Recent reading

[luzula]

I read some fiction! Only novellas though. I nominated them for my turn at book club, and ended up reading both of them.

Clear by Carys Davies (2024)
A poor Presbyterian minister takes a job evicting a tenant from a remote island during the 19th century Scottish Clearances, while his wife stays at home (at least she does at first). He falls and hits his head and the tenant, not knowing what his errand there is, takes care of him. I liked it well enough, but while I am generally a fan of resolving love triangles with poly, I thought the resolution here was much too hasty.

Aerth by Deborah Tomkins (2025)
Meh. It sounded like the kind of ecologically minded SF that I used to read a lot of, but it felt kind of flat to me. It takes guts to reference The Dispossessed so clearly in its plot, and I feel it just did not live up to that. And come on, you can't grow apples in a climate which is so cold that you get regular frosts in June! The flowers would freeze and you'd never get any apples. *grumbles* I did learn something new and exciting from the book, though, which is that runner beans (unlike ordinary beans) are actually perennial! They have tubers which you can dig up, store through the winter, and plant again in the spring (in warmer climates you don't have to dig them up, obviously). I'm totally going to try that with our runner beans, especially as they cross-pollinate and we had two varieties, so I can't trust the seeds to breed true.

Er, sorry to make everything about vegetable gardening.

Comments

[dolorosa_12]

Er, sorry to make everything about vegetable gardening.

On my part there's no need to apologise for that! I want to hear about your runner bean experiments!

[luzula]

I'll report back on that next year, then. : )

[sylvanwitch]

sorry to make everything about vegetable gardening

Lol! This is the best *disclaimer EVER, and I love it for you! YAY! :-)

[luzula]

I guess there are worse things to obsess over. : )

[chestnut_pod]

If more people made it about vegetable gardening, they wouldn't make silly apple mistakes!

[luzula]

Indeed! Although to be fair, the book did also teach me something.

[snickfic]

I liked it well enough, but while I am generally a fan of resolving love triangles with poly, I thought the resolution here was much too hasty.

I kind of felt the same. She was just so immediately fine with it, and I like things to be messier before they resolve.

[luzula]

Yes! The processing of emotion and relationship negotiation is part of what makes a poly story satisfying for me.

[rachelmanija]

You're not making everything about vegetable gardening! Half of your objection was about fruit.

[luzula]

True! : ) And I did also have other objections: for example, the prose did not particularly appeal to me.

[feroxargentea]

I didn't know that about runner beans! They never seem to have much in the way of overwintering roots, although maybe they would if they survived a bit longer into autumn (they always get blown over here, the soil is so stony it's impossible to put the poles in deep enough). They don't seem to resprout from the compost heap the way potatoes etc do.

Everything is about vegetable gardening if you try hard enough :)

[luzula]

Sorry about your stony soil! I didn't think to be grateful enough about our deep, mostly stone-free soil, but now I will be. Yeah, maybe they have to stand late into the autumn to make the tubers. I'll report back...

We also have one experimental oca plant, which is supposed to make tubers, but from what I've read, it happens in November or so, so maybe it'll be too cold then. Have you tried growing that?

[feroxargentea]

I haven't tried oca, no. Anything that comes with the tag "needs a long growing season" feels like a losing bet here! Also, hmmm, the wiki page says "the plant will die before producing tubers if frosts occur too soon after the autumn equinox", which is discouraging because our first frost was *on* the autumn equinox.

But maybe one frost wouldn't kill it? We often have one or two random frosts but then quite mild weather for a month or two.

Let me know how yours does!

[luzula]

I feel like you must be a fair bit south of me, but maybe you're also high up, which would make your growing season shorter? We have had one light frost so far, but it didn't damage anything. And tonight there's a risk of another light frost, so we harvested all our squash and pumpkins except the butternuts (and the oca), which we swathed in fabric in the hope that they might mature. It's a race against time...the next week after that should be okay.

I'm not actually expecting much from the oca; it's just an experiment. Maybe next year I'll put one in the polytunnel we will have then.

[feroxargentea]

Yes you must be a long way north of me (*waves to the northeast*). We're only halfway up a Peak District hill (250 metres or so) but it's quite a bit colder and windier and wetter than down in the city. Curcurbits sulk in the cold winds.

Fingers crossed for your butternuts! I tried Autumn Crown this year, a butternut/pumpkin hybrid, and they did manage to ripen a couple of fruits, but the pure pumpkins did significantly better. I think I'll stick with what's happy with grey skies :)

[nineveh_uk]

I've been tempted by Clear, but perhaps it is one for the library.

I had no idea about runner beans overwintering, though my dad grows them quite regularly.

[luzula]

Oops, forgot to reply! There was plenty to like in Clear, I thought, and it's not like the sudden end ruined what came before. But the end was just very rushed.

I dug up some runner beans a few days ago and found no tubers. But I planted them in a pot anyway and put them in the root cellar, so we'll see if they survive and grow next year.

[sovay]

I liked it well enough, but while I am generally a fan of resolving love triangles with poly, I thought the resolution here was much too hasty.

I didn't even have a problem with the relative simplicity of her decision that she was fine with it, or at least fine with trying it. I just wanted any sense of what it would mean for all three of them that was not just "all aboard who's going aboard for Norway!" The novel had been so quietly careful with the movements of its characters' lives until then—it had the kind of pacing that could devote an entire short chapter to a single important moment—and all of a sudden it telescoped so fast, I got snapped in the face with the recoil and couldn't believe the remainder of the book was the author's afterword. It didn't burn me retroactively on the rest of the story, but it seemed very odd that no one in the entire professionally edited process could have told her there was no need to structure a short novel like the last ten feet of film unpredictably ran out. If it was literally a word count problem, there were better ways around it!

[edit] I don't have an immediate fix-it beyond wanting, if the author was so resistant to writing a conversation, then at least some narrative recognition of the shift in the status quo, but it did seem a missed opportunity that Ivar is so initially obsessed with Mary's portrait and then just drops it when he realizes his feelings for John.

[luzula]

Yes, I do agree that the pacing is way off!

I wonder if it might also be a matter of taste: some people like things resolved with quiet understanding, and some (like me) want to dig into the process of getting there. But we certainly got more of digging into the process with Ivar and John.

but it did seem a missed opportunity that Ivar is so initially obsessed with Mary's portrait and then just drops it when he realizes his feelings for John
Definitely so! I actually thought that bit was set-up for later relationship development between Ivar and Mary, when I read it. But nope, did not happen.

[sovay]

I wonder if it might also be a matter of taste: some people like things resolved with quiet understanding, and some (like me) want to dig into the process of getting there. But we certainly got more of digging into the process with Ivar and John.

I can do quiet understanding! Here I'm not sure when they had time to understand!

Definitely so! I actually thought that bit was set-up for later relationship development between Ivar and Mary, when I read it. But nope, did not happen.

I shall headcanon. It's such an otherwise unnecessarily loose thread.