Stage-Land

Oct. 3rd, 2025 11:47 pm
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
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Stage-Land by Jerome K. Jerome

A work in which Jerome scores off the stereotypes of theater in his day. Those who have read Three Men And A Boat will recognize the style and humor.

San Francisco Area

Oct. 2nd, 2025 06:26 pm
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Our trip had ended in San Francisco because I was there to attend the memorial of a friend's mother. The cemetery was a beautiful place.

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Kink Hub: A Sharing & Reccing Community for Kink Fics

Links:[community profile] kinkhub | Community Rules | Posting Guidelines | Monthly Themes & Free-For-All | October: Kinktober

Description: Kink Hub is an 18+ comm for anything kink fic, where you can self-promote, share and rec fanfics of all fandoms and original works. RPF is welcome.

It's [community profile] kinkhub's second anniversary! For the month of October, the theme for all shared fics is "Kinktober". All works written for Kinktober (any year, any prompt list) count for this theme. If you've written or read any Kinktober fics, you're very welcome to share the links to them in the comm.

Birdfeeding

Oct. 1st, 2025 01:46 am
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[community profile] birdfeeding is a community started on January 1, 2023. It's all about birdfeeding, birdwatching, and other topics relating to birds. It also touches on nature in general, and observations that may effect bird activity such as local weather. Both text and image posts are welcome.

Community resources include posts about birding events, nurseries that sell seeds or plants attractive to birds, bird identification apps, the benefits of birdwatching, and other useful materials. Check out the anchor posts from Three Weeks for Dreamwidth.


Recent posts:

Holiday Activities

Climate Change

September Garden Tasks
labingi: (Default)
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I have just finished The Mabinogion Tetrology by Evangeline Walton, compiled novelizations of the Four Branches of the medieval Welsh Mabinogi. I highly recommend this work to fantasy fans who like tie-ins to traditional stories and don't mind a non-scholarly approach from a cultural outsider (Walton was American). It's a very "faithful" adaptation in that it takes virtually nothing out. The Four Branches themselves are just a few pages each, so Walton interpolates a lot, clearly from a 20th-century cultural standpoint (including idolization of "progress" and a surprising amount of Buddhism). One book was published in the 1930s, the others in the 1970s. The whole work is about 650 pages long, with the first three branches being novellas and the fourth a short novel. It is out of print but available as an e-book at Bookshop.org.

Speaking as a cultural outsider and lay reader myself, I think she does this quite well. Specifically, I think she does good work with the First Branch (The Prince of Annwn), and the Second (The Children of Llyr) and Third (The Song of Rhiannon) are among the most engaging and rewarding works I've read in a very long time! The Fourth Branch (The Island of the Mighty, a.k.a. The Virgin and the Swine), which was the first she wrote, is hit and miss for me but still worth reading. The whole work is generally quite feminist; I have no doubt was a huge influence on The Mists of Avalon.Spoilery review follows...Read more... )

Hanging Woman Creek

Sep. 30th, 2025 04:50 pm
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
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Hanging Woman Creek by Louis L'Amour

Adventure in the West.

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In case I haven't worn you all out nattering about Earthsea yet, here's some more. On Friday when I finished the Cycle I went online, as one does, and discovered that last year there was published a graphic novel edition of A Wizard of Earthsea, the first book in the series. So naturally this weekend I had to run out and buy it and read it all at once. The art was done by Fred Fordham and the project was overseen by Le Guin's son, Theo (she having passed away in 2018). 

Theo, like Le Guin herself, was trepidatious about any visual representation of Earthsea, after decades of white character designs; white, middle-aged actors; and general tom-fuckery when it comes to representing Le Guin's work. It wasn't until Theo saw Fordham's work in To Kill a Mockingbird that he first considered it might be worthwhile to consider a graphic novel adaptation of his mother's work, and so here we are.

Fordham appears to have been the right man for the job--this graphic novel edition of A Wizard of Earthsea captures the characters as Le Guin may have envisioned them when she wrote. Theo in his forward acknowledges that one of the beautiful things about how the characters are described in Le Guin's work--enough to give an idea of their appearance, but also vague enough that readers can all use their own imaginations to some degree--becomes limited when creating an "official" visual representation of those characters. So he considers Fordham's designs just one of many possible looks for these characters, but one that cleaves to his mother's original descriptions. 

His expressions neatly capture the shift in Ged's attitude over his schooling at Roke, from the proud, angry boy who first arrives to the sobered, haunted young man who departs.

Nearly all of the wording in the book is lifted directly from the original novel, which means Le Guin's original hard-hitting dialogue and beautiful descriptions of Earthsea survive to accompany Fordham's gorgeous scenic illustrations. He really captures the moody atmosphere of some of the book's darker moments, while also creating some truly stunning vistas of the ocean, which of course is a considerable part of the world for the characters of Earthsea (who live in an archipelago). I particularly enjoyed some of the rainy scenes--felt just like home here in the PNW!

He also does a great job making Ged and the Lookfar feel small on some of Ged's journeys. Looking at it some of these full-page spreads, you really feel that Ged is just one young wizard on his own in a vast and unknowable world. 

If I had any issues, it's only that some of the palettes run quite dark, so that a few panels can be almost impossible to distinguish unless you're looking at the book directly under a light source, and that there is some occasional visual awkwardness (not sure how to describe this--maybe Fordham used a 3D rendering tool and it shows?)

Overall, I was delighted with this, and I really hope Fordham and Theo press on to do Tombs of Atuan as well--I would love to see Tenar and Atuan rendered as well!

The Iron Marshal

Sep. 29th, 2025 03:33 pm
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
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The Iron Marshal by Louis L'Amour

An Irish boy grows up in New York -- and has just landed in Kansas.

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The School Reader: Second Book

Sep. 28th, 2025 03:27 pm
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
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The School Reader: Second Book by Charles Walton Sanders

A book concerned chiefly with reading. Vocabulary words listed before each story, poem, or bit. Interesting for the view of what they used to teach children. Views of science and of character.