scripsi: (Default)
[personal profile] scripsi
 

Books I read late July and August.

 

New books

At School With The Stanhopes by Gwendoline Courtney. If you follow my journal, you will sooner or later hear me talk about Stepmother by the same author. It’s one of my constant comfort reads, and has been since I was 10. But not until I was an adult did I realize that Courtney wrote a number of books in the 1940s and 50s, all geared towards teenage girls. Most of them have been out of print for decades, and being in Sweden has made it a bit of a hassle to buy them used. But now girls Gone by seems to republishing them, and I read II earlier this year. At School With The Stanhopes is about 16 year old Rosalind, whose guardian dies, forcing her to move in with her much older brother, whom she hardly knows. Neither of them are pleased with it, but I lifes becomes much less gloomy when her favorite teacher opens a school just down the lane. Especially as Miss Stanhope has a bevy of friendly younger sisters. It’s mostly a school story, but also about Rosalind and her brother building a relationship, and I enjoyed it enormously. I do wish I had been able to read this book in my early teens, though, because I can tell I would have loved it even more had I read it back then. 

Furstinnan (The Princess) by Eva Mattson. A biography of the 16th century Swedish queen Catherine Jagiellon. Sweden is pretty bad at noting women in history, and this is the first biography of a very interesting woman. Katarina Jagellonica, to use her Swedish name, was a Polish princess who rather surprisingly married Johan Vasa, the younger brother of the Swedish king at a time when the Vasa dynasty was seen as an upstart royal family. She was highly educated and educated, and it’s clear after reading this book that she had a lasting impact in how late 16th century Sweden was shaped. 

The Art of French Pastry by Jacqut Pfeiffer. I read a lot of cookbooks, but mostly just bits here and there, so never mention them in these posts. But this book was really interesting as it isn’t just recipes, but a thorough explanation of why a recipe looks the way it does, and also how it’s supposed to behave throughout. 

The Adventure of the Demonic Ox by Lois McMaster Bujold. The latest installment in the Penric and Desdemona series. It’s a series of fantasy novellas about a young man who accidently gets infested by a demon, something which makes him a sorcerer. As he doesn’t know how one is supposed to behave during those circumstances, he names the demon Desdemona, and they embark on a much more equal relationship. Bujold is one of my favourite authors, and the Penric and Desdemona novellas are bite-sized pieces of delight that together form a bigger whole. With that said this was probably one of the more lightweight installments in the series. 

 

Re-reads 

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop by Fannie Flagg. The first book has been a comfort read of mine since the early 90s, and I like the movie too. A couple of years ago it got a sequel. If Fried Green Tomatoes paints the past in very nostalgic shades, The Wonder Boy  feels like a fanfic, if one can say that an author can write that to their own work. Everyone is happy at the end of it, and if the bad guy in the first novel was a genuinely awful person, the villains in the latter are reduced to a man with murderous intent towards a cat, and an awful mother-in-law. But sometimes one is in the mood for a book where everything will be just fine. And then some. 

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I have always thought of this as a gothic novel for children. I mean, an orphaned heroine moving into an isolated mansion where she hears strange cries in the night, and there is a garden no one has been in for 10 years, and no one knows how to get into. I still remember how thrilled I was when I first read it as a kid. And I still love the description of the secret garden.

(no subject)

Aug. 29th, 2025 07:41 pm
angrboda: Viking style dragon head finial against a blue sky (Default)
[personal profile] angrboda
Husband made fried halloumi with mashed potatoes, French beans and parsley sauce.

I am. So full.

(no subject)

Aug. 27th, 2025 11:31 am
angrboda: Viking style dragon head finial against a blue sky (Default)
[personal profile] angrboda
I. Pictures from my summer holiday have been posting every other day over on my pillowfort. I wanted to have them post between 11 and 12 midday. This is not what has happened. I don't know why Americans can't just use a sensible way to read a clock. Oh well, it's not a disaster. I have enough posts scheduled that the last one will be in end September. Husband also gave me some photos that he took and I'll put up some of those as well.

II. Luna's appetite is yo-yoing a bit. After we came back from our holiday it started getting difficult, and then the other day she had another little hairball, and now she's eating well again. I really think the issue is hairball related rather than kidney issues, but we'll see. She's got a vet visit scheduled soon to have her teeth checked and the vet wanted to try and get a blood sample for her kidney values at the same time. It's easier for everybody, especially the elderly cat, if we can do both these two things at the same time without having to knock her out.

III. Still very motivated about the new bed project in the garden, but Husband says wait until later in the year for a higher chance of success and also because he says after we've had some proper rainy days, it'll also be easier to dig it up. So I'm trying to keep up steam here until I can order the plants and start digging a big hole! I kind of want to order them now just because I'm excited, but since I can't plant them anyway that would stupid. Plant nursery people can look after the same pots way better than I can in the meantime.

IV. Summer holiday has come to an end. Back to work kicking and screaming as per usual. Well, actually, I have seriously tried really hard not to complain too much about it this year, but some grump slipped out Sunday evening and Husband laughed at me.

V. Holly is having a nap on my lap at the moment and she's dreaming something. It's immensely cute, but the twitching tickles madly.

VI. Sunday also marked the return to watching opera from the Met in our little cinema. This one was The Barber of Seville which was very good and funny. I've been listening to bits of it again since. There are a couple of titles in the program for the next season that we would like to see, but some of them unfortunately won't be possible. These are only shown one time, so it's not like you get a choice. Rigoletto coincides with a family event, and Tristan and Isolde is shown on a Friday because it's so super long (5 hours!) AND we already have tickets for the music house that same evening. Neither of us are really up for that kind of marathon! The Met does have it's own streaming service with over 800 titles on it and it's not even very expensive, so we've been considering trying that out.

Profile

snogged: (Default)
snogged

January 2020

S M T W T F S
    1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031 

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Aug. 31st, 2025 10:25 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios