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

[cahn]

Yeah, I wonder about this too. There are a lot of people I had some great and interesting conversations with, and considered friends, and now they're just... not there. I assume most of them just drifted away, especially as one gets busier (I know I post less than I used to when I was less busy, and less than I'd like!) -- but I hope they're all doing okay.

[luzula]

Yeah, it's completely understandable that people have different phases of their lives, with different interests and amounts of free time, but it's still sad when they disappear utterly. I hope they're doing okay too!