We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

I posted this on tumblr yesterday and then realized that today is Wednesday, so here it is here too.

I was tagged by breathedout to post recent, current, and future reading. Unfortunately it is the middle of January, when winter seems eternal and focus nonexistent. However, it occurred to me as I said that that the middle of January is certainly better than the beginning of January, so there’s that!

Recent: The last thing I finished at work was a collection of E. F. Benson’s ghost stories. (I am efficient enough at work that I have the spare time to work my way through public domain literature.) I’ve been reading a lot of Edwardian ghost stories recently and it’s just so nice watching terrible things happen to near respectable academics while I wait for the printer to go off. Benson has some interesting interactions with modern technology (his modern) but an annoying tendency to try to explain the metaphysics. I prefer M. R. James.

I also read the most recent installment of the further adventures of Madame C—, which was excellent as usual. In audio there was Dead Man’s Ransom by Ellis Peters—I find her work very one-note, but it’s a note I really want to hear sometimes.

I have also been reading a bunch of RWRB fanfic. (I skimmed the novel this summer because the gifsets were hot but it really isn’t my preferred tropes.) From the outside, it appears to be good in direct proportion to its smuttiness.

Current: At work I am now going through Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner, which I am enjoying as much as one can enjoy anything in January. It is kind of amusing how many of the “rules” of modern fiction writing it flat out has never heard of and doesn’t care about. I do find it somewhat stunning that Warner wrote this particular novel when she was only just over 30.

I have just started Time Was by Ian McDonald, which I hoped would be a gay version of This Is How You Lose the Time War, and it looks like it may even live up to that.

I am halfway through the audiobook of The Intrigue by Marion Chesney (aka M. C. Beaton), which is nice enough, but I don’t think I’ll feel the need to continue the series. Especially as the narrator is just okay.

Future: My hold on Paladin’s Faith by T. Kingfisher will hopefully come in by the end of the month. Other than that, I should probably see if I can focus better on nonfiction right now.

But I also have a skip-the-line copy of Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher for a week. I don’t know if I’m in the best place to appreciate it but maybe it’ll be a nice counterweight.

And finally, on the way home today I read Cat Sebastian's "Bells Are Ringing," which is her free holiday epilogue to We Could Be So Good, and loved it, like I loved the novel. Also, today was already better than the last couple weeks mood-wise. Apparently next summer I'll be reading a baseball romance. Well, these things happen.

One of my few superstitions is that I don't want to talk about anything good until it has already happened, in case I jinx it, but today was my first day at work and everything is good, so I think I can say: DW, I have a job! A full time job! With benefits! Yay!

Apart from that, I have been liveblogging and writing various meta about Dimension 20: The Ravening War on Tumblr: Calorum, Amangeaux, Karna

I also wrote a poem which contains massive spoilers for A Court of Fey and Flowers.