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R. Frac in Moominland (Books Post)
Dec. 9th, 2018 09:16 amQuotidian Quotient
We had nearly a week of hard-frost mornings with bright blue skies. Now great winds are rolling around the Beautiful Shed, I have daylight candles lit, and the sky is full of portents. Well, clouds.
I sent nine postcards for the year's turning yesterday, and was pleased with myself about it. It was an efficient day, actually -- so much so that it feels like risking a jinx to say so. (If you wanted a card but you're not sure I have your address, pls DM.) I often use "sunreturn" from Le Guin's Earthsea as the focus of my solstice cards.
Today I wrote a small letter to my friend on the Isle of Iona, who is used to such eccentricities as paper letters from me. I love writing letters. I wish I had more occasion to do so.
Friday night K. and M. had me over for dinner, and I liked it so much I went out and bought the same fish fillets and bok choy so I could make the identical dinner over again. They have a wood stove, and the smell and feeling in the house are a joy. Much talk of shop and also Barcelona, which K. & M. love and I have never visited.
Books Post Proper: Frac Visits Moominvalley for the First Time
As I think I've explained elsewhere, I find it difficult to read seriously during a heavy teaching term. I end up reading short, easy things, or the first chapter of several things while wearing a distracted frown, or, if I'm not careful, no things at all except Internet skimming. I also don't like to read material directly related to work in case I discover an error or omission that it's too late for me to fix.
I have a mind of many portcullises and trapdoors.
Are there short (or swift) and satisfying books you can suggest for such circumstances?
I follow the Backlisted podcast obsessively, and the last episode but one discussed Moominvalley in November. Consequently, I've been reading the Moomins for the first time. I didn't read the books as a child. I heard about Tove Jansson on a different books podcast (Bookfight. As an indirect result, I read The Summer Book a few years ago. I love it, but I'd never sought out the children's books until now.
Here are the Moominbooks and my reading experience of them thus far.
Comet in Moominland – I haven't read this yet, as they don't seem to have it at the library.
The Moomins and the Great Flood – I read this first. This is the first Moomin book that Jansson wrote, though not the first published in English. Like many first-books-in-a-series, it doesn't have quite the voice or the feel of the later books. I like whimsy, and this contained much of it, but it didn't do that much for me.
Finn Family Moomintroll – In progress. Tonally on the lighter end of the spectrum; more a collection of set pieces so far.
Moominsummer Madness – This was fun, mildly perilous, and stuffed with delightful bits of satire on excessive park signage and the theatrical life.
Moominland Midwinter – This I read second and liked better than Great Flood, as the strangeness begins to cohere into a worldview, and large ideas lurk & loom & then quietly melt away in the thaw.
Tales from Moominvalley – Not read yet.
Moominpappa at Sea – Not read yet, but looking forward to it, as it apparently concerns Moominpappa's midlife crisis.
Moonminvalley in November – Yeah, like they said on Backlisted: an actual masterpiece. Seriously. It's wonderful.
I wouldn't skip right to it, though. If you are, like me, new to Moominvalley, I would read at least one and preferably several other Moomin books first, because the strength of this book rests partly on its relationship to, and difference from, the others in the series. Backlisted episode here if you don't want to take my word for it.
Non-Moomin-Related Books
Sjon Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was
A novella, really. This was interesting. The plot concerns a young queer man in Iceland, obsessed with cinema, trying to survive the post-World-War-One flu epidemic. It's an elliptical, spare, psychological narrative, cool and estranged.
I'd only read The Blue Fox before and found it disquieting and difficult to forget. At first I didn’t like Moonstone as much, but the final chapter – a sort of coda, really – did several things that mashed around what I thought the story was doing with fiction and nonfiction. Some of these new ingredients I liked and some I didn’t so much, but they all changed the way I read the earlier part of the book, and so I ended up liking it better. A book to re-read.
I've started another of Sjon's novellas, and am feeling doubtful about it, but since narrative disquiet seems to be his hallmark, I should probably carry on.
{rf}
We had nearly a week of hard-frost mornings with bright blue skies. Now great winds are rolling around the Beautiful Shed, I have daylight candles lit, and the sky is full of portents. Well, clouds.
I sent nine postcards for the year's turning yesterday, and was pleased with myself about it. It was an efficient day, actually -- so much so that it feels like risking a jinx to say so. (If you wanted a card but you're not sure I have your address, pls DM.) I often use "sunreturn" from Le Guin's Earthsea as the focus of my solstice cards.
Today I wrote a small letter to my friend on the Isle of Iona, who is used to such eccentricities as paper letters from me. I love writing letters. I wish I had more occasion to do so.
Friday night K. and M. had me over for dinner, and I liked it so much I went out and bought the same fish fillets and bok choy so I could make the identical dinner over again. They have a wood stove, and the smell and feeling in the house are a joy. Much talk of shop and also Barcelona, which K. & M. love and I have never visited.
Books Post Proper: Frac Visits Moominvalley for the First Time
As I think I've explained elsewhere, I find it difficult to read seriously during a heavy teaching term. I end up reading short, easy things, or the first chapter of several things while wearing a distracted frown, or, if I'm not careful, no things at all except Internet skimming. I also don't like to read material directly related to work in case I discover an error or omission that it's too late for me to fix.
I have a mind of many portcullises and trapdoors.
Are there short (or swift) and satisfying books you can suggest for such circumstances?
I follow the Backlisted podcast obsessively, and the last episode but one discussed Moominvalley in November. Consequently, I've been reading the Moomins for the first time. I didn't read the books as a child. I heard about Tove Jansson on a different books podcast (Bookfight. As an indirect result, I read The Summer Book a few years ago. I love it, but I'd never sought out the children's books until now.
Here are the Moominbooks and my reading experience of them thus far.
Comet in Moominland – I haven't read this yet, as they don't seem to have it at the library.
The Moomins and the Great Flood – I read this first. This is the first Moomin book that Jansson wrote, though not the first published in English. Like many first-books-in-a-series, it doesn't have quite the voice or the feel of the later books. I like whimsy, and this contained much of it, but it didn't do that much for me.
Finn Family Moomintroll – In progress. Tonally on the lighter end of the spectrum; more a collection of set pieces so far.
Moominsummer Madness – This was fun, mildly perilous, and stuffed with delightful bits of satire on excessive park signage and the theatrical life.
Moominland Midwinter – This I read second and liked better than Great Flood, as the strangeness begins to cohere into a worldview, and large ideas lurk & loom & then quietly melt away in the thaw.
Tales from Moominvalley – Not read yet.
Moominpappa at Sea – Not read yet, but looking forward to it, as it apparently concerns Moominpappa's midlife crisis.
Moonminvalley in November – Yeah, like they said on Backlisted: an actual masterpiece. Seriously. It's wonderful.
I wouldn't skip right to it, though. If you are, like me, new to Moominvalley, I would read at least one and preferably several other Moomin books first, because the strength of this book rests partly on its relationship to, and difference from, the others in the series. Backlisted episode here if you don't want to take my word for it.
Non-Moomin-Related Books
Sjon Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was
A novella, really. This was interesting. The plot concerns a young queer man in Iceland, obsessed with cinema, trying to survive the post-World-War-One flu epidemic. It's an elliptical, spare, psychological narrative, cool and estranged.
I'd only read The Blue Fox before and found it disquieting and difficult to forget. At first I didn’t like Moonstone as much, but the final chapter – a sort of coda, really – did several things that mashed around what I thought the story was doing with fiction and nonfiction. Some of these new ingredients I liked and some I didn’t so much, but they all changed the way I read the earlier part of the book, and so I ended up liking it better. A book to re-read.
I've started another of Sjon's novellas, and am feeling doubtful about it, but since narrative disquiet seems to be his hallmark, I should probably carry on.
{rf}
