Becoming Harriet Vane @oldshrewsburyian - Tumblr Blog

Set on August 14, this book, through the reunion of two old friends in the midst of a war, explores the complex ties of loyalty and love, and the question of what makes a tragedy.

#historical fiction #sándor márai #embers #this book is so good #i describe it as historical fiction because so much of it is preoccupied with a world vanished at the time of writing #queue

wearethekat

July Book Reviews: The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood by HG Parry

I felt meh about Parry's The Magician's Daughter, but A Far Better Thing absolutely blew me away last year, so her latest book was one of my most anticipated titles of the summer. In The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood, Elaine is sent away to an isolated manor house in Wales after her job at the British Museum is bombed in the Blitz. As she catalogues the library alone, she begins to have increasingly intrusive dreams of Nimue and the fall of Arthur...

Although the book opens with the World War II setting, the Blitz is more scene dressing to emphasize the themes of the Arthurian retelling than anything else. The real plot and most of the action is with Nimue, not museum employee Elaine. The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood is definitely not a story about King Arthur running around smiting German pilots or something. The influence of Elaine's modern setting on the Arthurian plot is much more subtle. I hadn't realized that the agonizing over the inevitability of war in TH White's retelling was so closely inspired by World War II, and Parry is clearly paying homage to that link. And even as a standalone narrative, the Nimue chapters are an excellent interpretation of the character in their own right. There's a strong sense of the inevitability of story capturing people in its wake, and a certain melancholy lent by Nimue entering the story so late, only a year or two before Arthur's fall. While I'm a little disappointed that Parry didn't have much to say about the modern timeline other aside from in reflection, I've always been a sucker for yet another good Arthurian retelling, and the book delivers on that front. Recommended, if not as much as the glorious tragedy of A Far Better Thing.

#fantasy #arthuriana #booklr #queue

expressions-of-nature

Golica, Slovenia by Pika Žvan

#stunning #slovenia #queue

fluentisonus

The Ruin, Anonymous Old English Poem, trans R.M. Liuzza

#<3 #poetry #old english #medieval literature #i really like liuzza's translations #queue

spirit-of-art

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), Der Mönch am Meer (The Monk by the Sea), 1810

#i saw this in person at a special exhibition and it was STUNNING #caspar david friedrich #i mean it's always great! but to see it close-to and VAST is so great #art history #queue

floranada-a-sense-of-place

Train Journey Royal Scotsman

#trains #scotland #moody atmospheric gorgeousness #queue

WIP ask:

Aspidistra?

As you may have cleverly anticipated, there are metaphorical aspidistras at the Duchess of Denver's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas Party:

“All right,” said Peter placatingly, “nobody’s chucking aspidistras.”

#wimseyverse #wip ask game

'courage' for the WIP guessing game

I couldn't find courage itself directly (alas!) but found one of its relatives:

I mean: she’s so fine and courageous that she just goes straight ahead when she thinks something needs doing, and she doesn’t seem to mind the risk, and Wilfred’s the same way, and…”

#ivanhoe noir #wild barter #wip ask game

WIP ask: kiss!

Surprisingly difficult to find the noun rather than the associated verb! But here it is, from The Silly Bodyguard AU:

Brienne bent, and pressed a kiss against the crown of his head.

#for once nothing bad is actively happening in #the silly bodyguard au