like:

Thor.

Sabrina - the 1954 one.

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