Recent reading

[luzula]

I went through my DW circle and unfollowed some people that I probably followed in friending memes at some point, but that I then haven't interacted with at all. But going through that list also made me a little melancholy: there are so many people there that I used to be friends with, who are now just gone. : ( I wonder what they're doing now?

Couching at the Door by D K Broster (1942)
Broster’s collection of stories that are dark/weird/creepy/supernatural. Some of these also appear in her other story collection A Fire of Driftwood, which I had read before. This is not a genre that I read much in otherwise, so I don't have much comparison, but I quite liked these stories. Broster’s prose is as enjoyable as usual, and it's interesting to see her apply it to other subjects than historical novels. I was wondering what she would do with the Persephone story, but that was one of my least favorite stories--it only very tangentially touched on the myth, or perhaps I was just too dense to get it.

The Catalans by Patrick O’Brian (1953)
I was wondering what O'Brian wrote when he wasn't writing boat books. This is a contemporaneous story set on the same stretch of coast near the border between France and Spain that Hornblower blasted with cannons in A Ship of the Line; apparently O'Brien lived there for a long time. I like his writing style, and the setting is vividly drawn in a way I admire and enjoy, but on the whole I didn't enjoy this like I do the Aubrey/Maturin books. It just doesn't have the same warmth, and I didn't connect with the characters the same way.

Comments

[seascribble]

Even just recently with the twitter exodus I've lost touch with so many people I used to see online every day and it is very sad. :( But the folks hanging on over here are some of the people I've known the longest!

[luzula]

I was never on Twitter or Tumblr, just on LJ and then DW. But some of these people I've also met in person, and those feel especially sad to lose contact with.