Look Ma No Hands

Book news:

• Hera Take Charge is going to be slightly delayed (by two weeks to a month), for reasons that will become obvious.
• Thanks very much to those who added reviews after my last newsletter! I very much appreciate it.

I have injured my right hand or rather, I have exacerbated an old RSI injury to my hand so now typing is very difficult for me. I am trying to spend as much time as possible not on my keyboard and as a result, first I am dictating this newsletter which I will have to edit later, because it is 100% not taking everything that I'm saying to it.

And second, all of my hobbies, it turns out, involve using my hands and right now I am trying to save my hands for some keyboard time. Because I need that. So I cannot sew. I cannot knit (definitely can’t knit). I cannot hook a rug. I can cook a little, but I can't really do anything very complicated cooking wise. I'm watching TV which I normally don't do that much of because for me, TV and podcasts are the things that I have on while I'm sewing. Or while I'm doing other stuff with my hands.

I cracked a whole bunch of hazelnuts today with my left hand. That was exciting.

I can read, on my phone, with my left hand, using my thumb to turn the pages. And I've been doing a lot of that so this newsletter is really a recommendation list for things I have been reading lately.

Menewood

Menewood is a beautiful, beautiful book following the further adventures — wait, “adventures” is wrong. We're following the further works of Hild of Whitby who is an actual historical person but Griffith's making her up. I love Hild because she is almost uncompromising but she does actually learn to bend a little bit. She is a woman who can speak, and people listen, in a world full of men and violence. She is herself extremely violent. But she is also somebody who understands what it is to build and to grow.  And the parts of Hild and Menewood that I like the most are the parts where she's working to create, where she's building a place for people. And it's a place that actually gestures towards egalitarianism. Which is historically attested, it is something that Hild of Whitby was said to value.

It’s very, very sharply observant, particularly of the natural world. Really muscular nature writing, it's a really beautiful realization of the world around us which is something I appreciate even though I don’t necessarily do it very well. I really like reading about it.

I like how much effort goes into textile development in this world.  Because the work that it takes to clothe people is massive, absolutely massive and Griffiths is one of the very few writers to pay attention to that.

It takes so much work to create wool! You have to raise sheep, you have to shear sheep. If you have flax, you have to grow the flax, you have to rett it. You have to turn the fibers into linen. You have to comb wool, you have to spin it, you have to weave it. Usually, your weave is a vertical loom and sitting that up takes forever. And then you have to weave it. Or you're doing a tablet wave with your friend.

It's fantastic detail for textiles, which I love, but it's also detail for farming, for the work of creating food, for what it's like when you don't have refrigeration, you can't store things terribly easily. You can store nuts and you can store butter and you can store honey so you make sure that you have those things.

Oooh, I find it so fascinating.

Might and Magic

The other thing I've been reading lately is actually a collection at story bundle called Heroines of Might and Magic. My friend Marie told me about it because she has a story there, which is very, very good. I've actually already read it, it's called How to Get a Girlfriend When You're a Terrifying Monster and it and its sequel, which has just come out by the way, I do recommend. They’re both super super cute, and they’re quick reads too.

The other one that I am reading at the moment is Tides of Magic by Andi R Christopher, who’s also a friend of mine and is an excellent writer. I love the way that they write about physicality. And the way that she, the point of view character, observes the world at a slight angle. Which is always something I'm very interested in.

Man, I have got to show you guys what this dictation mess looks like because it's terrible. I'm just talking to my phone, it's not real dictation software, maybe that's better.  I imagine it's having trouble with my accent. Maybe I should have done this as a voice message. But that might have confused people, too.

So, yeah, I'm reading a lot. I'm not writing.

Last night I watched a spider. There's a spider that lives inside my defunct doorbell which I'm very fond of and I came home with groceries last night and it was trying to subdue a beetle. And it clutched the back of this beetle, which was like maybe 3 times the size of this little spider, and it kept biting it and buried its head in the beetle's backside and it was really straining straining straining, and the beetle was straining straining straining to get away and I was cheering for the spider. Because I appreciate something that goes after a goal. And the beetle kind of gives this last massive shove and it dropped down. And I mean it was obviously going to die? Half of its innards were eaten out.

And the spider limped away with one leg missing and I haven't seen it today. I hope it's all right.

And I was like, that's a metaphor. Don’t go on your keyboard.

Below the divider is the actual dictation, pre-edits:

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