1. I had surgery a few weeks ago, and so I had a few weeks of enforced rest at home. The first week was a wash. I had some major healing to do, and had neither energy nor brain power to do anything except lie on the couch and watch TV. But once I was able to move more easily and think straight, I started doing things again. Like knitting and reading.
I managed to finish the red wool scarf I'd been working on. It is of a properly ridiculous length and bedecked with fringe. I finished it just in time for another set of heatwaves in August, so it has been neatly folded up and awaits cooler weather. My next project? A pair of socks. I have no idea where to start with that, though I found some YouTube tutorials from a long-time knitter. Once I watch those, I'll be able to throw myself into the project with the full knowledge that I can frog the whole thing and start over if I make a complete mess of it. That is, after all, how you learn new things: accept that you're a beginner, that it won't look very good at the beginning, and that it's all okay. You can always start over again. You'll be practicing your skills and developing a foundation to build upon.
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2. Now that it’s August, we're in planner release season. It's the time of year when we look at entirely too many different kinds of planners, notebooks, agendas, and pens in the hope that finding the right set of writing and planning tools will allow us to finally get our lives straightened out once and for all.
I had been getting my planner at Barnes and Noble. A few years ago I'd found a nice, spiral-bound weekly planner from Designworks Ink, and had been using that size (5.75"x8.25") quite happily for the past few years.
However. When I went to my local Barnes and Noble to pick one up for next year this past week, they did not have them. 'No problem,' I thought. 'I'll just check the website'. But the website didn't have them, either. Nor did the Designworks Ink website. They have a much larger desk agenda for 2026, but not the smaller weekly planner I liked so much.
Alas and alack!
So I did some searching on various stationery sites before finally settling on the basic 56-week planner from Field Notes. I don’t want anything fancy in a planner, just a place to write down the daily to-do list and keep track of appointments. I don’t need meal-prep, daily/weekly/yearly goals, astrology charts, or whatever else some companies put in their planners to fancy things up and, let's face it, to increase the price. All I want is to keep track of my daily To-Do list and the various appointments that spring up throughout the year.
I will have to number the days every month in the Field Notes planner, but given that it will fulfill my planning needs and is half the price of the planner I had been getting, I am willing to put in that bit of effort. It's a little smaller than the Designworks Ink planner, but I think it will do for me just fine. According to the tracking information, I should have my new planner tomorrow.
3. Because I haven't been able to go out and do very much outside my apartment for the last while, I haven’t been taking many photographs. I have been able to sit at my desk and do a bit of photo editing, though. I think the last time I wrote one of these, I'd mentioned taking my nearly one hundred year old Kodak Pocket Jr. 1A camera out for a spin to see if and how well it would work after all this time.
I'm happy to report that it works quite well. The images are fairly sharp, and though I have little control over aperture or shutter speed, as long as I keep in mind the film's ASA and the amount and direction of the light, I get a very good result. The only problem I had was that I had a lot of little black specks all over the pictures. With a lot of patience, I could remove the specks in Photoshop, but it’s tedious work. I talked with a photo friend about it, and we've come to the conclusion that the specks were most likely caused by debris from inside the camera's bellows. It probably hasn't been used for decades, so the interior has deteriorated, and the act of opening and closing the camera between shots caused flecks of material to blow around inside the camera, land on the film, and block the light while the film was being exposed. This resulted in white spots on the negative which caused the black specks on the final image.
I've bought more film to use in that camera, but I'm going to clean out the bellows as well as I can before loading the film next time. It was fun to take a camera like that down to the farmers market, even though no one stopped to ask me about it. Maybe the people at the farmers market are too used to seeing nerds with weird cameras to comment.
Taken on Ilford SFX film with a Kodak Pocket Jr. 1A
Taken on Ilford SFX film with a Kodak Pocket Jr. 1A
What I’ve Been Reading:
I had plenty of time to read during the first two weeks of August, so read I did. Here are some brief thoughts on the eleven books I’ve read so far this month:
The Salt Grows Heavyby Cassandra Khaw- A mermaid forced by a cruel king to live on land and a plague doctor flee through the wasteland the kingdom has become. They discover a strange settlement and discover that there are creatures in the world even worse than they are. This was a wonderfully weird and beautifully written horror novella that I’d recommend if you enjoy such things.
The Palace of Illusionsby Rowenna Miller- Clara Ironwood is a talented young clockmaker hired to develop fantastical-seeming illusions for the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris. When she finds a key that unlocks a shining world of magic, she must fight to save it from those who would take such beauty and destroy it for selfish ends. I had a lot of fun with this book, and though it gets a little convoluted in parts, I didn’t mind that very much as the rest of the book was so enjoyable.
The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory- A very fictional account of the life of Jacquetta of Luxembourg who was a player in the Wars of the Roses and mother to Elizabeth Woodville, who became Queen of England when she married Edward IV. I bought this book for a quarter on the library’s sale shelves. I thought I would be on some heavy medication after surgery and wanted something I could read with my brain off. I recovered without the need for major painkillers, but I read it anyway. It was 600 pages of dullness where Gregory recycles tired and inaccurate tropes about medieval women having no power and being forced to hide their intelligence or be accused of witchcraft. Can we not? Just stop. It’s inaccurate to the period and honestly insulting to these women who were perfectly intelligent and used their cleverness to great effect.
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (advance copy courtesy of NetGalley)- Twelve-year old Celia discovers she has magical powers the night she accidentally curses her beloved and gallant older brother to never find love. As she grows and develops her skills, she looks for a way to break the curse, but cannot find one- until she discovers the secret that has kept her country and the fairy kingdom at war for years. This was an enjoyable fantasy novella in the spirit of Novik’s other novels, Spinning Silver and Uprooted, where a young woman must stand up to overwhelming power with only her wits to guide her. It’s not going to be a favorite of my reading year, but it made for an enjoyable afternoon.
Diavola by Jennifer Thorne- Anna wants one thing on her fancy Italian family vacation in a country villa: to survive the week with her awful relatives. When strange things begin happening, Anna starts believe that the villa is haunted. But her family is determined to be extra terrible, leaving Anna to wonder if she’ll be able to save them, or if the spirit haunting the place will keep them all there forever. This was a wonderfully creepy horror novel that kept me guessing throughout. Though the pacing in the last quarter of the book lagged a bit, I thought it built up to a solid conclusion. I would definitely recommend this book for the summer. But maybe not if you’re on vacation with your family.
Universality by Natasha Brown- This Book is about a journalist who uncovers the truth behind a bizarre attempted-murder-by-bar-of-gold on a farm in Yorkshire where a group of people were attempting to create a new world of collective subsistence farming. The journalist’s article raises more questions than it answers, however, making the reader wonder how the words we use can be used to alter or reveal truth. After this book was longlisted for the Booker Prize, several of my friends read and enjoyed it. So I read it, too. I don’t read very much literary fiction, and while I can tell you that this is a very well-written and thoughtful book, I didn’t really care for it. But if literary works that question the nature of words and the way we tell stories is something you enjoy, you might be interested in Universality.
Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud- This is set in an alternate world where the moon can be inhabited by people and regular travel between it and the Earth is expensive but possible. In 1923, Veronica Brinkley is brought to Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy so she might be treated for her dark moods. Little does she know that her celebrated doctor is performing strange experiments on patients using the silk left behind by the legendary moon spider. But there is darkness in more than just the patients’ minds, and not all of the moon’s denizens disappeared ages ago. This was a delightfully creepy little horror novella that packed a lot of story into its 88 pages. Though it’s not for someone with a fear of spiders, if you love weird horror books this will be right up your street. I’m eagerly awaiting the second book in the trilogy, Cathedral of the Drowned, which is due out in the US on October 21.
Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson- Dracula’s ‘brides’ take center stage in this wannabe gothic horror novel. It the middle ages, young Constanta is turned into a vampire and enthralled by her creator for centuries. They traverse parts of Europe and over time take two new lovers who bring problems of their own. This is a book that wants to be deep and tell a story of domestic violence, but it is too in love with its own aesthetic to tell a story about anything. Despite the passage of centuries, Constanta barely changes, acting like an insufferable teenager through the years. Romania is treated like a backwater filled with nothing but ignorant people; the historic settings are full of anachronisms, and the prose is overwrought and melodramatic in the worst ways. If you’re looking for a better sapphic vampire story, check out J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, or Kat Dunn’s recent novel, Hungerstone, instead.
When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo- The women of Yejide’s family have always been tasked with helping the city’s departed souls to travel to the next life, but her troubled relationship with her mother Petronilla has kept Yejide from learning what she needs to do to help those souls. Meanwhile, Darwin was raised in the countryside by a devout Rastafarian mother. Though his religion forbids coming into contact with the dead, Darwin has little choice but to take a job as a gravedigger and cut off his hair and his past. The pair meet in a cemetery under dire circumstances, when the dead rest uneasily and the living aren’t doing much better. This book had a bit of a slow start, but once I settled into the rhythm of the language, I got used to it and largely enjoyed this novel based on Trinidadian folklore.
The Wild Huntress by Emily Lloyd-Jones- Branwen possesses a gift of being able to see the magic of the Other Folk who live near her home and uses this gift to hunt monsters; her only wish is to heal her ailing mother. Though Gwydion has magic that allows him to control the plants and trees of the forest, he is still the youngest, smallest, and weakest of his dangerous and gifted siblings; but he is a trickster who will keep his brother from becoming a tyrant, whatever it takes. Pryderi is a prince who was stolen as a baby, raised by a monster, and rescued by a farmer; he knows he doesn’t want a crown, but otherwise he doesn’t know who or what he wants to be. The three join the dangerous wild hunt in the fairy wood for a chance of making their greatest wishes come to pass, and though they have little to no chance of winning, they will at least do what it takes to survive. This was a thoroughly enjoyable adventure fantasy novel with endearing characters in a well-constructed setting based on Welsh mythology. It had plot turns I didn’t expect, but they made sense when I looked back on what had happened. If you’re tired of the usual romantasy fare with the pretty covers and vapid contents, give Emily Lloyd-Jones’s books a chance.
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang- A talented young concert pianist is forced to give up a life in music after her parents suffer debilitating injuries in a car accident. When a beautiful woman offers her a lifeline in the form of a job at Holistik, the most exclusive beauty shop in the world, she jumps at the chance. But things are not what they seem, and the more the narrator gets wrapped up with Holistik and the CEO’s beautiful niece, Helen, the more she realizes that the beauty they offer to the world comes at a horrifying cost. I found this book to be thoughtful and deeply unsettling, which is what you want from any good horror novel. I wouldn’t read it while eating. Or at night. Read it on a bright, sunny afternoon.
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