Sunday Status Update: February 13, 2022

This week, Galadriel.

Galadriel: It is the time in Lothlorien when we honor love. At least, it is that time inasmuch as it is ever any specific time in Lothlorien, as time is something of which we of the wood think little. Seasons change and the world runs by about the eaves of Lorien, yet ever it is our desire to forget that so long has passed from long-ago days. At least, that’s what I told Celeborn this week when he mentioned I’d forgotten our anniversary. He got all shirty, as usual, and I had to go on about how I’d lost myself in reminiscences of a long-lost time when I wore a rich hauberk and carried a sword. I waxed quite poetic. Think he might have bought it. Mum’s the word.

Bill: The highlight of the past two weeks was the arrival of a new Guy Gavriel Kay novel — All the Seas of the World. I would say something about its quality, but it’s a Guy Gavriel Kay novel, so you already know.  I also  read Animal Bodies, a collection of essays by Suzanne Roberts that started strongly but petered out somewhat; The Carnival of Ash, an up and down (mostly up) collection of linked short stories by Tom Beckerlegge set in Renaissance Italy (sort of); and two poetry collections: Coffin Honey by Todd Davis, a collection that rewarded multiple readings, and Under Her Skin, an anthology of female body horror poems edited by Linda Ryan and Toni Miller that unfortunately contained only a handful of poems I responded well to. In genre video I finished the truly fantastic first season of Arcane, the highly enjoyable first half-season of Star Trek: Prodigy, and the OK season of The Book of Boba Fett (which somehow became The Mandalorian Season 1.5), gave up on two other shows — Babylon 5  (I know, I know) and Stitchers. In ongoing viewing, season two of Resident Alien is absolutely nailing it, and I’m amiably wandering through Eureka season 2 while grading.

Marion: I finished Annalee Newitz’s engrossing nonfiction work Four Lost Cities. It really sparks the imagination. If you’re a writer and want to think about worldbuilding, this belongs on your shelf. As a change of pace I read Vanessa and her Sister, by Priyi Parmar. It’s an imagining of the early adult years of Vanessa Stephen and her younger sister, Virginia Stephen, who went on to get married and under her married name, Virginia Woolf, published a few things. The book includes the various thinkers, writers and artists of the Bloomsbury Group (because it seems impossible to talk about Vanessa Stephen Bell and Virginia Woolf without including them), but tries to focus on the inner life of the older Stephen daughter, who was an artist in her own right. Parmar’s prose is graceful and lovely, but a rushed ending made the story ultimately fall short for me. Now I’m on my second read of Nghi Vo’s incandescent Siren Queen, as an ARC.

Sandy: Moi? I am currently reading still another offering from Armchair Fiction’s Lost World/Lost Race series, this one being a novel from 1916 entitled The Strange Story of William Hyde, by Patrick and Terence Casey. The book is turning out to be kind of a slow read for me, not because I’m not enjoying it – I am actually loving it – but rather because it is incredibly detailed and is requiring a bit of research on my part to appreciate all the obscure references. I hope to be able to share some thoughts about this one with you all very shortly….

Terry: I started a couple of new books this week despite my resolution to finish everything else first. I’ve gone back to the beginning of the DALZIEL AND PASCOE mystery series by Reginald Hill with A Clubbable Woman; I want to closely watch how these characters grow this time around. And I’m vastly enjoying Jonathan Maberry’s Empty Graves, a collection of his zombie tales.