THE OPPRESSION OF THE UYGHUR PEOPLE explored in heartbreaking detail through an exiled poet and filmmaker’s memoir. Beautiful writing about a horrifying topic brings stories of the imprisoned and murdered into the light. A MINUS
#BookReview Setting the perfect tone for this collection of twenty-three tales of Baba Yaga is the spell-poem by Stephanie M. Wytovich that opens it. The stories that follow are traditional and modern, set in Slavic forests or a swamp in the American Deep South. Two of the stories are interesting variations on our Hansel and Gretel tale, another is told by the Baba Yaga's hut on chicken legs, and in one Baba Yaga falls in love.
The Baba Yagas vary too, they are ancient and young, beautiful and ugly, cruel and compassionate, but she is always a powerful figure who is closely connected to the natural world.
Into the Forest was edited by Lindy Ryan with an introduction by Christina Henry, and the stories are by women fantasy and horror writers who bring a welcome feminist sensibility to many of them. There are some very strong selections, but the collection does have a few weaker choices.
A couple of the stories are bursting the seams of a short story and could be developed into novels. The perfect kind of eerie anthology to cozy up with through the dark, cold months. #reading#books@bookstodon
@bookstodon
I really can't recommend Gordon Doherty's Empires of Bronze series enough - it's written really well and he clearly has done his research. What's really fascinating is that the story is ultimately a sad one - the Sea Peoples essentially end up wiping out most Bronze Age civs (other than the Egyptians), but the story has a hopeful ending. The author also does a great job of separating fact from fiction.
@chiraag@bookstodon Harry Turtledove (aka Harry Turteltaub) has a series (one title is Over the Wine-Dark Sea) called Hellenic Traders. The 4 books center around cousins Menedemos and Sostratos who work as seaborne traders in the years following the death of Alexander the Great (after classical Greece). The series is notable for a high degree of historical accuracy. I found them engrossing and full of nitty-gritty details about their life.
@MonarchLady@chiraag@bookstodon Harry's latest novel is WAGES OF SIN. It's about what life would be like if AIDS struck the world in the early 1500 instead of the 1980s. Can't wait to read it.
@awenspark@bookstodon Tender is the Flesh was a book that absolutely wrecked my mental well-being for a week or two, but also I went out of my way to recommend to others after reading.
Loved to be horrified by it. Still think about that experience years later.
#BookReview A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr
Read in Braille
Penguin
Pub. 1980, 104pp
This is a novella I’ve been meaning to read for years and it’s delightful.
Tom Birkin’s a Londoner who’s returned from war with shellshock and he takes a commission to restore a medieval church wall painting in a Yorkshire village. The warm summer days are glorious as he gets to work, with high hopes for the project:
“I willed it to be something good, really splendid, truly astonishing… something to wring a mention from The Times and a detailed account (with pictures) in the Illustrated London News.”
To his relief he’s quickly welcomed into the community:
“In the first few minutes of my first morning, I felt that this alien northern countryside - friendly, that I’d turned a corner and that this summer of 1920, was to smoulder on until the first leaves fell, was to be a propitious season of living”
For a book of just over 100 pages it’s full of fully realised characters; from his neighbour Moon (a fellow veteran who’s also on a contract from the vicarage) to the stationmaster’s daughter Kathy and the vicar’s wife Alice - they all visit him often, interested in him and his work. The vicar’s a miserly character and there’re some very uncomfortable conversations between him and Birkin.
And the description of landscape is evocative throughout:
“For me that will always be the summer day of summer days – a cloudless sky, ditches and roadside deep in grass, poppies, cuckoo pint, trees heavy with leaf, orchards bulging over hedge briars.”
This is a beautifully written story of someone looking back fondly on a restorative period in their youth, with the gradual unveiling of the painting mirroring his own feelings of rediscovering himself. The conversational tone, a hint of romance and poignant moments of reflection on religion and war make it easy to relate to this character from another time.
@Rhube@ianturton@SusannaShore@bookstodon Weird. Must be a mess up somewhere. But is that by Tor, by Amazon, or by the printer maybe, not getting the stock to Amazon in time. Hope your order arrives swiftly from Blackwell's!