Off the Cliff

An insomniac night saw me finishing The Secret Chapter with its intriguing backstory hints about the dragon kings (and may I hope that reincarnated winged serpent at the end is a Chekov's gun?) And very nice too. Except that now I'm left with my library books which are nowhere as genial as the Library.

A choice between St. James' nasty supernatural doings at a boarding school ( The Broken Girls), Setterfield's very gothic The Thirteenth Tale, and the random violence and impenetrable internecine politics of Glen Cook's The Black Company. The grimdark of the latter never registered when I read it nearly 35 years ago, and I must say it's a lot more bearable than the looming suspense of the other two.

Though in my current mood- vaguely malaise-y before a storm front blows in, vaguely anxious about mobility next week in the aftermath of same- I probably should be reading something cheerful and mangaish instead. Or relentlessly nonfic, like The Pursuit of the Millennium.

International issues aside, was woken from my scratchy achey head cold half-sleep by someone wanting me to be her in half an hour. Pulled clothes on, called a cab, munched slice of toast while sweeping away snow outside. Phone pings, cab co has a 'trace you drive' app, driver is just coming up Christie from Bloor, should be here in two minutes. No cab appears. Now I assume these guys have whatever it's called to tell them how to navigate my traffic maze, but maybe not and maybe he turned down instead of up. I call the company again to be told my driver has picked up his fare. Well, he certainly didn't do it on my block. So they send another cab who arrived eventually. Last night's 'snow' is more like little ice pellets and the roads are very slippery and, bref, what would be a 15 minute bike ride on clear streets takes half an hour.

But I arrived, sans exercises, and in consequence ached all day. Work *really* has to stop relying on old crocks like me and the worker who called me today whose back has gone out from too much hefting of lumpen toddlers.
( Catchup memeage )

After this morning's snowflurries melted in the grateful sun. Wind strong but still, the sight of blue sky counts for much. Am still exhausted after only a few hours' work, which may be age or cold or the psychic fallout of extremely unhappy knees. Occurred to me that paradoxically, joints hurt less when I was living on muscle relaxants and maybe I should try them again, but all that accomplished yesterday, when I wasn't working, was a nap mid-afternoon.
( Memeage )

Which is worse: listening to 90 minutes of jazz radio or listening to 90 minutes of jazz radio fundraising? 'If you pledge $20 a month you become eligible to be one of the guests on our two hour airplane cruise over southern Ontario!' No wonder they're falling short. (My physiotherapist stays tuned to JazzFM and today I had the full treatment.)

The highs and lows are those of a nice summer day- 14 and 24. We had a few days like that in July, but then I didn't feel the need for long-sleeved sleep shirt and flannel pants and bedsocks and sleep hoodie, and flannel sheets over the summer duvet I sleep on, and under the winter duvet I sleep beneath, because I was so *cooold*. Clearly my body thinks it's fall even if the weather doesn't agree.

Reading someone's LJ who notes she's reading The Invisible Library but wonders parenthetically why all steampunk/ AU Londons require a Sherlock Holmes figure. They don't, actually, but the ones I've read without one feel a little lacking. The fact is that Holmes *is* the embodiment of that London which is most easily assimilable into steampunk. So are Oscar Wilde and, alas, Jack the Ripper: not the real people of that name but the fictions of themselves they either created or had created for them.

I suppose this is all Alan Moore's fault. Except that long before Moore there was "In those days Mr. Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for treasure in the Lewisham Road." Holmes defines a place and time that exists in fictional history, where gas lamps burn and hansoms run and it is always 1895

(His opposite number I think is Queen Victoria herself, an iconic real person who carries naturally over into fiction. Or maybe she too is a created personage like the Ripper? except the figure her umm publicists created then- the revered Queen and Empress- isn't at all what shows up in books where no one actually reveres the monarchy.)

Entry by Gill Polack about how ms scholarship works (and a rather nice book-buying idea as well.)

I kind of knew this in the back of my head, what with all the variorum Shakespeare editions and- lord, what was it? The Pooh Perplex? Someplace where an addled scholar compares 20th century printed texts to each other and finds only the occasional transposed line or squiggly letter in the cheap edition. And that's printed works. Worse with the fifteen mss of St Basil's On the Holy Spirit in remote monasteries on Mt Athos. I'm not at all sure I'd have remembered the information while reading- or worse, writing- a book about manuscripts.

Which said, the book does sound interesting. Libraries are in this year.

ETA: oh. Dystopian YA. Pass, then.

sartorias posts lovely pictures of the Cloisters in New York. Visited them a decade ago with M; remember particularly the smell of boxwood in the garden, which is the smell of Parisian parks.

What I particularly like here is the paintings of interiors that show glimpses of a distant city through open doors and windows. Reminds me of the shifting city seen out the windows of incandescens' Library.

Find spearmint eucalyptus epsom salts at last, at gloomy blood-orange and black Loblaws. Not the brand I'm used to, not sure about the spearmint part. We shall find out tonight if they clear sinuses properly.

Discovered totally unfamiliar box of heavy glass tumblers in the basement. Not mine, must be the tenants', why have I no memory of them from when I organized those shelves on my return from Japan? (Because my memory famously sucks.) Discover also vaguely familiar box of dinner plates, dessert plates and bowls from the family house, wrapped in styrofoam peanuts and paper. Could keep them for myself instead of using my mismatched yard sale collection, but know I shall never host dinner parties for more than two people. Shall put both out for the Diabetes pick-up this week, but might borrow next door's dishwasher first to remove the dust of decades from the plates at least.

Have retrieved my signed copy of The Invisible Library. Evidently cousin's daughter gave cousin an almost full precis of the plot, which then decided cousin to read it. Some people clearly don't mind spoilers.

End of April, furnace still on at night, duvet and wool blanket and sometimes a third quilt just for the nesting principle; still in hoodie and flannel pants and socks and sleep balaclava, still with four beanbags about my person. (Beanbags don't stay as warm as hot water bottles; actually, these beanbags don't stay as warm as my old scorched ones either.) Not complaining: sleep in cold weather is one of my major pleasures and will end soon enough.

I think I mentioned somewhere (that I can't find now) that I am Libraryless. Gave my unsigned copy to staff's geek daughter at the end of January and never got it back because then staff wanted to read it herself, and says she *will* remember to bring it in but will also have to buy another copy because geek daughter needs to have one of her own. Sometime later (memory is shot) my aunt commandeered my presentation copy for her granddaughter to read, swearing I'd have it back as soon as she was finished. But E declared the book so excellent her mother had to read it, and sent it off to her where she lives, two hours from Toronto. E also said the book had inspired her to go back to reading fantasy, which she'd gone off of, but having read The Invisible Library she's determined to find something just as good.

Just thought you might want to know, G.

(And now aunt is wondering how one listens to an e-book. The ones she has are on disc.)

Something that occurred to me t'other day. By the start of book 1 Coppelia has figured out that Kai is a spoiler. At the end of book 2, she seems to know precisely which spoiler he is. When did she find that out, and whose head rolled when she did? Some keen junior librarian-- 'well he'd found out too much about us and he had no family and he's bright enough so I recruited him'? Or was it (also) someone senior who approved the recruitment? Because the ramifications of 'oh right, no family you said, just spoiler spoiler spoiler, and now what do we do?' would seem pretty major. Unless the Library recruited him knowing exactly who he was, which seems a touch unwise?

1. petronia departed in Sunday's mist and falling leaves, and now my house is indubitably my house once more, rather than the Otherwhere it becomes when someone else is in it. Don't know why it shifts identity that way (mind says sardonically, and with some truth, 'because it's never this tidy when you're here alone') and anyway it only works with people I've known for less than 20 years. But recent acquaintance alter it quite out of recognition, and I miss the strangeness when it, and they, are gone.

2. I thought that the misidentification of a painting in the last Patricia Briggs I read would become a plot point. Someone says 'Here's the martyrdom of St Stephen. He's crucified upside down, as in the legends.' Ah, surely this man is an imposter! Um, no. The only significance is that Briggs didn't google 'martyrdom St Stephen' and let herself be led astray by her memories of the martyrdom of St Peter. This annoys me more than it should.
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'And the moment after
Weep thy girlish tears.'

Truly there are times I wish the nuns hadn't taught me to memorize poetry.

Is spring. A week ago in winter coat and fleecy and gloves and shivering even in the sun; today in t-shirt and light jacket only because it feels chill when April winds blow, under a light cloud-cover that makes everything look like the humid spring of Tokyo. We shall see how long this lasts.

Started Three Parts Dead which to my delight reads partly like nojojojo and partly like incandescens and my favourite parts of both. Then made me put it down so I could finish the two books due before that, one of which is my French lama and the other of which is Ellen Datlow's Naked City, borrowed because it has about the only Lavie Tidhar that circulates in the TPL system.
( Cut for natter about same )