Echoes of Flavio's Ghost Dreaming

Some reading was done. Far less than I thought and almost all of it for Bibliogoth. But a lot of it was good and allowed me to visit some strange new worlds (no, not those 🙂 )


https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2024?ref=yyib_dec_24_sa

Bibliogoth today was good. We were discussing 'Circe' by Madeline Miller, a retelling of the story of the witch/nymph Circe. It might seem a book on a mythological ancient Greek witch would be boring, it isn't. It is very well written and the characters are well fleshed out and quite human -even those who aren't human, like those capricious Greek gods who seem to be eternal six year olds And the discussion veered into some interesting side-themes.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50164163-circe

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I loved this. It feels at first like one of those abstract short stories by Jorge Luis Borges, the Library of Babel in particular (I was thrilled to later read an interview in which the author mentions this as an influence). Then it evolves into something else. I see many comparisons drawn between Piranesi and the Narnia books by C S Lewis. Not having read this, I don't know anything further than the premise of the hidden world beyond the wardrobe. There is perhaps a little bit of Many Worlds here also. The world in which Piranesi lives is achingly beautiful but, alas... oh, I had written three lines of spoilers, so I won't put that. I loved this book.



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This was the set book for bibliogoth's December 2021 meeting.

Haven't posted much of late as my mind has been preoccupied with the current horror show I'm facing with my health and the hoops I'll have to jump. Funnily, that has made the Shell situation (where a large transnational insists that I'm their gas customer and are trying to charge me some eight thousand pounds as according to them I've never paid -whilst I've been with the Co-Op/Octopus that whole time and I'm reasonably happy with them, insofar as you can be with an energy supplier) -this has suddenly become far less threatening, with something so much bigger on my mind.

Apart from that, I still haven't been to a club night -and very likely won't be until that health issue gets resolved, which will take a fair while. I have been to one friends' picnic which was very good and didn't feel crowded in. And yesterday I met a friend mid-afternoon at the Pineapple, a local pub here in KT. And that was absolutely lovely, to catch up with a friend in person and, apart from inevitably boring her with the gruesome details of my current health thing, hear how she's doing and where her life is going.

Other things: the current book for Bibliogoth I'm liking a whole lot more than the previous one. It is 'A Woman of No Importance', by Sonia Purnell, a biography of Virginia Hall, an American spying for the British in Vichy France during WW2.

Something I never did properly when I was studying music was to learn the piano; had two years of piano as a secondary subject but it was very much secondary and our teacher had 'ideas' and made us spend most of the first year with lid closed, practising dropping wrist and passing thumb under. When my midi keyboard died late last year I decided to replace it with the cheapest digi piano I could find that had hammer-action -a Casio. It probably wouldn't withstand somebody practising a diploma level concert on it but it is ideal for me. So I find myself in the curious situation that I'm quite professionally proficient on one instrument and a complete beginner on another. It is fun, though, and it has taught me a lot about how somebody my age reacts to learning a new instrument. This has already been useful for my guitar teaching.

The Bear and The Nightingale by Katherine Arden

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Loved this story. Don't know much (or anything at all, really) about the folk lore and myths of Russia but this sparked a curiosity. There was an interesting thread about this in Bibliogoth when we were discussing the book (yesterday, as I write this). The consensus was that the characters were a little bit stereotypical, the plot did derive to an extent from old Russian folklore stories. None of this mattered to me, I really liked this book.



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Not a lot to relate. Not many adventures. Guitar lessons continue on Zoom and, for the two schools I teach at, on Google Meet. I still have fewer pupils than \normal' but, not having a social life in these times, I'm also spending much less so I'm 'nearly' ok, managing to get my head above the water and gasp and take in air once in a while.

I'm still putting pictures of sunsets on Instagram and putting short videos of local concerts done when such things were possible on my other Instagram. Tried a little bit of crowdfunding or sponsorship on Ko-Fi but that didn't work very well, maybe I should have gone the whole hog and started a Patreon page. But I'm not  desperate for money at this point. The worry is the medium future. At this age, I have no idea how long I can keep working as I do but it cannot be counted in decades. Last I looked I couldn't get a pension either as there appeared to be quite a few years in which there hadn't been paid the contributions in full. Must look into that but having to deal with all that sort of thing makes me lose my will to live.

Still going to Bibliogoth; the last couple of books have been interesting. The next one is 'Cold Comfort Farm' by Stella Gibbons and.. alas, I'm finding it a little difficult. It is very much not my sort of thing, which normally isn't a problem, one of the reasons for going to a book club is indeed to get some exposure to diverse literature in genres and styles out of one's comfort (sori) zone. And there isn't anything really wrong with the book but I find it stodgy and difficult to take in. rather than funny as I think it is supposed to be.

And that, and local walks in the neighbourhood but seldom to Hampstead Heath as it gets so busy even in lock-down, is pretty much it. Apart from perhaps watching The Expanse (which still is very good even though I've read the books) and Star Trek Discovery -which is.. it has its good moments and it is refreshing to see a TV show in which some of the main characters are LGBQT/non binary, but now and again bits of the plot make me want to scream. Listening to podcasts on palaeontology and cosmology in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep. Going for my one coffee out of doors at the stand by Kentish Town station. Having pretty much given up on learning to make bread properly, etc. but making beer out of a kit that a friend gave me for Christmas (the beer, a stout called 'dark matter' -cue more cosmological jokes- was amazing).

And so we go in a world with suddenly narrowed horizons, from lockdown to semi-aperture that makes the next lockdown inevitable and so we go, feeling our way in the dark and trying to move forward with our lives.

Into the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City by Elizabeth Dearnley




A collection of short stories based around the theme of the London pea-super fog. I found it rather uneven and perhaps oddly I found the couple of essays (one by Virginia Woolf, one by Claude McKay, fair more interesting than the stories, which I would have loved when I was 14 but at this point I found rather predictable and so-so; not terrible but not that very exciting. Still, enough of the book is a good read that it is work the while. And of course you might have different tastes and not agree with me.



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The future is a bit uncertain, although at least I'll have _some_ income from the schools I teach guitar at in the next three months. Beyond that, who knows. This situation could last longer, perhaps quite a bit longer, than that. In the meantime, my 36m² flat keeps shrinking, getting a bit smaller each day. I have enough 'virtual' social interaction, last night there was the usual Gothsluts pub meeting, only now virtual, happening on Zoom (comment by andyravensable : 'the drinks are cheaper and the music is better...'), also Bibliogoth, various friends' virtual parties and my own private guitar lessons, although I need quite a bit more of the latter.

A lot of people report inexplicable tiredness and sleep trouble -I've had both. it is just the stress of being in this situation without a clear end in sight, I s'pose. 

Pity that I just cannot get on with the book for the next Bibliogoth meeting: 'Our Lady of the Flowers' by André Gide. I knew of him, I'd read something by him when I was younger and I don't find his salaciousness shocking (as I did then) but his writing style makes it hard work for me and I find myself not caring for his characters or what happens to them. Will look into the new Hugo Awards list that sfred  posted, there might be something better for me there (we already had 'This is how you lose the Time Wars' last month in Bibliogoth). Have been watching 'Picard' and 'The Expanse' and a documentary on Robert Johnson the bluesman. Ran out of all three now... also, I've been practising guitar a lot! Which is good and necessary and does do quite a bit to help preserve (what's left of) my sanity.

The future is uncertain. But then it always was. In the meantime, we move on forward...

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I enjoyed this a lot, even though I found it somewhat difficult at first -little things that I found irritating, like the detailed description of astrological stuff. Some of those things (not the astrology!) become clearer towards the end. Interestingly, I now feel that some of those little irritating things were there on purpose, somewhat like when we meet a new person that has traits and foibles that make you wary of them or simply not relate (like, say, the astrology). As the book progresses and the main character and the story flesh out, they become complex and interesting, as in the case of those people one might have found irritating at first and end up accepting as friends. So many strands of it -the way someone in her situation will get ignored, talked down or condescended to. The way the grass was greener on the Czech side of the border. The one liners (and the make-believe pop wisdom quips). The characters slowly become believable (at least the main characters, many of the secondary ones remain very roughly drawn). I liked it.

This was the set reading for the Bibliogoth meeting in October 2019.



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I’m reading three books at the moment. Firstly, ‘All Systems Red’ by Martha Wells (I’m blaming Eglé for this :D ) which is the set reading for the next Bibliogoth (yes, it was my nomination, again I blame Eglé for that). It is a lovely book but quite short (and it is my second reading of it), so I’m reading a couple of other things at the same time so that I don’t finish it too early and forget all about it by the time of the Bibliogoth meeting (this has happened before..). So I’m reading something called ‘Starshine’ by G S Jensen. This is a space opera that is almost a compendium of all space sci-fi tropes including alien invasion, galactic porto-empires at war, love interest between enemies, etc. Not enjoying it that much but not bad enough to put it down and forget about it. Also re-reading ‘The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O’ by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland, which combines a ‘Many Worlds’ world, time travel and witchcraft, in the hands of two people that know how to do this sort of thing. Enjoying this one a lot.