#and dunnett is SO DAUNTING

[orangeshipper]

Tiny fandom, I wrote a thing!

I just wanted to dip my toes back into writing, as it's been a LONG time, and with it being Valentine's day last week, I thought I'd see if that was around in Lymond's time.

It was!

Apparently its first romantic connotations appeared in Geoffrey Chaucer's poem 'The Parliament of Fowls', 1381, which features here. Also featuring is Wyatt's 'A Description Of Such A One As He Would Love'.

Post-Checkmate

Mature fluff? Is that a thing? Nothing explicit.

Francis/Philippa

14th February 1559

The fingertips of bleak morning sun struggled past the edge of the shutters, not quite lighting the chamber or its bed with strewn sheets, only casting delicate highlights on bared skin and hair, dark and gilt, on the pillows. Pale as it was, the light did not wake them.

The birdsong, however, did.

“You assume full responsibility for this, I take it?” Francis Crawford mumbled gently against his wife’s hair, a smile touching the long mouth as he registered her groan.

“I’ll own to encouraging them - a little - but no more than that.” Slowly, Philippa stretched her long legs against his, then sat up, mildly apologetic at her part in their peace being disturbed. “How was I to know that ravens would lodge there, and not any bird more melodious?” She grimaced as further raucous, grating caws rent the still air. It was incessant.

Rising, she padded to the window embrasure, loose shift clinging to her body and hair tumbling in coils on her shoulders. Quick fingers unlatched the shutters, then the windows, admitting the cool morning air to their chamber.

The noise increased, with a great flapping of wings as the birds chased and swooped. Leaning out, Philippa surveyed what she had indeed encouraged - a nest on a small ledge, tucked into a corner against the protruding stonework of St Mary’s and just within reach of the window, sheltered by the eaves further above. An ideal spot; after noticing some birds playing about it the week before she had carefully gathered and scattered some moss, twigs, leaves and other detritus in handfuls, hoping to encourage a perch there.

And her efforts had succeeded - just rather sooner, and with far larger, uglier and unpleasantly noisy fowl than she’d imagined.

With a sigh, she pulled the windows closed again, leaving the shutters to admit the burgeoning sun before retreating back to the warmth of the great bed and her husband’s arms, pulling up heavier furs over the sheets as she did so to cover them.

“Amis, don’t begrudge them,” Francis admonished. Lifting a hand to tease away the hair that fell over her eyes, his long fingers ghosted her cheek before pulling her down to a soft kiss. “Didn’t you know? For this was on Saint Valentine’s Day, when every fowl comes there his mate to take.”

“And each a marriage with its mate does make? I remember.” Delight danced in the depths of her gaze.

“Full joyous may they sing when they wake,” he continued, smiling, “as you see, the ravens do. And you?”

“I’m not sure I'd call it 'singing'!” Her chuckle was lost against his lips, becoming a gasp as the musician's fingers teased across her skin. “And me? Well. Him that she chooses, he shall have her as quickly…”

“Is that so?”

Philippa heard his breath quicken, heart hammering, as he eased up to bring her beneath him. He drew back a little, which allowed her to survey the way the brightening sun haloed the gold of his hair, throwing light into the deep blue of his eyes, darkened as they were with desire. Aware of her skin flushing under his gaze, her teeth caught her lip gently as she waited. He continued softly, “And he’ll have her whom his heart can’t forget. Ah, yunitsa. Are you content with your choice, still?” He glanced round at another harsh chorus from beyond the window and said, with only slight ruefulness, “I believe ravens mate for life, I’m afraid…”

Reaching up, she took his face in cupped hands, her own brow marked with a single line as she made a show of considering his question seriously, studying him. She couldn’t believe that he held any doubt, now, though their marriage had only been complete for a mere few months.

“Am I content? Let me see…

A face that should content me wondrous well Should not be fair but lovely to behold, With gladsome cheer all grief for to expel; With sober looks so would I that it should Speak without words such words as none can tell; His tress also should be of crisped gold; With wit; and thus might chance might I be tied, And knit again the knot that should not slide.

“Yes, Francis,” she went on, fingers delving back into the golden whorls of his hair, drawing his mouth down to hers. Words came out in a breath, a sweet sigh as his warm lips moved from hers, to her cheek, to her throat, and his fingers started to play once more, dancing at - then under - the hem of her shift. “Tant que je vive, mon coeur ne changera… Mon chois est fait, aultre ne se fera. I love you.”

Her world had faded and sharpened to those devastating points of focus where she could feel his touch against her, inch by agonising inch closer to where she needed. God, but he knew how to play her.

All at once he raised himself on one arm, smiling down at her as his thumb brushed her cheek, the colour attractively risen in his own fair skin.

“Well that’s a relief. Otherwise I’d have had to convince you.”

“Francis!”

Philippa sat up, clutching the sheet to her body which still throbbed with warmth against the cold air in the space which he’d left. Quitting their bed he had crossed the room, charmingly naked, and set himself to making up the fire. Though she knew he remained excruciatingly conscious of her gaze on his back, he made no sign of it, rising smoothly when he’d finished to go and peer through the window at the raven pair, still at their disquieting play beyond.

“Francis…” Her voice was softer this time, barely concealing the pleading note it held. She swallowed. “My choice may be fixed, but it does no harm to affirm it, being St Valentine’s Day after all. Come.” Her hand stretched out to his, and her heartbeat quickened again as she saw how the glittering cornflower gaze fell to her reddened lips. “Persuade me.”

His grin was slow, and devilish. But he did not hesitate.

Fin

[cbk1000]

Could you give me a list of your top 10 must read books? They don’t have to be your favorites, just books that you think everyone should read in their lifetime at some point (preferably English for right now lol).

Well, I’m gonna’ have to include some Russian books on this list, but I’ll be helpful enough to include suggestions for English translations (though preferences, of course, do vary from person to person, and if a book has a few different translations of it, you should always read some samples and see which you like better; the translation can mean the difference between one of your favorite books, and one you had to slog through).

Without further ado, and not in any particular order:

1. War and Peace: So far I’ve read three translations, and having now read it in Russian as well, my favourite translation is still the Rosemary Edmonds Penguin Classics edition. I know it’s a great big fucking book, and daunting, but I read it in Russian side by side with an English translation to help me with vocabulary when I was only 6 months into learning Russian, so if I can read it twice through simultaneously in two different languages, you can give it a shot once. Tolstoy puts an incredible amount of humanity into his writing. He’s one of my favorite authors of all time.

2. Survival In Auschwitz by Primo Levi: This is actually the first of a trilogy, but it’s not technically necessary to read the rest (though I would suggest it). Primo Levi was an Italian chemist  imprisoned in Auschwitz who wrote about his experiences there. It’s a really disturbing examination of humanity and why and how it perpetuates the atrocities it perpetuates.

3. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned in the gulags after slagging off Stalin, and he was PISSED about what he saw and experienced: so pissed he wrote three massive volumes about what a bitchboy Stalin was. There is a one-volume abridgment if you feel light-headed at the idea of three 700+ page books about the Stalinist government. This is another work that forces you to take a good hard look at the human race, and a good hard look at the parts of yourself that are capable, as every human is under the right circumstances, of participating in some of the worst acts of our fucked-up species.

4. The Count of Monte Cristo: Not as literary as the preceding works, but I had a damn good time reading it. I finally just got my dad to read it (by buying him a copy as one of his Christmas presents so he’d feel obligated to give it a shot), and when he finished it he e-mailed me to say he couldn’t believe he’d never read it before and it’s now one of his favorite books. Poison!! Revenge!! Infanticide!! Who said 19th century literature can’t be a sexy, sexy time? 

5. The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett: I’m cheating on this one because it’s a series, but more people need to know about Dunnett. This is a six-book historical fiction series set in mid-16th-century Europe as well as the Mediterranean, following one Francis Lymond, a Scottish nobleman who gets himself mixed up in the political shenanigans of the time period. And there were a lot going on, in multiple countries: and this series spans an immense amount of them. Scotland, France, Russia, Turkey--there are some absolutely fucking fantastic set pieces here. Dunnett has some truly stunning prose and is an extremely atmospheric writer; I feel like I can touch and taste her writing. I do think some people will struggle a bit with the first book in the beginning; Lymond likes to speak multiple languages, to quote poetry, make obscure references, etc. etc.; if you feel flummoxed by him, so is everyone around him. I actually think he’s a bit of a twat. This is one of those rare series where I don’t care all that much for the main character, but the supporting characters and plot make up for it. And for the majority of the series, you see Lymond through the eyes of other characters, so I wasn’t oppressively trapped in his head, screaming at him to stop being a whiny bitch. He’s a sort of Byronic hero, so YMMV. 10/10 swashbuckling. There are some action sequences so gripping I became physically angry if interrupted while reading them. Mr. Jenn got ignored quite a lot while I was dipping in and out of this series.

6. The Once and Future King by T.H. White: More than another piece of Arthuriana, this is a touching and even sometimes hilarious examination of war and our propensity for violence. The first book in the collection is whimsical and funny and feels every bit the comfy childhood read that it is: and the next book opens with a cat being boiled, which should tell you something about the tonal shifts the series undergoes as White works his way through the myths. I only read this for the first time a few years ago, and I’ve already read it three times since then. It’s left its mark, needless to say.

7. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: Another War and Peace, this time with French people. Listen: I know Hugo goes on for much too long about the Parisian sewer system. I know it. But there’s so much soul in this book, and so much compassion, and maybe he did spend too long waffling on about literally everything in the world, but dude did it with a style few people can match. Even in translation this is a gorgeous book. I’ve read it in English and Russian and it’s equally beautiful in both.

8. A Higher Call by Adam Makos: This is a true story about a badly damaged American bomber flying over wartime Germany, and the German Messerschmitt who escorts it to safety. The writing is pretty standard narrative non-fiction: adequate, but you’re not going to get your panties in a luscious twist over any of Makso’ sentences. But it is truly a gripping story, and a moment of incredible humanity amidst so much inhumanity. 

9. The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt: The author uses fairytales and the power that stories have over us to examine society as it careened toward WWI. I forced myself to slow down while I was reading this book because I wanted so badly to savor it. It’s an evocative look at how stories (fairytales, in this case) can be both an escape when we need it and an excuse when reality needs us.  

10. Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally Not just an example of someone doing the right thing when so many people wouldn’t, but an example of an imperfect human doing the right thing when so many people wouldn’t. Schindler was a chain-smoking heavy drinker with a wife, a mistress, and a girlfriend who risked his life to keep Jews from the concentration camps. It’s important to know that just as all the people who contributed to the atrocities of the Holocaust were not soulless monsters, and therefore could have been any one of us, so too were its heroes not all paragons of virtue. There is the capacity for kindness and violence in all of us.

Thanks for the question, come back any time to talk about books!!

[marinaparrott92-blog]

Keeping A Yard In Winter months.

When you have a flower landscape, maintaining flowers need to be your problem especially in wintertime. Cold foods items (particularly dairy or mayonnaise based) should be kept under 40 degrees F (4 levels C) or lower. Both our yard as well as dog organisations outmatched on the topline as well as in working incomes for the one-fourth. Just before you start making use of feline preventives for landscapes, you could want to look at ensuring that to begin with, the creatures can't access your garden.

A winter season garden may have the tendency to look bare and also dull, specifically if you stay in a very cold climate. If water becomes gloomy or foul odoring in a little starter water landscape along with a drinking fountain, clear away 10 percent from the water coming from the bottom with either a pump tube or water pump.

Alister Clark Memorial Rose Garden, a climbed yard in Bulla, Victoria, house community of the rosarian Alister Clark, consisting of all his enduring cultivars. Regarding plants and household pets go, have fun with your canine to begin with to tire him out, and garden during your dog's nap times. Also I do rarely obtain inspired good enough to round up hen manure for my splendid household garden. A Moss Backyard is actually an encounter, it is actually an emotion of charm as well as calming calmness, even in a mini fashion ... All a present off The lord. A rock yard design could be an useful convenient and exquisite option for your landscape in the lasting so long as you have special treatment in preparing that out prior to completion. That additionally should be actually remembered that the region taken up by the office needs to be actually certainly not much more than HALF of the overall location from your garden. I additionally found dark blue Lupines and also white colored and red Pincushions and also yellow Desert Sunflowers and a handful of others that I could not determine. Shower room ceramic tiles can also be recycled for creating varieties in the landscape for aesthetic objectives and also as water drainage assistances in plants in pots vegetations. Incorporating natural products, additional ground, garden compost, manure or various other forms of nutrients to the soil will certainly ready the fine backyard bed that will definitely keep your shade vegetations. In chilly landscapes, the beneficial position is one where snow often tends to gather over the winter season. At the Educational institution from Sheffield, James Hitchmough's job is actually full and revolutionary from massive capacity; Nigel Dunnett at Sheffield is an eco-friendly roof covering, rain backyard as well as lasting planting guru. For those of us in the western globe, managing a garden with many winter season may be daunting and include hardships. CrossCab supply Tunbridge Wells taxi companies as well as vehicle solutions at extremely affordable and also inexpensive fees. However with a little research and a really good strategy you could properly increase backyard yard in the fall. A landscape construct can be as rustic or even official as you http://fborenato290.host-sc.Com/ feel free to, make your choice, as well as style what matches your style. At that point you are actually probably going to have a pre-formed pool liner, if you really want to receive performed fast as well as cheap. As our experts search for methods to save loan in this particular economic climate and along with veggies being actually apex in rate, it would be actually a great idea to grow a landscape along with a variety of veggies.

[daniellejarnigan-blog]

The Insulated Landscape Workplace.

An extremely active time starts in the garden as the summer months and autumn florals vanish. Possessing a chia natural herb garden is actually a very easy as well as very well-maintained way of horticulture, and also you could place them throughout your home or have several little bit of cannabis backyards in several aspect of your home. That is actually a great idea to view the yard at various opportunities of the day and after that mark on a sketched program of the yard where the light as well as color is at various times of the day.

Even a little outdoor patio, balcony or even patio will certainly be enough to put together your putting up backyard. In moving right into a new rental residential property I possessed a sizable frontal yard along with a good quickkerb concrete perimeter to highlight the stunning pots.

Alister Clark Remembrance Rose Backyard, a climbed landscape in Bulla, Victoria, residence community of the rosarian Alister Clark, consisting of all his making it through cultivars. As far as pet dogs as well as plants go, enjoy with your pet dog initially to tire him out, and also garden during your pet's snooze times. As a suggestion, the majority of our garden period covers our third and 2nd monetary fourths, which has traditionally been actually the best one-fourths for revenues as well as profits for our firm. Climatic disorders, budget, as well as form of landscape or patio area could effect the decision of acquiring outdoor patio things. I have developed tomatoes in all types of dirt, coming from rough, hard stuffed clay to rich dark loam so loosened you could drive your upper arm joint deep in to the ground with no effort. In the late-summer and also autumn I begin lettuce seedlings in a cold frame trap the yard. After all the lettuce was out of the very hot box, Mommy will begin the delightful potato vegetations, which would receive hair transplanted to the principal garden in June together with the cabbage as well as various other plants. As lovely as the yard examines this time around, this's no surprise that this area is flocked by website visitors. It could be vital in keeping the temp higher over chilly evenings avoiding vegetations from being actually damaged by obtaining very chilly. Then forward, I loved selecting fresh veggies off our backyard in my new suburban residence. Don't forget to include sitting so you can easily take pleasure in all the sights, fragrances, and noises of a tactical Tuscan landscape. At the Educational institution from Sheffield, James Hitchmough's work is actually total and also innovative of enormous capacity; Nigel Dunnett at Sheffield is actually an environment-friendly rooftop, storm backyard and sustainable growing guru. For those of us in the western world, dealing with a backyard with so many winter months can be daunting stephanymerryman.blogcindario.com as well as involve difficulties. I decided to go take some photos of my landscape while the fallen leaves brought raindrops as well as the different colors were actually rich and also accurate. If you consult any of your regional landscape establishments or baby rooms, they'll be able to provide you the relevant information you are going to need to cover a robust crop of your tasty veggies. Present Chief Executive Officer worked with Mr. Harrison for 20 years, therefore understands preciseness railroading cold. In my opinion, the most ideal yard emblems feature an excellent blend from flat parts, rounded items, and high items. However, for the do-it-yourself gardener, this is actually certainly not that challenging to develop a raised backyard bed from fresh lumber.

[orangeshipper]

After reading The Lymond Chronicles 4 times through in as many months, I've taken the plunge and moved on to The House of Niccolo!

I'm 140 pages into Niccolo Rising.

Tiny Lymond Fandom, how do we feel about Niccolo?? Eight weighty books after being so attached to Lymond is feeling really daunting.

I'm enjoying it so far, but have steeled myself through the usual 50% total incomprehension hoping for the 50% unputdownable drama??

I feel like we're spending so much time with Julius and Tobie and many, many, MANY merchants while I have no handle on Claes yet? Whereas GoK I was absolutely sold on Lymond from the moment he accosted Mariotta on the stairs at Midculter...

On the other hand, someone has just used the greeting "Well, turd." and I'm reminded that Dunnett is an absolute legend.

[cbk1000]

Recs please? Since I ADORE your writing, I would love to read something that you think it's extraordinary.

I am always happy to talk books, but I’ll throw in a disclaimer first that I tend to have fairly eclectic taste, and some of my fave books are ones that others consider boring and/or turgid. I also read a lot of poetry, and I’m gonna’ peddle some of that here because dammit, more people need to read poetry. HERE WE GO.

Let’s actually start with poetry. I love, love Keats; some of his lines are so beautiful I have to set down the book I’m reading to process them. I also love Tennyson generally speaking, but Idylls of the King in particular, which is a collection of narrative poems retelling Arthurian legend. It is gorgeous and heart-breaking. I also started reading Seamus Heaney recently and his work is rather breath-taking. Ditto Charles Algernon Swinburne. I have many, many other favorites, and I won’t list them all here, because that would be overwhelming; however, if you held a gun to my head and told me I had to pick one poet, and one poet only, Wilfred Owen is my guy. He was an English poet who fought in WWI (and died right before Armistice, sadly) and wrote some of the most beautiful (and heartbreaking) lines I’ve ever read in the English language. ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’ is probably his most famous poem, and a good starting place.

For books, it’s a cliche coming from someone with a boner for Russian literature, but I really do love ‘War and Peace’. Yes, it’s long and definitely daunting (although Tolstoy is, in my opinion, far more accessible than many classic authors, and far more accessible than a 1400 page novel set during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia would suggest), but I came away from it with so many new things to ponder. Likewise ‘Les Misérables’, which meanders away from the main plot to talk about literally everything that exists (including the Parisian sewer system) but gave me such insight into humanity, and with such compassion.

‘The Lymond Chronicles’ by Dorothy Dunnett is swashbuckling historical fiction told with panache and some of the most atmospheric descriptive writing I’ve ever read.

T.H. White’s ‘The Once and Future King’ is at once irreverent and compassionate and I’ve read it at least three times already, even though I just discovered it maybe four years ago. (Shoutout to @clonemaster-general for bringing it to me.)

‘The Transylvanian Trilogy’ by Miklos Banffy takes place during the last years of the Austro-Hungarian empire and is not only beautifully-written, but a gripping story of Hungary as the world hurtles toward WWI.

Edith Pargeter’s ‘The Heaven Tree’ trilogy, set in 13th century Wales and England, is lyrical and heartbreaking, and while she had a penchant for insta-love that does get on my nerves a bit, I do think she also had an incredible skill for describing human emotions.

‘Life and Fate’ by Vasily Grossman affected me enormously; it primarily follows a single family during the Battle of Stalingrad, but also takes us into the perspectives of Hitler, Stalin, and that of a young boy headed to the gas chambers. Grossman’s mother was killed by the Nazis, and this novel I think was Grossman’s struggle to understand how humanity could be so inhuman. The scope of it is incredible; I often see it described as a sort of 20th century ‘War and Peace’.

This, of course, is a very, very short list, and I could write whole essays on some of these authors (and on many others), but I’ve gone on long enough for now. Thanks for asking!