Author: Laurel L. Russwurm

is a self publishing novelist and photographer.

Mid-Year Book Freakout Tag 2020

I was tagged by @lettersfromthelighthouse. Thank you, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to do!

Best book you’ve read so far in 2020:  

It’s a three-way tie between Burn by Patrick Ness, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, and Folk by Zoe Gilbert. Very different books but all absolutely engrossing.

Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2020:

Not applicable. I’ve read two books this year that are the first in a series – namely The Cruel Prince by Holly Black and The Tea Dragon Society by Katie O’Neill – but no sequels. The Cruel Prince just didn’t grab me enough, although I might still get to the next book eventually. I really need the other Tea Dragon books though because, wow, tea dragons are just the cutest things and if I can’t have a real one I at least need to read more about them.

New release you haven’t read yet, but want to:

It’s been out for a couple of months now, I think, but Highfire by Eoin Colfer looks like it’ll be a fun read! I’m a big fan of Artemis Fowl and his children’s books, so I’m interested to see how he approaches an adult audience. (Also, just in case you were wondering, not everything I read is about dragons, I promise.)

Most anticipated release for the second half of the year:

I’m very intrigued by Susanna’s Clarke’s new novel, Piranesi. The labyrinthine house with infinite rooms and endless corridors sounds like a wonderful setting. It also seems as if it might be more manageable for me than Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I do want to read but is rather intimidating length-wise.

Generally speaking, I don’t really keep track of new releases though. Is that weird?

Favorite new author (debut or new to you):

I’ll say Zoe Gilbert here. Folk is a wonderful debut and I adore how atmospheric her writing is.

Biggest disappointment:

Probably Jeanette Winterson’s Frankisstein. It seemed like the kind of book I would love – I like Frankenstein, I like retellings, I like other things by Winterson – but in the end the weirdly fetishistic treatment of the trans main character overshadowed all the good points.

Biggest surprise:

Boring answer, but I can’t really think of any major surprises. I guess Snowflake, AZ by Marcus Sedgwick was a much more contemplative/ideas-based novel than I was expecting. I was anticipating something with more… plot, I suppose.

Book that made you happy:

I already mentioned this book above, but I often go back to children’s fiction when I need cheering up and wonderful The Tea Dragon Society by Katie O’Neill just left me with a great big smile on my face. It’s just such a warm, comforting story.

Newest fictional crush/newest favorite character:

Vivienne from The Cruel Prince by Holly Black was very enjoyable to read about. She’s the main character’s half-sister and doesn’t have a massive role, but I liked her more than the actual protagonist.

Burn by Patrick Ness has some great characters as well. I loved Sarah Dewhurst, Jason Inagawa, and Kazimir in particular.

Also, Albína Horáková, the landlady in Sarah Perry’s Melmoth, was not at all pleasant but a great character.

Book that made you cry:

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker. They were angry tears. Briseis deserved so much better.

Favorite book to film adaptation you saw this year:

I don’t think I’ve seen actually any this year, apart from the Stargirl film based on the YA novel by Jerry Spinelli. Wouldn’t call it a favourite really. I loved the book when I was a teenager so I watched it on Disney+ while I was using up my free trial, but it was just okay really. There are a lot of movies dealing with the same themes in a more interesting way and, for me, it didn’t quite have the charm of the book.

Very much looking forward to seeing the new Little Women film and The Personal History of David Copperfield though, the latter especially just looks really charming and I do love Dev Patel (speaking of which, does Gawain and the Green Knight count?).

Most beautiful book you’ve bought or received this year so far:

Hamnet and Folk again. Just look at that gorgeous illuminated H! And the strong colours and the detail in the birds and leaves on Folk’s cover are just gorgeous!

Book you need to read by the end of the year:

I’ve been promising a friend that I’ll read Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo for ages now so definitely that.

Otherwise, I really need to read more non-fiction, especially around current events. I’m just hoping my ability to focus/concentrate will come back soon because it’s been absent for a while and I hate it.

Tagging: Um, anyone who wants to talk about books! If you see this and want to answer the questions then just say I tagged you. 🙂

lovenotereminders:It doesn’t make you unlovable or a horrible person if you don’t have many friends….

lovenotereminders:

It doesn’t make you unlovable or a horrible person if you don’t have many friends. It can be difficult to meet new people if you’re shy or quiet or have anxiety. It can be difficult to stay in touch with people if you can’t find the time or energy to remain in contact. It can be difficult to make new friends if you struggle to find people you click with or who are interested in the same things as you. None of those things mean you’re unlovable. 

Favorite Things I’ve Read In The Letters of This One Specific Family, 1790-1821 (paraphrased)

marzipanandminutiae:

  • “We’re engaged now and setting out on the sea of life together in our little raft.” dude you’re both rich as Midas. you’re setting out together in a yacht, minimum
  • Increasing amounts of “per my last email” in letters between Husband and Father-In-Law discussing Wife’s income from the family fortune
  • Husband: “HAVE YOU HAD THE BABY YET I’M SO WORRIED I WADED THROUGH A FLOOD TO GET TO THE POST OFFICE”
  • Husband: “Get the baby a suit of armor or I’m sure to crush her with hugs when I get home”
  • Wife: “Teenage Daughter, could you send me my gold lamé turban?”
    • I sat there staring into space mouthing “what” for like a solid minute
    • I want to see this hat SO BADLY
  • Husband: “Son was firing his toy cannon at my office door, so I had to sally forth and valiantly seize the enemy munitions!”
  • Teenage Daughter: “My friend and I had our mutual admirer guess which of us had made which pudding to win a pair of gloves from one of us.”
  • Wife quotes Byron NONSTOP
  • Wife: “Fuck slave-owners and fuck the Missouri Compromise.”
    • Yes, they were abolitionists
    • Yes, they actually did treat their servants well and pay them fairly
  • Husband: “That old widow I rent to is behind with her payments, but don’t evict her because that would be inhumane, especially since it’s winter.”
  • Husband: “Wife, remember to wear your flannel petticoats to stay warm- and so I can take them off you when I get home.”
  • Also Husband, not paraphrased: “How close I should lie to you and how hard I should love you if I were there.”
    • WONDER WHY THEY HAD 11 KIDS
  • Husband: “On our tenth anniversary, I just wanted to say that you’re as beautiful to me as always and I love you the most that anyone has ever loved anyone else in the history of the world.”
  • Wife: “Hi yes I also love you the most that anyone has ever loved anyone else in the history of the world.”
  • Wife: “My handwriting sucks and I’ve burned three attempts at this letter already but HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT THIS AWESOME TREE I SAW BESIDE THE ROAD YESTERDAY”
  • Husband makes so. many. puns. Help.
  • Wife: “Send two or three pounds of the best chocolate you can find, please.”
  • Husband: “We have ice cream with dinner every day here- don’t be jealous!”
  • Husband: “Young Adult Daughter, I wrote a poem about your rejected suitors. Here it is.”
    • Unfortunately I cannot remember the poem at the moment. But there was a part like, “And as for Frank Lyman/He’ll never be my man.”
    • Just roasting a bunch of young men with surnames you now see on Boston street signs

To Be Continued.

dignifiedrice: The Tiffany Aching books are so important.  They’re about a girl, in a professional…

dignifiedrice:

The Tiffany Aching books are so important. 

They’re about a girl, in a professional hierarchy created by women, growing into her own power, and growing as a person. At the end of each book, her good work is validated by the most powerful witches. For Tiffany’s success, she’s rewarded in an almost Mary-Sue like fashion (and I use that term in the most positive way). Granny Weatherwax bows to her. Granny Weatherwax takes off her hat to her. This lifts Tiffany’s spirits and reassures her that she’s on the right track, and it’s treated as SO IMPORTANT, and, like – how many other books do that? 

The prizes at the end of the story – Tiffany becomes a better person, she protects people, she gains the respect of her superiors (who are also women). 

Can you imagine that in another novel? The joyful moment of heartwarming, the cherry on the ice cream sundae of the adventure, the heroine’s crowning glory, is that some old women bow to her in respect. 

The books are so positive towards women, it’s unreal. Sure, the witches don’t always get along (they’re witches, they’ll always argue), and Tiffany has to deal with some petty one-up-man-ship, but it’s so fucking mature, how it’s handled. Tiffany winds up helping her enemy, Annagramma, who slowly learns to become a decent human being, and is revealed to have her own problems. She also becomes friends with the woman her childhood crush marries, even though they were initially antagonistic towards each other. It would have been SO EASY for these women to be one-note villains, the “bitches” for Tiffany to triumph over, but they’re not, and that’s fantastic. Pratchett does not go for the low-hanging fruit, and tear other women down to build Tiffany up. 

I once had the incredible privilege to speak to Terry Pratchett in person at the Edinburgh Fringe. I thanked him for the Tiffany Aching novels, which had helped me and my husband bond during our year of long distance. And I asked him how he, as a male author, was able to write such well-rounded women. 

“Well, my mother was a woman,” he said, and the audience laughed, but basically he said that his life had been filled with just as many interesting women as interesting men, and it felt natural to reflect that in his novels. 

The Tiffany Aching series is a gift for girls. It’s a gift for just about anyone who reads them, but girls in particular NEED stories like this, stories about a world of women helping and challenging each other. Stories where they get to be powerful. 

soracities: and when julia de burgos said “the sea, the true sea, almost mine now” and when saadi…

soracities:

and when julia de burgos said “the sea, the true sea, almost mine now” and when saadi youssef said “but to the sea, to this sea, i return” and derek walcott said “you want to know my history? ask the sea.”

kaldavstvo:

and when hermann broch said “those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part,” and when keri hulme said “I know about me. I am the moons sister, a tidal child stranded on land. the sea always in my ear, a surf of eternal discontent in my blood,” and iain pears said “being by the sea is like a permanent baptism; the light and air hypnotizes, and your soul is washed by vastness.”

kafk-a:

and when marguerite duras said “there is one thing i am good at, and that’s looking at the sea” and when agnès varda said “it’s important to always be by the sea. the sea is the element of love”

brucetwinksteen:

when albert camus said “the sea; i didnt lose myself in it. i found myself in it” and when sylvia plath said “if i lived by the sea i would never be really sad” and when hozier said “love, when the sea rises to meet us” and when an anonymous writer said “and yet my heart wanders away, my soul roams with the sea” and when homer said “I’d rather die at sea”