scripsi

This journal is mostly about fanfiction. And about fandom and fanart and books. There may be a few more personal posts, but they are always f-locked. This journal is where I post my fanfic first, elsewhere you may found them under the nick Dancingsalome on AO3 and Teaspoon. I love talking about fanfiction, or fandom in general and I always enjoy finding friends who likes that too. If you friend me, you will be friended back.

On a more personal note, I'm Swedish, works on a railway, married, owned by both cats and dogs.

Please note that many of my fics are darkfics, angsty and often with potential triggering subjects. Pay attention to the warnings. I talk a bit more about why I write what I write about in this post. I also talk about my writing in an interview for The Doctor Who Fanfic Review, part 1 and part 2.

I mostly write het, but there quite a bit gen, and some slash too. I’m multi-fannsih and write in several fandoms. So far I have written in, for now, are Doctor Who (classic & new), Peter Pan, Harry Potter, Versailles, Penny Dreadful, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova, Sleepy Hollow (1999), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Mummy, Victoria, Angel, Timeless, Pirates of the Caribbean, Agent Carter, Labyrinth, Emily of New Moon, Ivanhoe, All About Eve, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, The Borgias, The Man in the High Castle and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV) (1)

A Masterlist is under construction, but here are all my fics on AO3

Esaias Tegnér (1782 – 1846) was a Swedish bishop and writer. He wrote this poem in 1810 as a reaction to Napelon. And 216 years later I find it still has relevance.

The eternal

The strong one shapes his world with the sword,
His reputation soars like the eagles;
But one day the wandering sword will break,
And the eagles will fall in their flight.
What force will create is both fleeting and short,
like storms in the desert it soon comes to nought.

But truth will live on. Amidst axes and blades
her calm, gleaming brow she uncovers.
She guides through the nocturnal world’s shady glades,
and constantly points to some other.
What’s true is eternal: round heaven and earth
its words will re-echo from birth to new birth.

What’s right is eternal: its lily though crushed
can ne’er be completely uprooted.
Should evil prevail and the world end as dust,
what’s right can be willed unrefuted.
Though round you with cunning and force it’s oppressed,
it still has a refuge concealed in your breast.

And will which in flaming breast refuge did seek
takes mandom like God, becomes action.
What’s right now gains arms, what’s true now can speak,
and all see a world that’s re-fashioned.
Each hazard you faced and each sacrifice made
like stars rise from Lethe and never will fade.

And poetry lasts, unlike flowers’ passing scent,
or rainbows in clouds someone glances.
The beauty you fashion as dust will not end,
its countenance old age enhances.
For beauty’s eternal: with mind keen and brave
we fish up its gold-sand from time’s mighty wave.

So grasp all that’s true, so dare all that’s right,
the beautiful fashion with pleasure!
The three will for ever be mankind’s delight
and from time do we plead for such treasure.
What time gave you once you must give back as well,
the eternal alone in your heart may still dwell.

Det eviga

Väl formar den starke med svärdet sin värld,
Väl flyga som örnar hans rykten;
Men någon gång brytes det vandrande svärd
Och örnarna fällas i flykten.
Vad våldet må skapa är vanskligt och kort,
Det dör som en stormvind i öknen bort.

Men sanningen lever. Bland bilor och svärd
Lugn står hon med strålande pannan.
Hon leder igenom den nattliga värld
Och pekar alltjämt till en annan.
Det sanna är evigt: Kring himmel och jord
Genljuda från släkte till släkte dess ord.

Det rätta är evigt: Ej rotas där ut
Från jorden dess trampade lilja.
Erövrar det onda all världen till slut,
Så kan du det rätta dock vilja.
Förföljs det utom dig med list och våld,
Sin fristad det har i ditt bröst fördold.

Och viljan, som stängdes i lågande bröst,
Tar mandom, lik Gud, och blir handling.
Det rätta får armar, det sanna får röst,
Och folken stå upp till förvandling.
De offer du bragte, de faror du lopp,
De stiga som stjärnor ur Lethe opp.

Och dikten är icke som blommornas doft,
Som färgade bågen i skyar.
Det sköna, du bildar, är mera än stoft,
Och åldern dess anlet förnyar.
Det sköna är evigt: Med fiken håg
Vi fiska dess guldsand ur tidens våg.

Så fatta all sanning, så våga all rätt,
Och bilda det sköna med glädje!
De tre dö ej ut bland människors ätt,
Och till dem från tiden vi vädje.
Vad tiden dig gav må du ge igen,
Blott det eviga bor i ditt hjärta än.

Merry Christmas for those of you who celebrate: In Sweden Christmas Eve is the big day, but as I worked in the evening we didn’t do much. My parents came for lunch, and it was all very nice anyway. We don’t go in for lots of gifts, I gave my husband and son a sweater each, because that is what they both wanted. And my husband gave me a book. It was written in the 1950s and is an analysis of the bodies, jewelry and clothes worn by king Gustav Vasa, his three wives, his son Johan III and his second wife. They all lived in the 16th century, and the book is probably only of interest for a history and costume history nerd like me.

Working was thankfully slow, and as I work evening today as well, I hope to have another slow workday. I plan to check out Yuletida and see if there is any fanfic that interests me. I hope you all have a lovely day, regardless of how you spend it!

So this list quickly grew. Thee are a lot of other ones. Do you have any favorites?

This is the Swedish version of O Holy Night Jussi Björling is considered one of the best opera singers Sweden has ever produced.

Watch on YouTube

( Read more... )

Glögg

Glögg is a Swedish mulled wine that has been drunk since at least the Middle Ages. The word comes from the older glödg, which simply means heated. Nowadays it is traditionally served in December. Though you can buy it readymade, I always make my own, as I find the bought stuff too sweet.

½ bottle brandy
1 bottle red wine
1 bottle port wine (I use the cheapest possible of all three bottles of alcohol, as the spices dominate the flavour.)
25 grams of whole cinnamon
10 grams of whole cardamon seeds
10 grams of whole cloves
300 grams granulated sugar
15 centiliters of water

Lightly crush the whole spices and mix with the brandy After 1-3 days, strain and mix the brandy with the red wine and the port wine. Dissolve the sugar in the water on low heat, and add to the alcohol. Now it’s done, and just needs to be bottled. Will keep for several years.

Serve heated in small cups with whole almonds and raisins. Usually with gingerbread cookies and ”lussekatter” (saffron buns) to eat with it. In Sweden you can buy special cups for it, but cups meant for Turkish coffee are the perfect size.

The discarded spices can be re-used in a simmer pot.

You can play around with the recipe, and add other spices. This year I added two star anises and two tonka beans, some black pepper and allspice. Vanilla bean and dried orange peel can also be added. And you can use any sugar you like, this year it was a mix of rock sugar and some tonka-infused sugar.

Gingerbread

Mix together:
150 grams softened butter
2 ½ dl sugar
Add
½ dl golden golden syrup
1 dl cold water

Mix together in another bowl
8 dl white flour
1 tbl ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cardamon
1 tsp ground clove
1 ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

Slowly as the flour mix to the wet ingredients until a dough is formed. Cover the bowl and let it rest in the fridge overnight, at least for 12 hours. Remove about an hour before you plan to bake. Roll out very thinly, like 2-3 mm and cut out with cookie cutters. Heat the oven to 175C and bake for 6-7 minutes.

If you wish you can decorate with frosting. The traditional shapes of the cookie cutters are hearts, men, women, pigs and billy goats, but whatever shape you want is fine. I have collected a lot over the years, but my favorites are a pig and a man cutter that once belonged to one of my great-grandmothers, so it’s over a 100 years old.

TIP: These cookies are a hassle to move to the baking sheet as they are so thin. So I roll out the dough directly on a silicone baking mat so I don’t have to move them.

Knäck (Christmas Butterscotch)

This is a traditional Christmas candy. “Knäck” translates to crack, and beware, these are delicious, but can be hard on the teeth and fillings.

You need equal parts of double cream, golden syrup (or treacle) and sugar. I usually use 2 dl of each. Pour into a pot and heat until boiling, while constantly stirring. Adjust the heat so it doesn’t boil over and continue to stir. Cook until 126-130C, or until a drop of the mixtures, dripped into cold water, is easily formed into a ball. Traditionally poured into small (like 1,5-2 cm across) fluted paper cups.

It’s very popular to add chopped blanched almonds as the last step before pouring, though personally I don’t care for that. But for the amount above, you would need about ⅔ dl unchopped almonds.

I haven’t written any fanfic in a long time, and I feel I need to get back into it. I know from experience it’s good for my mental wellbeing to write, and as the world continues to hassle us, I need what I can get to feel good. I had been thinking of signing up for Yuletide, but completely missed the sign-up window. But when I checked what other people wish for, I found 2 letters that gave me ideas. So I will try to get those done as treats. I’ll try to write 300 words every day. More if I get in a flow, of course, but 300 words is doable even days with little writing time.

Fanfic meme gakked from all over my f-list.

From your AO3 Works page, look at the tags and find the answers to these questions.

I currently have 123 works published, in 28 fandoms.

1. Under what rating do you write most?
Teen and up audience, with 47 works.

I thought Explicit or Mature would be on top, but they are number 3 and 4. But as it is my longer fics that tends to get that rating, while my one-shots usually have a lower rating, that isn’t so surprising.

2. What are your top 3 fandoms?

Doctor Who with 32 fics.
Peter Pan with 17 fics.
And Harry Potter and Versailles both come third with 8 fics each.

Peter Pan was my first big fandom in the early 2000s, and Doctor Who my second one, ten years later, so no surprise with those. I was also super into Versailles for a bit, so that’s not odd either. But I’ve never really been very big on Harry Potter. I was over 30 when I first read the series, and I never really thought they were particularly well-written, though I was hooked enough to read every new book. But 3 of my fics are written as part of a re-mix challenge, so I didn’t really choose which fandom I would match on.

3. Which character do you write about most?

Captain Hook, who is in all my Peter Pan-fics. The Delgado version of the Master comes second, and River Song third. Though if you want to argue that the Master is the same character regardless of regeneration s/he is definitely my most written one, in 30 fics in total.

4. What are the 3 top pairings you've written?

On shared first place are Wendy Darling/James Hook (Peter Pan), Sophie de Clermont/Fabien Marchal (Versailles) and The Master/River Song (Doctor Who), who all have 7 fics each. Second pairing is Beth Harmon/Vasily Borgov (The Queen’s Gambit) with 6 fics. And third place are Evy Carnahan O'Connell/Rick O'Connell and Imhotep/Evy Carnahan O'Connell (The Mummy), and Vanessa Ives/Sir Malcolm Murray (Penny Dreadful) with 3 fics each.

5. What are the top 3 additional tags?

On shared first place I have Humor, Angst, Dark, which have 14 fics each. Second is Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence with 9 fics, and in third place is Spanking with 8. Which I feel gives a pretty good general overview over my fanfics.

Most of November is already gone, but here is, rather late, my October reading.

New books
How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin. A young woman is called to a meeting with her great-aunt, whom she has never met before. Unfortunately the great-aunt gets murdered and it turns out she was predicted to be murdered as a teenager and has spent her whole life collecting information about the people in the village she lives in. Now her great-niece may inherit everything, if she solves the murder within a certain time frame. I liked the premise, but somehow the book failed to really grip me. I’m not sure why, but it felt like characters and descriptions were a little flat. It seems the book is the first in a series, so I may check out the next one, and see if things improves.

Testimony of Mute Things by Lois McMaster Bujold. Another Penric and Desdemona novella. The last few installments have been chronological, following Penric’s life as a husband and father, but this one took place with Penric in his 20s.. It’s a pretty straightforward murder mystery, but though I always enjoy Bujold's writing, this felt like one of the weaker novellas in the series. Still worth reading, though!

As usual I'm also reading several other books that I haven’t finished yet, but I also stopped reading a book, which I almost never do. Usually I stick to the end even if I don’t think the book is particularly good, because I want to know how it ends, but this one was so bad I couldn’t stomach it anymore. The book in question was Gallows Hill, a horror novel by Darcy Coates. I read Dead Lake by the same author which I thought was ok, and I like the premise of Gallows Hill. A young woman inherits her parents who she hasn’t seen since she was a young child, and doesn’t remember. In fact she doesn’t remember anything since before she came to live with her grandmother, though some strange scars on her body seems to indicate something traumatic must have happened. It turns out she has not only inherited a large and isolated house, but also a winery. And of course strange and sinister things start to happen.

You know, if I was broke, having used up the last of my money to get to my parents funeral, but finds out I had inherited everything, my first course of action would be to have a discussion with the family lawyers where I would explain my situation and see if it would be possible to get some money. Then, before going to the isolated house my parents lived in, I would buy some groceries. Well at the house, being met by a friendly and helpful employee of my parents, I would make sure he showed me the house properly, especially where all the many doors to the outside were located, and to make sure they are locked. Actually, I would probably stay in a motel instead, but now I’m here, and when choosing a bedroom, and I noticed the windows have locked, I would most certainly lock that window. The day after, when I find that someone has left nooses outside the house I would definitely leave, but if I didn’t, I would still make sure my phone batteries were full all the time.

The heroine of this story does none of these things. None! She also doesn’t locate a bathroom until she has stayed in the house for 2 or 3 days. At the point she noticed for the second time that her phone batteries had died, I gave up. I don’t think I have ever read a book with a protagonist so completely devoid of common sense. I mean, people can make stupid decisions, or be forced to, but the whole plot in this book seems to hinge on a protagonist too stupid to live. And who knows, perhaps she dies gruesomely by the end because of her lack of sense. But I couldn’t stomach more than barely half of the book, so I will never know.

Re-reads
Killer by Jonathan Kellerman. Some time ago I mentioned that I’m looking for a crime novel I was absolutely certain was a Jonathan Kellerman book, but when I re-read them, I never found it. In it the protagonist comes into contact with a woman with a small child, father unknown. The woman either disappears, or is found murdered, and the child definitely disappears. The protagonist eventually finds out that the woman has been murdered by the paternal grandfather who has some kind of cult, and the baby has been kidnapped by that family. I have a very distinct memory that the child gets to sleep in a bed looking like a car, a bed that belonged to his father, though the child is otherwise not well treated. It frustrates me so much that I haven’t been able to find that book.

Anyway, I realized that I had actually missed Killer in my re-read, and got a bit excited as the plot starts out somewhat similar. A woman tries to get custody of her niece, claiming her sister is not fit to be a mother. The little girl's father is unknown, but though the mother is a bit flaky, the aunt doesn’t get custody. Soon after the aunt is murdered and the mother and child disappear. At first I thought this actually was the book I was looking for, but the plot was solved in a completely different way. So I’m still frustrated. As Kellerman books goes, this was quite ok, though the ending felt a bit quick and sloppy.

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook by Alice B. Toklas. I like reading cookbooks. Back when my insomnia was bad, cookbooks were what I read to get sleepy again. I also like cooking and trying out new recipes. This book is more a memoir with recipes than an outright cookbook. Toklas was Gertrude Stein’s life partner, and this book is a non-linear story of their life together, through two world wars, travels and servant woes. The recipes are a reflection of their time, the end of the 19th century and up to 1950, and many, if not most, are very complicated, or featuring ingredients not many eat today. But it’s a fun book.

Gakked from all over my f-list.

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for starting a fic title? One fic per line, ‘A’ and 'The’ do not count for 'a’ and ’t’. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

Whenever a letter has more than one fic, I have shamelessly chosen the one I felt most to share. Leaning towards one-shots, and trying to spread the fandoms around.

A. All That You Love Will Be Lost (Doctor Who, Ninth Doctor & Nyssa of Traken)
B. But A Dream (Victoria, Queen Victoria/Lord Melbourne)
C. A Conversation In the Drawing Room, And Other Letters to Mrs. Strange (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Emma Pole/John Childermass)
D. The Devourer (Peter Pan, Captain Hook)
E. Elizabeth’s Child (Emily of New Moon, Elizabeth Murray)
F. The First Passion, And the Last (Doctor Who, Twelfth Doctor/River Song, Missy/River Song)
G. A Gift For Her Heart (Ivanhoe, Rebecca of York/Brian de Bois-Guilbert)
H. Homeward (The Borgias, Cesare Borgia/Micheletto Corella, Lucrezia Borgia & Micheletto Corella)
I I Always Wanted To Be A Pirate Queen (Doctor Who. Liz Shaw & Delgado!Master)
J. Juliana and John (The Man In the High Castle, Juliana Crane & John Smith)
L. Little Miss Sunbeam (Doctor Who, Delgado!Master & OC)
M. Make Her Yours (The Queen’s Gambit, Beth Harmon/Vasily Borgov)
N. Nothing Interesting Ever Happens in Perivale (Doctor Who, Sarah Jane Smith & Ainley!Master & Third Doctor)
O. Only Forever (Labyrinth, Jareth/Sarah Williams)
P. A Place In the Shadows (Penny Dreadful, Vanessa Ives & Sembene)
R. Requesting Comfort (Agent Carter, Peggy Carter/Ana Jarvis/Edwin Jarvis
S. Susan, Once Queen of Narnia, Always Queen of Narnia (Piranesi & Chronicles of Narnia, Piranesi & Susan Pevensie)
T. Three’s Company (The Mummy, Ardeth Bay/Evy Carnahan O'Connell/Rick O'Connell)
V. Visiting Time (Doctor Who, Delgado!Master/River Song)
W. Wedding Nerves (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Jonathan Strange/Arabella Strange)
Y Yellow, Sweetie? (Doctor Who, Eleven Doctor/River Song)

22 letters out of 26 covered. I missed out on K, Q, U, and X. But with 123 fics, I'm not surprised I have covered most of the alphabet.

Not only is 4.50 from Paddington (1957) one of my favourite Christie’s, it’s also the one I have re-read the most, and it also has one of my favourites among her characters.

On the train to see Miss Marple, her friend Mrs. McGillicuddy observes a man strangling a woman on a train that is temporarily beside her own. She and Miss Marple report the crime, but as no body is found, the police dismiss it all as a dream. Miss Marple, of course, thinks otherwise. She figures out that the body must have been thrown out of the train on the Crackenthorpe estate, and manages to get help from her friend Lucy Eylesbarrow, who gets a job at Rutherford Hall as a housekeeper.The Crackenthorpe family is a fine collection of Agatha Christie tropes. The elderly family father who keeps a thigh rein on his money. The spinster caretaker, the bohemian artist, the successful businessman, with a wife from a noble but poor family, and lastly the never-do-well son. There is also the daughter who died young, but her husband, the war hero, is around. Another son died in the war, and the dead daughter has a teenage son who sometimes visits. To complete the picture there is also the family doctor who seems very interested in the spinster daughter. Lucy manages to find the dead body secreted away in a barn, and then she and Miss Marple need to find out who she was, and also which one of the many men having access to the estate who is the murderer. Needless to say Miss Marple figures it all out, through there a couple of more murders before that happens.

It’s a pretty solid Christie mystery, but a large reason why I love this book is because of Lucy Eylesbarrow. She’s an attractive woman in her early 30s who, despite being a highly gifted academic, decides to have a career as a short time housekeeper. She’s very good at her job, and is therefore in high demand and is very expensive. I love that Christie, though Lucy, points out that taking care of a home is actually a job that requires a number of talents and hard labour. Whenever I feel household chores are just a drudge, I always feel more motivated after re-reading 4.50 from Paddington, because Lucy thinks doing chores are fun. Lucy also proves to be an excellent detective, and she and Miss Marple make a very good team. I’ve always felt it’s a pity Lucy never returns, she would have made a good returning character.

Mild spoilers below the cut.

( Read more... )

Overall I think Christie does a good job with the characters in this book. Yes, they are a selection of her stock characters, but they still have distinct personalities. Like Emma, the spinster daughter, who isn’t at all down trodden, and clearly has her own life and interests, even if she lives a life as her father’s caretaker. Mrs. McGillicuddy, who we only see at the beginning and the end of the book, is still a real human being, and I think it’s a testament to Christie’s skill as a writer that even if Mrs. McGillicuddy is so briefly described, you are still left with a real person. Someone who isn’t very imaginative, who may not be very generous with money, but who still has a large family who loves her, and close friends who look forward to seeing her.

I’ve seen two adaptations of this book. One from 1987 with Joan Hickson. She was a marvellous Miss Marple, but this particular adaptation is one of the weakest in her Marple series. I don’t mind that there are some cuts and changes in the cast, but several of the characters have significant changes to their characters, and none for the better. I’m especially annoyed with how Lucy is portrayed. On the other hand the one from 2004, part of the Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, is one of the better episodes from that series, even if I don’t think Geraldine McEwan is the best Miss Marple. There are some changes in this adaptation as well, for example Inspector Craddock is made into a relative to Miss Marple.Not that I mind, especially as he is played by the ever charming John Hannah.

I haven’t read that much in September, or rather, not finished much. I don’t even want to know how many books I have started…

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno Garcia. I’ve enjoyed everything I have read by this author, and I enjoyed this one as well. It has three timelines, but I found those easy to keep apart, and the three protagonists each with their own voice. There is a young Mexican woman, Minerva, who in the 1990 studies at an old New England university. She writes her thesis on a mostly forgotten horror author, Beatrice Tremblay who attended the same university in the 1930s. The second timeline is her diary Minerva gets access to, where Beatrice describes the disappearance of her best friend. And last there is the story Minerva’s great grandmother Alba told her about what happened on the family farm in the 1910s. All the stories are linked, and like all of Moreno Gracia’s books I have read there is something supernatural in action. Here it is witches. Even though I guessed from the start who the antagonists were, i still found this a very interesting read.

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold. I’m not a big fan of true crime, and I’m not especially interested in Jack the Ripper. But The Five isn’t about him, but about the five women he killed. Rubenhold is a historian and she has made a thorough research into their life. The only thing she doesn’t describe is their murders, she cuts away at the last sighting, and returns to talk about their families reaction. Because most of them had families who cared deeply for them. And what I found very interesting was that she could find no proof any of them, apart from the last victim, was a prostitute at the time they were killed. Most of them were homeless, and all of them poor and alcoholic. Evidently Rubenhold has received a lot of flack, even outright hate, for daring to claim Jack the Ripper didn’t kill prostitutes. She has also received critique for not describing the actual murders, but personally I liked that. I thought it was a good book, and I found her descriptions of the five women thoughtful and interesting.

Story of A Murder by Hallie Rubenhold. Because I liked The Five, I went on to read her book about the Crippen murder. I knew the basic fact about it, mostly because Agatha Christie was inspired by it in Mrs. McGinty Is Dead. Again I thought Rubehold did a good job describing Belle Elmore, the victim, Crippen and his mistress Ethel Le Never, and she has clearly done her research. But I just can’t find this murder interesting, even if it was deeply tragic, so I can't say I enjoyed this book much. But if you are interested in true crime, I think you might like it.

No spoilers in this post

I think I can safely say Sparkling Cyanide (1944) was the third Agatha Christie I ever read, because I remember being very attracted by the cover. It’s the one you can see in this post, and I found it both pretty and intriguing. Of all the Christie books my parents had, this was very likely the one I chose, just because of that.

The book begins with a number of characters remembering the beautiful and wealthy Rosemary Barton. At this point she has been dead for almost a year from what appears to have been a suicide, though no one can find a very convincing reason, or explain why she choose to do it by cyanide at a restaurant. Among them are her younger sister Iris, who reflects she never really knew her sister, and her husband, George Barton. There are also Anthony Browne and Stephen Farraday, both in love with Rosemary, Stephen's wife Sandra, and Ruth Lessing, George’s secretary. All of them people who may have had a reason to kill Rosemary. Then George arranges a new dinner party, with the same people, and the same restaurant as when Rosemary died. And someone else dies, and this time it’s clear it’s murder…

This novel has neither Poirot nor Miss Marple as detectives, but the semi-recurring Colonel Race, who in this book is an old friend of Geroge Barton. I’m always surprised Poirot isn’t in it, which is probably because he is the detective in the short story “Yellow Iris”, which has pretty much the same plot and characters, but another murderer. And Sparkling Cyanide feels like a Poirot novel than anything else, and there is not a very good reason for not having him, apart from Christie just not wanting to.

Generally Sparkling Cyanide seems to be considered a mid-rung Christie. It’s written during her Golden Age, and I think it would have been ranked higher if Poirot had been in it. Race just isn’t a very exciting detective. Personally, though, it has always been one of my favourites. I always enjoyed the first chapters where the various characters remember Rosemary, and the murder plot, even if it’s very complicated, is entertaining. And I’m still coveting a dressing gown in spotted silk, like the one Rosemary has. Also, Aunt Lucilla is quite funny.

There are several adaptations, but the only one I have seen is from 1983 with Anthony Andrews as Anthony Browne. The only thing I remember about that one was that I was disappointed it wasn’t set in the 1940s. There is, however, an excellent adaptation of “Yellow Iris” with David Suchet from 1993.

Spoilers for the book under the cut!

Murder of the Orient Express (1934) was the second Christie I read, and the book that got me hooked. But the reason I read it was because I saw the 1974 movie. You know, some movies you remember more than just the movie, you remember what happened around it. I was twelve, it was Sunday evening, and it was bedtime, and the movie had just started. Something about it made me curious, so I sat down beside my mother on the sofa instead of going to bed. I was told to go to bed, and I said yes, and didn’t budge. I remember sitting extremely still and quiet so my parents would forget about me. They must have decided it was ok for me to see it, because I wasn’t told again, and when they made their evening coffee I got a cup of cocoa. At that point I realized I was going to be allowed to stay up, despite school the next day. And I loved the movie so much. The cast, the costumes, and the mystery. The very next day I realized we had the book, and this was the beginning of me falling in love with Agatha Christie. The movie also made me fall for 1930’s fashion, which has been an enduring love since then. Another thing it instilled with me was a burning desire to travel on the Orient Express myself, something I eventually did, and I can tell you it was an amazing experience!

The plot almost completely takes place at the Orient Express. A man is murdered, a man who has previously approached Hercule Poirot saying he fears for his life. Everything points to the murderer having left the train, but as the train unexpectedly has been stopped by a snowfall, Poirot quickly realizes the murderer must still be on the train. Then that the victim had a very shady past, and then, little by little, more and more of the passengers are revealed to have a connection to this past.

I think this book may seem tedious to some, as it’s pretty static. People are interviewed and reinterviewed, and a lot of information is repeated. And it’s also almost entirely taking place on the train, which gives you very limited scenery. Personally I like how Poirot slowly picks apart the various statements, but I can see it may be boring for others.

I mentioned the 1974 movie, with Albert Finney playing Poirot. It has an all-star cast, and to me particularly Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman shines. I still think most of the actors are very well-cast, but nowadays Finney’s Poirot grates on my nerves. He is shrill, aggressive, and shouts a lot. David Suchet in the 2006 adaption is great, but I find the rest of the cast very nondescript. I wish I could have the 1974 version with Suchet instead of Finney! There are a number of other adaptations, but I haven’t seen those, so I can’t comment on them.

( Read more... )

Books I read late July and August.

New books

At School With The Stanhopes by Gwendoline Courtney. If you follow my journal, you will sooner or later hear me talk about Stepmother by the same author. It’s one of my constant comfort reads, and has been since I was 10. But not until I was an adult did I realize that Courtney wrote a number of books in the 1940s and 50s, all geared towards teenage girls. Most of them have been out of print for decades, and being in Sweden has made it a bit of a hassle to buy them used. But now girls Gone by seems to republishing them, and I read II earlier this year. At School With The Stanhopes is about 16 year old Rosalind, whose guardian dies, forcing her to move in with her much older brother, whom she hardly knows. Neither of them are pleased with it, but I lifes becomes much less gloomy when her favorite teacher opens a school just down the lane. Especially as Miss Stanhope has a bevy of friendly younger sisters. It’s mostly a school story, but also about Rosalind and her brother building a relationship, and I enjoyed it enormously. I do wish I had been able to read this book in my early teens, though, because I can tell I would have loved it even more had I read it back then.

Furstinnan (The Princess) by Eva Mattson. A biography of the 16th century Swedish queen Catherine Jagiellon. Sweden is pretty bad at noting women in history, and this is the first biography of a very interesting woman. Katarina Jagellonica, to use her Swedish name, was a Polish princess who rather surprisingly married Johan Vasa, the younger brother of the Swedish king at a time when the Vasa dynasty was seen as an upstart royal family. She was highly educated and educated, and it’s clear after reading this book that she had a lasting impact in how late 16th century Sweden was shaped.

The Art of French Pastry by Jacqut Pfeiffer. I read a lot of cookbooks, but mostly just bits here and there, so never mention them in these posts. But this book was really interesting as it isn’t just recipes, but a thorough explanation of why a recipe looks the way it does, and also how it’s supposed to behave throughout.

The Adventure of the Demonic Ox by Lois McMaster Bujold. The latest installment in the Penric and Desdemona series. It’s a series of fantasy novellas about a young man who accidently gets infested by a demon, something which makes him a sorcerer. As he doesn’t know how one is supposed to behave during those circumstances, he names the demon Desdemona, and they embark on a much more equal relationship. Bujold is one of my favourite authors, and the Penric and Desdemona novellas are bite-sized pieces of delight that together form a bigger whole. With that said this was probably one of the more lightweight installments in the series.

Re-reads

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop by Fannie Flagg. The first book has been a comfort read of mine since the early 90s, and I like the movie too. A couple of years ago it got a sequel. If Fried Green Tomatoes paints the past in very nostalgic shades, The Wonder Boy feels like a fanfic, if one can say that an author can write that to their own work. Everyone is happy at the end of it, and if the bad guy in the first novel was a genuinely awful person, the villains in the latter are reduced to a man with murderous intent towards a cat, and an awful mother-in-law. But sometimes one is in the mood for a book where everything will be just fine. And then some.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I have always thought of this as a gothic novel for children. I mean, an orphaned heroine moving into an isolated mansion where she hears strange cries in the night, and there is a garden no one has been in for 10 years, and no one knows how to get into. I still remember how thrilled I was when I first read it as a kid. And I still love the description of the secret garden.

One more post before vacation.

Challenge #7

The Ferris Wheel

Journaling: Life in fandom goes through ups and downs. Reminisce about the "wild ride" of your time in fandom or in other online communities.

The net wasn’t around when I was a teenager, but if it had, I’m sure I would have written fanfiction. Because even if I didn’t write them down, I did long and elaborate stories about The Lord of the Rings in my head. First merely adding a female companion to the fellowship, but after I read Silmarillion I made up more independent characters and adventures. I’m sorry I never did write them down, but I still have some of the synopsis for them.

I ventured online for the first time in early 1999. My son was a newborn, and one sleepless night I did a search for Dorothy L. Sayers and found a mailgroup that had just decided on a read.through of all her books. It was my first online community, and we had so much fun. Now, 26 years later, I´m still in contact with some of them. At some point we decided to write a round robin to create Harriet Vane’s fictitious detective novel Death 'Twixt Wind and Water, as it has a fair amount of clues to reconstruct. It was great fun, and the first time I wrote fiction in English. This mailgroup also introduced the concept of fanfiction to me, as some members also wrote Harry Potter fic.

For a couple of years I read fanfiction now and then, but never considered writing it. That changed when I happened to see a promo shot of Jason Isaacs as Captain Hook in Peter Pan in 2003. Peter Pan was one of my childhood favourites, and this picture triggered me into writing. For about 2 years I wrote feverishly, and wrote some really dark fanfic. And wrote myself into dealing with some trauma from my teens. To cut a rather long process very short, writing fanfic helped me heal in a way I had not foreseen, and was instrumental in shedding a depression I had lived in for years.

I didn’t write much between 2005-2013, even if I did write from time to time. I divorced, and juggling work and being a single mother gave me little time and energy for it. Even when life settled down I had got out of the habit to write, but in 2013 there was a sudden death in my family. It was a terrible and traumatic experience, and it triggered me into another feverish writing spell. I had just re-watched Doctor Who, from the First Doctor and onwards, and I started writing Whofic.

Once again I found writing very therapeutic, but after the first rush of writing I realised something I never consciously realised before. I love writing. It’s good for my well=being, regardless if I write a blogpost or a fic. Up until early 2022 I wrote steadily, exploring a number of fandoms and ships. Then I had a creative freeze when the war in Ukraine happened. I couldn’t do anything creative at all for a long time, and only got back to writing on a regular basis earlier this year. It feels good to be back!

As of now I have 123 fics on AO3 in 26 fandoms. 94 of those one-shots. I mostly write het, with a preference for strong and competent female characters and morally ambiguous male ones. I just checked, the ratio looks like this, F/M (80 fics), Gen (33), F/F (7), M/M (5), Multi (5). All my fics are in a historical and/or fantastical fandom. As a history nerd I spend a lot of time researching history when I write.

My fanfics can be found here.

As I'm going on my 4-week vacation tomorrow I know I won’t post much during that time. So here’s July’s books for most of the month, and the rest will be included for August. My goal this month was to actually finish some of the thirteen books I have started, but not finished. This is how it went.

The Empty Grave by Jonathan Stroud. The last of the Lockwood & Co series. I found it enjoyable, and the series ended with a satisfying conclusion. The reality of Marissa Fitts was more horrifying than I thought. But I also feel the ending opened for a sequel, with various things Lucy indicated that she had done since the grand finale, and also because we never found out Skull’s identity and why he was such a powerful ghost. But as this book was published in 2017, it doesn’t seem very likely it will come.

Det ockulta sekelskiftet (The Occult Turn of the Century) by Per Faxneld. How occultism influenced a number of Swedish artists in the late 19/early 20th century. Super interesting, and not something I knew anything about. Which is surprising as I’ve studied art history and consider myself pretty well-read on. But I think the idea that esoterism was influential to some of our more well-known artists has been seen as something embarrassing.

Of course I couldn’t abstain from not starting any new books, so I also read Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronovitch, the latest Rivers of London novel. I found it enjoyable, but not remarkable. Though I always like the inclusion of Abigail and the talking foxes.

Never Flinch by Stephen King. A return to Holly Gibney and her PI agency Finders Keepers. This time we have not one murderous person, but two. One that wants to kill a popular feminist, another who kills as revenge for a man who has been murdered in prison before it’s revealed he was wrongfully imprisoned. I like Holly as a character, but I kept putting this book down and then forgetting about it, so it’s safe to say it didn’t grab me.

And that’s it, so far for July.

Fanfic game from kitarella_imagines

If you’ve written fics for more than one year on AO3, go to your statistics page. Click on the different years at the top to see the categories of statistics for each year.

1. Which year did you write the most words? Do you know why? e.g. you had more time; you were caught up in an exciting new fandom or pairing; you got a rush of ideas etc.

The year with the highest word count is 2015 with 137 352 words. But that is because when I signed up to AO3 in the very late 2014, I uploaded most of the fics I had written from 2003 onwards. Even if I had a writing spurt in 2015, I'm quite sure it wouldn’t be the year with the highest word count if I just checked the new fics. So the year where I can be absolutely sure is my most productive one, would be 2021 with 94497 words. I had watched The Queen’s Gambit over Christmas, and fell for Beth Harmon/Vasily Borgov. At the time there was a very active Discord for that pairing, which was very inspirational, and I wrote 6 fics for that fandom, one of them being the longest and most ambitious things I have ever written. I also started fanfics for The Mummy and All About Eve.

2. Which year did you write the least words? Why was this? e.g. lack of time, too busy, no inspiration etc.

2023 with zero words. The war in Ukraine completely killed my inspiration. So from March 2022 to March 2024 I didn’t write anything at all. I’m writing again now, but I have only worked on fics I started in 2022, I still haven’t got any ideas for new fics. The year with the least wordcount when I have actually written anything is 2024 with 2948 words.

3. Which years did you get most hits, kudos, bookmarks and fic subscriptions? Do you know why? (e.g. popular fandoms, lots of words written.) Are there years where you have the same amount of bookmarks and subscriptions?

Again 2015 racks them up, but it’s 2021 that I can be sure of. It has the most of everything. I think it’s because, completely by accident, I managed to fall for a fandom that was hot right then, The Queen’s Gambit, and I have found that The Mummy fanfic seems to have a perpetual fandom, as those fics always are among my most popular. And to my surprise my all About Eve fanfic has got a lot more attention than I ever thought, considering the pairing is so unusual I’m the only one who has written it on AO3.

4. Which years did you get least hits, kudos, bookmarks and fic subscriptions? Do you know why? (e.g. niche fandoms, not many fics written.) Do you have any other conclusions?

Apart from the nothing year of 2023, it's 2024, when I only updated with a chapter on a WIP. If I take a year when I participated actively, then it’s 2019, when I wrote 6 fanfics in as many fandoms. But 4 of those were one-shots, and only 2 in fandoms that are on the bigger side. Most of my fandoms are small, and usually I enjoy pairings that aren't the popular ones.

No energy at all for doing the creativity prompts right now.

Challenge #4

Fun House

Journaling: What is making you smile these days? Create a top 10 list of anything you want to talk about.

Getting a message from Stepdaughter with pictures of my granddaughter.
Face-timing with my nephew and niece.
My cat.
Taking a walk by the lake where I live.
Going to the summer house.
Finishing a sewing project.
Trying a new recipe and really liking it, so it gets added to the dinner rotation.
Thinking about it, cooking in general makes me smile.
Finishing cleaning the house. I loathe the actual cleaning, but love the finished result.
Listening to music I love.

Challenge #5

Journaling prompt: Be a carnival barker for your favorite movie, book, or show (or any other of your choice - game, comic, anything else)! Write a post that showcases the best your chosen title has to offer and entices passersby to check it out.

I will do a little rerun here, and point you to this post, where I talk about two of my all time favorites, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.

Challenge #6

Journaling prompt: What games do you play, if any? Are you a solo-gamer or do you view games as a social activity?

I don’t play computer games, apart from solitaire. I’ve tried, and promptly get mind-numbingly bored. I do enjoy board games on occasion, though.

Journaling prompt: What are your favorite summer-associated foods?

Creative prompt: Draw art of or make graphics of summer foods, or post your favorite summer recipes. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

My favourite sumer food probably sounds very boring, but if one takes care to use the best quality possible, it’s delicious. Boiled white fish with new potatoes, clarified butter and chopped hard-boiled eggs. When I was a child the fish we used was northern pike, which my father or grandfather had just caught, but nowadays we usually buy fresh cod. The new potatoes come from the garden. The clarified butter must be real butter, and organic eggs taste the best. One can mix the butter and the eggs, but we prefer to keep them separate, so each can take after taste.

Also, for me this tastes best eaten outside the summer house, on dishes called “Grön berså” (green bower) by the Swedish designer Stig Lindberg in 1960.

This is a spoiler-free post.

The Hollow was first published in 1946, during Agatha Christie’s Golden Age. It’s not one of her more well-known mysteries, which I always thought was a bit strange, because it’s my favourite Christie. On the surface the plot is typical for her: A murder in a stately home where several guests have gathered for the weekend. Hercule Poirot investigates. Personally I think this book is rather invisible because it belies a very common statement about Christie, that she only writes cardboard stock characters with no depths and complexity. In The Hollow we have plenty of complex characters and I would say the main theme in the book is obsession. Obsessive love, obsession for science, the artist's obsession towards their work, and so on. If you wanted a stock Christie, you may be disappointed. There is also the fact that even if this is a Poirot novel, he doesn’t enter until halfway, and he is actually not the first to figure out who the murderer is. In fact I’ve always felt this book may have been better liked if there had been no Poirot in it at all. Checking the publishing order, this was the first Poirot since 1942, and Christie had written five books in between. I wonder if the publisher put pressure on her to include Poirot in this one… You also get the POV from more characters than usual. I have never read any of Christie's Mary Westmacott novels, but I’ve read that The Hollow is more like them in writing style.

( Read more... )

What I finished reading in June was the first four books in the YA Lockwood & Co series by Jonathan Stroud, The Screaming Staircase, The Whispering Skull, The Creeping Shadow and The Hollow Boy. Husband wanted to rewatch the Netflix show, and as I hadn’t seen it, I joined in. I liked it, and as it ended after one season, which covered book 1 and 2, I promptly started to read the books.

The concept is that the UK is suffering from a spreading ghost infection, and as being touched by a ghost is fatal unless you get medical aid, it’s not a good thing. It doesn't help that only children and teenagers are able to actually see the ghosts. So gifted children work for ghost hunting agencies, which is a pretty nifty device for putting teenagers in the forefront of the action, while still not always being very sensible, because teenagers. The narrator is a girl, Lucy, who starts working for the very small agency Lockwood & Co, and gradually they are getting closer and closer to why this ghost infection has started.

I find the books very enjoyable. Lucy is a pretty engaging narrator, if not always a stellar character. But my favourite character is Skull, a ghost trapped in a jar that only Lucy can talk to.

I also actually counted the books I’m in various stages of reading… Yikes! I think I should focus on finishing some of them this month. Here they are, in no particular order.

The Empty Grave by Jonathan Stroud

Det ockulta sekelskiftet (The Occult Turn of the Century) by Per Faxneld. How occultism influenced a number of Swedish artists in the late 19/early 20th century.

Never Flinch and Fairy Tale by Stephen King

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. (A re-read.)

A Better Man by Louise Penney

Furstinnan (The Princess) by Eva Mattson. A biography over the 16th century Swedish queen Catherine Jagiellon.

Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle

The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman

Towards Zero by Agatha Christie

I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg

The Treasure by Selma Lagerlöf

This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer

Midnight Rooms by Donyae Coles

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The Eternal

God jul!

A few of my favourite Christmas songs

Christmas recipes

On fanfic

What I have been reading, October edition

Fanfic meme, A to Z

The Agatha Christie reread: 4.50 From Paddington

What I have been reading, September edition

The Agatha Christie reread: Sparkling Cyanide

The Agatha Christie reread: Murder on the Orient Express

What I have been reading, July/August edition

Sunshine Revival Challenge #7

What I have been reading, (almost) July edition

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