beads & books
Feb. 23rd, 2009 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushnerMy cousin Susan, the jeweler, sent me a link to Anne Choi's handmade beads with words on them, thinking I'd like them. She was right! I bet you will, too. (My favorites, of course, are Out of Stock.) Need more jewelry? Aragona (remember Aragona?) is having another Blue Moon Sale!
Lessee, what else . . . . Came back from Santa Cruz with a headcold. A very mild and pleasant headcold, consisting only of a stuffy nose. When's the last time I had a cold like that? Can't even remember. Colds the past few years have been accompanied by such miserable sore throats, coughs, aches and pains . . . I was beginning to think I had made up the kind of cold you could just bluff your way through with decongestant. Or that age had robbed me of the ability to endure. Ha. (Snort.)
But I relish the excuse to lie around and read, and I took it. As a result, just finished two really, really terrific books, which I am glad to recommend to all! The first is Flora's Dare, sequel to Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau Wilce. Best YA fantasy I've read since Philip Pullman, and fills me with similar delight, for entirely different reasons. Or maybe not: world an entertaining sidestep or two away from our own; tangled, sparky (& in this case, hilarious) heroine . . . . not to mention a City. How I love cities. Unlike me, Ysabeau has named hers. And I want to go there. (But not when there's an earthquake caused by giant underground squid.) The other book is We Are Gathered Here by Micah Perks (who, as the head of the Writing program, was our host at UCSC). I can't wait for Delia to read it: it's about Victorian women's friendship between a "lady" and her "maid," but set in the Adirondacks, and includes visits to a Gypsy camp, a Shaker women's settlement, and a miners' strike. Perks has also written an essay about her inspiration, Searching for an Ending, which is worth reading. Actually, there's a third novel I read, out at Big Sur: The Scarlet Rider, by Lucy Sussex, in which an Australian scholar tries to find identity of a 19c woman author from the Outback. Both Scarlet Rider & We are Gathered Here include lesbian couples - not as a big deal, but as part of the landscape of the protagonists' lives. Interesting to note that both first appeared in 1996. Yay. And 'bout time.
Hope you get some happy reading! But without the headcold.
Lessee, what else . . . . Came back from Santa Cruz with a headcold. A very mild and pleasant headcold, consisting only of a stuffy nose. When's the last time I had a cold like that? Can't even remember. Colds the past few years have been accompanied by such miserable sore throats, coughs, aches and pains . . . I was beginning to think I had made up the kind of cold you could just bluff your way through with decongestant. Or that age had robbed me of the ability to endure. Ha. (Snort.)
But I relish the excuse to lie around and read, and I took it. As a result, just finished two really, really terrific books, which I am glad to recommend to all! The first is Flora's Dare, sequel to Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau Wilce. Best YA fantasy I've read since Philip Pullman, and fills me with similar delight, for entirely different reasons. Or maybe not: world an entertaining sidestep or two away from our own; tangled, sparky (& in this case, hilarious) heroine . . . . not to mention a City. How I love cities. Unlike me, Ysabeau has named hers. And I want to go there. (But not when there's an earthquake caused by giant underground squid.) The other book is We Are Gathered Here by Micah Perks (who, as the head of the Writing program, was our host at UCSC). I can't wait for Delia to read it: it's about Victorian women's friendship between a "lady" and her "maid," but set in the Adirondacks, and includes visits to a Gypsy camp, a Shaker women's settlement, and a miners' strike. Perks has also written an essay about her inspiration, Searching for an Ending, which is worth reading. Actually, there's a third novel I read, out at Big Sur: The Scarlet Rider, by Lucy Sussex, in which an Australian scholar tries to find identity of a 19c woman author from the Outback. Both Scarlet Rider & We are Gathered Here include lesbian couples - not as a big deal, but as part of the landscape of the protagonists' lives. Interesting to note that both first appeared in 1996. Yay. And 'bout time.
Hope you get some happy reading! But without the headcold.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 03:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 04:24 am (UTC)Kath
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 03:41 pm (UTC)feel better
Date: 2009-02-25 01:30 pm (UTC)Are those beads too good, or what!?
Feel better!
-Susan