Five Things Make a Post

[pedanther]

Our next production is Ladies in Black, an Australian musical that debuted a few years ago (just before covid came along and limited its prospects for becoming more widely known). I wasn't planning to do two musicals back-to-back, but as usual there was a shortage of men willing and able to sing, so I got roped in. I'm playing the male half of the main romantic subplot, which is a change from my usual (character roles and, in Alan Rickman's phrase, "very interesting people"), and has been taking me into new territory. The rehearsal period has been a bit crunched because of the way the Rock of Ages season was extended, but we had our final dress rehearsal/preview last night and were pleased and relieved to discover that, while there are still some rough patches, we do indeed have a show.

At work, I haven't maintained my focus to the same remarkable level, but it's still pretty good. As I got back into things after the covid isolation, what I've been noticing is the way it's affected by how much else I have on my mind (for instance, it's taken a dip just lately because a lot of my spare time and brainpower has been focussed on preparing for the opening of Ladies in Black). That seems kind of obvious, now that I say it, but it's not something I was really consciously aware of before in the same way.

My complaint about not having anyone to share my The Sandman experience with has had a happy epilogue: I was catching up with my brother on the weekend, and he mentioned that he's also watching The Sandman and, as it turned out, was up to exactly the point I'd been up to when I was most miffed about not having anybody to talk to about what it was like to be up to that point. So we got to have a long conversation about what we thought of it so far.

I was all set to say that I think I might be done with this set of monthly reading challenges, having whiffed June, July and August, but then I checked my reading log and discovered that in fact I've completed the August challenge entirely by accident: the challenge was "a book with an object in the title", and I happened across The Witch's Vacuum Cleaner and other stories at the library and decided to give it a go without remembering about the challenge. The challenge for September is "a book with LIGHT or DARK in the title", so we'll see how this goes.

The Witch's Vacuum Cleaner and other stories is one of a series of collections reprinting the short stories Terry Pratchett wrote very early in his career for the children's section of his local newspaper. They're trifles, but they're amusing and they have their clever moments. It was also fun spotting the first appearance of ideas that he revisited later on: there's a story in this collection that uses a version of the premise of Johnny and the Dead, and another which is unmistakeably a complete miniature version of the plot of Truckers (and even has some of the same jokes).

Comments

[ariaflame]

Have you already read 'The Light Brigade' by Kameron Hurley?

[pedanther]

I have not.

...hm. Parts of the blurb sound interesting, but I've read a "gritty take on the future of war" recently enough that I don't think I'm ready for another one just yet.

[ariaflame]

Hmm. Of Darkness, Light, and Fire. Though that's an omnibus of 'Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light' and 'The Fire's Stone' by Tanya Huff. The first matches your thing better. Urban Fantasy.

[thisbluespirit]

"a book with LIGHT or DARK in the title"

I'd say there must be a lot of those... and simultaneously can't think of one right now. lol.

[igenlode]

"The Dark is Rising" (Susan Cooper).
It's 'children's fiction', but it's children's fiction from long enough ago (1970s) that the 'Young Adult' genre hadn't been invented yet, so it's basically adult fiction minus the romantic subplots.

[pedanther]

I have been meaning to re-read that at some point, but I'm trying to use the reading challenge as a motivator to try new things instead of just re-read things I already know I'll like.

[igenlode]

"The Dark Mile" by DK Broster ;-p
https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20200246

(It's the third and weakest of her 'Jacobite' books, but only peripheral to the other two; given that I found it unsatisfactory at least partly because it retcons the shattering ending of "The Gleam in the North" while focusing instead on the original protagonist's young cousin, I don't know if it would be less or more readable on its own...)

[igenlode]

Or Barbara Hambly's Dark Hand of Magic, for something more in the fantasy line (and also, as it happens, the third book in a trilogy, albeit, as I wrote, "In many ways this in itself *is* the backstory to the two previous books, rather than requiring them in order to make sense".)

[pedanther]

Dark Hand of Magic is another one I've read already, and is on my personal list of "That was a good story, well told, and I am never going to read it again".

[igenlode]

Yes, it's pretty... gruesome.

As a real obscurity I have on the shelves "For Us in the Dark" by Naomi Royde Smith (my copy apparently inscribed by the original owner E. Jones in March 1939), which I picked up at random in a charity shop and paid 50p for because I couldn't put it down again. A very odd (and intended, apparently, by the author as explicitly Catholic in its sensibilities, although none of the principal characters are) but lyrical and compelling book apparently based on the circumstances of an ancient murder trial in 17th-century Italy; reminds me rather of Elizabeth Goudge with its moments of beauty and horror, and sympathetic insights into all the characters, even the most misguided or conventionally trivial-minded.

[fred_mouse]

Not sure whether this will link to everyone's books, or just the ones I added as possibilities for this prompt at storygraph; there are lots of interesting ideas there!