Recent reading

Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens by Elizabeth Arnason
A collection of short stories set in the same world as Ring of Swords. I really liked this! It's very reminiscent of Le Guin: domestic stories that explore a different social system and different set of social taboos. The writing is great, too. Hmm, maybe I should request and/or offer this for Yuletide?

Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge
Oooh, this was great! I was not that into Fly By Night and wasn't sure if I was going to read more Hardinge, but I gave this one a try and loved it. The writing serves the story instead of distracting me from it, and I really connected with the protagonist. And I found the story very original as well--I've never read anything with this kind of plot.

General update

I've spent the last week at our family's summer place with my parents, my sister and her boyfriend, and their kid. On the whole it was good; there were a couple of family spats (some about politics and some about money), but I guess that's unavoidable. I successfully interacted with my sister's kid! \o/ She's a 14-month-old toddler with boundless energy, and I've really had very little experience with kids that age before. But it went fine--she seemed to like me and I liked her. Still glad I don't have a kid of my own, though. Taking care of one 24/7 seems pretty exhausting and absorbing.

Before that I was on another short camping trip, on the west coast this time, with a friend. And now I'm headed to the wedding party of one of my best friends. I'm pondering what to sing for them--I want to do Vladimir Vysotsky's No Man's Land, which doesn't seem to be translated into English? It's about two troops of soldiers, one on the Russian side and one on the Turkish, where the captains of the troops (unbeknownst to each other) both go into no man's land to pick flowers for their weddings. The scent of the flowers puts them to sleep and they have a dream together where:

the border is open like the gates of the Kreml
they see bunkers that are empty
they see a hundred flowers bloom
the driest sand shall burst into bloom
and every land will be no man's land: the earth belongs to no man.

I like it a lot and I think the couple would like it, but it also has a lot of profanity and is maybe not wedding-relevant enough, so hmm. I have a backup song as well which is more of a love song, so I guess I'll ask the couple what they think.