And some reading

 I wonder if my taste in reading is changing. I never used to care much for either fantasy or romance or fantasy-romance but now....

I used to MOSTLY read "classic" novels, but now I find a lot of the doorstopper books are very long, and I lose the thread of them in the middle (I hope I get the concentration to read them again back. I did finish "Wives and Daughters" last year (I think it was) and I enjoyed that one. But I burned out on "Dracula" because there are too many creepy things happening. My tolerance for creepy and especially violence and sadness has gone way down since the pandemic). I do still enjoy mystery novels, I'm still working on "Death on the Chertwell" but I've kind of put that aside because I have a new book I love that I'm reading on.

A while back (like, almost a year) someone on Bluesky reposted a post Sarah Beth Durst had made, about her new book coming out in July 2024, called The Spellshop. And it sounded like an intriguing story, and the sample copy of the book shown was very pretty - the pages are tipped in lavender (you don't often see books any more with colored page edges) and the picture on the front was very nice. It was described as a cottagecore rom-com and basically a fantasy romance and you know? Even though in the past I said I disliked romance novels, it interested me enough to pre-order a copy

It came over the weekend. I'm not too far into it yet - maybe a quarter of the way. It's very good. It sets up the world without being too obvious (for example, it's a couple chapters in that you realize the "humans" aren't ordinary humans - Kiela, the protagonist, is described offhand at one point as having sky blue skin and dark blue hair. But otherwise, she seems an ordinary enough human.

Well, her pet/assistant ISN'T. Caz is a sentient spider plant, magicked into consciousness by another librarian attempting a spell - magic is forbidden to most, and apparently that librarian was dismissed. But Kiela adopted Caz (though he - it? they?) seems pretty self-sufficient provided he can gather up a ball of fresh soil periodically (apparently he carries it along with him to feed his roots; he is capable of walking on his tendrils)

I will say the precipitating event of the whole adventure - where Kiela takes a barge filled with rescued spellbooks and sets off for an island, winding up on the one where she was born - is not very happy. There's a revolution going on on the mainland, and the city where Kiela's workplace (and home: she basically has a tiny apartment in the library, and lives off of food ordered from a cafeteria) is comes under attack from the .....well, rebels might not be the right word, maybe revolutionaries?  because these seem to be people mostly bent on smashing and destroying, and they set the library on fire* and Kiela and Caz JUST manage to escape. (Most of the other librarians have left; she was trying to pack up the spell books to transport them on barges to a safer spot. So she gets away with many of them, even though it's technically illegal for her to have them)

(*This may explain last night's dream - I was staying in a high rise hotel, presumably in "Manhattan" (I have never actually been there) and I was on a high enough floor that I could look out over numerous blocks, and about a block and a half away I saw another hotel on fire, and I kept calling 911 but they would not believe me and would not send firefighters. Actually a common low-level nightmare is "I have to do something, it's important, but I am thwarted from doing it" - the phone won't work, or I can't find the tool I need, or people won't believe me...)

But escape she does, and come to Caltrey, the island where she was born and lived as a girl. Her parents' house is still there - they never sold it, just left it when they moved to the city (her parents are dead; it's mentioned they died of a disease, which makes me wonder if a COVID like plague swept through the land). 

She and Caz find the house, and clean it, and carry the books up into it. 

And now it's my favorite part of books like this: she's figuring out how to live. Getting what she needs (she finds a bakery run by a sympathetic deer-woman who gives her some things and arranges for her to buy supplies) and fixing food and cleaning up the house to live there and planning for a garden and to maybe get chickens. (Back when I had to read Robinson Crusoe in high school, my favorite part was him figuring out how to find shelter and food; same with Island of the Blue Dolphins when I was a tween)

Oh, and there's Larran. The handsome (and buff) relative stranger who goes up on her roof to unclog the stove pipe after she smokes herself out of the house trying to cook. She's a little rude to him at first - by her lights he's a little presumptuous, showing up and helping, and I suspect she wonders what he wants in return. BUT it turns out the island people are not like the city people; they help when they can and do not expect repayment. Or, perhaps, as a saying I've seen: "Today you; maybe tomorrow me" meaning that "I help you out when I can because I will be helped (not necessarily by you) when I need it"

And yeah, that's kind of the tone of the book: the idea that there can be a better and more loving path, where you look at your neighbors not so much as a source of high profits as someone to have a relationship with and mutually help. (And yes, yes, the baker still charges for her bread; she has to buy supplies and live and all that. It's just....it's a much smaller and more community-oriented thing). 

And apparently Caltrey is suffering; it sounds like the wizards in the city have withdrawn their magical protection of the islands for inscrutable reasons. And so, Caltrey is more impoverished, and there seem to be shortages of things.....which is where the illegal spellbooks may come in....

Like I said: it's a pleasant and absorbing book (once you get past the burning library, and I had to warn a librarian friend who had bought it sight unseen). 

My possible next book is another fantasy (though it's also called "magical realism," apparently) is a book I really bought sight unseen, just based on the description in an ad from Bookshop: "The Dallergut Dream Department Store," apparently about a store that, in fact, takes place in dreams and sells dreams and meaning. It was written by a Korean woman and translated, which is interesting.

Also something that amuses me a tiny bit - and makes me wonder if this was intended as YA - two of the blurbs on the back are from K-Pop bandmembers. Now, I don't know much about K-Pop. I know it was tremendously popular, at least a couple years ago, and I remember the news about a couple members of one popular band hitting the age of compulsory military service and having to take a break from the band. I guess it's still popular? I don't know much about current pop music but it seems there are a fair few of the sentences in my Duolingo German practice where Junior (a child, probably about 9 or 10) and Zari/Sari (a young teen girl) talk about K-pop, so I presume it is still popular. 

It'll be interesting to see what it's like. 

As I said: I find fantasy, particularly things other than the "traditional" High Fantasy (where you have swordfights and dragons and stuff) interesting and fun to read now. And I like some of those, you might say counterfactual stories - "what if our world, but one specific thing was different" and this may be one of those. 

And at any rate: I find now I have a need for "gentler" stories, one that show a better world than the world I inhabit. (I still think the "Monk and Robot" books by Becky Chambers are among my favorites in the last five years, and they are very much "hopepunk" - showing a better world, both technologially/ecologically and in terms of how people act, than our world).

I am pretty confident "The Spellshop" will be another one of those "hope and kindness" books; already Larran and the deer-lady baker (she has a name but I don't remember it at the moment) are nice people who don't seem like the kindness they have is a "front" for being worse. (And I presume that Larran and Kiela will wind up together, that's been pretty well telegraphed).

And yeah, maybe my tastes in reading HAVE changed because the world now seems scarier and less kind than it did even ten years ago, and so being able to escape into a nicer world (that also gives you the hope that that world is possible) is good.