browser tabs and bookish things
Timezones are funny things. This morning when I woke up, there was a notification on my phone - one of my apps, telling me "Happy Valentine's Day".
Which was odd because A) Valentine's Day was yesterday and B) Valentine's Day still doesn't feel like a real occasion and I likely would have forgotten about it if I hadn't seen reference to it online last night.
*
I have too many tabs open, so in an effort to close some of them:
1. The Innkeeper's Wife by Clive Sansom. Last year I heard one of Sansom's poems read aloud. I was intrigued, and failed to find the poem either online or in a library book, although I did find this and a few others. I kept this tab open to remind me to try to get one of his books through an interlibrary loan. No success.
2. Hemlock and after is a lovely, thoughtful post about Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones: One of the reasons I love it so much is that it is a book about growing up reading: it would be interesting to read it in parallel with Jo Walton's Among Others - both books about girls who grow up reading, who learn to build relationships through their reading, and who engage with magic hidden within the everyday world, magic which can almost, but not quite, be explained away, if you are wrong-headed enough to try it.
It also suggests what is perhaps the simplest explanation for how the characters might move forward in spite of what happens at the very end of the fourth part. And that is the end of the story. [...] What follows is a coda. Each section of the book has a title formed from the letters on the vases - but the Coda doesn't. That's finished, this is something else [...]
*
3. Dorothy Sayers’ GAUDY NIGHT is a post about one of my favourite books ever: Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night (1935) is one of the best English-language novels I’ve read (and re-read). Her sense of the subtlety of complex human experience - among women, between lovers and would-be lovers, between rivals for love or success, among intellectual equals, and within the introspective human being; the rich and exact use of language for scene-setting, dialogue, poetical language and quotation settings, slang, scholarly argument; the multiple arguments that thread the pages of book, arguments that can seem dated at face value but on closer inspection turn out to be at the root of contemporary divides; and her delicious sense of the dance of romance and friendship between two independent, intellectual, and integrity-bound humans - all of these, plus a pretty good mystery plot, add up to a novel that many readers will wish could continue indefinitely.
A related tangent: Recently I saw a comment on Tumblr in which a reader was expressing their frustration with Gaudy Night - with the lack of plot, with the lack of a murder to solve. That made me pause. I don't actually have any memories of the first time I read Gaudy Night, which is unusual for a book that has made such a huge impression on me. (I didn't write anything about it straight away, which is also unusual.) Instead, my memories are of immediately rereading it.
For me, Gaudy Night has become solely defined by the experience of rereading. I don't know what it is like to experience Gaudy Night without knowing what the story is doing and where it is going - I can't recall how initially I felt about the earlier events of the novel. With some books, I have an idea about whether a lukewarm reader who is part way through should be patient and keep reading, or whether the lukewarmness is an indication that perhaps this book simply isn't going to appeal to them. But with Gaudy Night - no idea.
Another related GN thought: I was rereading it during the summer holidays and discovered an incident I had no memory of - the visit to the Botanical Gardens. The conversation that occurs there is reasonably familiar, but their context was not. And it's important."[...] You're not attending."
"Yes, I am," said Harriet, vaguely. "He had a wife called Charlotte and you re looking for him in a private school." A rich, damp fragrance gushed out upon them as they turned into the Market, and she was overcome by a sense of extravagant well-being. "I love this smell - it's like the cactus-house at the Botanical Gardens."
Her companion opened his mouth to speak, looked at her, and then, as one that will not interfere with fortune, let the name of Robinson die upon his lips. [...] And when both roses and carnations had been despatched - this time by a messenger-to their destination, it seemed natural, since the Botanical Gardens had been mentioned, to go there.
*
4. 10 More Soundtracks & Scores from Movies Based on Books has some good recommendations - I was able to find most of them on Spotify.
(I am glad I've discovered Spotify, because 8tracks announced that they are limiting how their service works for people who don't live in Northern America.)
*
5. Don’t feel guilty about buying used books: Writers won’t see a dime of that sale, but it’s the long game that counts. It's always good when consumers are aware of how creators get paid - but there's no shame in not buying new.
It hadn't occurred to me to feel ashamed of my second-hand book buying habit. Firstly, the pool of available books is different. There are titles I'm highly unlikely to find secondhand, and books - or editions of books - which are only available secondhand, because they're out of print.
Secondly, the way I buy books second-hand is very different to the way I buy new books. New books are planned purchases, in which I prioritise the books I most want to get and then set out looking for something specific. Secondhand books are impulsive purchases, in which I wander into shops and just see what I can find.
And because secondhand books cost 10% of the price of a new book, I've a lot of books I wouldn't have otherwise bought. Secondhand books means I can afford to get something just because "I have fond memories of that / I might want to reread that one day / I have the others in the series / This edition is in better condition than the copy I own / This edition matches the rest of the series (unlike the copy I own) / This edition is more compact and will take up less space on my shelf (unlike the copy I own)". Sometimes, if I "upgrade" my copy, I send my previous copy to the op shop or give it to a younger relative, but there are a few things I just now have two copies of. It's a bit silly but it's fun silliness.
I don't believe the existence of secondhand books changes the way I approach buying new books (or the way I use libraries. I continue to borrow nearly everything I read from the library). If I look at my shelves, when it comes to my favourite authors, my collections are a mixture of new and secondhand. And some of those authors are utterly unaffected by my book-buying habits, because they died over a century before I was even born.
*
Today's exciting realisation was that because I have an account with a particular service provider, I can get discounted tickets at certain cinemas. This has been brought to my attention before, on more than one occasion, but I'd forgotten about it - I don't go to the movies very often, and it doesn't apply to my preferred cinemas. So I hadn't looked into exactly what the deal was.
Until today, when I went to book tickets so my brother and I could see Star Wars: The Force Awakens again. It's isn't showing at the closest cinemas any more, and I decided I was prepared to pay more to go to the bigger chain cinema - which felt a bit extravagant. It was a lovely surprise to realise it actually wasn't extravagant at all.
(I guess it's still extravagant in the sense that going to a film in the evening when you have work the following morning isn't the most sensible timing... )
[Later] Finally got to see The Force Awakens again, and I enjoyed it so much. Happy now. Still tired but happy.
~ Herenya
Which was odd because A) Valentine's Day was yesterday and B) Valentine's Day still doesn't feel like a real occasion and I likely would have forgotten about it if I hadn't seen reference to it online last night.
*
I have too many tabs open, so in an effort to close some of them:
1. The Innkeeper's Wife by Clive Sansom. Last year I heard one of Sansom's poems read aloud. I was intrigued, and failed to find the poem either online or in a library book, although I did find this and a few others. I kept this tab open to remind me to try to get one of his books through an interlibrary loan. No success.
2. Hemlock and after is a lovely, thoughtful post about Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones: One of the reasons I love it so much is that it is a book about growing up reading: it would be interesting to read it in parallel with Jo Walton's Among Others - both books about girls who grow up reading, who learn to build relationships through their reading, and who engage with magic hidden within the everyday world, magic which can almost, but not quite, be explained away, if you are wrong-headed enough to try it.
It also suggests what is perhaps the simplest explanation for how the characters might move forward in spite of what happens at the very end of the fourth part. And that is the end of the story. [...] What follows is a coda. Each section of the book has a title formed from the letters on the vases - but the Coda doesn't. That's finished, this is something else [...]
*
3. Dorothy Sayers’ GAUDY NIGHT is a post about one of my favourite books ever: Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night (1935) is one of the best English-language novels I’ve read (and re-read). Her sense of the subtlety of complex human experience - among women, between lovers and would-be lovers, between rivals for love or success, among intellectual equals, and within the introspective human being; the rich and exact use of language for scene-setting, dialogue, poetical language and quotation settings, slang, scholarly argument; the multiple arguments that thread the pages of book, arguments that can seem dated at face value but on closer inspection turn out to be at the root of contemporary divides; and her delicious sense of the dance of romance and friendship between two independent, intellectual, and integrity-bound humans - all of these, plus a pretty good mystery plot, add up to a novel that many readers will wish could continue indefinitely.
A related tangent: Recently I saw a comment on Tumblr in which a reader was expressing their frustration with Gaudy Night - with the lack of plot, with the lack of a murder to solve. That made me pause. I don't actually have any memories of the first time I read Gaudy Night, which is unusual for a book that has made such a huge impression on me. (I didn't write anything about it straight away, which is also unusual.) Instead, my memories are of immediately rereading it.
For me, Gaudy Night has become solely defined by the experience of rereading. I don't know what it is like to experience Gaudy Night without knowing what the story is doing and where it is going - I can't recall how initially I felt about the earlier events of the novel. With some books, I have an idea about whether a lukewarm reader who is part way through should be patient and keep reading, or whether the lukewarmness is an indication that perhaps this book simply isn't going to appeal to them. But with Gaudy Night - no idea.
Another related GN thought: I was rereading it during the summer holidays and discovered an incident I had no memory of - the visit to the Botanical Gardens. The conversation that occurs there is reasonably familiar, but their context was not. And it's important."[...] You're not attending."
"Yes, I am," said Harriet, vaguely. "He had a wife called Charlotte and you re looking for him in a private school." A rich, damp fragrance gushed out upon them as they turned into the Market, and she was overcome by a sense of extravagant well-being. "I love this smell - it's like the cactus-house at the Botanical Gardens."
Her companion opened his mouth to speak, looked at her, and then, as one that will not interfere with fortune, let the name of Robinson die upon his lips. [...] And when both roses and carnations had been despatched - this time by a messenger-to their destination, it seemed natural, since the Botanical Gardens had been mentioned, to go there.
*
4. 10 More Soundtracks & Scores from Movies Based on Books has some good recommendations - I was able to find most of them on Spotify.
(I am glad I've discovered Spotify, because 8tracks announced that they are limiting how their service works for people who don't live in Northern America.)
*
5. Don’t feel guilty about buying used books: Writers won’t see a dime of that sale, but it’s the long game that counts. It's always good when consumers are aware of how creators get paid - but there's no shame in not buying new.
It hadn't occurred to me to feel ashamed of my second-hand book buying habit. Firstly, the pool of available books is different. There are titles I'm highly unlikely to find secondhand, and books - or editions of books - which are only available secondhand, because they're out of print.
Secondly, the way I buy books second-hand is very different to the way I buy new books. New books are planned purchases, in which I prioritise the books I most want to get and then set out looking for something specific. Secondhand books are impulsive purchases, in which I wander into shops and just see what I can find.
And because secondhand books cost 10% of the price of a new book, I've a lot of books I wouldn't have otherwise bought. Secondhand books means I can afford to get something just because "I have fond memories of that / I might want to reread that one day / I have the others in the series / This edition is in better condition than the copy I own / This edition matches the rest of the series (unlike the copy I own) / This edition is more compact and will take up less space on my shelf (unlike the copy I own)". Sometimes, if I "upgrade" my copy, I send my previous copy to the op shop or give it to a younger relative, but there are a few things I just now have two copies of. It's a bit silly but it's fun silliness.
I don't believe the existence of secondhand books changes the way I approach buying new books (or the way I use libraries. I continue to borrow nearly everything I read from the library). If I look at my shelves, when it comes to my favourite authors, my collections are a mixture of new and secondhand. And some of those authors are utterly unaffected by my book-buying habits, because they died over a century before I was even born.
*
Today's exciting realisation was that because I have an account with a particular service provider, I can get discounted tickets at certain cinemas. This has been brought to my attention before, on more than one occasion, but I'd forgotten about it - I don't go to the movies very often, and it doesn't apply to my preferred cinemas. So I hadn't looked into exactly what the deal was.
Until today, when I went to book tickets so my brother and I could see Star Wars: The Force Awakens again. It's isn't showing at the closest cinemas any more, and I decided I was prepared to pay more to go to the bigger chain cinema - which felt a bit extravagant. It was a lovely surprise to realise it actually wasn't extravagant at all.
(I guess it's still extravagant in the sense that going to a film in the evening when you have work the following morning isn't the most sensible timing... )
[Later] Finally got to see The Force Awakens again, and I enjoyed it so much. Happy now. Still tired but happy.
~ Herenya