scrubjayspeaks

Eheheh! My copy of Maureen Johnson's new book, Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village, arrived today. I had already forgotten I had preordered it, so it was a delightful surprise. (I have several more such surprises coming my way in Spring 2022, at which point they will have matured to positively shocking.)

It's a small, illustrated book. I haven't allowed myself to leaf through it yet--leaning into the surprise aspect. I'm going to light candles and make a whole thing out of it (assuming I don't pass out before that point from overwork).

I haven't quite finished the last few pages of Field Guide to the Haunted Forest, but oh my gaaaaaaawd, I love it so much. Every so often, the universe sees fit to remind me that I genuinely love poetry. And this is loose, pleasantly odd poetry, deeply rooted in nature and seasonality. It is the flip side to traditional haiku, with its rigid structure, but it puts my head in the same sort of place.

This is--I think I mentioned previously--by the creator of the podcast, The CryptoNaturalist. It doesn't have any particularly cryptozoological tendencies, so if that's not your bag, fear not. It's more of a...traditional (???) sort of nature poetry, though there's certainly an air of the weird at times. Mostly, though, it focuses on the ideas that nature is fundamentally wonderful--full of wonder--and that you as a human are part of nature and the world is better for having you and everything else in it. They are poems of small, overlooked things and cosmic truths glimpsed in mundane places.

I gather from comments here and there that Jarod has had mental health struggles. It absolutely reads like the work of someone who has fought to get to a point where they believe in their place in the world, believe the world would, after all, be smaller and poorer were they not in it. It reads like letters of encouragement to a former self: you deserve to be here, just as you are. You are part of the world, a radical notion when one is deep in the isolating misery of depression.

Also, Jarod tweeted out this description of the intersection of genres at which the podcast sits, which will tell you exactly why I love it so much:

The CryptoNaturalist is a podcast about Van Helsing situations from a Steve Irwin perspective. It has also been described as "if Tom Bombadil had a podcast" and The X-Files as told by Bob Ross. I'm pretty pleased with all of these descriptions.

— The CryptoNaturalist (@CryptoNature) April 24, 2021

I am absolutely insane with envy at the prospect of having my own body of work described thus. Hnnnnnnnggggg...

Challenge #12: resurrect an old meme. Have fun with it! Which is the goofiest meme you can think of? Put on your party hat and be silly!!

Ha! Ah, I have a few askbox memes still saved in my tumblr drafts folder from several years ago. Some of the writing related ones sound fun, but they seem to favor people with a large body of work from which to be drawing answers. Others are more along the lines of icebreaker questions, which I have...mixed feelings about in brickspace. Online's okay though.

I pulled a few from the list of suggestions, though. Under the cut due to length:

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In addition to cutting out a bunch of news listening, I also recently cut back on several subscriptions I wasn't really making enough use of to justify. I did this not out of an enormous sense of fiscal responsibility or general practicality. No, I did it to give myself permission to sign up for Libro.fm. It's an alternative to Amazon's Audible service for audiobooks, and it partners with independent bookstores. So I'm essentially buying audiobooks from my most beloved but not very conveniently located indie bookstore, with the convenience and savings of digital-only purchases made at home.

I love everything about it. The first book I got was Garth Nix's Sabriel, because wanting to be able to listen to it whenever I like was the reason I signed up in the first place. (My library only has a digital copy of the audiobook available, which is inconvenient for me, as I cannot put it on the Walkman I use at work. I require ownership of mp3s.) This is a book I have loved since childhood, when I picked it out at the book fair my mother helped organize each year at my elementary school. I still remember seeing that cover art for the first time. Walking up and down the aisles of tables laden with books and coming back to that one again and again.

I had a hard time reading as a child. Nothing that got picked up on by my teachers, probably because they were paying more attention to my admittedly impressive array of behavioral issues. I just always read stories and didn't...quite...follow them. I don't seem to be dyslexic. I do have attention issues and a vivid imagination all too willing to fill in any gaps in the story I remembered, though. Point is, I re-read books constantly. I didn't want to read new things very often--that was hard work. But re-reading a familiar book made the story make more sense each time, like I was bringing the lens into focus a little more on each pass.

I reread Sabriel more times than I can count. It lived on the floor by my bed for years, because I never really stopped reading it. I bought a brass bell with a hideous cherub for a handle because it made me feel like the Abhorsen, wielding my bells to put the dead to rest. When I moved to the new house, bringing only as much as I needed to cope with a few weeks of being mostly alone there in my trailer, I brought a box of belongings, only some of which were books. Some of it was things I wanted to read or play right then. Some of it, though, was simply stuff I didn't want to be separated from. The external hard drive that backed up my computer, at that moment in storage. Some heirlooms. And some books that I just didn't want to have away from me for any length of time. Sabriel was one of them. It just needed to be close to me, needed to be safe.

Hearing the story again now, I'm struck by how logical my love of it is. The issues of growing up different, clever yet intensely aware of a yawning chasm of ignorance in oneself, put in the position of having to live up to a parent's legacy and not knowing how one can ever fit into the shape of them or if that's even desirable--all of that would have called to me as a child. I could not have TOLD you at the time that those themes mattered to me. I probably couldn't even have picked them out at all. I knew I loved swords and bells and flying, adventure and talking animals and the intersection of hurt and comfort. It's only the distance of adulthood that brings that, too, into focus.

I didn't listen to the audio version until a few years ago. So Tim Curry's narration of it isn't burned into my bones like, say, the audio of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy et al. that I listened to while commuting to college for six bonkers months. Don't worry, though. Now that I own it, I'll listen to it so many times, it will just become part of the auditory wallpaper in my head, something I can hear without ever playing the files. Many of the lines already scroll out in my mind ahead of the narration, familiar as an old friend.

It's been a while since I've done this, in part because I haven't been listening to or watching anything of particular value for a while. While sick, I just watched a whole lot of Youtube videos. Anyway! Highlights:

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This week on thefridayfive:

1. Do you enjoy receiving books as holiday or birthday gifts?
God, yes. Generally, if it's fiction, it's something I asked for or at least an author on my "always buy" list. Nonfiction, on the other hand, might be a surprise. Mum often gives me books about language (puns, quotes, amusing misuses &c.) or odd history topics.

I mean, it needs to be someone who knows my tastes and interests. I have received some...unfortunate books in the past from people who seem to think I'm likely to have a lot of overlap with, say, the Oprah book club.

2. What book are you reading (or, what is the last book you read)?
The Ruin of a Rake, Cat Sebastian. Because arsenicjade is the sort of dangerous friend who will recommend to me comedy of manners historical gay romance and throw in the BLATANT TEMPTATION of chronic illness. This is not a genre I read. Was not. Is now, apparently.

3. Are you enjoying (or, did you enjoy) that book? Why or why not?
Ugh, YES, and I am outraged about it. Outraged, I say. *shakes fist* There are references to a past of taking in stray animals, more snark than you can shake a swordcane at, and currently, the delicous threat of a recurrance of malaria hanging over someone's head. It's just--there's a lot going on here, and it is somehow all calculated to please me.

4. About how many books do you read in an average year?
I have no meaningful way of answering this. I have, in the past, tried to keep track of my reading habits. It has gone poorly. I read a lot of nonfiction, but I don't necessarily finish those books cover to cover? I read a bit to get whatever information I was after, or I read until my interest in the subject wanes a bit, then it goes back to the library. (I use the library A LOT.)

I don't read as much fiction as I would like. Fandom has managed to fill up a lot of my fiction diet, for a start. Also, I'm in a long-term mental state where I am...reluctant to trust new stories, because I am not emotionally prepared for disappointments. I do a lot of rereading of safe favorites. Eh. I don't love this arrangement, but it's where I am at the moment.

5. What are some of the books on your to-read pile (or list)?
Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3), Seanan McGuire. Lock In, John Scalzi. Truly Devious, Maureen Johnson. Space Opera, Catherynne M. Valente. (Aaaand I just made the mistake of looking in the to-read book basket. There's...a lot of books.)