Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 44

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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being with people

Every time I get to exchange friendly words with people, it's a shot of pure joy. Every time I get to be (safely) in proximity to people, it's a rush of euphoria.

( under here find a beautiful stallion )

( under here see me talking to some kids about my apples )

( under here see some stylish motociclistas )

Anyway.

This is how I satisfy my need for connection in a time of coronavirus.

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music meme

Via sovay , in turn via kore .

What I love about seeing other people's version of this meme is discovering all the weird and wonderful song titles that I didn't know previously.

A Place: Arrested Development: Tennessee
A Food: Johnny Flynn: Cold Bread
A Drink: Shurwayne Winchester: Girl Born to Wine
Animal: Dolly Parton Little Sparrow
A Number: Pray for Polanski: 9191991
Color: Nina Simone's version of Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair
Boy's Name: Of Montreal's cover of M.I.A.'s Jimmy
Girl's Name:...

Lagoonfire cover

Lagoonfire, the sequel to The Inconvenient God--or shall we say, the second in the Tales of the Polity--has a cover!



Art this time by Susan Lavoie.

And it has a back blurb for the paperback edition:

The past can be a difficult thing to escape…

Decommissioner Thirty-Seven is not the most conventional decommissioner at the Ministry of Divinities, but she takes her role of helping fading gods to retire seriously—and feels bad when things go wrong. Take the decommissioning of Laloran-morna, former god o...

3%

I talked about this Brazilian SF show once before, in 2017, when just one season was out and I started watching it. It's now complete at four seasons. The premise is that 97% of the world (or at least the portion we're focused on) live in poverty in a desertified "Inland" (Continente), but 3% live in a tropical paradise, the Offshore (Maralto; probably based on the actual island of Fernando do Noronha based on its location on the map that plays in the opening credits). When people turn twenty, t...

Honeytrap, by Aster Glenn Gray

“At the height of the Cold War, a Soviet and an American agent fall in love.”

Not only are their countries enemies, but the agents are both men, in an era when being gay was still taboo. Fans of Aster Glenn Gray know that she’s excellent at complicated and anguished love—and Honeytrap really lets her show her stuff.

She’s also in top form when it comes to another of her strengths: the intelligence of her characters. Gennady and Daniel are interested in ideas and ideals, in what poetry’s all about,...