Learning New Words with Lymond: G is for Gimcrack

"Ever since I first read them in college, as a writer I've been in dialogue with the Lymond books," Kushner says. They captured her imagination from the beginning: "As I read, I kept trying to figure out, 'How did she just do that?' I learned a lot." ~ "All the Writers You Love Probably Love Dorothy Dunnett," Alyssa Dawn Johnson, NPR

Welcome back to another chapter of Learning New Words With Lymond, my attempt to understand and appreciate the intersection of word choice and character development in the work of the Scottish novelist Dorothy Dunnett. Earlier this year, I reread her first novel, The Game of Kings, and wrote down the many words and references I wanted to look up; put them in alphabetical order; and began the process of analyzing and enjoying how Dunnett does what she does with language.

The Trial of Gilles de Rais, BNF Latin 17663 (Wikimedia Commons)

We continue our journey with words beginning with the letter 'g'...

galloon

"Mine all have whole necks, and go to bed with me for joy, not for lions on their quarterings and galloon on their underwear." p. 276

A galloon is "a kind of narrow, close-woven ribbon or braid, of gold, silver, or silk thread, used for trimming articles of apparel; a trimming of this material." (OED) The confrontation between Lymond and Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, serves to illustrate magnificently, mostly through dialogue, their previous history and respective characters. 

gib-cat

"--But even a gib-cat has claws," said Lymond, returning the smile and answering the thought. "Where is Samuel Harvey?" p. 314 

A gib-cat is a neutered tomcat or a term of abuse for an older woman; the former is clearly what is meant here. (OED; see also the entry The Dorothy Dunnett Companion, vol 1.) In  Lymond's adversaries---here Sir Robert Bowes and George Douglas--ignore the threat of his claws, and are deservingly and entertainingly shredded over the succeeding pages.

Gilles de Rais

I'm used to being taken for a cross between Gilles de Rais and a sort of international exchange in young mammals, but I draw the line somewhere. p. 348 

Gilles de Rais (c. 1405-1440) features in neither volume of The Dorothy Dunnett Companion. Born into a powerful Breton family, he became Marshall of France and fought alongside Joan of Arc. Accused of summoning demons and convicted of raping and murdering over a hundred children, he was executed in 1440. Alongside that, "international trade in young mammals," is a bit of a damp squib, aside from being a glaring anachronism: mammalia isn't used as a zoological classification until the eighteenth century; mammal wanders into the dictionary in the nineteenth; and international trade in young animals would not then have been the moral outrage it is today. Lymond is speaking figuratively, not literally; since his audience is the hapless Will Scott, he could well be referring to his attempt to capture Margaret Douglas's son and use him as a bargaining chip. To say nothing of the other exchanges of hostages going on in Part 3, Chapter 2. Layers within layers!

gimcrack

"In a day of gimcrack cannibalism and snivelling atrocities, we have now touched rock bottom. God send," pursued the voice as Scott, descending, made his way to a trestle by the well, "God send that somebody else is about to flay the gristle from your inestimable backbone." p. 348

A gimcrack is either a "a fanciful notion; also, a ‘dodge’, underhand design;" a knicknack or ornament or insubstantial thing; a fop, especially a female one (noun); or as an adjective "trivial, worthless; showy but unsubstantial; trumpery." (OED) Lymond, in taking in Will Scott and attempting to teach him, runs a risk most teachers will ruefully recognise: a pupil who learns some unintended lessons. Will is a delightful point of view character and this scene in the cellar at Threave is a crucial turning point for him and for us as readers in discovering who Lymond is and what he really wants. And it's a delightful example of Lymond's ability to scourge with words alone.

girasol

There was a gleam of steel: a solitary, agonized, breathless moment in which the irony of the thing struck him like a cannon ball, and then the circle of dark heads above him opened out like a girasol to the sun. p. 476

A girasol can be either a fire opal or a sixteenth-century name for a sunflower, from an Italian portmanteau of the word girare (to turn) and sole (sun). (OED) If the repetition of sounds in "like a sunflower to the sun" bothers you (it wouldn't have bothered late Latin poets, who made an Olympic sport of alliteration and assonance), and "like a flower to the sun" feels to hackneyed and overused, try "like a girasol to the sun" today!

Glasgerion

There was a pause. Then Lymond, rather helplessly, began to laugh. "Strike on, strike on, Glasgèrion. Prophète de malheur, babillarde..." And as once before, was betrayed by the uncertain, wanton luxuriance of voice. p. 361

"Prophète de malheur, babillarde" is translated in The Dorothy Dunnett Companion. Come, let us add "prophet of misfortune, chatterer" to our mental libraries of French invective. The Companion doesn't list a literary source but a Google search suggests Lymond is quoting "L'Hirondelle et les petit oiseaux," a poetic retelling of Aesop's fable of the swallow and the other birds by Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695). The swallow, warning the other birds to eat up a farmer's hemp seeds before they can grown into plants that will be made into rope for nets, is roundly rebuffed by the other birds.

Prophète de malheur, babillarde, dit-on,
        Le bel emploi que tu nous donnes!
        Il nous faudrait mille personnes
        Pour éplucher tout ce canton.
        La chanvre étant tout à fait crue

A full version of the text, with light commentary, can be found here.

Glasgèrion is a late medieval ballad, known to Chaucer, in which a king's daughter falls in love with a harper, Glasgèrion, and is deceived and raped by his servant.

Strike on, strike on, Glasgèrion,

Of thy striking doe not blinne:

Theres never a stroke comes oer thy harpe,

But it glads my hart withinne.

The ballad is partially quoted in The Dorothy Dunnett Companion; the full text can be found here. Lymond, wounded and physically exhausted, mocks himself for being a day late for a meeting that would been a crucial step towards proving his innocence.When and why Lymond engages in verbal acrobatics is always revealing for his character; to his interlocutor, Gideon Somerville, it seems a sign of inebriated insouciance; as readers, we can see how desperately Lymond is trying to keep it together, and how he compounds his self-reproach for being "too little, too late." Lymond's verbosity also distances and delays the melodrama of his situation, which makes it feel earned rather than excessive.

Glaucus

"Ah!" said Lymond, airy and stylish in dark blue. "There's a but. Like Galucus, we have a but, but no honey in it. Lord Grey has changed his mind?" p. 313

Not the Greek god of fisherman, but a mythological character, the son of King Minos. He accidentally drowned in a jar (aka, a butt) of honey and was brought back to life by Polyidus using a magic herb. (Wikipedia; see also The Dorothy Dunnett Companion.) The prince was promised and then deprived of the gift of prophecy, paralleling Lymond's own situation of being promised and deprived of a key witness to his innocence.

gomerel

Sir Wat said: "Ye gomerel: if that's right, why the devil didn't you watch that first letter?" p. 523 "That boy," bellowed Sir Wat, "was a shilpit, shiftless, shilly-shallying gomerel before he met up with Francis Crawford." p. 525

Clearly, a term of abuse favoured by the redoubtable Wat Buccleuch; a Scots and northern dialect word for a silly person, fool, or simpleton. (OED) A ninteenth century word, as far as the dictionary says, rather than an early modern one; its earliest print user was Christian Isobel Johnstone (1781-1857) (ODNB), an important Scottish novelist, journalist, and editor; another early user was the great Scottish historical novellist, Sir Walter Scott.

Learning New Words with Lymond: F is for Fustic

Welcome back to Learning New Words with Lymond, a series of blog posts about word choice and storytelling in the works of Dorothy Dunnett, an internationally beloved historical novelist. Like Ellen Kushner, when I first read the Lymond Chronicles, my immediate reaction was "How did she just do that?"

Dorothy Dunnett, The Game of Kings

This project attempts to answer this question by analyzing Dunnett's use of rare and obscure words. What do these words mean in context? What do they reveal (or conceal) about character and plot? We continue our journey through The Game of Kings with words beginning with the letter 'f'...

feal 

"All right, but remember, although you've bought the rights of fuel, feal, and divot, I shan't be lying here like an upset sheep forever." p. 461 

Dunnett's recondite vocabulary functions like a camera obscura of the past: through the tiny hole of one now-obsolete word, we get a shadow-picture how and why that word was once common. At first sight, feal looks at first like it might simply be a misprint. It's not. Feal can be a noun, meaning a feudal tenant or vassal, or a payment to a feudal lord; an adjective, meaning faithful or constant; or a verb meaning to hide or conceal. And that's not getting into the possibilities that feal is, in older spellings of English, another way to write feel, fall, or fail! This particular sentence, spoken by Lymond to his brother Richard, has already come up once before, when I looked up the word divot, thinking that this had to be a new-to-me use of that word. And it was. "Feal and divot" comes from Scottish law: it is "a rural servitude, importing a right in the proprietor of the dominant tenement to cut and remove turf for fences or for thatching or covering houses or the like purposes, within the dominant lands." (OED).

 

fenestration

Something--hardly laughter--glimmered in the heavy eyes. "Neither do I. But the fenestration seems fairly extensive." p. 438 

The first thing that comes to mind when I see the word "fenestration" is the Defenestration of Prague, which involved the people of Bohemia tossing Habsburg officials out a window into a refuse-choked moat for failing to keep their promises. According to the dictionary, it can refer both to "the arrangement of windows in a building," and also "the process of becoming perforated; the formation of small holes." (OED) The first attested use of fenestration is nineteenth century, but since the word comes directly from the Latin word for window, fenestra, it's not inconceivable that it was in use earlier. I think I've looked up more words from these scenes where Richard Crawford tends his brother than any other part of the book--Dunnett does absolutely fascinating things with subtle revelations of character through language. "My injuries seem fairly extensive" and "the fenestration seems fairly extensive" are the statements of two very different men.

flamens

Lymond looked over his shoulder and back. "Spaniard? Behold," he quoted sadly, "my countenance and my colour. It's only Sweet Cicely awaiting the bees, and blushing in young modesty like a seraphim, two wings over the eyes, and the other four pinned with some some damnably hard knots: God save Flamens and keep all the knotless from high winds and short memories." p. 316 

Lymond, in temporary captivity to a group of Englishmen whom he tricked and soundly humiliated by pretending to be Spanish, proceeds to drive them to distraction by making ceaseless, subtle fun of them. He quotes King Herod's speech from the fifteenth- century Coventry Nativity play:

Behold my countenance and my colour,
Brighter than the sun in the middle of the day!
Where can you have a more greater succour,
Than to behold my person that is so gay;
My falchion and my fashion with my gorgeous array?

The reference to Sweet Cicely is partially explained by the site of Lymond's captivity--a kitchen garden; in Isaiah 6:2 the seraphim in cover their feet and faces with their wings and fly with the third set. In Roman culture, a Flamen is a priest of a god. Surely in this case, Lymond propitiates Momus, the god of ridicule, mentioned on the previous page. The rest of his  mockery is unfortunately lost on me; as far as I can tell from skimming the Spanish episode (pp 111-7, if you want to see for yourself), there is nothing that would make these particular words into the carefully aimed insult they undoubtedly are. If either the penultimate (God save Flamens) or final clause (keep all the knotless from high winds and short memories) are references to literature, they have thus far escaped me. Knotless, in any event, means "like a thread without knots, smoothly, without check or hindrance," in other words, the opposite of how Lymond's hapless opponents' plans have gone. (OED)

fleshers

The fleshers and brewers and smiths and weavers and skinners and saddlers and salters and cappers and masons and cutlers and fletchers and plasterers and armourers and porters and water carriers, and the one-eye man who had called at Bogle House selling fumigating pans. p. 138

A flesher is a Scottish word for a butcher. (OED) Names of historical occupations are such an evocative window into how people lived.

fossorial

But whatever happens, you have from these fossorial depths my unstinted gratitude and fondest applause. p. 304

A synonym for burrowing, used to describe an animal that burrows or is capable of doing so. Lymond's admiration and gratitude for the help of Christian Stewart, to whom he is speaking, goes a long way down.

frangible

A frangible and archaic courtesy reigned at Flaw Valleys. p. 378 

Frangible is a word I've seen before but have trouble remembering because it doesn't sound at all like its meaning, which is breakable, or capable of being broken; it can be used as an adjective or a noun. I was delighted to discover that it's an old word, dating back to at least the late fifteenth century, with roots in Old French. (OED) Not a load-bearing word, since the sentence would have much the same flavour if it were "A fragile and archaic courtesy reigned at Flaw Valleys," although breakable (frangible) is subtly different from easily broken (fragile). The sentence does start to change into something very different if one plays with alternatives for "archaic." A fragile and old-fashioned courtesy reigned at Flaw Valleys is something out of a comedy of manners, which this is decidedly not.

froissèes

The men watching, unable to breathe, heard the click and clash and slither of contes, froissées, beating and binding: saw first one man and then the other bring his art to the pitch of freeing his blade for the ultimate perfection, only to bow before the other's defence. p. 419

While froissées is the feminine past participle of the French verb froisser, which can mean "to take offence, to be hurt" or "to crumple or crease," it is clearly has another meaning here. As happened when I looked up contes, I am unable to identify the precise technique described--no joy from my beloved Oxford English Dictionary or a damnably AI-infested Google search. A quick word search of Mahon's English translation of L'Abbat's The Art of Fencing, or, the Use of the Small Sword (1735) and George Silver's Paradoxes of Defence (1599) turns up neither term. However, the Wikipedia article on martial arts manuals shows that there was a whole industry of seventeenth century Scottish fencing manuals. These are of course, a century too recent, but one assumes Dunnett had the linguistic facility and curiosity to consult early modern fechtbücher (fight books) in the original. Digging into them all goes beyond the scope of these posts, but hopefully, at some point, someone who is both a Dunnett fan and a practitioner of historic martial arts will investigate. In the meantime, one need not be able to follow the precise technical terminology of the duel between the Crawford brothers to appreciate the story it tells.

fustic

Sir Robert Bowes straightened, nodded, and surveyed the Master at leisure from fustic head to silver spurs. He smiled. "Is this the fellow?" p. 314

Fustic refers to a yellow dye made from the wood of either the Venetian sumac (Rhus cotinus) or Cladrastis (Chlorophora, Maclura) tinctoria. Those who are deep into their Dunnett will be delighted to learn that one of the earliest published uses of the word is by royal Latin tutor Roger Ascham in Toxophilus, the schole of shootinge (1545). (OED) We are told a few times that Lymond is very blond; Bill's Dunnett Blog has a recent post which gathers a number of physical descriptions of the character. Impossible that anything male should be as fair as that, memory whispers; there is a more than superficial resemblance between Lymond and Peter Wimsey. It interests me how often Dunnett uses action to described character, and how selectively she uses details of physical appearance. Descriptions of how characters speak are perhaps rarest of all. Without being told anything, we are shown that Bowes thinks he has the upper hand.

Spoiler: he doesn't.

A Note on Links

Because I work at a university, I have access to the subscription version of Oxford English Dictionary, and indeed the luxury of the online Oxford Reference series at my fingertips. As a matter of principle, I try to use and link to material that anyone can access when writing for public audiences. However, the OED has features--like the ability to explore the etymology, frequency, history of use, and meanings of words, that free online dictionaries simply don't have. Thus, I quote relevant bits of entries, and include open access links wherever possible, so that anyone who wants to do so can retrace my steps for themselves.

Learning New Words with Lymond: E is for Epopee

Welcome back to Learning New Words with Lymond, in which I blog my way through the rare and obscure words used by Dorothy Dunnett in The Game of Kings. Over the six books of the Lymond Chronicles, we follow the misadventures of the title character, Francis Crawford of Lymond, across the sixteenth century world, from Scotland to Russia. Dunnett is known for the beauty of her writing and notorious for the complexity of her language.

Dorothy Dunnett, The Game of Kings

In these posts, I explore Dunnett's many sesquipedalians. What do these words mean? Why do they make sense in context? How do they enhance our understanding and enjoyment of what is happening in the story? This occasional series wends its through the alphabet from A to Z.

We continue with words beginning with the letter 'e'...

eddish

The lids veiled Lymond's eyes as they disengaged. "Reaping the eddish. Try the other side next time." p. 416 

Eddish is the grass which remains after mowing or haying, so "reaping the eddish" is trying to cut down something that isn't there. An apt and biting comment from Lymond on his brother's failure to wound him during their duel. Unbeknownst to Richard, Lymond is protected by bandaging from a previous injury. A good fight scene isn't just exciting, it tells us something about the character of the fighters, and we learn so much about the brothers Crawford in this one.

eidelweiss

The last thing Janet saw was Sybilla's head, like eidelweiss on some black, mirrored tarn. p. 473

Sybilla, Lymond's mother, has beautiful white hair. Edelweiss (the extra 'i' seems to be a typo) is "an Alpine plant, Gnaphalium Leontopodium or Leontopodium alpinum, remarkable for its white flower, growing in rocky places, often scarcely accessible, on the Swiss mountains. Also attrib., as in edelweiss-lace." (OED)

encycsted

"And yet you rather expected Richard to read your mind, didn't you? You thought he pictured you encysted forever with pots and pans--A woman is. a worthy thing; they do the wash and do the wring. And so on. Whereas--" p. 355 

A literal or figurative way to describe something enclosed in a cyst, capsule, or bag. This is such a fun, wise conversation between Sybilla and her daughter-in-law, Mariotta, about the many ways husbands and wives can have a good relationship with one another.

enteere

Come, my friend, my brother most enteere; for thee I offered my blood in sacrifice; and all that. Except that it was Janet Beaton's blood. p. 460

The word can be an adjective meaning whole or complete, but when used of people it can also mean "wholly devoted to another, perfectly beloved." Later, it was used of friends or friendly conversation to mean "unreserved, familiar, intimate." Used by Lymond when speaking to Richard, as they make their peace with each other.  

enteric

"Oh my dear, Catherine has made enough martyrs without adding more. I shall tell Dandy you drained every drop and left in a state of enteric rapture: only remember to fib when you see him." p. 261

Sometimes, when reading Dunnett, I am convinced that Sybilla, Lymond's mother, and Honoria, Dowager Duchess of Denver (Lord Peter Wimsey's mother) would have got on like a house afire, innocent bystanders fleeing into the night, no survivors, et cetera. They have a similarly elliptical, even malapropistic, way of speaking. An enteric fever is typhoid; as a noun, the word is used to refer to a medication to treat diseases of the digestive tract; as an adjective, it relates to the intestines or digestive tract in general. Like her son, Sybilla can tell the truth in such a roundabout fashion that it sounds like a lie: as is revealed later in the book, if Richard had drunk Catherine Hunter's nostrum, he would indeed have become a martyr, and his stomach would have been in anything but raptures.

Epaminondas

"Do you think if you didn't clutch them to your chest like Epaminondas and his javelin, your affairs might be less ruinous?" p. 303

Epaminondas (419/411-362 BCE) was a Theban general and statesman, responsible both for freeing his city from the domination of Sparta and, in later historians' estimation, leaving it vulnerable to annihilation at the hands of Alexander the Great a few decades after his death. The javelin seems to be a reference to the account of his death given by the Roman biographer Cornelius Nepos:

He was also an able speaker, so that no Theban was a match for him in eloquence; nor was his language less pointed in brief replies than elegant in an elaborate speech. [At the battle of Mantinea, while his Boeotians were winning the day, he was mortally wounded by a javelin]: when he saw that if he drew out the iron head of the dart he would instantly die, he kept it in until they told him "that the Boeotians were victorious." "I have lived long enough," he then said, "for I die unconquered." The iron head was then extracted, and at once he died.

epopee

I should make a wonderful epopee, don't you think? p. 304

Christian Stewart is one of the few characters in Game of Kings around whom Lymond lets down his guard and one of the only ones in the entire series to not only return his verbal serves but even beat him at his own game. (Epaminondas and his javelin is her pointed comment on Lymond's dangerous habit of playing his cards close to his chest.) Lymond, who has spent the previous page dancing a desperate tarantella around explaining to her what is really going on with him, concludes with the truth and a bit of self-mockery. An epopee (pronounced, despite its French origins, exactly as it looks, eh-poh-pee) is an epic poem. Christian gives this the response it deserves.

escharotic

The carrying, escharotic voice was thick with sheer cold fury for half a dozen words, and then he had it controlled. p. 526

 An eschar is, according to the dictionary, a "a brown or black dry slough, resulting from the destruction of a living part, either by gangrene, by burn, or by caustics." (OED.) An escharotic is something that causes an eschar; in other words, it's a beautiful early modern synonym for caustic. Would this passage, which describes Lymond's tone of voice in the dramatic courtroom scene at the end of the book, land the same if the sentence began "the carrying, caustic voice...?" Or does using the word escharotic allow Dunnett to strengthen the sentence's euphonious series of c-sounds by slipping in two for the price of one? Caustic would do the same. Once again, I am made wildly curious about what Dunnett was reading to come up with some of these words. As of about 2010, escharotic occured 0.005 times per million words (OED).

ethological

"For all his ethological small talk," Lymond said. "You must decide on the data you have." p. 324

Much of the plot of Game of Kings hinges on Lymond attempting to capture the testimony necessary to prove his innocence, without explaining what he is doing or why. Ethological is a highfalutin' synonym for ethical; in John Stuart Mill, it also describes something "of or relating to the study or formation of human character." (OED) Ethology, delightfully, sometimes means "the portrayal of character by gestures; the representation of character through action," something at which Dunnett excels. (OED)

Eulenspiegel

She said tartly, "It doesn't help to find oneself bedevilled with persons making Eulenspiegel-like appearances. I live for the day when we can be formally introduced. Don't you think it would be better than coming to me like--" p. 302

I really should have recognized this one! Till Eulenspiegel is a figure from medieval German folklore, a trickster whose practical jokes expose his contemporaries' folly and hypocrisy. There's a fairly famous tone poem by Richard Strauss "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks," which I recommend listening to if you don't know it.

exigent

Threave, pockmarked and exigent, hung above them. p. 342

Threave is a Scottish castle on a riverine island; while describing it as pockmarked makes sense (as Dunnett describes, it has been the site of decades of violence); I'm puzzled by what to make of exigent in this context. As a noun it means "a state of pressing need; a time of extreme necessity; a critical occasion, or one that requires immediate action or aid; an emergency, an extremity" (with related meanings or needs or quantifiable requirements); as an adjective, it can mean "necessary, requisite, needful" or "requiring immediate action or aid; pressing, urgent" or "requiring a great deal; demanding more than is reasonable; exacting" or "strongly desirous; much in need" (with or without the word of). (OED)

New Recipes of Summer

My goodness, summer went quickly! It was a season of delicious cooking and eating. Here is what I made, and also two recommendations for places to find new recipes to try.

1. If you're not a follower of the Woks of Life food blog, I highly recommend it! One of my favourite things I made this summer was their Asian Shrimp Salad. If you love cucumber, as I do, this will probably be to your taste (and the cucumber-averse could probably substitute peppers or another crunchy, watery vegetable). The recipe calls for using raw red onion, but I dislike raw onions in my salads, so I changed it by sauteing the onions, aromatics, and shrimp in the oil (rather than the just the shrimp, as instructed). I'd recommend making this change to the recipe.
2.  A small section of my cookbook collection is devoted to food from the United States, especially from New England. Erin French's two cookbooks are my favourites out of all of them. Her food often has an usual technique or combination ingredients--like a sweet cake made with parsnips and frosted with apricot-jam sweetened marscapone; or the Brown Sugar & Maple Glazed Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Fruit, which my mom and I made twice in quick succession when I was home. I will remember it as something to make for future dinner parties. Fruit and meat are not a combination I often use and it tasted wonderful. The instructions for the glaze don't work as written--at least on parents' gas stove, it didn't need to boil for nearly as hard or as long as the instructions said. Provided you keep a sharp eye on the glaze, it's a pretty perfect recipe.
   

July

• Shiitake, Kimchi, and Pineapple Fried Rice from Stir Crazy by Ching He Huang
• Edamame Mapo Tofu from Stir Crazy by Ching He Huang
• Beef and Kimchi Water Chestnuts from Stir Crazy by Ching He Huang
• Leek, Chard, and Corn Flatbread from Smitten Kitchen by Deb Perelman

 August

• Asian Shrimp Salad from Woks of Life
• Sabzi per eedu (Parsi-style eggs on vegetables) from Masala by Mallika Basu
  
• Brown Sugar & Maple Glazed Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Fruit from Big Heart, Little Stove by Erin French
• Lauryn's Hot-Sugar-Crust Peach Cake from Bake Smart by Samantha Seneviratne  

September

• Three Cup Tofu from Woks of Life
• Creamy Tomato Masala from Smitten Kitchen Keepers by Deb Perelman 
• Süddeutsche Lauchtore from Classic German Baking by Luisa Weiss
• Chicken Teriyaki with Green Peppers from Stir Crazy by Ching He Huang
• White Bean and Garlic Soup, from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant
  

No Such Thing as Too Many Books, Redux

To Be Read (TBR) piles are a popular subject: the first page of Google search results provides a wide variety of tips for "managing" or "getting through" the books one hasn't yet read. My own strategy is to make periodic lists of them--my last one was in 2022--and to use the list as an aide-mémoire when I find myself in a bookstore or library. Listing the book puts me under no obligation to read it, now or ever, but it's exciting to gather all the possibilities of what I might read.

Which of these books would you pick up first?

1. C.J. Cherryh, Hammerfall

On the list because the title is cool, and becayse Cherryh is one of the many famous and well-regarded science fiction authors whose works I have yet to read.

2. T. Kingfisher, Paladin's Grace

My sister enthusiastically recommends this book and the larger series of which is a part, The Saint of Steel. Apparently, this features an angst-y paladin who knits socks. My interest is piqued.

3. May Sarton, The Small Room

I loved The House by the Sea, one of Sarton's journals, and I've enjoyed a number of her poems, but I don't know her work as a novelist. I'm not immediately attracted to campus novels but this one seems worth a try.

4. John Darnielle, Devil House

I know John Darnielle from his music (one of my goals in life is to see his band, The Mountain Goats, live). I don't usually read or want to read horror novels but this seems like it could be strange and weird and gripping in all the right ways.

5. Lynn Flewelling, Casket of Souls 

This is actually the sixth of seven book in the Nightrunner series, so for completness, and because I hate starting in the middle of series, let me note that the first book is called Luck in the Shadows. A series of heroic fantasy novels with a bisexual spy as a protagonist? Color me interested.

6. Joan D. Vinge, The Outcasts of Heaven Belt

Vintage science fiction? Vintage science fiction!

7. John Truby, The Anatomy of Story

In an interview, he did a few years ago, the novelist Victor Lavelle recommended this as his favourite book about the craft of writing.

8. Vaslav Nijinsky, The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, edited by Joan Acocella

The unexpurgated diary of the one of the twentieth century's greatest dancers.

9. Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust

I bought a copy of Helena (Waugh's novel about the life of the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine) a few months ago; this also sounds intriguing.

10. Joy Chant, Red Moon and Black Mountain

A high fantasy novel, now out of print, which went on my list entirely for its evocative title and beautiful cover. 

11. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Diving into the Wreck

Exploration, salvage, and tourism of abandoned spaceships is a new to me science fiction premise, and one I think I would enjoy.

12. Ellen Klages, Passing Strange

Ellen Klages' short story collection Portable Childhoods is one of those books I recommend to people with the glittering eyes and trembling voice of an addicted fanatic. I love her work so much and look forward to reading this.

13. Emma Sterner-Radley, Snowblooded

A beautiful cover and an assassins' guild. This sounds rather fun!

14. Omaima al-Khamis, The Book Smuggler

I love historical fiction and this seems like a corker--a novel about a scribe who smuggles books around the medieval Islamic world.

15. Alan Garner, Treacle Walker

This book was added to this list due to its euphonious title and a short page count.

16. Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company

Apparently, the creator of Sherlock Holmes also wrote Arthuriana!

17. Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

Having watched and adored the two parts of Les Trois Mousquetaires, I want more. More. More! And what better place to get it than the original novel.

18. Alexandre Dumas, La Reine Margot

This sounds like a wild ride through a dramatic period of history.

19. Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion the Fortunate

Listen, Captain Blood, The Seahawk, and Scaramouche, are three of my favourite works of historical fiction--especially Scaramouche, which has some of the most perfect opening lines ever written. More Sabatini in my life is always a good thing.

20. Samuel Shellabarger, Prince of Foxes

The entire premise of this novel reminds me of my favourite bits of Dorothy Dunnett's House of Niccolo series.

21. Christopher Soto, Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color

I love anthologies of poetry and this one seems like a great way to encounter work that is new to me.

22. 100 Knitted Tiles

I am not sure what one does with a knitted tile--sew them together to make a blanket? Use them as coasters?--but I do love knitting squares in lots of different designs.

23. Victor Lavelle, The Ballad of Black Tom

Retellings and reimaginings of the work of H.P. Lovecraft fascinate me.

24. Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter

Tell me something is a classic, or especially that it is a book that fell into obscurity and has been rediscovered, and I am very likely to file it in my memory--or my blog post--as something worth reading.

25. Mervyn Peake, The Gormenghast Novels

I borrowed these from the library as a teenager and never finished them. I remember absolutely nothing of the plot other than an atmosphere of melancholy strangeness.

26. Laurie J. Marks, Fire Logic

The first of a four-book series of fantasy novels, with a unique and intriguing premise.

27. William Wright, Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Pursuit of Campus Homosexuals

Apparently Harvard was ahead of the curve, having a Lavender Scare of its own decades before the United States government decided to get in on the act. The main source for this book was Harvard's own archives of proceedings against its students.

28. Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

I've read the complete poetry of John Donne and I love it; it would be a great delight to learn more about the poet and his life.

29. John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

Did you know that John Steinbeck's first novel was a work of historical fiction about an early modern privateer (Henry Morgan)? I didn't either! There's another Sabatini link here, too--the titular character of Captain Blood is also based on Henry Morgan.

30. Hana Videen, The Deorhord

I loved Videen's book about daily life in early medieval England; this book, about Old English words for animals, seems equally fun.

31. Seán Hewitt and Luke Edward Hall, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World 

As I wrote a few years ago, Frank Wynn's otherwise excellent anthology Queer: LGTBQ Writing from Ancient Times to the Present, contains a gap of fifteen hundred years; 300,000 Kisses seems like a book to fill in that gap. And the illustrations look beautiful.

A Diptych on the Creation of Man

A Question

 

A voice said, Look me in the stars 

And tell me truly, men of earth, 

If all the soul-and-body scars

Were not too much to pay for birth.

~ Robert Frost. Text from Archive.org

"Imagines mortis the dance of death 0102 The creation of Eve The fall of man PK-P-127.375 - recto" by Holbein, Hans (1497-1543) is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Matins

 

Unreachable father, when we were first

exiled from heaven, you made

a replica, a place in one sense

different from heaven, being

designed to teach a lesson: otherwise

the same--beauty on either side, beauty

without alternative--Except

we didn't know what was the lesson. Left alone,

we exhausted each other. Years

of darkness followed; we took turns 

working in the garden, the first tears

filling our eyes as earth 

misted with petals, some

dark red, some flesh colored--

We never thought of you

whom we were learning to worship.

We merely knew it wasn't human nature to love

only what returns love.

~ Louise Glück, The Wild Iris (London: Carcanet, 1992), p 3

A Diptych on Dreaming of Home

Two poems that go together when I think about my experiences of home across seven cities in three countries.

Where We Are

i envy those
who live in two places:
new york, say, and london;
wales and spain;
l.a. and paris;
hawaii and switzerland. 

there is always the anticipation
of the change, the chance that what is wrong
is the result of where you are. i have
always loved both the freshness of
arriving and the relief of leaving. with
two homes every move would be a homecoming.
i am not even considering the weather, hot
or cold, dry or wet: i am talking about hope. 

Gerald Locklin, source, Good Poems, p. 286

Stepping Out of Poetry

What would you give for one of the old yellow streetcars
rocking toward you again through the thick snow?

What would you give for the feeling of joy as you climbed
up the three iron steps and took your place by the cold window?

Oh, what would you give to pick up your stack of books
and walk down the icy path in front of the library?

What would you give for your dream
to be as clear and simple as it was then

in the dark afternoons, at the old scarred tables? 

 

~ Gerald Stern, Good Poems, p. 328