1. Years ago, when some dear friends of mine were getting married, I ordered my bridesmaid dress well ahead of time so I could get the necessary alterations. We placed the order, and I proceeded to wait for the dress. And I waited some more. And then even more. Finally, some three weeks late, the dress arrived (intact), though the box looked like it had been mauled by a pack of wild dogs. I've often wondered where the dress went in those three weeks. What did it see? What did it do to anger that pack of wild dogs? That was the first, but hardly the last entry in my list of shipping shenanigans. For example:
I mention all of this because the Field Notes planner I ordered last week nearly became another traveling package. It was due to arrive on Monday, but when the mail came, it wasn't there. The tracking simply said "in transit to the next destination". Now, when I have seen that in the past it means my package is headed into the wild blue yonder. This time, it was merely delayed. My planner arrived, safe and sound, on Tuesday. I took a quick look through it, and I think it will be pretty much perfect for me.
2. If you know me at all, you'll know that I am not a sports person. I can't keep track of team names, and whenever my coworkers are talking about some team or another, I usually have to ask, "They play. . . baseball?" But there is one sport– or at least one team– that I follow not quite religiously, and that would be Nebraska volleyball. Despite having a new coach after Coach Cook's retirement last spring, the Huskers were ranked #1 in pre-season rankings. With two top ten match-ups in the opening weekend, new head coach Dani Busboom-Kelly has her work cut out for her, but in the first game against #3 Pittsburgh, the Huskers did well. The first set was close, but the Huskers came from behind to grab the win, and they were on fire in the second set, defeating Pitt 25-11. They apparently put things on cruise control in the third and lost that one, but came back in the fourth set to get the overall win. It was exciting to see the Huskers play so well out of the gate, and to say that I'm excited for the rest of the season is a bit of an understatement. GBR! 3. I don't really have a third thing this week. It's been hectic with work, appointments, home maintenance, a friend's sad news and the tasks involved with that. It was also terribly hot and humid until yesterday, so the desire to go about and about was just not there. But this week the temperatures are decidedly cooler and more pleasant, so I'll be going out and doing more interesting things this week. For example, I'll be going to the farmers market later this morning, and I plan to use up a roll of Ilford HP5 black and white film in my Kodak Pocket Jr. 1A. I cleaned the camera's bellows as well as I could, so I'm hoping I’ll have fewer spots on my negatives. What I've been reading: Despite the aforementioned hecticness, I managed to finish several books last week- partly because some of them were short, and partly because I'd been working on a couple of them for a while. The Drowned Woods by Emily Lloyd Jones- Mererid is the sole surviving water diviner, bound in service to a vicious prince who will stop at nothing to gain more power for himself. She's been on the run from him for years, always looking over her shoulder, and never able to rest in a single place for long. Her past catches up with her in the form of her former mentor who has cut ties with the prince and now seeks to destroy him. They team up with a fae-cursed young man, a princess of thieves, and a corgi that may or may not be a fae spy to pull off a heist that could save the realm or destroy it. The Drowned Woods is another in Lloyd-Jones's loosely connected trilogy that includes The Wild Huntress and The Bone Houses. It was thoroughly enjoyable, though I prefer The Wild Huntress, if only because heist novels aren't necessarily my favorite and because I liked Branwen more than I liked Mer. But those are personal preferences, and I would still highly recommend Emily Lloyd-Jones's books. Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw- This short novella is about a group of friends who spent their college years ghost-hunting together. After college, however, they developed their own lives and careers and have begun to grow apart but have reunited in a crumbling and notorious Japanese mansion for one last ghost-hunting hurrah. Little do they know that the ghost of the mansion is more than just a spooky tale, and that this one night of terror will change their lives forever. After reading The Salt Grows Heavy, I knew I wanted to read more of Khaw's work, so I put this book on hold at the library, and it came in for me sooner than I expected. There is plenty of conflict and tension in this book, and while the style of its narrative is different from The Salt Grows Heavy, I was invested in the story and its characters right away and couldn't stop until I'd finished it. Khaw is quickly becoming a favorite horror writer, and I only wish that they had more books out. The Library at Hellebore is next on the list, but my library doesn't have it, and the $30 price for a relatively short hardcover book is a lot. I'll try to wait until I can find it on sale somewhere. But not at Amazon. I don't buy books from them. The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar- Anatole, a magician in a 1500s Italian castle becomes friends with the little princess. As she grows up, they become good friends, but when she is old enough to get married, she is betrothed to the cruel leader of a neighboring kingdom. When she falls in love with a scribe's apprentice, Anatole must find a way to make the pair forget the other existed, prevent the apprentice's execution, and prevent a war between the two kingdoms. This was an enjoyable book with an odd sort of structure that I mostly didn't mind. I haven't read any of Sachar's other books- not even Holes, so I didn't know what to expect coming into The Magician of Tiger Castle, which is his adult debut. Was it the best fantasy novel I've read this year? No, but was it a lot of fun? Yes. Would I recommend it? Also yes. A Poisoner's Tale by Cathryn Kemp- This is the tale of the possibly mythical Giulia Tofana, who lived in 1600s Rome, and who is reputed to have made a perfect poison she sold to women who wanted to get rid of their abusive husbands. With no way to obtain a divorce, these women were desperate for a way out to protect themselves and/or their children, and Giulia is reputed to have given them the solution to the tune of up to 1,000 men. Was she a real person? It's hard to say. The records apparently aren't definitive, and Kemp developed her made-up characters from a variety of sources and stories. This sounded like an intriguing tale, but ultimately I found it a little stale. You know Giulia's fate from the beginning, so the tension of "will she get away with this, or will she be captured?" is not there. The narrative also keeps the reader at arm's length, which made it difficult to care very much about what was going on. Kemp's writing is perfectly lovely, but thanks to several odd (to me) narrative choices, this one was a bit of a miss. Traveling in Books is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Traveling in Books that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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Sunday, August 24, 2025
Three Things #4
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