Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 44

chairs

One amusing thing I noticed earlier in the pandemic was that chairs were popping up in odd places. First an office chair appeared in the middle of the neighborhood common. A little later a metal chair with a vinyl cushion on the seat and for back support appeared wedged below the railway bridge. "I'd like to get my picture taken there when I'm just finishing a run," I thought--it would be just perfect because it's often right around that spot that I end a run, and I'm tired.

Unfortunately, I did...

And---preorders are now available, paperback too.

At first it seemed preorders wouldn't be available for the paperback, but they are!

Here is the link to the publisher's preorder page

(This is one time when I wish DW did the thing that both FB and some formats of Twitter do, where they give you a little preview of the web page you're linking too. )

Here are the first two paragraphs:

I was on my way to visit the retired gods of Sweet Harbor District when I received a communication from Decommissioner Five, my superior at the Ministry of Divinities. ...

Lagoonfire proof, cosmos and bees

The mail brought a welcome item--my uncorrected proof for LAGOONFIRE!



I must go through it carefully and root out typos! The Polity approves of rooting out errors.

Last book featured a deity who wasn't ready to be retired. This one features a bunch of retired gods. How do they spend their time? How does the Polity treat them? You can learn a lot about a government by how it treats its decommissioned deities.

I've been spending too much time just working, but when I'm not, I step outside to enjoy t...

weird thing that just happened

I was talking to my neighbor on her front lawn, and an unknown-to-us guy, White guy in his 50s, maybe, or maybe 60s, short silvery hair and sunglasses on, drives up. He rolls down the window and...

Him: Hey, hey, I need to ask you something.

Us: .... Yes?

Him: My daughter is thinking of moving into this neighborhood, is looking to move into this neighborhood, but I need to know: are there a lot of Trump supporters here?

Us: .... There are ... some. You'll see a few signs if you drive around.

(I woul...

A couple more quotes from The Souls of Black Folk

Suddenly all my copyediting clients need copy editing! Which is excellent from an income-stream perspective, but suddenly my life of leisure has evaporated.

But in the spirit of Wednesday reading, here are a couple more quotes from WEB DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk These are from Chapter 8, "Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece." Each chapter opens with a quote from the lyrics of a song--and also a bit of the music for the song, which is cool. Here's an excerpt from the one for chapter 8:

“On the...

the girls next door

I've been having a lot of fun with the girls next door. Last Saturday I read them Mousekin's Golden House, and unbeknownst to me, their mom took some pictures:





I said offhand to the older sister that she should write a story ... and the next day SHE CAME BACK TO ME WITH ONE. (I felt so influential!) And it's adorable. It's about the family's cats, Tulip and Cheeto:

( Tulip and Cheeto Life )

They've also joined in when I've done chalk drawings recently. Here's my cardinal with red-winged blackbird...

Blurb in Japanese v. blurb in English

I thought I'd translate the blurb of the original Japanese edition of The Memory Police, originally titled, 密やかな結晶 (hisoyaka na kesshō; The Hidden Crystal/The Secret Crystal), to show how the story was pitched when originally published, in its original language. Wakanomori checked it over and offered some good corrections.

『妊娠カレンダー』の芥川賞作家が澄明 に描く人間の哀しみ。記憶狩りによって消滅 が静かにすすむ島の生活。人は何をなくしたのかさえ思い出せない。何かをなくした小説ばかり書いているわたしも、言葉を、自分自身を確実に失っていった。有機物であることの人間の哀しみを澄んだまなざしで見つめ、現代の消滅、空無への願望を、美しく危険な情況の中で描く傑作長編

Human...

The Memory Police

The Memory Police
Yoko Ogawa


Japanese title: 密やかな結晶 [The secret/quiet/hidden crystal]
Original Japanese cover


The English title, jacket copy, and advertising totally misrepresent this novel. Yes, the memory police are present and as awful as you’d expect; yes, the protagonist, a novelist, hides her editor away, Anne Frank style. But this isn’t a novel about a dystopia or oppression—those elements are incidental. It’s fundamentally about forgetting, loss, and (because it’s the ultimate loss) death. W...

Corn Maze!

I have always wanted to walk through a corn maze, and yesterday Wakanomori and I did! We visited Mike's Maze in Sunderland, MA, which every year has a maze that, when seen from the sky, is a picture or a message. ( Here you can see pictures of previous years' mazes.)

This year, the maze is a giant exhortation to VOTE! You can see the design on the front of the kiosk. I also like the corn T-shirt the employee is wearing. She gave us a map--imagine giving Theseus a map!--and also a little pack of ma...

bounty

I received a package of peppers from mallorys_camera . She grew them herself! She is a pepper genius--look at the variety!



I cooked with the tiny Thai peppers yesterday. I will probably cook with the banana peppers today. Unfortunately my oven gave up the ghost today (sadly, it was when I was trying to bake a pie ... but I guess you only notice when an appliance dies when you try to use it), so I won't be doing any roasting for a while.

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