Greetings all from a grey, cool and rainy UK - we're promised more warmth next week by the forecast, but for now I'm enjoying the July cardigans and only having pollen allergies, no heat rashes or chafing to go along with it. I'm just over one week into a two week block of annual leave and my reading mojo came back in a rush - even a somewhat patronising, ecologically under-researched piece of highly recommended literary fiction got read in a couple of days - and I know that at least Susan and Dame Eleanor also have more reading time in the summer. So let's talk about books! Any suggestions for fun, mind-candy summer reads, well-written and informative non-fiction, or something thought-provoking which will hang around the corners of the mind for months to come? Or something teaching or academic career-related which is worth the time?
THIS WEEK'S GAMEPLAY
The group seemed to all feel that following the Sprites' suggestion made sense - the help of the Ladies of the Wood is clearly worth having, and the large fish is a problem which sounds within scope, especially now Cornelius has told Scout that he has some black powder! Since the herbs you've found are close to the stream, which leads to the pond, between Martha, Linnet and Scout you are pretty confident you'll be able to find this spot again quite easily (you'll all be taking note of distinctive trees and local features that you can remember), so you decide to go after the fish immediately - it's only mid-morning after all.
Walking along the stream bank isn't entirely easy - it's overgrown and muddy, and walking up the stream bed is a hard slog given the varying depth and substrates, from slippery pebbles to fine, cloudy mud, but half an hour of persistence brings you to the promised pool - and it is as beautiful as it sounded, a fairly large pool big enough for a human to have a bit of a swim in, fed from a small waterfall scattering rainbows from the spray, with rocky shelves for basking near the waterfall, and to the left of the outflowing stream there's a shallower area of waterlilies backed by a reedbed. But it is very quiet, quieter than the surrounding woods. You settle in in hopefully concealed places to watch and get a feeling for the place. After a few minutes, a bird (or maybe not) flies over and drops a small object into the water - as soon as it hits, a large scaly shape erupts out of the depths and large jaws lined with several rows of teeth snap at the ripple source, its back curving out of the water revealing spikes along its back and spiny fins, as it drops back down, slapping the water with its tail in seeming frustration. There's definitely a fish here! And it's about 8 feet long, too big to get out via the stream.
What do your characters want to do? You could try to recall information relevant to what you've just seen (you can see what you might know/be able to recall about the creature's nature, any magical aspects or myths/stories that might be relevant or helpful, or see if your observations gave you any clues to its weaknesses), you could try to find some local creatures or inhabitants to get information from, or you could go straight to setting up a suitable plan for getting rid of this fish - it's clearly hungry so that might be helpful, and you all have different skills and weapons to use.
LAST WEEK'S GOALS
DAISY
- Work on difficult paper every day, goal to get it close to done
- Essential admin
- Read chapters maybe
- Real summer: beach with kid after next camp pick-up
DAME ELEANOR HULL
- swim x3, weights x2, yoga x4
- finish Alms!
- create syllabus for new class
- Greek 1 unit
- 2 phone calls
- 1 trip to campus
- dentist
- defrack habitat
HEU MIHI
1. Finish proceedings essay edits
2. Revise Festschrift paragraph
3. Overcome my fear of working on my intro
4. Finish stacking wood
5. Add website page for grad students
6. Work out a bunch
JANEB
1. self-care: 75%+ of regular chores list, sort the Clothes Pile Of Doom, additional intentional movement three days, do physio recommended stretches with great caution at least once, practice rest as needed. Make appointment for physiotherapy (I've reached the make an appointment point on the waiting list), call handypeople about lights and gate and cat-fence, make appointment to talk to employment advisor at neurodivergent adults charity.
2. fun: play D&D, crochet some, draw something, read a lot of somethings, do some paintgemming, write something.
3. teaching and administration: NOTHING
4. research: NOTHING
JULIE
1. Submit grant?!
2. Write abstract for call for papers.
3. Plan archive trip for September.
4. Last bit of admin - report for PhD student review.
5. Read chapter for PhD student.
6. Bathroom project.
7. Life admin - book train tickets, hairdresser.
8. Read book for book club.
SUSAN
1. Three chapters of Famous Author
2. Write again to editors
3. Actually do the stuff for Big Collaboration
4. Read dissertation
5. Plan trip to dissertation city for little archival work
6. Do something fun
7. Keep reading for pleasure
IN SUMMARY
for real life TLQ - goal check-in and book talk! Any suggestions for fun, mind-candy summer reads, well-written and informative non-fiction, or something thought-provoking which will hang around the corners of the mind for months to come? Or something teaching or academic career-related which is worth the time?
for TLQuest: now you can see the big fish, what do you want to do next? See what you can recall or deduce (effectively ask the DM for more information!)? Launch into action?
I'm still considering the possibility of shape-shifting, especially given the size of this thing! Of course it could have entered the pool when it was smaller and then grown too large to get out, but I do feel a bit uneasy about killing it without trying to find out more. If it is just a monster, that's one thing, but I don't want to discover that I have just delivered to the Ladies the body of their ne'er-do-well nephew who was put in the pool to think over his latest misdemeanors. If the thing is an animal, I may be able to establish some rapport with it, but lacking "real magic" I'm not sure I'll be able to sense its nature if it's actually Fae or similar. I think the sprites were probably telling the truth as they know it, but at their size, they're not going to come close enough to investigate carefully. I need more input from somewhere! I'm going to start by tossing a hunk of bread into the pool (followed by a piece of fruit, and then a slice of meat if anyone has some)---see whether the thing prefers any item in particular, and whether I can tell if it's simply animal or something else, also whether its motives are monstrous, or whether it's just hungry, or whether there's something else going on.
ReplyDeleteIs there anyone/thing else around here that we can talk to about the pool, the woods, and its denizens? I can only talk to things that have speech capacities, but I believe Martha can talk to animals. Should we try to make contact with the Ladies of the Wood and ask what they know about this fishy thing and what they'd like done with it?
Hello everyone, well, for a week where it felt as if I pretty much just slept, noodled on my phone, and ate too many snacks, I actually have made progress on various tasks.
ReplyDeleteAnd am getting through a lot of reading! Rather than favourites, these are just things I enjoyed recently - in beachy frivolities, the Nosey Parker cosy mysteries by Fiona Leitch - set in Cornwall, ex-London-cop turned back-in-home-town-caterer Jodie can't resist getting entangled in murder investigations. The obligatory old friend/high school boyfriend versus dishy Detective Inspector romance plot isn't too annoying, and the obligatory rescued animal has a personality but isn't too prominent. Not art, but pretty solidly crafted and enjoyable. Well written non-fiction - caveat, I'm not a historian, and most of my history reading/knowledge is solidly European with a dash of mostly Eastern North America. I really enjoyed The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan - caveat that I'm currently reading The Earth Transformed which is closer to my area of expertise and so far am enjoying it a little less - it's still good though! The last book that really hung around my mind was Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo - very expensive for a novella, but also rich and strange and thought-provoking.
LAST WEEK'S GOALS:
1. self-care: 75%+ of regular chores list, sort the Clothes Pile Of Doom, additional intentional movement three days, do physio recommended stretches with great caution at least once, practice rest as needed. Make appointment for physiotherapy (I've reached the make an appointment point on the waiting list), call handypeople about lights and gate and cat-fence, make appointment to talk to employment advisor at neurodivergent adults charity. just about, no, two days, no, yes I did that thoroughly, yes, yes, yes, yes
2. fun: play D&D, crochet some, draw something, read a lot of somethings, do some paintgemming, write something. yes twice, no, yes, yes, yes, no
3. teaching and administration: NOTHING I did check emails Friday and deal with one thing - I was checking in hopes that we'd know the decisions about who is in redundancy pools and which programmes the university are planning to cut, which according to the Change Programme would be decided by the Friday, but I should know better than to expect information to come to staff on schedule - even if the decision was made, I expect communication cascades (and message crafting) will take a few days. But pretty much nothing
4. research: NOTHING yes
This WEEK'S GOALS:
1. self-care: 75%+ of regular chores list, sort the Clothes Pile Of Doom, additional intentional movement three days, do physio recommended stretches with great caution at least once, practice rest as needed. Attend eye clinic for lenses, meet with possible garden person, meet with employment counsellor, try to progress one other house project.
2. fun: play D&D, crochet some, draw something, read a lot of somethings, do some paintgemming, write something. Main goal for this second week of annual leave is to do something enjoyable or at least that induces a flow state of mind every day.
3. teaching and administration: NOTHING
4. research: NOTHING
Yay for progress, rest, and fun! You did great with the making appointments and calls, as well as with the fun things!
DeleteWell done on rest and fun. And Fiona Leitch sounds like a good one to check out - not just for me, but I need to find a cosy crime for a book club gift swap. I am intrigued by the 'somewhat patronising, ecologically under-researched literary fiction' - can think of a couple of possibilities.
DeleteOh, and I wanted to read Peter Frankopan, but he came to talk about the Earth Transformed to our seminar series this year, and was so awful in person that it put me off.
DeleteLots of yes, even though you checked work email: I would have too. And I just heard Peter Frankopan give a very prestigious lecture, which he basically phoned in. While he knows his field, he's got used to being able to talk from 30,000 feet and use a fair amount of b.s. He doesn't have to teach, and it shows. Also, because he's married to a Sainsbury, he's used for fundraising and he gets confused by audience. My sense is that the Silk Road is good, if not entirely original...
DeleteI don't know anything about Peter Frankopan, but it sounds like you're having a pretty leave-y leave, JaneB, which is excellent!
DeleteThe Silk Roads didn't feel hugely original but it was a highly competent and readable synthesis with not much of the author (I am sick of the current trend where factual books are full of annoying little stories about the author's travels or the amazing people they met or introducing different scientists as wacky humans with real human lives, I want to read INFORMATION if I select non-fiction which is not an (auto)biography, and about the subject if it's a biography, not about the author. I want the author to only be there through their competence and writing voice, not constantly popping up telling me they were in a quarry in Germany on a really hot day, or had a great meal in a monastery in Bhutan, or whatever). Having listened to a couple of seasons of his podcast, I formed the impression of one of those public historians who has minimal intersection with the actual work of the department! Thought I might just be being judgey but maybe not...
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBooks, hmm. I've recently read Devil's Chew Toy for my mystery group; it's okay but I didn't love it (and with so many lesbian-of-color characters, why is it the white guy who's the brains of the outfit?). I'm now reading various mysteries by E. C. R. Lorac (Golden Age), recently republished and also available through archive.org; I'm at least as interested in the lifestyles and attitudes of characters as I am in the stories; the mystery-puzzles are decent, but I can't say the characters are really likeable, and I keep wanting to re-write them to make different people guilty. I liked Bricks and Mortar, another mid-century archive.org find, not a mystery but the (fictional) life of an architect born in the 19th century, lived to the 1930s, the connections between people and houses. I re-read Margery Sharpe's Martha novels (starting with The Eye of Love, then there are two more) and enjoyed them a lot.
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
- swim x3, weights x2, yoga x4. YES, ALL. weights x3, even.
- finish Alms! NOT YET, wrote another 1500 words.
- create syllabus for new class. STARTED. minimal progress, really, but starting is a good thing, right?
- Greek 1 unit. HALF, at least I got back to it after some weeks off.
- 2 phone calls. YES.
- 1 trip to campus. YES.
- dentist. YES but now I have two more appointments coming up.
- defrack habitat. NO, but Sir John has expressed interest in clearing up his lair and addressing some of the boxes in the garage, so maybe we will get on this in concert.
ALSO: took notes on an ILL book and returned it. Decided that for at least this week and probably the rest of the summer I will do academic work on the community college campus where I go to the gym, or else at the local public library: I am just too distracted and thrashy at home. I'm hoping that with a clearer division between work and home, I will do better at both work and home projects.
New goals:
- swim x3, weights x2, yoga x4
- finish Alms!
- create syllabus for new class
- re-read conference paper, think about expansion
- Greek 1 unit
- dentist
- defrack habitat
Still seems like progress. It's hard when you can't settle in your environment - hope the college/library makes it easier to concentrate.
DeleteTrying something new is a great way to deal with the thrashing sensation! Hope you find a good new place to work for a few weeks and reset the brain/lure back the research elves.
DeleteHmm. Martha wants to be cautious. The fish looks huge, and she can't see how they can capture it easily. The wood here seems too quiet for her liking: she would definitely talk to any creatures to find out more if there were any around, but there are no birds or anything within sight or earshot. Perhaps they need to sit and wait in silence for a bit and see if anything comes out of the undergrowth or the trees.
ReplyDeleteBooks - need to refrain from telling you about everything I've ever read here! I've been reading a lot more this year, which is good: I've rarely not been able to read, but how much energy I have for new stuff definitely fluctuates. Authors I love whose work definitely lingers in my brain are Barbara Kingsolver, (some) Hilary Mantel and Sarah Moss. I read Sarah Moss's Cold Earth this weekend, which is perhaps not a beach read in that it's quite intense and eerie, but the writing is brilliant.
ReplyDeleteLighter reads for me are often detective/mystery, but not too grisly/too much violence against women. I liked the Tana French Dublin Murder squad series, but they are quite intense. I've recently read Claire Mackintosh's Ffion Morgan series - only two so far, but they were enjoyable (Welsh police woman, personal life the obligatory mess, but murder victims both male, which is a nice change and plots sufficiently complex that I didn't guess who the murderer was). Her other books aren't as good: a bit too plot-driven.
Good non-fiction: I recently read Rachel Hewitt, In Her Nature, about the history of women in outdoor sports, but comparing that to women's participation nowadays and the obstacles they face, with some personal reflections on running as a way of dealing with grief. I enjoyed Raynor Winn's books, and Katherine May's Wintering was another that rattled around my brain, though I was disappointed by Enchantment.
Last week
1. Submit grant?! -YES, but now it needs a further stage of review at faculty level, which I hadn't realised, so waiting on that.
2. Write abstract for call for papers. - YES
3. Plan archive trip for September. - YES
4. Last bit of admin - report for PhD student review.- YES
5. Read chapter for PhD student. - YES
6. Bathroom project. - NO
7. Life admin - book train tickets, hairdresser. - YES/NO
8. Read book for book club. - YES (Francesca de Tores, Saltbood, on female pirates if anyone's interested. Good on the historical research, but shallow characters.)
ALSO: watched a lot of the Tour and the football, went to about a day and a half of a conference that was happening here so easy to drop into, joined online for the 60th anniversary celebration of my former research group, which was a nostalgia-fest.
This week:
Since I'm in limbo with the grant, need to do some recalibrating of goals. So:
1. Plan for rest of session: read through notes, work out priorities, request readings through ILL.
2. Read at least one book/equivalent articles
3. Work through some archive material related to the article I just submitted abstract for (needs doing even if abstract isn't accepted).
4. Keep email to essentials only.
5. Meetings: 1 x post doc, 1 x PhD student, 1 x difficult undergrad, 1 x university PR (with people from Spanish consulate - not quite sure what I'm supposed to be contributing, but involves fancy lunch and some citizenship points)
6. Bathroom project
7. Life admin: birthday presents for niece and nephew, hairdresser, various extra-curricular stuff for son, kit daughter out for trip with friends in two weeks.
A lot of Yes! Well done!
DeleteIndeed, that is a splendid lot of yes! I hope you're enjoying the Tour. It is a piece of Real Summer, and I like thinking about the year we finally go see a bit of it in person (nothing actually scheduled, but I have Ideas).
DeleteAagh for the many extra layers of grant review! Much empathy - may they be swift and helpful with minimal changes requested!
DeleteHmmm. Alice is a good companion, not a leader. She'll pay attention to the others, and play the waiting game. She knows that whatever happens with the fish thing, it will take the combined skills of all of them. But she's also deeply realistic, so she'd never think that the evil looking fish is potentially something/on else. Clearly a time to help, but not lead.
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
1. Three chapters of Famous Author ONE
2. Write again to editors NO
3. Actually do the stuff for Big Collaboration YES, but then more stuff appeared.
4. Read dissertation YES
5. Plan trip to dissertation city for little archival work STARTED
6. Do something fun YES
7. Keep reading for pleasure YES
So, made less progress on Famous Author than I hoped, but the chapter I worked on was the one I wanted to add stuff to, so I added about 1500 words, and figured out other things I need to get from the library with the big cyber-security problem. I finished (I thought) everything for the Big Collaboration, but then got something else. And my co-editor wrote me to tell me that his mother had died (not unexpected), but that same night his wife ended up hospitalized with heart problems, so he's out of commission for a while. The Dissertation is read, but I need to spend more time getting ready for the defense. Otherwise, I've seen people, had fun, and kept reading.
Oh, and in the good news department, my sabbatical *was* approved, only a week after it started!
Reading: Nothing earth shattering, but I'm greatly enjoying Stanley Tucci's Taste, which is incredibly evocative of my childhood foodways, but also about how food traditions are passed on, merged, and translated as people move... And he's a charming companion. Also reading Secret Voices, which is lots of excerpts from women's diaries: enjoyable but also easy to dip into and out of...
Goals for this week:
1. The rest of today is fun: going to an exhibit that is vaguely work related, then to see Kiss Me Kate, one of my favorite musicals.
2. Three more chapters of Famous Author, and check the references I've got at Big Library.
3. Follow up with editors
4. Start on forgotten task for Big Collaboration, and see whether we need more help.
5. Keep reading for fun
6. Visits with people
7. Any admin stuff that needs doing...
4. Keep doing fun things and seeing people
5.
It sounds like you have a lot of pleasurable activities on your list, which is great--enjoy! Congratulations (??) on the sabbatical approval?
DeleteAcademic bureaucracy, amirite? At least they finally got it together. Enjoy your outings and visits!
DeleteYay for being Approved!
DeleteThere was a very interesting article by the editor of Secret Voices in the Guardian last Saturday! Made me want to read it.
DeleteThe Fish:
ReplyDeleteLinnet would prefer not to kill it, if all possible. But obviously it's too big (and too much of a fish) for a capture-and-release operation, either. Scout's right; we should find out more about what this creature is, what it wants, what it's doing there before we proceed. Of course, if it's just a big voracious fish in a pond that's too little for it, there wouldn't be much that we could do *but* kill it--and it would likely starve in the end anyway, so we could rationalize the killing that way. I do wonder about the bird (or whatever) that dropped something into the water. Is something feeding this thing, on purpose?
Last week:
1. Finish proceedings essay edits - YES
2. Revise Festschrift paragraph - NO, but one of my co-editors has sort of taken this over (and has more knowledge of the topic), so I'm kinda phoning it in.
3. Overcome my fear of working on my intro - YES? I don't want to work on it, of course, but I have actually made some progress and it doesn't seem as totally mystifying as it did.
4. Finish stacking wood - YES, at last!
5. Add website page for grad students - YES
6. Work out a bunch - YES: One swim, three runs, a yoga class, and a walk.
This week:
I'll be visiting my parents Tuesday-Friday, so I don't think that I'll get much done. BUT:
1. Intro work: Do at least two of the four tasks I've written out for myself.
2. Read part of an Italian novel.
3. Start reading essay collection for review.
4. Look at Festschrift document, at least.
5. Email grad student to check in about progress.
Well done on the intro! Often getting started is the hard part, and momentum builds once you have something down. Stacking wood sounds like it belongs with working out! I hope you have a good time with your parents.
DeleteAnd yes, fair point about the fish being likely to starve anyway, if we don't kill it. But situations that might involve Fae make me nervous.
DeleteI just realized that even though I'm an independent-minded cuss who isn't suited to regular regimental work, I do like that my job includes getting orders from people who are sure of what needs to be done, rather than always having to use my own initiative. Maybe I should stop dodging those leadership training courses . . . or maybe I should just stick with my outfit and just keep dodging . . . These are the sorts of thoughts I have as we sit very quietly, well back from the edge of the water, and observe.
Books:
ReplyDeleteI'm very new to the cozy mystery thing, so I'm sure that everyone else in the world has read these, but I've just picked up a few M. C. Beaton novels from the library. My mom likes the Hamish Macbeth series, and they do seem rather charming.
I just read a novel written by one of our former doctoral students (who also has an MFA in creative writing); it was pretty good but not great, and there was this one thing that drove me crazy: Every time anyone touched anything, they did it with their thumbs. They were constantly "thumbing" things, too. It was a little bananas. For that reason (and a couple others) I thought that the book would have been better with a good editor...but good for him launching his novel-writing career, anyway! (He does have a tenure-track job in an English department, too.)
I also recently read Nicola Griffith's "Menewood"--I loved "Hild," and the sequel was also pretty great, even if it took me a long time to get the characters straight in my head. (It had been a few years since I'd read "Hild.") I'm currently reading a book called "The Guineveres" about four girls named Guinevere who live in a convent in the 1940s and are trying to plot their escape--it's pretty good.
I love M. C. Beaton! Both the Hamish series and the Agatha Raisin are highly enjoyable comfort reads. She also wrote a ton of Regency romances, now out under the Beaton name though originally published under a different name, which are witty and amusing, with appealing unconventional heroines and interesting takes on stock character types, if you like that sort of thing. Extremely fluffy, but not stupid, I would say.
DeleteAnother "M.C.Beaton is very fun" from me!
DeleteOh, I may need to check out the regency romances! (if I don't know them under the other name).
DeleteOops, left these in the wrong week...
ReplyDeleteCornelius was searching for herbs near the scary fish pool, and sat down under a lovely tree for a moment. Of course he fell asleep... He had a really odd dream in which he felt like an entity was trying to talk to him, and it seemed like the communication was coming from the scary fish pool? He got the strong sense that someone was trapped and trying to get out, and getting desperate... He came running back to the group and is now in a flat panic thinking the fish is really not a scary fish at all and maybe we need to talk to it before we try to blow it up or anything! He's not the most intuitive of humans (and he knows this) so if he is getting vibes from the pond maybe there is something to it...
RL: no report, no goals, will get back to it this weekend when I'm home and not knee-deep in assorted foliage crawling up and down scary steep brooks and slopes....
ReplyDeleteBooks because I can always think about those even if I have to type on my phone:
Fluffy and fun but good: Book Lovers, The Sunseekers
Scary on existential level and still in my brain from book club months back: We Spread by Iain Reid, really interesting premise/construction/theme
Good any time, varies from light to serious: anything Lesley Crewe, also brilliantly place-specific