regshoe

First of all, a note on physical book design: One thing I really dislike about new books is that most of them are absolutely massive hardbacks which I find really awkward and unwieldy to hold and keep open; The Warm Hands of Ghosts, for instance, when I got it from the library was a whopping 24cm high, and even Clarke's Piranesi is 22cm. They also tend to have dust jackets, which I dislike (these at least can be removed, although not from library books). My ideal format for a book is a small hardback with no dust jacket which lies more or less flat on the table; many of the older books I own are just that, and I lament the change in publishing practices. Imagine my satisfaction, therefore, when The Wood at Midwinter turns out to be a mere 20.5cm high, nicely cloth-bound, with no dust jacket. More of this, please. It also has a gorgeous cover design.

( Of all the trees that are in the wood... )

The last books of December!

Field Work: What Land Does to People and What People Do to Land by Bella Bathurst (2021). Found while browsing the shelves at the library, where I thought, ooh, a book all about modern farming, that's something I should know more about. Bathurst intersperses memoir-ish sections about the farm where she has lived (as tenant of the farm cottage) for some years and the family who own it with chapters describing her investigations into various aspects of farming and related business—visiting and interviewing a range of people involved in agriculture and describing their work. It's interesting stuff, and there's some really fascinating detail about things as varied as the day-to-day work of knackers, the complex psychology of family farms and the ways in which farmers are changing and diversifying their businesses to remain viable in the modern economy. But, given that subtitle, I was hoping for a bit more about the actual ecological detail of the processes of farming, of which there is not much. Also Bathurst's prose is sort of slick in a way I find unpleasant and untrustworthy (a complaint I have about a lot of modern non-fiction), and she has an irritating habit of bringing up controversial topics like anti-TB badger culls with an air of going 'look, I am not afraid to tackle controversial topics!' and then not actually saying anything about why there's a controversy or what she thinks the correct view of the issue is anyway.

Re-read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (2004), which is just about my favourite book ever. While I think I would have liked it less if I'd first read it more recently and with more experience of old books, it remains an excellent example of modern historical fiction as well as the best fantasy book there is. This time I appreciated Stephen's character even more, was intrigued by the ambiguity of his ending (good thing there was so much good Yuletide fic exploring what happens to him afterwards :D ) and apart from that just had a few random lingering questions, like why on earth does Lascelles—totally groundlessly, incorrectly and without any actual consequences—try to accuse Henry Woodhope of being in love with Strange in chapter 57???

Sixpenny Octavo by Annick Trent (2022). Disclaimer that the author is someone I know :) I was excited to see this appear! It's an f/f historical romance novel set in/around London in the 1790s, a time of political upheaval and repression by the British Government as the effects of the French Revolution are felt across the Channel. One of the main characters, Hannah Croft, is a clockmender whose best friend and business partner is arrested and imprisoned—erroneously but implacably—for sedition after the reading club they attend is raided by the authorities; the other, Lucy Boone, a servant recently out of work after her employer was also arrested for sedition and transported, may be able to give evidence that could help free Molly, Hannah's BFF. Working together, Lucy and Hannah fall in love... In case that summary didn't make it clear, there is a world of fascinating historical detail in this book: about the political atmosphere; about the jobs Lucy and Hannah do (Lucy decides to leave service and ends up making a living through more uncertain, specific and interesting work; meanwhile we hear a lot about Hannah's and Molly's clockmending), the places they go and their and their friends' lives in general; about reading and literacy and their place in eighteenth-century working-class life (Lucy learns to read over the course of the book, and the reading club where she becomes a regular attendee is an important setting throughout). I absolutely loved all that; and like Beck and Call, the other book of Trent's I have read and enjoyed, there's a lovely sense of the social-historical atmosphere, of the tasks that fill the characters' days and the places and social circles they inhabit. I was not so keen on the romance: the characters confess their feelings and begin their relationship long before they really trust or understand each other, which is not my thing, and there's some jealousy around Hannah/Lucy vs. Hannah's friendship with Molly which I did not like (really I think I dislike relationship jealousy in fiction generally, unless it's the sort resolved by the character deciding to remove themselves from the situation causing it). Also the prose style is more modern than I like (including in the made-up contemporary Gothic novel read by the reading club from which we get several excerpts, which was disappointing). There's some good exciting plot stuff, especially towards the end when the reading club identify the informer who was responsible for that raid in the first place—when the informer is unmasked they start complaining about how it's not fair, the Government don't even pay them, which made me laugh as I immediately thought of Pickle :D Oh, and I liked Lucy's friendship with her new employer Mr Raeburn, and the various ways they help each other. On the whole, the book is a very good one! Lots to like, and most of what I didn't like was a matter of taste—highly recommended.

Lochiel of the '45: The Jacobite Chief and the Prince by John Sibbald Gibson (1994). More Jacobite history reading, and more relevant material for my WIP! This book opens with a brief survey of Lochiel's family background and early life, but it's mostly about the '45: from Lochiel's agonising and historically pivotal decision to bring Clan Cameron to join Charles when he landed in Scotland, through the various parts played by Lochiel and the Camerons in the Rising itself, Lochiel's movements and plans in the months after Culloden and finally his unsuccessful Jacobite plotting in France in the last two years of his life. All fascinating stuff and highly relevant to Flight of the Heron! Some particularly interesting and noteworthy details:( Jacobite details! )

From Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, chapter 42:

When he awoke it was dawn. Or something like dawn. The light was watery, dim and incomparably sad. Vast, grey, gloomy hills rose up all around them and in between the hills there was a wide expanse of black bog. Stephen had never seen a landscape so calculated to reduce the onlooker to utter despair in an instant.

“This is one of your kingdoms, I suppose, sir?” he said.

“My kingdoms?” exclaimed the gentleman in surprize. “Oh, no! This is Scotland!”

From The Flight of the Heron, Part I chapter 1:

It was hot in the Great Glen, though a languid wind walked occasionally up Loch Lochy, by whose waters they were now marching. From time to time Captain Windham glanced across to its other side, and thought that he had never seen anything more forbidding. The mountain slopes, steep, green and wrinkled with headlong torrents, followed each other like a procession of elephants, and so much did they also resemble a wall rising from the lake that there did not appear to be space for even a track between them and the water. And, though it was difficult to be sure, he suspected the slopes beneath which they were marching to be very nearly as objectionable.

[...]

The sun was now getting lower, and though the other side of the glen was in full warm light, this side felt almost cold. Another peculiarity of this repulsively mountainous district. Gently swelling hills one could admire, but masses of rock, scored with useless and inconvenient torrents, had nothing to recommend them. He did not wonder at the melancholy complaints he had heard last night from the officers quartered at Fort Augustus.

(JSMN is set that much later that the Romantic view of mountainous country as beautiful and admirable has become more prominent, but I don't think there's anything especially significant in Stephen not agreeing with it here; for him it's just a matter of 'the gentleman has just dragged me off to this random place without any warning, it's cold and dark and soggy and I don't know what's going on, and I'm under a fairy enchantment that makes me horribly depressed all the time'. But it's amusing to think of him and Keith commiserating over their distaste for Scottish mountains, and also amusing to compare the Army command who oblige Keith to go to Scotland with the gentlemen who obliges Stephen to. Or to imagine Keith getting kidnapped by the gentleman!)

3weeks4dreamwidth begins today, and I'm excited about it—I love Dreamwidth and doing fandom on Dreamwidth, and this looks like a lovely opportunity to celebrate this place and do more fandom stuff here. :)

For the festivities muccamukk is posting daily discussion/fanwork prompts based on tarot cards, and when I saw that today's prompt was this picture my first thought was—ahahaha, there must surely be a Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell fic in there! So, sidetracked for a moment from my main fic projects, I wrote this ficlet about Thomas of Dundale.

I have spent the last week quietly panicking about Yuletide and reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which have made for an interesting combination. Anyway, my Yuletide fics are now mostly done, and I've finished the book!

I can't remember if I've said this before, but just in case: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the best book ever and I love it a lot. Even after reading it so many times there are still things to enjoy and appreciate and think about, so here are some more thoughts...

( The bare branches against the sky were a writing and, though he did not want to, he could read it. He saw that it was a question put to him by the trees. )

This earth shall have a feeling (4064 words) by regshoe
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Stephen Black & John Uskglass | The Raven King
Characters: Stephen Black
Additional Tags: faerie - Freeform, Magic, Portentous Ravens
Summary:

Stephen Black and the Raven King, from the beginning.

My attempt at beginning to explain the relationship between Stephen and the Raven King, which I thought deserved explaining. The title is an extremely out-of-context quote on kingship from Shakespeare's 'Richard II'.

Also, I now know how to code footnotes on AO3 :D

I'm delighted to announce that the Uskglass-related nonsense has resumed.

While the world is full of troubles by regshoe
Fandom: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Rating: T
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Words: 2,135
Characters: John Uskglass | The Raven King, Original Characters
Summary: 'The boy said that he had been taken by Hubert's men while still a baby and abandoned in the forest. But the Daoine Sidhe had found him and taken him to live with them in Faerie.' The story of a night in the last years of the eleventh century, in the wilds of northern England.

More-or-less disconnected musings on the question of being human, as applied to the life of John Uskglass.

Iron Enough To Make a Nail by regshoe
Fandom: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Rating: G
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Words: 2,305
Characters: John Uskglass | The Raven King, William of Lanchester, Catherine of Winchester, John Childermass
Summary: Some scenes from the life of the Raven King.

(I think 'strength enough to build a home, time enough to hold a child, love enough to break a heart' are all things he clearly demonstrates in canon <3)

Yesterday: finished re-reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

Today: went out for a walk in the countryside, saw a raven (in flight against the winter sky... <3).

Coincidence? I think not.

(Happy new year!)

Originally posted here on Tumblr. Note from Future Reg: This idea later turned into the fic The White Rose Whiter Blow.

From Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell:

To Lascelles’s surprize he saw that a small shoot was poking out of Drawlight’s right eye (the left one had been destroyed by the pistol blast). Strands of ivy were winding themselves about his neck and chest. A holly shoot had pierced his hand; a young birch had shot up through his foot; a hawthorn had sprung up through his belly. He looked as if he had been crucified on the wood itself. But the trees did not stop there; they kept growing. A tangle of bronze and scarlet stems blotted out his ruined face, and his limbs and body decayed as plants and other living things took strength from them.

From The Ballad of Reading Gaol:

They think a murderer’s heart would taint
Each simple seed they sow
It is not true! God’s kindly earth
Is kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but blow more red
The white rose whiter blow

Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way,
Christ brings his will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight?

Tags: i don't have any particularly profound point to make here, i was just struck by the similar imagery used in similar ways, i love when basically-realistic writing sort of gestures towards the fantastic in description or illustrating themes, and seeing a parallel with a book that's actually about magic was pretty interesting