Equinox: A Spring & Autumn Vid Exchange

unsent_letters_exchange is running again this year, hurrah! Nominations open next week, Feb 18. Anyone up for playing with me?

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I'll post more about this later when my listing is live, but I took the plunge and signed up to offer fic for the 2026 Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction. Because shit is rough out there right now.

My current fandoms are small enough that it was a little bit of a conundrum about what to offer, but I went with:
Broster novels, Hornblower, and Vorkosigan Saga.

Fingers crossed!

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For a couple of years now, I've been reading The Flight of the Heron to phoenixfalls over chat. We started at a sentence a day, mostly because she had gotten an idea in her head that there's a tragedy at the end and she wanted to ease into that slowly, idk. Sadly, one sentence a day was a miserable way to go through all the lyrical scenic exposition at the beginning; it was like wandering lost in a nightmare dreamscape with no way out. Also, it was really hard to build any kind of narrative continuity. I did what I could by posting multi-day recaps before each new sentence, but progress was still glacial.

Consequently, it wasn't too long before we decided on two to three sentences a day, with an option for four if I asked nicely first. (Always granted, for she is a gracious person.) That has gone much better.

It's been a lot of fun. It's a lovely excuse to say hello to Phoenix every day, and the novel bears up well to close reading. It's also encouraged me to look up all the things I gloss over at speed, which has had some interesting surprises. (When BCP suggests that letting Ewen accompany them to Lady Easterhall's will bring the party to four and make them a partie carrée, he is making a dirty joke! That they will be a perfect foursome, two men and two women! I imagine them all side-eyeing each other, trying to figure out who the women are supposed to be. “As your Highness pleases, of course,” said O’Sullivan stiffly.) There's also been a lot of time to spin pet theories and get attached to minor characters. (Saunders, Lady Easterhall's servant with the cough, is a favorite.) I've also been able to introduce her to relevant fic as we went, which has also been an opportunity for me to revisit them, too.

Since we've been very consistent, only taking a break when I was in Japan, we have been making good progress. As of this weekend, I can report a milestone: we have just now completed Part II! Hurrah us!

With the move to Part III, Phoenix is anticipating a tonal shift and thus has authorised a whole paragraph a day. (With two or even three paragraphs authorized in dialogue sections!) So we will be cruising along, and finish in... well, it will still be years. But not as many years!

On to Part III! Hurt/comfort, here we come!

David Macaulay, Ship (1993)

Lengthy (96 pages!) illustrated for-older-readers children's book detailing an underwater archaeology expedition to investigate the wreck of a fifteenth-century caravel, finishing with a builder's journal documenting the caravel's construction. Lots of information about archaeological planning, research, and methods, followed by a similarly detailed section on historic ship construction. The illustrations and diagrams are as information-rich as the text. (When reading this aloud to grrlpup, I often stopped to elaborate further on some detail in the drawings.) For a fully-illustrated picture book, the reading level is fairly advanced (verbose and with lots of specialized vocabulary), providing lots of opportunity for an older child to nerd out undisturbed. (An older child -- or me!)


Lois McMaster Bujold, The Paladin of Souls (2003)

Immediate sequel to The Curse of Chalion, plus a few years. Our point-of-view character is someone who was mostly dismissed in the first novel for alleged madness -- and in fact, her early motivations are wholly about getting out from under the "protection" of people who think she's mad.

Of course, once she does get out, adventures start being had. And she's mad about it, because she wasn't planning on having adventures, she just wanted to have a nice life being left alone on her own terms. Alas.

Ripping yarn, I liveblogged most of it to phoenixfalls as I read it, things kept snowballing in that classically Bujold way, and much like in The Curse of Chalion we were a good ways into it before figuring out what the larger plot ultimately even was. There were a number of moments that made me laugh out loud. (When she experimentally kisses the literally too-handsome-for-his-own-good guy to see if it will break a spell, and he isn't fazed in the least, just kisses her back as if this happens every so often and he considers it "impolite to duck".) Ista reminds me more than a little bit of Cordelia, and I wouldn't call that a bad thing.


Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore (2025) -- DNF

I don't usually post about my DNFs (Did Not Finish), because why bother, but I did read about half of this, and was hugely conflicted.

( Did Not Finish )

Anyway, it's a month overdue and four hundred people are waiting for it at the library, and I keep thinking about other books on my tbr list that I want to read but I "have to" read this one first. Boo. I hate it when I can see the book I would have found compelling around the margins of the book the author actually chose to write.