#amending-death

[chthonic-cassandra]

Favorite rose tea blends? I find myself increasingly curious re: rose this year

Sorry for taking so long to reply to such a lovely question!

My two absolute favorite rose tea blends are both quite pricey, and as I work through my tins of them I am debating with myself about which I'll repurchase:

Tay Tea's Persian Rose - black tea blended with rose petals, borage, and green cardamom

Fortnum & Mason's Rose Pouchong - simply rose petals and black tea

For lower caffeine, I'd recommend Tea Fiori's White Tea with Rose if you can find it; Mina's Moroccan Rose White Tea; and August Uncommon's Dolomite (almond jasmine green tea). Dolomite is not primarily a rose tea but it has a wonderful subtle rose note.

I am currently out of Tea Heaven's Rose Cardamom Black Tea, but it's a lovely solid choice; they also have a rose vanilla I'd like to try.

The now defunct Tea Head's Raspberry Rose Oolong is my favorite of favorites for iced tea, and once I work my way through my stock of it I will be in the market for a good replacement.

My other favorite rose teas are all from local tea houses which I can't name without revealing my location, but I felt deserved acknowledgement! I would love always to hear others' preferred rose teas.

[oldshrewsburyian]

Depending on your mood: favorite book-to-film/tv show adaptations or your least favorite book-to-film-tv show adaptations

Ooh, I’ll do favorites, with an aside that, while I absolutely loved Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown, I am grumpy about the very beautifully filmed “The Dig.” I thought it was clumsy and sentimental in places where the book was subtle and understated.

Book to film:

Atonement (yes, I know there were changes, but the film is so gorgeous, and it’s hard for me to imagine how the casting could be bettered.

The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje reportedly replied to an indignant friend that the film had done nothing to his book; that they were two separate entities. True. Also, the chemistry of all these actors with each other. Also the unbelievably beautiful cinematography. Also the unbelievably beautiful actors.)

Random Harvest (author James Hilton did the voiceover for the opening of the film, charmingly, and the film itself is, imho, pitch-perfect in its evocation of an idyll snatched despite history, and in its emotionally authentic melodrama.)

Rebecca, 1940 (the secret to getting your sexy, sexy Gothic novel adapted and past the censors is Alfred Hitchcock. Still mad about the 2020 version; that can be a bonus round for the least favorite.)

Book to TV:

Brideshead Revisited, 1982 (the secret to getting your angsty, angsty Catholic novel adapted and past the censors is Jeremy Irons’ obscenely beautiful baritone, apparently. I love this so much. Bonus least-favorite to the 2008 “adaptation” which squandered a brilliant and beautiful cast with a bad script. I’m still mad about that too.)

Pride and Prejudice, 1995 (the cast, the score, the natural light, the interiors, the fabrics, the delightful indulgence of it all. Yes I do have a rant about the ‘05 version, but I’ll spare you.

Jane Eyre, 1983/2007 (this is a place where the BBC got very lucky in its casting directors in both the cardboard-drawing-room era of production values, and in the glossy remake boom of the early ‘00s. In the first case, you have Timothy Dalton’s unparalleled OTT Rochester and Zelah Clarke’s magnificent, steely Jane; in the second you have Toby Stephens and Ruth Wilson... which is probably saying enough right there. Still not sure how they got cast as two people who aren’t supposed to be sexy, but am I complaining? I am not.)

[chthonic-cassandra]

Can't recall if it was an oolong specific osmanthus tea you were looking for, but I'm enjoying some of this iced rn and thought of you

I was indeed specifically seeking osmanthus oolong, and just yesterday I was thinking about that again and comparing brands, so this is extremely timely. Thank you so very much! I think this may end up being a birthday present to myself.

[chthonic-cassandra]

Thought of you - https://www.luckyscent.com/product/3221300/noteworthy-lilac-by-luckyscent-sample-packs

It makes me so happy that you thought of me! <3 I'm going to tag @eatingmuffinsinanagitatedmanner, who is also on a lilac perfume journey.

The only one of these I've tried is the Caswell-Massey Lilac, which is quite lovely and was actually my most frequently worn perfume for several years. I haven't worn it for a while as I've been really into the new experience of perfume oils, but I still have something like a quarter of a large bottle waiting for me when I'm ready to come back to it.

The sample pack looks like a fun way to try these! I'm quite tempted.

[oldshrewsburyian]

Hello, kind inquirer/fellow appreciator of Ciarán Hinds’ face!

As for my detection obsession...! I’ll avoid giving you a life history here, but it all started with Sherlock Holmes. When I was about six years old, I had a book of lavishly illustrated Sherlock Holmes stories adapted for children. These were, in addition to a précis of the “Study in Scarlet” intro: The Speckled Band, still terrifying; The Naval Treaty, still a favorite; The Red-Headed League, A Case of Identity, The Blue Carbuncle, and The Final Problem. I still remember weeping inconsolably when we (for these were read aloud by my father) got to “The Final Problem.” This may, in fact, have been the origin story of my being allowed to watch Granada Holmes, for reassurance purposes.

Anyway! I then moved on to the Nancy Drew books, the Miss Marple stories and thence to Christie’s oeuvre, and eventually to Dorothy L. Sayers’ Wimsey novels, which spoiled me for 1) romance 2) the way most adults talk. The family road trips of my youth were never without tubs full of battered paperbacks, and my parents and I passed around Christie and Marsh and Sayers, E.C. Bentley and Margery Allingham, and... well, I never lost the taste for observing and absorbing the nuances of this particular genre, and the ways that detective fiction can be used as a tool for exploring interesting psychological and social questions. Also, I still love Sherlock Holmes the most.

[chthonic-cassandra]

Saw this and thought this might interest you: "A reimagining of Dracula’s voyage to England, filled with Gothic imagery and queer desire. The cult vampire novella by Mexican author José Luis Zárate is available for the first time in English."

https://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/blog/

Wow, this looks so cool! Thanks so much for sharing about it - it is indeed exactly the kind of thing I’m interested in!

[chthonic-cassandra]

What were your top five books of the year? What is the most over-hyped book you read this year? Did you DNF anything? Why?

3 and 24 already answered!

16. What is the most over-hyped book you read this year?

I am so sorry everyone, but it would have to be Gideon the Ninth. 

Marge Piercy’s Woman at the Edge of Time, which I just finished the other day, is another book which came highly recommended but which I found tremendously unpleasant to read and with which I had a lot of issues, but there’s some more nuance for me there and I need to give it more thought.

[chthonic-cassandra]

Recommendations for epistolary in film!

This is such a great prompt! 

But also really hard, which is why this has been languishing in my inbox for so long. Reflecting, I think epistolary in film is very hard to pull off at all - I was thinking about how I’ve seen five different film adaptations of Dangerous Liaisons, and they all, to a one, basically do away with the epistolarity. 

This is the best I could come up with, for a pretty generous definition of epistolarity:

The Piano (1993), dir. Jane Campion

The Favourite (2018), dir. Yorgos Lanthimos

The Earrings of Madame de... (1953), dir. Max Ophuls

The Pillow Book (1996), dir. Peter Greenaway

Letter Never Sent (1959), dir. Mikhail Kolatozov

Le Corbeau (1943), dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot

The Story of Adele H (1975), dir. Francois Truffaut

Personal Shopper (2016), dir. Olivier Assayas

weirdly, The Vanishing (1988), dir. George Sluizer has quite prominent epistolarity, though I’m not sure I can recommend it.

I keep feeling like there’s a Satyajit Ray film with really good use of letters, but I can’t think of one, so I might be mistaken about that.