Yuletide 2025 recs
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yuletide9 recs over at my journal for: IVE, Two Husbands One Wife, Bend It Like Beckham, Billy Elliot, Blackadder, NMIXX, Revenged Love, Sabrina Carpenter - Manchild, Set It Up
proteinscollide posting in yuletide
Picture Book Advent Wrap-Up
Dec. 29th, 2025 10:38 pmosprey_archerAnd Picture Book Advent draws gently to a close. A note for my future self: although traditionally Advent ends on December 24, I think it would be nice to have a final picture book for the morning of Christmas. (My sister-in-law’s large extended family does a BIG Christmas, so we’ve simply ceded Christmas Day to them and have our own little family Christmas later on, which leaves Christmas morning open.)
Because of the way the dates of Advent fell, I had only two books left to review. First, The Wee Christmas Cabin at Carn-na-ween, by Ruth Sawyer, illustrated by Max Grafe, a picture book version of a story I first read in Sawyer’s story collection The Long Christmas. After a lifetime helping out in one cabin after another, with never a home of her own, old Oona is at last driven from her final house on Christmas Eve… only for the Good Folk to build her a house, and grant her wish that every white Christmas hence, the hungry and the lonely will be able to find her home for succor.
A lovely story. Another solid example from Sawyer that the spirit of Christmas is “generosity” and not “copious evergreens.”
And second, The Christmas Sweater, Jan Brett’s new Christmas book this year! Theo’s Yiayia knitted an extremely gaudy Christmas sweater for his dignified pug Ari. Hoping to win Ari over to the cozy warm sweater, Theo takes her for a snowshoe in the woods… only for a fresh fall of snow to obliterate his tracks! But fortunately, Ari(adne)’s sweater caught on a twig near the edge of the woods, so they can follow the unraveled yarn back home.
From the dedication, it looks like one of Brett’s children married into a Greek family, and this book is an homage to that family connection. I particularly enjoyed Ari’s expressive face, and indeed all the dogs running around in the snow in this book.
Because of the way the dates of Advent fell, I had only two books left to review. First, The Wee Christmas Cabin at Carn-na-ween, by Ruth Sawyer, illustrated by Max Grafe, a picture book version of a story I first read in Sawyer’s story collection The Long Christmas. After a lifetime helping out in one cabin after another, with never a home of her own, old Oona is at last driven from her final house on Christmas Eve… only for the Good Folk to build her a house, and grant her wish that every white Christmas hence, the hungry and the lonely will be able to find her home for succor.
A lovely story. Another solid example from Sawyer that the spirit of Christmas is “generosity” and not “copious evergreens.”
And second, The Christmas Sweater, Jan Brett’s new Christmas book this year! Theo’s Yiayia knitted an extremely gaudy Christmas sweater for his dignified pug Ari. Hoping to win Ari over to the cozy warm sweater, Theo takes her for a snowshoe in the woods… only for a fresh fall of snow to obliterate his tracks! But fortunately, Ari(adne)’s sweater caught on a twig near the edge of the woods, so they can follow the unraveled yarn back home.
From the dedication, it looks like one of Brett’s children married into a Greek family, and this book is an homage to that family connection. I particularly enjoyed Ari’s expressive face, and indeed all the dogs running around in the snow in this book.
Recent Reading: Asian Fantasy + Romance
Dec. 29th, 2025 09:25 pmwhimsyfulOnce a Villain, by Vanessa Len
The third and final volume in the YA time travel urban fantasy Monsters trilogy, this definitely cannot be read without the previous two installments.
Continuing right where Never a Hero left off, the book starts off with main antagonist and Joan’s half-sister Eleanor having finally succeeded in creating a world where monsters rule over humans and she reigns over all, and the plot revolves around Joan and the othes desperately trying to find a way to undo this and return to the world they know.
First of all, I have to talk about that resolution to the love triangle—
I had suspicions from the structure of the earlier two books (ex. the division of page-time between the two male love interests) that Len might be going for a poly/throuple ending, but I wasn’t sure if she had the guts to go for it in a mainstream YA series. I’m very pleased to report that she did, in fact, have the guts to go for it! Even though generally the soulmate/predestined trope is not a romance trope I’m fond of, and having the predestined couple turn out to be actually be a predestined throuple all along only slightly mitigates my indifference, but otherwise I really liked how this played out. One of my worries was how she was going to flesh out the Nick/Aaron side of the throuple, but I thought Len managed to concisely convey the sense of a deep, intense relationship between the two in an alternate timeline, enough that I could buy the current versions working out—though I could have read an entire book about about gladiator!Nick and Scarlet Pimpernel!Aaron (hopefully the fanfic writers will tackle this).
The worldbuilding continues to be one of the most intriguing parts of this series, and in this installment I really liked the depiction of a dystopian alternate world where humans and part-humans were basically slaves. The time-travel continues to run on vibes and Doctor Who-esque rules, but I didn’t mind since we got some cool action sequences and juicy character interactions (in particular, I loved every instance where a character has to interact with a different timeline’s version of someone they cared about) out of it.
As for weaknesses, I thought Joan was a pretty reactive heroine in this book, and it did sometimes feel like she’s going along with the requirements of the plot instead of having a distinctive personality of her own that actively drives the plot forward. I also found the epilogue/ending to be a bit too unbelievably happy in terms how easily all the conflict between human and monster society were resolved—I would have preferred if it ended more on a hopeful work-in-progress instead. And as with the previous two books, I felt like the prose could have been prettier on a sentence-by-sentence level.
But overall, I quite enjoyed this trilogy, and thought Len explored some pretty cool ideas even if she didn’t 100% stick the landing. I’m definitely looking forward to her future works!
Goodbye, My Princess by Fei Wo Si Cun (trans. Tianshu)
A bit of an odd duck of a book. Translated Chinese webnovels have been steadily growing in popularity in the Anglosphere, but most of these are danmei (M/M). I’ve seen this book marketed as YA het fantasy romance, despite 1) covering some pretty mature topics (liked forced abortion), 2) there being exactly one fantastical element in the setting—a magical amnesia-granting river—and is otherwise full on historical fiction, and 3) having an infamous tragic ending, which would preclude this from being considered a romance by Western genre conventions. What this really is, is a tragic romance, and an excellent example of the genre.
The plot: Xiaofeng is a cheerful, naive young princess from the desert kingdom of Xiliang who has been in a loveless arranged marriage with Li Chengyin, the crown prince of the Li empire, for the last three years. It has not been a happy union—Li Chengyin alternately fights with Xiaofeng or ignores her in favor of his preferred noble consort, and Xiaofeng mainly copes with the stifling nature of court life by crossdressing and sneaking out of the palace to roam the city with her faithful maid/bodyguard A’du. Then one day she encounters a stranger who claims to be her lost love from a life Xiaofeng can no longer remember. As Xiaofeng tries to piece together what had happened in the past, she and her husband finally start growing closer, but what she doesn’t realize is how truly brutal the royal court is, and that some memories are better left forgotten.
The entire main story is told entirely from Xiaofeng’s first person narration, which was a very effective and immersive choice. She is a naive, kind-hearted and trusting person stuck with limited language and cultural fluency in a foreign court stuffed to the brim with schemes and intrigues, and everyone knows it. So you only get a glimpse of all the political intrigue as they all fly completely over her head (these schemes only get explained in full in the epilogue/side stories told by the side characters) and have to try to figure out for yourself what’s actually going on. There is also an excellently done character progression as she slowly loses her innocence and happiness and is ground down into despair—her voice starts off rather silly and childish and then grows both more mature and much more sad.
The author Fei Wo Si Cun has a reputation for angsty, obsessive, incredibly asshole male leads who are basically a forest of walking red flags. But it worked very well for me in this story because it becomes very clear after a certain point that the male lead Li Chengyin is also the main villain and primary antagonist of the story. In fact, the book can be seen as a deconstruction of the common “kind-hearted naive princess marries a cold ruthless prince from an enemy kingdom and then they fall in love” trope/storyline. Li Chengyin is incredibly ruthless and cunning because that was the only way to survive the intrigues of the royal court and stay alive as crown prince. Xiaofeng’s warm and open-hearted personality is like catnip to someone with his personality, but being a monster who loves only one person does not make him any less a monster, and so he loves her but he also destroys everything that she loves, and it all ends in tears.
Overall, recommended if you’re in the mood for what’s essentially a perfect tragedy, starring a pair of lovers so doomed even being granted a clean slate and a second chance by Fate is not enough.
A note about the translation: the English translation is by Tianshu, and this is one of the best Chinese-English translations that I’ve read recently. There is no awkward “translationese” or jerky sentences—the prose flows smoothly and is downright lovely in many parts, and overall feels like a labor of love. I also liked the choice to link footnotes to all the bits of classical Chinese poetry that’s quoted in text. The one choice I’m puzzled by is the change in structure; the original novel (or at least the version I found online) had 42 chapters in the main story, plus some bonus chapters that are snippets from the POV of certain side characters (these are technically not necessary to read but highly recommended). The English translation aggregates the text into four very long chapters/parts instead, plus the bonus side stories. I’m not sure why Tianshu decided on this grouping, as this means there is no easy point to take a break in the middle of a very long part compared to the original.
The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (trans. Faelicy & Lily)
My first danmei cnovel, and I had a great time! About Shen Yuan, a young man who hate-read the entirety of a super popular and clichéd cultivation harem webnovel and died while in the middle of raging about how terrible the writing and plot holes are...only to wake up having transmigrated into said webnovel, as the villainous mentor who will face a brutal end by the OP Gary Stu male protagonist. Now he has to somehow get into the guy's good graces to avoid his canon fate and fix the original novel's plot holes...and of course this being danmei he accidentally changes the romance from M/F one-dude-with-a-massive-harem to M/M along the way.
Shen Yuan's running commentary mocking the the cliches of the hackneyed harem cultivation webnovel he's been unwillingly transmigrated into were hilarious, and I also loved every instance where he had to stay in character as this cool and unmoved master while internally swearing and freaking out. He's also a very funny example of an incredibly unreliable narrator.
My only complaints were that 1) I wish the female characters got more to do (not unexpected for a danmei, but it’s still disappointing to have several intriguing and layered male side characters whereas all the side female characters are much more flat in comparison) and 2) that sex scene sure was...something. Still, this was incredibly fun to read, and I'm definitely going to check out MXTX's other works!
The third and final volume in the YA time travel urban fantasy Monsters trilogy, this definitely cannot be read without the previous two installments.
Continuing right where Never a Hero left off, the book starts off with main antagonist and Joan’s half-sister Eleanor having finally succeeded in creating a world where monsters rule over humans and she reigns over all, and the plot revolves around Joan and the othes desperately trying to find a way to undo this and return to the world they know.
First of all, I have to talk about that resolution to the love triangle—
major ending spoilers
I had suspicions from the structure of the earlier two books (ex. the division of page-time between the two male love interests) that Len might be going for a poly/throuple ending, but I wasn’t sure if she had the guts to go for it in a mainstream YA series. I’m very pleased to report that she did, in fact, have the guts to go for it! Even though generally the soulmate/predestined trope is not a romance trope I’m fond of, and having the predestined couple turn out to be actually be a predestined throuple all along only slightly mitigates my indifference, but otherwise I really liked how this played out. One of my worries was how she was going to flesh out the Nick/Aaron side of the throuple, but I thought Len managed to concisely convey the sense of a deep, intense relationship between the two in an alternate timeline, enough that I could buy the current versions working out—though I could have read an entire book about about gladiator!Nick and Scarlet Pimpernel!Aaron (hopefully the fanfic writers will tackle this).
The worldbuilding continues to be one of the most intriguing parts of this series, and in this installment I really liked the depiction of a dystopian alternate world where humans and part-humans were basically slaves. The time-travel continues to run on vibes and Doctor Who-esque rules, but I didn’t mind since we got some cool action sequences and juicy character interactions (in particular, I loved every instance where a character has to interact with a different timeline’s version of someone they cared about) out of it.
As for weaknesses, I thought Joan was a pretty reactive heroine in this book, and it did sometimes feel like she’s going along with the requirements of the plot instead of having a distinctive personality of her own that actively drives the plot forward. I also found the epilogue/ending to be a bit too unbelievably happy in terms how easily all the conflict between human and monster society were resolved—I would have preferred if it ended more on a hopeful work-in-progress instead. And as with the previous two books, I felt like the prose could have been prettier on a sentence-by-sentence level.
But overall, I quite enjoyed this trilogy, and thought Len explored some pretty cool ideas even if she didn’t 100% stick the landing. I’m definitely looking forward to her future works!
Goodbye, My Princess by Fei Wo Si Cun (trans. Tianshu)
A bit of an odd duck of a book. Translated Chinese webnovels have been steadily growing in popularity in the Anglosphere, but most of these are danmei (M/M). I’ve seen this book marketed as YA het fantasy romance, despite 1) covering some pretty mature topics (liked forced abortion), 2) there being exactly one fantastical element in the setting—a magical amnesia-granting river—and is otherwise full on historical fiction, and 3) having an infamous tragic ending, which would preclude this from being considered a romance by Western genre conventions. What this really is, is a tragic romance, and an excellent example of the genre.
mild spoilers under the cut
The plot: Xiaofeng is a cheerful, naive young princess from the desert kingdom of Xiliang who has been in a loveless arranged marriage with Li Chengyin, the crown prince of the Li empire, for the last three years. It has not been a happy union—Li Chengyin alternately fights with Xiaofeng or ignores her in favor of his preferred noble consort, and Xiaofeng mainly copes with the stifling nature of court life by crossdressing and sneaking out of the palace to roam the city with her faithful maid/bodyguard A’du. Then one day she encounters a stranger who claims to be her lost love from a life Xiaofeng can no longer remember. As Xiaofeng tries to piece together what had happened in the past, she and her husband finally start growing closer, but what she doesn’t realize is how truly brutal the royal court is, and that some memories are better left forgotten.
The entire main story is told entirely from Xiaofeng’s first person narration, which was a very effective and immersive choice. She is a naive, kind-hearted and trusting person stuck with limited language and cultural fluency in a foreign court stuffed to the brim with schemes and intrigues, and everyone knows it. So you only get a glimpse of all the political intrigue as they all fly completely over her head (these schemes only get explained in full in the epilogue/side stories told by the side characters) and have to try to figure out for yourself what’s actually going on. There is also an excellently done character progression as she slowly loses her innocence and happiness and is ground down into despair—her voice starts off rather silly and childish and then grows both more mature and much more sad.
The author Fei Wo Si Cun has a reputation for angsty, obsessive, incredibly asshole male leads who are basically a forest of walking red flags. But it worked very well for me in this story because it becomes very clear after a certain point that the male lead Li Chengyin is also the main villain and primary antagonist of the story. In fact, the book can be seen as a deconstruction of the common “kind-hearted naive princess marries a cold ruthless prince from an enemy kingdom and then they fall in love” trope/storyline. Li Chengyin is incredibly ruthless and cunning because that was the only way to survive the intrigues of the royal court and stay alive as crown prince. Xiaofeng’s warm and open-hearted personality is like catnip to someone with his personality, but being a monster who loves only one person does not make him any less a monster, and so he loves her but he also destroys everything that she loves, and it all ends in tears.
Overall, recommended if you’re in the mood for what’s essentially a perfect tragedy, starring a pair of lovers so doomed even being granted a clean slate and a second chance by Fate is not enough.
A note about the translation: the English translation is by Tianshu, and this is one of the best Chinese-English translations that I’ve read recently. There is no awkward “translationese” or jerky sentences—the prose flows smoothly and is downright lovely in many parts, and overall feels like a labor of love. I also liked the choice to link footnotes to all the bits of classical Chinese poetry that’s quoted in text. The one choice I’m puzzled by is the change in structure; the original novel (or at least the version I found online) had 42 chapters in the main story, plus some bonus chapters that are snippets from the POV of certain side characters (these are technically not necessary to read but highly recommended). The English translation aggregates the text into four very long chapters/parts instead, plus the bonus side stories. I’m not sure why Tianshu decided on this grouping, as this means there is no easy point to take a break in the middle of a very long part compared to the original.
The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (trans. Faelicy & Lily)
My first danmei cnovel, and I had a great time! About Shen Yuan, a young man who hate-read the entirety of a super popular and clichéd cultivation harem webnovel and died while in the middle of raging about how terrible the writing and plot holes are...only to wake up having transmigrated into said webnovel, as the villainous mentor who will face a brutal end by the OP Gary Stu male protagonist. Now he has to somehow get into the guy's good graces to avoid his canon fate and fix the original novel's plot holes...and of course this being danmei he accidentally changes the romance from M/F one-dude-with-a-massive-harem to M/M along the way.
Shen Yuan's running commentary mocking the the cliches of the hackneyed harem cultivation webnovel he's been unwillingly transmigrated into were hilarious, and I also loved every instance where he had to stay in character as this cool and unmoved master while internally swearing and freaking out. He's also a very funny example of an incredibly unreliable narrator.
My only complaints were that 1) I wish the female characters got more to do (not unexpected for a danmei, but it’s still disappointing to have several intriguing and layered male side characters whereas all the side female characters are much more flat in comparison) and 2) that sex scene sure was...something. Still, this was incredibly fun to read, and I'm definitely going to check out MXTX's other works!
Write every day: Day 29
Dec. 29th, 2025 11:38 pmluzulaDay 28: Busy with family; alibi sentence. How about you?
Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 28:luzula, china_shop, badly_knitted, trobadora, brithistorian, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, chestnut_pod, cornerofmadness, garonne, brithistorian,
Day 29:luzula, china_shop, garonne, brithistorian,
Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 28:
luzula, china_shop, badly_knitted, trobadora, brithistorian, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, chestnut_pod, cornerofmadness, garonne, brithistorian, Day 29:
luzula, china_shop, garonne, brithistorian,Not really the call of the wiiiild, I guess
Dec. 29th, 2025 07:29 pmoursinOut for my walk today, went through the pocket park behind the house, and there was a lady with a small terrier (I think), that was going absolutely spare under some trees -
- and looking up I finally saw, right up at the very top where it had attained to, a squirrel, which was presumably the reason for the agitation.
Had some passing converse with the dog's owner anent this, who claims that he will never actually catch a squirrel, even though they are tame enough that if you go and sit on one of the park benches they will come and look you over.
Mostly the dogs that one sees being walked in the park are less vociferous, perhaps they have grown wise to the ways of squirrels.
So anyway, I passed on to the other somewhat larger park, and see no advance yet in what is supposed to be a development involving a pergola (???) and further eco-stuff but at least there is no longer unsightly work being done at that spot.
Have only very lately discovered that two objects which I vaguely thought, had I thought at all, were maybe bird-houses, are actually insect-houses. Much to my chagrin, I can find nothing about this on the park website which boasts of various eco and environment good stuff that goes on there (I am still trying to work out what the sparrow-meadow is, have not seen plume nor feather of a sparrow on my ambles).
However, I can at least point dr rdrz at this site where I perceive that insect houses are quite A Thing: designed to provide safe nesting, hibernation, and breeding spaces for beneficial pollinators such as solitary bees, butterflies, ladybirds, and lacewings'.
I assume solitary bees are a specific species, and have not actually been expelled from their hive for some vile transgression, to roam the earth etc etc etc like an apian ancient mariner.
Yuletide recs (part 2)
Dec. 29th, 2025 10:38 amsnickfic posting in yuletideMore recs at my journal, including:
Possibly in Michigan
The Secret History
The Raven Tower
Impromptu/19th Century RPF
The Dispossessed
The Long Walk -Stephen King
Waking the Moon
Rope
Possibly in Michigan
The Secret History
The Raven Tower
Impromptu/19th Century RPF
The Dispossessed
The Long Walk -Stephen King
Waking the Moon
Rope
8 recs in 7 fandoms
Dec. 29th, 2025 06:26 pmmrs_redboots posting in yuletideIf you go to my journal you will find recs for stories in the following fandoms:
Puck of Pook's Hill/Callendar Series
Sussex Set
Swallows and Amazons (two stories)
Cadfael Chronicles
Chalet School
The Secret Garden
and Dragonriders of Pern
There may yet be more to come....
Puck of Pook's Hill/Callendar Series
Sussex Set
Swallows and Amazons (two stories)
Cadfael Chronicles
Chalet School
The Secret Garden
and Dragonriders of Pern
There may yet be more to come....
(no subject)
Dec. 29th, 2025 08:11 amskygiantsThe Queen's Embroiderer: A True Story of Paris, Lovers, Swindlers, and the First Stock Market Crisis did quite a good job of giving me historical context around the lives of artisans and upwardly mobile bourgeois in 17th and early 18th century France and only a mediocre job IMO of convincing me of its central argument, but I was reading it for the former and not the latter so I can't say I was disappointed per se ...
As the author, historian Joan DeJean, introduces her narrative, she was browsing the National Archives when she came across two documents: the first, appointing Jean Magoulet as official embroiderer to Queen Marie-Thérèse of France; the second, decreeing that Magoulet's daughter Marie Louise should be put in prison and deported to New Orleans on charges of prostitution. DeJean immediately dropped what she was doing to Get To The Bottom Of This and went on a deep dive into the entire Magoulet family as well as the family of Louis Chevrot, the young man whose involvement with Marie-Louise resulted in the charges above.
In order to write this family saga, Joan DeJean has pulled out every relevant family document -- marriage licenses, birth certificates, guardianship statements, criminal charges, recorded purchases, etc. etc. -- and she does a clear and interesting job of explaining what we can learn from them, what these kinds of documents normally look like and what their context is, what the specific features of these family documents imply, and letting you follow her logic with your own brain. I appreciate this very much! I had no idea, for example, that it was standard in 17th-century France for the court to appoint a guardian for any child who lost a parent, even if they still had the other parent living, to ensure that their financial interests were protected, something that came up often in this narrative where a lot of kids were losing parents in situations where their financial interests were not particularly protected. It's a really good example of historical detective work, how you can draw a picture of a family through time through the bureaucratic litter they leave behind, and I appreciated it very much.
On the other hand, Joan DeJean also occasionally slips into writing like this --
In the course of their attempts both to get rich quick and to save their skin when they got into bad straits, the Queen's Embroiderers became imposters, tricksters, con artists nonpareil. They lied about everything and to everyone: to the police, to notaries, to their in-laws. They lied about their ages and those of their children, about their professional accomplishments and their net worth. They caroused; they philandered; they made a mockery of the laws of church and state. The only truly authentic thing about them was their extraordinary talent and their ability to weave gold and silver thread into the kind of garments that seemed the stuff of dreams. In their lives and on an almost daily basis, haute couture crossed paths with high crime.
Savage beauty indeed.
-- which made me laugh out loud every time it happened. So, bug, feature? who could say ....
Anyway, Joan DeJean makes a pretty good argument for most of the family gossip she pulls out about the Magoulets and the Chevrots, but the center of her argument about the Great Tragic Romance between Marie-Louise Magoulet and Louis Chevrot rests on a really elaborate switcheroo that I simply do not buy. In drawing out her family saga, DeJean has become obsessed with the fact that there seem to have been two Marie-Louise Magoulets, one being more than a decade older than the other, and, crucially, also more than a decade older than Louis Chevrot; ( I guess this is technically spoilers for a three hundred year old scandal )
But a.) context about material culture and craftsmanship is what I was here for and context is what I got, in spades, and b.) if you're going to invent a historical conspiracy theory, make it as niche as possible, is what I say, so despite the fact that I don't BELIEVE DeJean I still spiritually support her. Has she perhaps connected a few more dots than actually exist? Perhaps. But I still certainly got my money's worth [none; library] out of the book!
As the author, historian Joan DeJean, introduces her narrative, she was browsing the National Archives when she came across two documents: the first, appointing Jean Magoulet as official embroiderer to Queen Marie-Thérèse of France; the second, decreeing that Magoulet's daughter Marie Louise should be put in prison and deported to New Orleans on charges of prostitution. DeJean immediately dropped what she was doing to Get To The Bottom Of This and went on a deep dive into the entire Magoulet family as well as the family of Louis Chevrot, the young man whose involvement with Marie-Louise resulted in the charges above.
In order to write this family saga, Joan DeJean has pulled out every relevant family document -- marriage licenses, birth certificates, guardianship statements, criminal charges, recorded purchases, etc. etc. -- and she does a clear and interesting job of explaining what we can learn from them, what these kinds of documents normally look like and what their context is, what the specific features of these family documents imply, and letting you follow her logic with your own brain. I appreciate this very much! I had no idea, for example, that it was standard in 17th-century France for the court to appoint a guardian for any child who lost a parent, even if they still had the other parent living, to ensure that their financial interests were protected, something that came up often in this narrative where a lot of kids were losing parents in situations where their financial interests were not particularly protected. It's a really good example of historical detective work, how you can draw a picture of a family through time through the bureaucratic litter they leave behind, and I appreciated it very much.
On the other hand, Joan DeJean also occasionally slips into writing like this --
In the course of their attempts both to get rich quick and to save their skin when they got into bad straits, the Queen's Embroiderers became imposters, tricksters, con artists nonpareil. They lied about everything and to everyone: to the police, to notaries, to their in-laws. They lied about their ages and those of their children, about their professional accomplishments and their net worth. They caroused; they philandered; they made a mockery of the laws of church and state. The only truly authentic thing about them was their extraordinary talent and their ability to weave gold and silver thread into the kind of garments that seemed the stuff of dreams. In their lives and on an almost daily basis, haute couture crossed paths with high crime.
Savage beauty indeed.
-- which made me laugh out loud every time it happened. So, bug, feature? who could say ....
Anyway, Joan DeJean makes a pretty good argument for most of the family gossip she pulls out about the Magoulets and the Chevrots, but the center of her argument about the Great Tragic Romance between Marie-Louise Magoulet and Louis Chevrot rests on a really elaborate switcheroo that I simply do not buy. In drawing out her family saga, DeJean has become obsessed with the fact that there seem to have been two Marie-Louise Magoulets, one being more than a decade older than the other, and, crucially, also more than a decade older than Louis Chevrot; ( I guess this is technically spoilers for a three hundred year old scandal )
But a.) context about material culture and craftsmanship is what I was here for and context is what I got, in spades, and b.) if you're going to invent a historical conspiracy theory, make it as niche as possible, is what I say, so despite the fact that I don't BELIEVE DeJean I still spiritually support her. Has she perhaps connected a few more dots than actually exist? Perhaps. But I still certainly got my money's worth [none; library] out of the book!
Final December meme post, and some fannish links
Dec. 29th, 2025 01:24 pmdolorosa_12Today's prompt from chestnut_pod brings this year's December talking meme to a close, and it's been a great run of questions. Many thanks to all of you who left a prompt! This final prompt is to talk about how I learnt to garden, plus any longstanding plant friends in my garden.
( Response here )
fandomtrees is due to open for reveals on 10 January, but it will only do so when every participant has a minimum of two gifts each. This post on the comm links to a spreadsheet of needy trees — there are still a substantial number of participants with only one gift, or with no gift at all. My own tree is here.
And the new year means thatsnowflake_challenge will be rolling around again. I'm always so happy to see the consequent burst of enthusiastic activity on Dreamwidth!
chestnut_pod brings this year's December talking meme to a close, and it's been a great run of questions. Many thanks to all of you who left a prompt! This final prompt is to talk about how I learnt to garden, plus any longstanding plant friends in my garden.( Response here )
fandomtrees is due to open for reveals on 10 January, but it will only do so when every participant has a minimum of two gifts each. This post on the comm links to a spreadsheet of needy trees — there are still a substantial number of participants with only one gift, or with no gift at all. My own tree is here.And the new year means that
snowflake_challenge will be rolling around again. I'm always so happy to see the consequent burst of enthusiastic activity on Dreamwidth!Recent reading
Dec. 29th, 2025 07:51 amtroisoiseauxFinished I Leap Over the Wall: Contrasts and Impressions After Twenty-Eight Years in a Convent by Monica Baldwin, a 1949 memoir that is what it says on the tin and a fascinating read. It's a mix of explaining convent life to a secular audience (which was pretty much the same as in Catherine Coldstream's Cloistered, although I feel like Baldwin made more of an effort to explain why this or that aspect of life as a nun made sense in the context of Catholic doctrine), Baldwin's sense of culture shock from having entered the cloister in 1914 and left it in 1941, and her misadventures in adjusting to the modern world circa WWII— she worked various jobs in an effort to Do Her Bit for Britain, including as an unofficial Land Girl, dormitory matron at a munitions factory, hostess at an army canteen, assistant librarian at the Royal Academy of Science, and something for the War Office that she isn't allowed to talk about. (She was also the niece of former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, which probably helped.) It's also a thoughtful, insightful memoir about a woman figuring out who she is as a person after nearly three decades of suppressing every instinct towards individualism; in a way, it reads a lot like someone recovering from a long-term abusive relationship— there was one particularly aching line about the first time she "had actually dared to open a window, in a place containing several other people, and the universe had NOT rocked to its foundations and then come toppling down about my ears"— although, as it's all written in such a bright tone and Baldwin's view was clearly that she personally was unsuited for religious life, rather than religious life in itself being The Problem, I imagine that she would have been surprised by the comparison.
Also finished my fourth(?) re-read of Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, just under the wire for 2025. I don't have any new thoughts this time— no, actually, I have one: ( ... )— but I continue to enjoy this series so so much and will cheerfully re-read it on loop until Alecto gets published and/or the rest of my life, whichever comes first, even at my current snail's pace of three years to finish three books (having last read Gideon in 2023 and Harrow in 2024).
Also finished my fourth(?) re-read of Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, just under the wire for 2025. I don't have any new thoughts this time— no, actually, I have one: ( ... )— but I continue to enjoy this series so so much and will cheerfully re-read it on loop until Alecto gets published and/or the rest of my life, whichever comes first, even at my current snail's pace of three years to finish three books (having last read Gideon in 2023 and Harrow in 2024).
Assignments are out!
Dec. 28th, 2025 10:29 pmrfemod posting in rarefemslashexchangeAssignments have been sent!
If you have any issues with yours, please reach out as soon as possible via email at rarefemslashexchangemod@gmail.com. Any questions that will not break anonymity can also be left on this post (anon is on, screening isn't).
There are nine pinch hits that will be posted within the next 24-48 hours.
Happy creating! :)
If you have any issues with yours, please reach out as soon as possible via email at rarefemslashexchangemod@gmail.com. Any questions that will not break anonymity can also be left on this post (anon is on, screening isn't).
There are nine pinch hits that will be posted within the next 24-48 hours.
Happy creating! :)
Links: Fandom, Science, Some Politics
Dec. 28th, 2025 05:12 pmmuccamukkFandom:
snowflake_challenge: Running a multi-fandom prompt every other day for all of January. (Yours truly isn't modding this year around, but will hopefully still participate.)
cultivativity:
beagoldfish:
Archive of Our Own: Update on Our 2020 Commitment from the OTW Board, Chairs & Leads.
I haven't been active in fandom for a couple years now, but I appreciate that they still seem to be working on this.
Writer Beware: Army of Bots: Deeper Into the Vortex of Nigerian Marketing Scams.
LLMs are so fun. I'm glad everyone has access to them. It's def making the Internet better. /s
Science
The Tyee: Charting a Course Through Bears’ Eyes.
Popular Science: First-of-a-kind study shows encouraging data for trans kids who socially transition.
Politics
CBC: Pro-Palestinian protester suspended from Vancouver Island University loses court challenge.
My level of cynicism about higher education continues apace. It would cost VIU nothing to let the woman have her transcripts. They've made their point.
Sojourners: Politically Polarized Family Attempts White Elephant Gift Exchange.
Satire, gave me a laugh.
snowflake_challenge: Running a multi-fandom prompt every other day for all of January. (Yours truly isn't modding this year around, but will hopefully still participate.)cultivativity: This community is organized as a series of modules designed to help build a practice to nurture our creative selves.
beagoldfish: This is an event for small and non-traditional fanworks. We want to remind you to appreciate the little things, be kind, be curious, enjoy generously, and above all, 'be a goldfish.'Runs over January and Feburary 2026.
Archive of Our Own: Update on Our 2020 Commitment from the OTW Board, Chairs & Leads.
I haven't been active in fandom for a couple years now, but I appreciate that they still seem to be working on this.
Writer Beware: Army of Bots: Deeper Into the Vortex of Nigerian Marketing Scams.
LLMs are so fun. I'm glad everyone has access to them. It's def making the Internet better. /s
Science
The Tyee: Charting a Course Through Bears’ Eyes.
Stewards from the Heiltsuk First Nation are using computational models and Indigenous knowledge to protect bears’ access to salmon.
Popular Science: First-of-a-kind study shows encouraging data for trans kids who socially transition.
Politics
CBC: Pro-Palestinian protester suspended from Vancouver Island University loses court challenge.
My level of cynicism about higher education continues apace. It would cost VIU nothing to let the woman have her transcripts. They've made their point.
Sojourners: Politically Polarized Family Attempts White Elephant Gift Exchange.
Satire, gave me a laugh.
Write every day: Day 28
Dec. 28th, 2025 08:43 pmluzulaDay 28: Alibi sentence. Still lots of family time, now at my parents' place, so no farm news. How about you?
Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 27:the_siobhan, badly_knitted, goddess47, trobadora, sylvanwitch, sanguinity, china_shop, chestnut_pod
Day 28:luzula, china_shop
Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 27:
the_siobhan, badly_knitted, goddess47, trobadora, sylvanwitch, sanguinity, china_shop, chestnut_podDay 28:
luzula, china_shopConclave
Dec. 28th, 2025 03:47 pmosprey_archerA last-minute entry to movies I watched in 2025! When I popped into the library yesterday, there was Conclave sitting on the New DVDs shelf, so of course I snatched it up and took it right home and watched it.
Conclave is about a fictional modern-day conclave to elect a new pope, and I’ve been chomping at the bit to see it since it came out because… I guess I am just into movies about the Catholic church… I don’t fully understand this about myself. It may just be the aesthetic. Gold! Red! Shiny things! Lots of candles! One can criticize many things about the Catholic Church but by God they’ve got a look.
Anyway, cardinals converge on Rome, all wearing their cardinal gear, and if like me you enjoy things like aerial shots of cardinals carrying white parasols crossing the courtyard of a vast church complex, you will find great visual delight in this movie. And the movie doesn’t bog down in explaining things like the white parasols either. We don’t need to know why they’re part of the cardinal’s vestments.
The plot of the movie centers on the machinations to elect the new pope, featuring a bunch of guys who desperately want to be pope but also desperately need to pretend that they are being forced into pope candidacy against their will, because other people believe they are the best candidate. At one point in my life I would have scoffed at this hypocrisy, but having endured many years of Donald Trump on the public scene, I have come to believe that actually it’s quite politically useful for candidates to have to hang back until other people more or less drag them bodily into candidacy.
At the center of this is Ralph Fiennes, and I regret to inform you that I remember almost none of the character names from this movie, because I really struggle to tell people apart when they are all dressed the same and also all look pretty similar, in this case a bunch of old white guys with a smattering of old guys of other races.
Ralph Fiennes, as I was saying, is playing the guy who is in charge of making sure the election runs smoothly, and also perhaps awkwardly is one of the candidates - against his will, of course. (Perhaps slightly more sincerely against his will than some of the others.) I saw him about a year ago in the National Theater recording of Antony and Cleopatra, where he plays the sottish, running to seed, impulsive and still dangerous Antony, and his character here is just about the opposite in every way, which raised my respect for his acting ability even more.
He is calm, controlled, thoughtful, and deeply compassionate, a quality perhaps most clear in the scene where he points out to another cardinal that his hopes to be pope are toast. On the surface this action seems almost brutal, but that clarity allows the other cardinal to grieve his dreams in private, instead of hoping against hope and watching them get smashed in public.
An absorbing movie. I didn’t love it quite as much as I hoped to love it, but I greatly enjoyed watching it nonetheless.
Conclave is about a fictional modern-day conclave to elect a new pope, and I’ve been chomping at the bit to see it since it came out because… I guess I am just into movies about the Catholic church… I don’t fully understand this about myself. It may just be the aesthetic. Gold! Red! Shiny things! Lots of candles! One can criticize many things about the Catholic Church but by God they’ve got a look.
Anyway, cardinals converge on Rome, all wearing their cardinal gear, and if like me you enjoy things like aerial shots of cardinals carrying white parasols crossing the courtyard of a vast church complex, you will find great visual delight in this movie. And the movie doesn’t bog down in explaining things like the white parasols either. We don’t need to know why they’re part of the cardinal’s vestments.
The plot of the movie centers on the machinations to elect the new pope, featuring a bunch of guys who desperately want to be pope but also desperately need to pretend that they are being forced into pope candidacy against their will, because other people believe they are the best candidate. At one point in my life I would have scoffed at this hypocrisy, but having endured many years of Donald Trump on the public scene, I have come to believe that actually it’s quite politically useful for candidates to have to hang back until other people more or less drag them bodily into candidacy.
At the center of this is Ralph Fiennes, and I regret to inform you that I remember almost none of the character names from this movie, because I really struggle to tell people apart when they are all dressed the same and also all look pretty similar, in this case a bunch of old white guys with a smattering of old guys of other races.
Ralph Fiennes, as I was saying, is playing the guy who is in charge of making sure the election runs smoothly, and also perhaps awkwardly is one of the candidates - against his will, of course. (Perhaps slightly more sincerely against his will than some of the others.) I saw him about a year ago in the National Theater recording of Antony and Cleopatra, where he plays the sottish, running to seed, impulsive and still dangerous Antony, and his character here is just about the opposite in every way, which raised my respect for his acting ability even more.
He is calm, controlled, thoughtful, and deeply compassionate, a quality perhaps most clear in the scene where he points out to another cardinal that his hopes to be pope are toast. On the surface this action seems almost brutal, but that clarity allows the other cardinal to grieve his dreams in private, instead of hoping against hope and watching them get smashed in public.
An absorbing movie. I didn’t love it quite as much as I hoped to love it, but I greatly enjoyed watching it nonetheless.
Culinary
Dec. 28th, 2025 06:47 pmoursinLast week's bread held out adequately.
On Wednesday I made Angel Biscuit dough (this year I had active dried yeast) which was enough to provide for Christmas, Boxing Day and Saturday morning breakfast. Turned out rather well.
For Christmas dinner we had: starter of steamed asparagus with halved hardboiled quails' eggs and salmon caviar; followed by pheasant pot-roasted with bacon, brandy, and madeira and served with Ruby Gem potatoes roasted in goosefat, garlic-roasted tenderstem broccoli (as noted with previous recent tenderstem broccoli, wish to invoke Trades Description Act re actual tenderness of stem), and red cabbage (bought-in, as not only is it an Almighty Faff, making it from scratch would involve ending up with A Hell of A Lot of Red Cabbage). Then bought-in Christmas puds with brandy butter and clotted cream.
Boxing Day lunch: blinis with smoked salmon, smoked Loch trout, and the remaining salmon caviar, and creme fraiche with horseradish cream, and a salad of lamb's lettuce and grilled piccarello pepper strips, in a walnut oil and damson vinegar dressing. Followed by mince pies.
Yesterday lunch was the leftover blinis and smoked fish. For yesterday evening meal I made the remains of the pheasant into a pilaff, served with a green salad.
Today's lunch: chestnut mushrooms quartered in olive oil, white-braised green beans and cut up piccarello peppers, the Phul-Gobi (braised cauliflower) from Dharamjit Singh's Indian Cookery, and blinis made up from the last of the batter, a bit past its best.