Reading Wednesday
Sep. 6th, 2017 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yuuagoFinished reading: Forge by Jan Zwicky. Already mentioned in a previous entry that I liked it, so I'll just say - this poetry collection is great from beginning to end; if you have a chance to read it, please do so. There's something about her work that feels very fresh and musical; I can see myself returning to re-read this one frequently.
Currently reading: Nights of the Living Dead: An Anthology, edited by Jonathan Maberry and George A. Romero. This is, basically, a short story collection of fanfiction for the film Night of the Living Dead. Well, okay, not all of it is fanfiction - considering George Romero has a story in it, as well as John Russo. ;) But, anyway. If you like short stories, and you like zombie fiction, and you like Night of the Living Dead in particular, then you'll enjoy this - though you don't need to have seen the film in order to appreciate it.
Also Currently Reading: What the Bear Said: Skald Tales of New Iceland by W. D. Valgardson. More short stories. Some of them are folk tales that came over from Iceland mostly-unaltered; others are Icelandic-Canadian stories firmly grounded in the Canadian setting. Storms over Lake Winnipeg, instead of whales there are enormous sturgeons, talking bears.... One story in particular that I loved involved elves in Canada.
There is a farm in Manitoba, near to Gimli. On this farm there is a rise, and on this rise there is a field of stones. Nothing grows in that field; there is a trail that goes around it, instead of across, because nobody wants to cross it.
One Christmas Eve, there is a woman in the house on that farm, alone; her family has gone travelling to Gimli to go to church there, and had to stay overnight, leaving her there. After all, someone has to look after the animals.
She hears a knock on her door, and opens it to find a pair of travellers; a man and a child, very shabbily-dressed and obviously poor. She is hospitable to them; warms them up and gives them food and tries to make them comfortable. But these are not ordinary people; they are elves, and there are a lot more of them where that came from, as she discovers when she hears another knock on the door and opens it to find many more people, all of them beautiful and very well-dressed... The first two were sent to see what kind of reception they'd get. So, there is a bit of a party at this woman's place that night.
One of the men, a very handsome fellow, approaches her and is very flirtatious; she refuses him. The next person she speaks to, a beautiful woman, says that this was her husband, and as thanks for the refusal, the elf-lady gives the woman some beautifully embroidered clothes, and states that she is not allowed to wear them until her wedding day.
In the morning, the elves disappear without a trace.
The woman's relatives visit her the next morning, and she tells them what happened. The next Christmas, her mother stays in the house, and the woman goes to Gimli with her family. When they return, they find her mother injured on the floor. She says that there was a knock on the door, but when she opened it, all she found was a pair of beggars. So, she closed the door on them, and they seemed to leave. But then they came back....
A few years later, the woman meets a strange, handsome man near that field of stones. He looks familiar, but when she asks, he says that they have never met. They walk together for a while, and he tells her old stories. And they meet many times after that. A few months later, these two marry; and the woman wears the beautiful clothing that the mysterious elf-woman gave her.
After the wedding, she walks through the snow with her new husband to the field of stones on the rise. Passers-by see them, and it looks as if they are speaking to someone - but there is no one visible there. The man, it is said, is the son of the elf-couple; the flirtation had been a test to see whether she would be a good wife for their son, and the gift of wedding clothes was a promise.
...And after that, the woman and her husband move to British Columbia, to be near mountains and seaside; and the rise of stones near Gimli no longer seems so strange and otherworldly, because the elf-man's family has gone with them as well.
(End)
Now, there's one tiny detail that made me laugh - there's a scene where everyone is trying to find a "normal" explanation for who the elves were, based on what the clothing looks like; the answer they came up with was "Oh, the embroidery is so beautiful; they must have been Galicians" - okay, yes, thank you; if Galicians = elves, then I'm going to pretend that my ancestors were elves now. \:D/ Clearly my grandmother was an elf-lady, haha. <3 Anyway....
Reading next: Awfully Devoted Women: Lesbian Lives in Canada, 1900-65 by Cameron Duder. Title pretty much says it all; I have no idea if this book is any good, but we shall see. The selection of stuff in the local library that deals with specifically-Canadian LGBT2QA stuff is... small.
Also reading next: A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale. This one is a M/M novel set in Saskatchewan near the end of the Edwardian era. Hopefully the ending won't be tragic (but I'll steel myself for it anyway). It wasn't written by a Canadian; Gale is British. I find that interesting - it isn't often that I find stuff in Canadian settings that isn't by a Canadian author. Well, we'll see how this one goes.
Currently reading: Nights of the Living Dead: An Anthology, edited by Jonathan Maberry and George A. Romero. This is, basically, a short story collection of fanfiction for the film Night of the Living Dead. Well, okay, not all of it is fanfiction - considering George Romero has a story in it, as well as John Russo. ;) But, anyway. If you like short stories, and you like zombie fiction, and you like Night of the Living Dead in particular, then you'll enjoy this - though you don't need to have seen the film in order to appreciate it.
Also Currently Reading: What the Bear Said: Skald Tales of New Iceland by W. D. Valgardson. More short stories. Some of them are folk tales that came over from Iceland mostly-unaltered; others are Icelandic-Canadian stories firmly grounded in the Canadian setting. Storms over Lake Winnipeg, instead of whales there are enormous sturgeons, talking bears.... One story in particular that I loved involved elves in Canada.
There is a farm in Manitoba, near to Gimli. On this farm there is a rise, and on this rise there is a field of stones. Nothing grows in that field; there is a trail that goes around it, instead of across, because nobody wants to cross it.
One Christmas Eve, there is a woman in the house on that farm, alone; her family has gone travelling to Gimli to go to church there, and had to stay overnight, leaving her there. After all, someone has to look after the animals.
She hears a knock on her door, and opens it to find a pair of travellers; a man and a child, very shabbily-dressed and obviously poor. She is hospitable to them; warms them up and gives them food and tries to make them comfortable. But these are not ordinary people; they are elves, and there are a lot more of them where that came from, as she discovers when she hears another knock on the door and opens it to find many more people, all of them beautiful and very well-dressed... The first two were sent to see what kind of reception they'd get. So, there is a bit of a party at this woman's place that night.
One of the men, a very handsome fellow, approaches her and is very flirtatious; she refuses him. The next person she speaks to, a beautiful woman, says that this was her husband, and as thanks for the refusal, the elf-lady gives the woman some beautifully embroidered clothes, and states that she is not allowed to wear them until her wedding day.
In the morning, the elves disappear without a trace.
The woman's relatives visit her the next morning, and she tells them what happened. The next Christmas, her mother stays in the house, and the woman goes to Gimli with her family. When they return, they find her mother injured on the floor. She says that there was a knock on the door, but when she opened it, all she found was a pair of beggars. So, she closed the door on them, and they seemed to leave. But then they came back....
A few years later, the woman meets a strange, handsome man near that field of stones. He looks familiar, but when she asks, he says that they have never met. They walk together for a while, and he tells her old stories. And they meet many times after that. A few months later, these two marry; and the woman wears the beautiful clothing that the mysterious elf-woman gave her.
After the wedding, she walks through the snow with her new husband to the field of stones on the rise. Passers-by see them, and it looks as if they are speaking to someone - but there is no one visible there. The man, it is said, is the son of the elf-couple; the flirtation had been a test to see whether she would be a good wife for their son, and the gift of wedding clothes was a promise.
...And after that, the woman and her husband move to British Columbia, to be near mountains and seaside; and the rise of stones near Gimli no longer seems so strange and otherworldly, because the elf-man's family has gone with them as well.
(End)
Now, there's one tiny detail that made me laugh - there's a scene where everyone is trying to find a "normal" explanation for who the elves were, based on what the clothing looks like; the answer they came up with was "Oh, the embroidery is so beautiful; they must have been Galicians" - okay, yes, thank you; if Galicians = elves, then I'm going to pretend that my ancestors were elves now. \:D/ Clearly my grandmother was an elf-lady, haha. <3 Anyway....
Reading next: Awfully Devoted Women: Lesbian Lives in Canada, 1900-65 by Cameron Duder. Title pretty much says it all; I have no idea if this book is any good, but we shall see. The selection of stuff in the local library that deals with specifically-Canadian LGBT2QA stuff is... small.
Also reading next: A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale. This one is a M/M novel set in Saskatchewan near the end of the Edwardian era. Hopefully the ending won't be tragic (but I'll steel myself for it anyway). It wasn't written by a Canadian; Gale is British. I find that interesting - it isn't often that I find stuff in Canadian settings that isn't by a Canadian author. Well, we'll see how this one goes.
Yuu. Fic writer & book lover. M/Canada.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-07 02:54 am (UTC)I hadn't heard of Awfully Devoted Women before, but it also sounds very much like my thing.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 07:07 am (UTC)(Also: I tried out that apple cake recipe you posted! It's delicious. <3 Though I suspect that it's not going to last the night— the amount of cake left keeps decreasing every time I check on it, haha.)
no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 12:06 pm (UTC)