Holiday, reading/watching, Christmas cards
Dec. 7th, 2025 09:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenwoodsideI got to go to mainland Europe in November. It was my first time out of the UK in eleven years. Although the holiday took place for family reasons outside my control (it's okay: no one had died) and had some stressors, it was great to be travelling again, and to visit Bayern/Bavaria and Czechia for the first time. Though I kept wanting to cry because of Brexit and all the crap that's happened since that vote in 2016.
Strahav Monastery, Prague.
Entertaining graffiti spotted on an otherwise immaculate street near the bank of the Danube in Regensburg: "Vandalism keeps the rent down".
Old houses in Regensburg, looking pretty.
Surprise Alps in Füssen. Surprise because when we got there, the clouds were so low that you could barely see the end of the street. After hiding from the sleet for a couple of hours in a restaurant, we emerged, and the mountains said BEHOLD. WE ARE HERE.
I remembered more German than I expected, and only managed to piss off one transport assistant by speaking Welsh to her. (Heddiw and heute are so similar, it's an easy mistake to make! Apparently the similarity is an Indo-European thing. This + day reconstructed across multiple languages with similar-sounding building blocks).
I also think I'm a capitalist slave because one of the most enjoyable things on the holiday was just wandering around Edeka or around Galeria Kaufhof's food department going Oooooh.
The house is still taking up most of my energy outside work. At the moment I'm procrastinating on a battle with some aged anaglypta wallpaper. But slowly things are coming together. By March next year, I might even be able to put away the million screwdrivers, allen keys, and B&Q equipment currently littering every window ledge and corner.
Books are helping me keep going. Reading has included:
- Seven out of the ten books in Adrian Tchaikovsky's huge Shadows of the Apt fantasy insect (yes, of course) series. It's very schlocky but mostly also fun. Great to read on the bus. Highlight so far was a beetle-aligned POV character encountering an eccentric retired dragonfly general who keeps singing birds as a hobby; the former is hugely grossed out by them: the birds are so creepy and unnatural with their snapping pointy beaks and mad eyes and weird sharp feet. Heh. Adrian continuing to fight the good fight against vertebrate bigots. I've burned out of the series for now, but will return to it.
- I think Tchaikovsky has broken me. I checked his Amazon page and he's got another two books out. If he's revealed to be the human face for a collective writing group of genetically modified bees, I won't be surprised and I don't think anyone else will be either.
- The Book of Dust: The Rose Garden. This was an odd one. I know that Philip Pullman does have the discipline to write gripping adventure stories (see: Northern Lights; The Belle Sauvage). With this and his last book, I'm not sure if he's forgotten how to, or has just lost interest in doing so and wants to explore other things. In this case, the nature of the imagination. I enjoyed the book, despite its meandering, not to say rambling, nature and tendency to wave at elements of genre storytelling but then quickly move on to a page of internal monologue or a conversation about Lyra's emotional problems. I'll try and write a longer post about it at some point, because the more I think about it, the more there is to say, some of it frustrated and irritated, some of it admiring.
- Hemlock and Silver by T Kingfisher. Reworking of Snow White. Sweet and fun with a one-eyed talking cat. Ursula Vernon (author's RL name) doesn't do anything very new here, but since I find what she generally does do to be pretty likeable and great for winter, that's okay. I think she was trying to stretch herself more in A Sorceress Comes to Call and hope she continues to develop, though apparently whatever she does is likely to involve manipulative or somehow disfunctional mothers. Apparently her relationship with her own mother is good (according to her latest author's note) -- maybe it's just one of those things, like Tchaikovsky and arthropods
- Just started the latest Murray of Letho detective novel by Lexie Conyngham, set in the lead up to King George IV's 1822 visit to Scotland, orchestrated by Sir Walter Scott. I don't know what her writing process is, but I always imagine her in a study filled with period maps and shelves of social history. Her care for detail is beautiul.
Watching:
Not that much, at the moment. I'm sure the pendulum will swing back in that direction soon, certainly by Christmas, which is my traditional time for crashing out and watching lots of TV. I caught the start of the latest series of Stranger Things, and enjoyed that. It's got at least two levels of nostalgia now. First, there's the eighties tribute act thing that it's been doing since the start. I don't remember the eighties, still, anyone with any lingering affection for the spirit of The Goonies can probably key into it. And now, since the first episode aired in 2016, and all the little kids are full-grown adults, in one case with a kid of their own, there's that layer of feeling too. Shit, they got big. Even in tribute acts, time doesn't stand still. The show has been handling that rather well by going back to its Season 1 roots with a plot about child kidnapping, with some of the old child cast starting to consciously accept their role as authority figures and legit grown-ups.
I feel like sending Christmas cards. If you'd like a Christmas card, please leave your address in a locked post or, if that's not possible, let me know and I'll share my email. Be warned that while I'm very organised about buying Christmas cards, and even at writing and stamping them, I tend to fall down when it comes to actually posting them. So the card will definitely arrive, but it might be in time for Christmas 2026 or 27.
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Date: 2025-12-07 05:09 pm (UTC)I've been enjoying Stranger Things too! I like the 80s vibe (The clothes! The music!), and I think you're absolutely right in that the decade since the show started has added an extra layer of nostalgia to it. I think it makes sense to end it now. I will miss Robin though, she's my favourite!
And I like the idea of a card arriving possibly at a random time! <3 I'll send you my address, in case you don't still have it?
Oh and how's your mate doing? *hugs*
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Date: 2025-12-11 08:51 pm (UTC)Oh and how's your mate doing? *hugs*
<3 I asked how they were doing on 1st December, and haven't heard back yet. I can think of several possible explanations. The one about them getting a job as dressmaker to the Dragon King of Bhutan is nice but unlikely -- I'm just hoping there hasn't been more bad news.
I've been enjoying Stranger Things too! I like the 80s vibe (The clothes! The music!), and I think you're absolutely right in that the decade since the show started has added an extra layer of nostalgia to it. I think it makes sense to end it now. I will miss Robin though, she's my favourite!
Yes, she's been great. The show has done a pretty good job across the board with its late-joining characters: I enjoyed Sean Astin and Patrick Quinn -- hopefully Robin will continue to escape their fate! And have more cool moments. I liked seeing her watch out for Will and give him some confidence. Also, it's going to be great to have something fun to watch on Christmas Day, especially since there's no Doctor Who.
And I like the idea of a card arriving possibly at a random time! <3 I'll send you my address, in case you don't still have it?
Could you? I think I'm going to have to do the pre-internet thing and keep a real physical address book. It can sit on a bookcase of real physical books, once I expand my optional furniture beyond a cobalt blue camping chair.
And oh, I'd never heard of the Murray of Letho books before, but they sound great, thank you! I do like a good novel set in Scotland, more so if it's carefully crafted and researched. It's all D. K. Broster's fault, haha!
It's a fun series! Definitely cosy crime, but not stupid cosy crime. I don't remember a huge amount about most of the plots full of red herrings and sometimes rather abrupt endings, but I do remember the brose, the comedy of manners and gentle satire, the whiskey and bannocks, the Old Town and New Town, and the brose. Also, I don't normally see things with slash goggles, but the central character and his man Robbins -- if the series were better known, I'm pretty sure fan writers would be busy! A standalone thriller/mystery covering an earlier period (about twenty years after the forty-five) called The Slaughter of Leith Hall is probably a good taster book for the author.
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Date: 2025-12-14 01:12 am (UTC)Don't worry about it! This is me right now but with summer, so I totally get it.
Fingers crossed!
Sold! Thank you!
(ANd will send my address right after I post this comment!)
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Date: 2025-12-08 04:27 pm (UTC)LOL.
It looks like a fabulous holiday (and let's not think about Brexit, or we will weep...)
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Date: 2025-12-11 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-09 12:03 pm (UTC)Though I kept wanting to cry because of Brexit and all the crap that's happened since that vote in 2016.
Yeah, my mum and I went to Florence a couple of years ago, and because we obviously had to join the non-EU queue out of the airport, we spent the whole 45-minute taxi ride afterwards bitching about Brexit.
Highlight so far was a beetle-aligned POV character encountering an eccentric retired dragonfly general who keeps singing birds as a hobby; the former is hugely grossed out by them: the birds are so creepy and unnatural with their snapping pointy beaks and mad eyes and weird sharp feet. Heh. Adrian continuing to fight the good fight against vertebrate bigots.
Ahahaha!
I really liked A Sorceress Comes To Call, but it was also my first and so far only Ursula Vernon, and from people's comments I get the sense that that helps, haha. Since she seems to do a lot of the same sort of thing.
with some of the old child cast starting to consciously accept their role as authority figures and legit grown-ups.
That's cool.
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Date: 2025-12-12 07:12 pm (UTC)It took about 60 minutes to get through the passport check in Prague. Not fun at 9pm! But really inconvenient tourist hold-ups make up about 0.000001% of my problems with Brexit.
I really liked A Sorceress Comes To Call, but it was also my first and so far only Ursula Vernon, and from people's comments I get the sense that that helps, haha. Since she seems to do a lot of the same sort of thing.
Yes, she's definitely found a niche. (It's a good niche, and I hope she keeps writing books from there, perhaps with occasional excursions). I've been reading her since around 2005 or 2006 --- but as a fanfiction writer --- when I think she was still making an RL name for herself with graphic novels/comics. So going on twenty years now. Eep.