Recent reading

[luzula]

Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison
Reread. I read this fairly recently, maybe two years ago? And I loved it on reread as well. The language is so, so good. It frequently makes me shiver. Here's one of my favorite passages:

He hid himself in under the foredeck among ropes and sails. Halla went to look for him; he had turned bearish, in a den, head buried between paws. When she spoke, kneeling beside him, he pulled her down suddenly on to the cold sail, arm heavy on her neck, his wet cheek by hers. For a time they stayed so. If he could sleep, she thought, sleep through the unhappy months, the heart's hunger, the months of death and cold and not having what you most want, and wake with time gone past and blurred and a new year coming. But perhaps it is too early in the year, she thought after that, and besides, he is not a bear.

To fully make sense of that, maybe you need to know that Halla was partly raised by a bear. I love the font and layout of the book as well (it is by Small Beer Press), which is not something I often think about when reading. I was thinking about the theme of the book, traveling light. I am ambivalent about it. I mean, in one sense I want to travel light: I don't want to own too many things, I want to leave (ecologically) light footprints on the earth. And I suppose not wanting kids is traveling light as well? Having kids is very much binding yourself to other people. But at the same time I can't help being uncomfortable with not binding yourself to other people at all--I want to have friends and family, I want to have meaningful work and be engaged with social movements, I want to have social roots. And it seems like Halla moves on from all her relationships. Although we don't know what happens with her among the Valkyries, I suppose.

The Least of all Possible Mistakes by rageprufrock (podfic read by Lazulus)
I never know whether to write up longfic as I do books, or not. This is definitely book-length, so let's put it here. This is a Sherlock fic that has been recced everywhere, so I finally picked it up, even though I had no prior interest in the pairing (alwaysfemale!Lestrade/Mycroft). I enjoyed it a lot, and it helped that the reader is brilliant. I haven't listened to much podfic lately, but this one really stands out. The story was maybe a bit long in the middle for me, probably because I am not really up on Sherlock canon and thus did not appreciate all the references to cases. But the first and last thirds were gripping, and the characterizations really worked for me.