On books, and friends

I got a pair of books in the mail last week. It was trade paper editions (inscribed, and the first with such an inscription as one can only hope to deserve) of Ink and Steel, and Hell and Earth by matociquala, and I have a guilty confession.

Some time back she sent me a pdf of the whole thing. I never read it. It sits on my computer's desktop mocking me for 1: not liking to read fiction on the computer (I thought I might read it while travelling, even that wasn't enough), and 2: I am terrible at reading books by my friends.

I am ever afraid I won't like them. This is all out of comparison to the books they may have already pleased me with. I have read a lot of manuscript, with a critical eye. That doesn't bother me. But a finsished product... I get the willies.

And fantasy is even harder for me to get into, because there are so many more places in which it can go wrong. But, once I had these in my hands, I dove in. I like her stuff. I like the period in which she set them, and I like the characters. I had some trepidations.

I've studied the period (late Elizabeth/early James). The people are familiar to me, as is the language. There were only two places in which I saw a real bobble (a misplaced whom, and word which didn't enter English until after WW2), and those were minor. It was familiar, and comfortable and easy to read.

Not just easy to read, hard to put down. I started them on Thursday, and apart from time spent taking pictures and lying in wait for squirrels, it was what I did. I finished the story (one tale, two volumes) this morning.

One long draught, and done.

Y'all ought to think about picking them up.

The virtues of stubborn repetition

I was over at Maia's, cleaning the mice, feeding the snakes, and lying in wait for squirrels.

I went to let the goose out, and give him run of his yard (April is the last of the geese, coyotes got the others, so he is in a cage in the evenings, and only released if there is someone to return him at night).

Which was when I saw the crocus. There are number of them in pots. They are stunning. A really nice shade of purple, with a hard gloss on the outer petals, and a wonderful veining. This was a saffron crocus, just opening. So I watered them (there were others, not in bloom) and set up the computer, and everything else.

Then I spent time shooting the flower. After which I went to the computer, and watching the birds, and listening for squirrels (of which there were none). Every so often I went back to the flower, and shot some more, trying to catch the essence of it, as it opened.

This is the way my first glimpse looked.

A Study in Saffron


There are more.