Witch

Finbar Hawkins' novel Witch tells the story of teenage Eveline, who sees her mother murdered by witch hunters and struggles to keep herself and her younger sister safe in an English countryside rife with suspicion and mob violence. The story is set in 1646 and the novel is dedicated to the men and women persecuted by the witchfinding craze.

Hawkins tells a fascinating story and manages to draw in the reader. Most of the book is balanced on the delicate question: is this a historical fantasy where the story is based on historical facts and magic is real, or is this a historical fiction where the story is based on facts and magic is not, as far as anyone can reproducibly demonstrate, real? As a modern reader I found this balancing act superb, an act of authorial skill that is like watching someone juggle while also riding a unicycle. It made the story feel real and emotionally accessible in a way that hit me differently than a direct fantasy-world-where-magic-is-definitely-real.

This post's theme word is ruth (n), "compassion or contrition." The community is held together by the ruth we hold for each other.

Galaxy: The Prettiest Star

Galaxy: The Prettiest Star is a graphic novel by Jadzia Axelrod and Jess Taylor. It's a joyful, colorful celebration of lines and active drawings; also, incidentally, it is a metaphor for trans-ness. The main character is a vivid alien princess, in disguise as a normal human highschool-age boy. There is also a playful supervisory robot corgi.

The story explores attempts to blend in at high school, experimenting with self-presentation, the malleability of friendships and social pressure and how high school feels very high-stakes. Plus there is a charming corgi! (I've recently met a corgi puppy who lives a few blocks away and is a charming ball of energy.)

The story is straightforward works really nicely. It holds up for me as a way to discuss masking, coming out, being yourself, and transition. Always feeling watched and surveilled on personal presentation. Some parts are definitely fantasy and I was left bemusedly trying to figure out if anything lined up with the secret radio transmissions, or the eternal space war.

This post's theme word is reck (n), "care or concern." The entire basketball team had little reck for the prom night dancing kerfuffle.

Quotes for the past year

 Accumulated on various scraps of paper, which apparently is my brain's preferred mode of operation.

D: "I'm not just a talking head for delivering CS and sarcasm."

D (during a lecture): "What do we know --- he asks rhetorically --- about the properties of cosine?"

A cool note that I'd never thought of, from D: "Testing only tells you if bugs are there. It can't guarantee that bugs are not there."

"We expect furniture to migrate... quite a bit, in my experience."

Grocery checkout clerk: "What's your maximum carry weight? ... are you shopping for an army?"

Me: It took 5 weeks, but we've run out of symbols. How do you feel about the Greek alphabet? Hebrew?

Student: Hmm.

Me: I sometimes use hieroglyphics. Stork times alpha!

Student: That's awful.

(conclusion: we used Greek, plenty of letters there)

This post's theme word is besom (n), "a bundle of twigs attached to a handle and used as a broom." The marketing department recommends that flying besoms be replaced by modern flying broomsticks.

Howl's Moving Castle

Diana Wynne Jones' novel Howl's Moving Castle is a fun fantasy novel. It was adapted into an animated Mikazaki film but the adaptation changed many of the text-rendered delights of the story. The book sidles up to a sort of genre-savvy knowledge about fantasy stories. Protagonist Sophie is the eldest of three daughters, so she inherently understands that any choice she makes will go wrong in order to better frame the improved choices of her younger sisters; the youngest, of course, will make the best choice of all and have great fortune in life. Sophie understands everything in her life in this light --- working in the family hat shop, living in a provincial town, avoiding the maidens'-heart-devouring wizard Howl whose wandering castle emits puffs of steam as it haunts the fields outside her town.

The narrative voice here is joyful, and Jones is a master. (I read this book after having it strongly recommended, years ago, and that recommendation absolutely holds up!) All narration is in limited third-person and we mostly follow Sophie, but the reader is allowed to witness and notice things like hints being dropped and then named as hints by other characters in the scene, or Sophie's own magic which she denies having but frequently uses. The biggest and most fantastic reveal is (spoiler) that the wizard Howl, whose actions seem disjointed, fickle, and mysterious to Sophie, is actually a 27-year-old Welsh grad student who escaped into this fantasy world to (probably) avoid defending his thesis. I admit I filled in some of that invention, but most of it is actually right there in the novel.

This was a quick read and I'd recommend it. My edition had some Q&A with the author in the endnotes, which only increased my enjoyment of the story.

This post's theme word is hierophant (n), "an interpreter of esoteric knowledge." The skills of a wizard and a Ph. D. student are both obtained from close study with a hierophant and years of diligent work.