Recent reading

[luzula]

My fever has gone down and I am not half-dead anymore, though far from well. Dragged myself to the corner store today, had this conversation:

Me: *sways and looks like a zombie*
Guy behind the counter: Aww, you look sick!
Me: Yeah.
Him, sounding very sure: It's the Norwegian flu!
Me: Norwegian flu?
Him: You'll be sick for two weeks! And then it'll take you ten more days to get well!
Me: Um.

I cannot find the Norwegian flu on the internet. Anyway, I have read doggedly to distract myself from the misery:

La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman (2017)
Okay, this I read before getting sick. I liked it--the characters were sympathetic, and it was a good page-turney adventure too. Although I was a bit thrown by the sudden appearance of Fairyland.

The Common Good by Ugo Mattei (2011, original in Italian, read in Swedish, seems not to be available in English)
Ha haaa. Why did I choose this book to read while having a fever? I know, I know, it's because it's due at the library. Anyway, the author is an Italian law professor, and it's about the commons as opposed to public or private ownership. I feel like I already agree with him politically, but he's saying it in a too-complicated way. Or maybe that was just my fever-muzzy brain. I never get it when people use the word "phenomenology"--I'm sure I've tried to learn what it means before, but it never sticks. The book was very short though, so there's that.

Marken by David Väyrynen (2017, only in Swedish)
Also due at the library. A collection of poetry set in Norrbotten, the northernmost county of Sweden. Or actually it's more like documentary-style fic. I should have taken the fact that the book cover is entirely red as a clue, but I didn't actually realize where it was going until a network of villages is seceding from Sweden and aiming to become self-sufficient. And this is told by means of the meeting minutes of a village annual meeting. : D More stories should be told via meeting minutes. I did have a niggling discomfort with one aspect of the book though, which was that there are many many names in it, but none of them are immigrant names; they're all Swedish, Finnish and Sami. It's not anti-immigrant that I can see, they're just...not there. Also it's a bit sweeping about people from southern Sweden. Anyway, an interesting part of the book is a moral code with 613 items, spread through the book. Here's a sample:

83. A ban on expecting interest on your sacrifices during hard times.
84. A ban on bragging afterwards about your sacrifices in order to obtain interest.
85. A ban on forcing others to make sacrifices for your sake.
86. A ban on scapegoating one person so that the rest of the village will be free of blame.
...
91. A ban on blaming everything on bad circumstances.
92. A decree to remember that some things you cannot control yourself.
93. A ban on thinking that the things you cannot control yourself are under divine control.
94. A decree to remember that even if you work together, there are some things you cannot control.
95. A decree to nevertheless work together in such situations.

The Year Without A Summer by Mary Robinette Kowal (Glamourist Histories #3)
A+ choice of light reading when having a fever, would recommend. This is established-relationship regency with magic, nice mix of character development and page-turney plot.

Nella Last's War by Nella Last
The diary of a 49-year-old British housewife during WWII. This was absorbing and domestic and surprisingly upbeat for a war story, largely because the main character gets out of the house and away from her husband, and learns she has a talent for organizing. I liked it! (The weirdest thing about it though is that at one point she bakes a cake in June and then doesn't eat it until April the following year! Whaaat. It's just wrapped up in paper in a tin. Is there so much sugar in it that it's preserved by that?)

The Course of Honour by Avoliot
Everybody and their sister was reading this a while ago, and I do see why! Wow. This had pretty much everything I wanted right now, sooooo much pining and tropey goodness, and such a well-constructed plot too. All the thumbs up. I loved it.

Comments

[the_rck]

I've generally only heard of keeping cakes that long if they're being soaked in hard liquor (usually rum or brandy) during storage (example here: http://www.gratednutmeg.com/?p=4130 ), but I'm not a baker. High levels of sugar are unlikely in Britain during WWII because sugar was heavily rationed 1942-1953 (According to this BBC page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/topics/rationing_in_ww2 ).

[oursin]

Traditional rich fruit cakes - as made for Christmas, wedding cakes, etc - were often kept for a long time, even without the hard liquor (as in my grandmother's Methodist household), e.g. the tradition of keeping the top tier of the wedding cake for the christening of the first child. I'm not sure, without running and finding out, whether the dried fruit (maybe she had a prewar stash or a parcel from American friends?) would act to some extent as a substitute for sugar. My own recollection from memoirs and novels of the war is also of people saving up sugar e.g. by going without in tea, to make cakes for some particular occasion.

[luzula]

Interesting! We don't really have this fruitcake tradition in Sweden--or, people sometimes make them for Christmas, but I think that came from Britain.

[jesse_the_k]

You can read a lot of books when you're sick!

I share your issue with "phenomenology." I'd love a handy-dandy bookmark series containing definitions-and-samples of the $10 words academic humanities folks deploy to be sufficiently academic. My never-remembers are "ontology" and "hermeneutics" and ... I just started reading some essays by Siri Hustvedt so there are at least a dozen more I've already forgotten.

The aphorisms are intriguing indeed. Does the "interest" in 82 & 83 refer to monetary gain on investment or social attention? 92 and 93 are so damn true.

Meeting minutes are a sly way to tell stories, since the politics only become clear after a change in regime (or at least in the person taking notes). Are there novel meeting-management systems as well?

[luzula]

"Hermeneutics", yeah, I have no idea what that means.

The usual primary meaning of "ränta" is economic, but I guess it could be both. And nope, the minutes did not say anything about meeting techniques!

[skygiants]

Oh, Nella Last! I found it fascinating how novelistic it was -- like, her life feels like a narrative, with a trajectory. I guess more people's lives do than you might expect.

I've had Nella Last's Peace sitting on my shelf for some years now, with intent to read, but I suspect it will be depressing so it continues to sit. >.>

[luzula]

Well, don't we all create narrative in our lives?

There was an afterword by one of her sons in edition, giving a brief account of what happened next. I was sad that apparently she didn't get to continue organizing stuff after the war. : (

[isis]

Aw, feel better soon. I can't imagine trying to read nonfiction while sick!

[luzula]

Ha ha, well, it wasn't really a success! And thanks.

[dhampyresa]

Get better soon!

[luzula]

Thanks! I'm slightly better each day now.

[lyr]

I'm sorry you're miserably sick! I hope you feel better soon.

[luzula]

Thanks! I feel better now, though still not well.

[feroxargentea]

Cake explanation: Christmas cake (or Christmas-style cake) is supposed to be made several months in advance :) It's more dried fruit than actual cake, so it will keep a very long time. It's matured by pouring spirits into it, little by little over a long period, and wrapping it in marzipan and icing. No bug would dare go near it. (Also you could probably kill a human if you bashed them over the head with it or made them eat more than one slice.) Obviously everyone is too well fed at Christmas to eat any, so you end up finishing it at this time of year. I don't make it myself, but my mother-in-law distributes hers around the family...

(and yes, Nella Last did find herself a little lost after the war, but she eventually found other things to organise. Second volume of her letters is worth reading too.)

[luzula]

So sugar + alcohol, then. That does sound like no bug would dare go near it! Do you like it?

[feroxargentea]

I do! (My mother-in-law makes a non-alcoholic version just to keep me happy)