Frances K R – Page 31

Statistically, I give this rating to less than 3.5% of books I have rated.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the story of a boy whose mother is sick, and the monster that comes to call.

It is a sad book, and a true one (in that it speaks a truth, not the truth; I think it is smart enough to realize that the topic it is addressing is not one it can fully dress down in words). I have not decided if it is a kind or a cruel book; if it is kind, it is a terrible sort of kindness.

I wrote, once, privately, seven-months-and-change ago, about how there is a dearth of narratives for accepting that you have finished grieving. This is not about that, but it speaks to the shunning–of aspects, of truth, of a person entire–that arises in response to apparently terminal illness, and I think the topics are related.

It strikes me as very worth reading, and I recommend picking it up most strongly.

Bloody peculiar magazine.

Quite busy at the moment, and with somewhat depressing details to boot. Rather than getting into all that, a small and undepressing anecdote about Weird Tales magazine, specifically about the fact that a copy arrived in my mailbox on Monday.

This would not even warrant a mention if it weren’t for the fact that I don’t have either a running subscription (mine expired a couple of years back) or a single unfilled order for the magazine in question.

It was definitely addressed to me (I checked), so I am not depriving anyone of their copy. And I mean, it’s free genre reading material, so I am not complaining. I’m just confused. I checked with my mother and the light of my life and neither of them got me a subscription, and no-one has mentioned doing any such thing. I doubt very much they’re doing mailouts to try and get former subscribers to resubscribe, since there was no note or flyer or anything along those lines in the envelope; just the magazine.

Someone I know did get a small interview in the pages, and I’m wondering if he asked that one of the contributor copies be sent my way. That’s about the only thing left that I can think of that might have caused this to happen; otherwise, I’m simply going to assume that there was a glitch in the system. Might actually call them and check; if it is a glitch, they would probably like to keep it from happening again.

(I like two of the stories rather well, but had to grind through a third. Will finish the magazine later.)

I didn’t use to believe that the past could reach cold hands out towards the living…

Funnily enough, I used this for a post title nearly two years ago, too. It’s a line from Stephen King’s Christine, which I have been thinking about rereading lately.

Anyway. I’ve been thinking about Kyle Murchison Booth, a character from an interlinked series of stories written by Sarah Monette (many of which were collected in The Bone Key. I love the stories very much–they remind me of MR James–and I am just quietly amused that two fairly significant things didn’t occur to me on the first read-through.

(This may be a side-effect of going through them with great enthusiasm, and therefore great speed.)

First, the past is never kind to Booth (I think he may have actually been called Cousin Kyle in one of the stories, and I still can’t imagine doing it; he is Booth, to me, or Kyle Murchison Booth, but not Kyle). No-one who knew him from before, or who knew of him from before, ever seeks him out to do him good. There is Radcliffe, who is specifically a break with the patterns of the past, and did not go looking for Booth, and is very nearly still cruel to him anyway.

Second–and this is one the light of my life pointed out to me–the Samuel Mather Parrington Museum is not a safe place. It is haunted. But it is safe from other haunts. They may chase Booth, and they may press against the outside of his window, and they may wait for him at the bottom of its stairs… but they do not go into the Parrington.

Whatever walks there, walks alone.

Books, again.

I’ve been culling our bookshelves for a couple of weeks now. While I’ve collected a fair number to get rid of, perhaps fifty, it hasn’t made a huge difference. I have a lot of books. Most of them still aren’t in Goodreads (and I get that funny guilty twinge whenever it recommends a book I’ve already read and have on the shelves to me). And given that Goodreads lists about six hundred books on my “owned” shelf, and yes, I really did mean most of them still aren’t in the system…

…I have a lot of books.

It’s easier to cull them this time than it was in times before, and it’s nothing to do with not wanting to read. On top of the books, I have a particular attitude: I don’t want to be the kind of person who gets rid of a book. I have had this attitude for a long time.

I’ve had it since before we bought our house.
I’ve had it since before I rented my own place.
I’ve had it since before I moved out and went to university.
I’ve had it since before I went to boarding school in Switzerland[1], and that was for ninth grade.
Like some of the books I still own, I’ve had it since I lived in London as a kid.

I think it’s very easy to embrace absolutes when you’re a kid. And it’s easy not to question those absolutes, especially when they’re not overtly harmful. I don’t want to be the kind of person who lets go of a book. Because books are awesome, dammit. I mean, that hasn’t changed for me–books are amazing, books make me happy, new ones can be a wonder and old ones are a comfort and I don’t see this changing. I love (the best of) my books, and I love the idea of books, and I have a respect for the physical integrity of books (even ones I don’t like) that’s… quite hard to override.

When I developed this attitude, I didn’t understand certain things that I understand now.

The fact of limited space in housing, and how sheddy long-haired cats can be, and how books can pile up and collect dust.
Shared space, really shared space, and the importance of not having someone you live with made uncomfortable by your housekeeping.
The low-level cringe that a cluttered room induces.
The embarrassment of finding you already own a book you just got[2]–fortunately I’ve never bought one and had that happen, but there’ve been friend loans and library loans and… yeah, it’s not a good feeling.

I’m still not the kind of person who gets rid of books casually. But I don’t want to look at myself and say I’m the kind of person who won’t get a book out of her house if it’s making her unhappy to have it there. There’s nothing noble or devoted about that.

That’s damaging, albeit in a low-level constant-background what-weight-do-you-mean-oh-this-weight-I’ve-been-carrying-this-weight-so-long-I-don’t-hardly-notice-it-no-more, and I am, finally, too old for that shit.
—
[1] In a former tuberculosis sanitarium.
[2] This is totally different from buying a replacement for a battered copy, or deliberately picking up a second copy for love or loaning purposes. On this note, you should all read Days by James Lovegrove, Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, and Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. Seriously.

Keeping moving.

Today felt a lot longer than Tuesdays usually do. I didn’t sleep well, which I imagine is part of it, and it took me a while to wake up. And most of the day seemed to go on strictly Sisyphean tasks; laundry when more clothes will be worn, dishes when more meals will be cooked and eaten, cleaning the litterboxen, and on and on. It was raining this morning, which was actually kind of lovely, and I wasn’t able to make it out for that; in fact, with one thing and another, I wasn’t able to make it out until after dark, which always feels a little as if it doesn’t quite count.

Still. I did make it out, and the house is cleaner than yesterday.

I’m hoping to sleep better tonight (a goal which I am sure I will get to a lot more quickly if I stop typing, but I also want to get this finished), and for tomorrow… not sure. Thinking I may need to start blocking out specific chunks of time for specific tasks in order to keep the day from slipping away.

On the plus side, the collaborative writing project I’m in seems to have started slowly unstalling itself, which is nice. Touch wood and hope it carries on.

Blinking at the calendar

Wow, it’s been a long time.

Most of February was taken up with some acute household health stuff (everyone’s fine, life carries on, thank god the crying jags were mostly staggered in timing because I think that if we’d had them all happening at the same time it would have been harder to get through). March was tied up a lot with some temporary work. And I can’t believe it’s halfway through April, good grief, where does the time go?

I spent a chunk of last night trying to update my CV to reflect something that I’m good at but that I’m not usually hired to do, and it’s a little scary. Besides that, there’s not much really going on. I’m tired and I realized today that I’ve dropped the ball on something, and I’m trying to get it back together rather than bolting in the opposite direction throwing excuses behind me. Should be manageable, really.

Piper’s having trouble walking, so I’m sitting with her in the living room and going to get through as much as I can today without leaving her alone for too long. I foresee a lot of laundry in my future today. It won’t be so bad, if I can get to the doing rather than the talking about.

In which I am pleasantly surprised

Back in December, I mentioned that I’d picked up a collection of eight horror movies for five bucks. The recognizable one[1] is the original Night of the Living Dead, so I’m not going to be putting that on. However! There is also Colour from the Dark, a movie which instantly raises the burning question “Did the writers read “Colour out of Space”, or is this a direct rip-off tribute derivative of the very-understandably-forgotten The Curse[2]?”

A family accidentally frees something from the Earth’s womb while drawing water from their well and now a sinister glow is seeping into their lives.

Really, it could be either.

Continue reading “In which I am pleasantly surprised”

PC Gamer, Richard Cobbett and the Open Beta

http://www.belowgame.com/pc-gamer-richard-cobbett-and-the-open-beta/

Quite tired.

The job hunt continues, and I think that’s enough said about that.

I’ve been tidying the house a fair bit, and while it was never horrible, it looks a lot less cluttered now. (I got rid of fifteen litres of yarn on Thursday, actually, and am rather ridiculously happy about that. Am currently trying to figure out how best to rehome comics and graphic novels.)

I lost two hours in the middle of the day, today, and while I don’t think it was a bad loss I wish I’d been a bit more productive.

And I’ve joined A Month of Letters because really, I have all these bits of stationery around and after a while an unused stack of paper can start to seem as sad as an unread book.

(I’m still working on books, too.)

One of our pets probably needs elbow surgery, and we’re still waiting to hear back from the surgeon (we, at this point, means both us and the vet we took her to see). I am trying very hard not to get frustrated at the delay, I understand that there are probably not a lot of veterinary surgeons in town, but I really want to know what can be done for her. She’s not okay, right now.

I’m trying not to get ground down. It’s mostly working.