Ex Libris Kirkland is my entirely self-centered way to keep track of what I read, what I enjoy, and what I want to remember.
📓 Recent Notes 📓
Also I enjoyed a few hours of rabbit holing my way learning about the real Helm, and now I've got a new item on my one-day-in-England agenda: hike from Kirkland Hall up to Cross Fell and back. Probably not something you can do in the teeth of a real Helm wind, but something that you totally can do on a regular day.
ALSO I learned about the concept of a 'blanket bog' - not a thick swamp, but a thin layer of retained ground bog, that can span large grasslands and even (somehow?) hills and mountain faces.
a note about Helm
OK, finished this - and really enjoyed it. Halls's a great writer, and the conceit is great. These are interleaved stories from different times, about different people with different concerns, who are all living in the Eden Valley, a real place where the real Helm wind sweeps down a small mountain called Cross Fell, and creates a very strong, very local wind. The stories span prehistory up to the present moment (a climate scientist studying how microplastics in the air might be killing the Helm!). I was engaged in every one of the stories, a rare feat for this kind of anthology.
a note about Helm
Also fun to see that the area where Helm (the wind!) dominates has a place called Kirkland, which I know is a place name. But still jarring every time I see it.
a note about Helm
Knowing the tone of these, I didn’t experience the same cringe/dread that the first one engendered, and just enjoyed the trainwreck. One of those books that has me cracking up quietly to myself, while my wife comments ‘I don’t need to know what you think is funny in this book but I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.’
a note about The Honeywood Settlement
Finally picked up the sequel to The Honeywood Files, which was absolutely one of my favorite books I’ve read over the last few years. It picks up right after the client Sir Leslie Brash has moved into the new house, and continues with architect James Spinlove and the builder Grigblay as they all try to settle accounts… and figure out if they all got what they wanted out of this exercise. The editor, who comments on each piece of correspondence, is as wry and funny as ever.
a note about The Honeywood Settlement
📖 Recent Quotes 📖
[after a nearby developer threatens to build ugly cottages next to the property line of the new Homeowner at Honeywood, the editor comments:] This is a happy instance of the way commercial enterprise advances the cause of civilization by establishing blackmail as a recognized source of revenue and of increase to the wealth of the Empire. By building cheaply and rapidly, instead of in the old-fashioned way, not only are larger profits immediately accrued, but future profits are secured by the early need for renewal, and good money earned merely by refraining from building.
an excerpt from The Honeywood Settlement
[ there's a circle mark at the end that says HUMAN WRITTEN ] The author has created a maker's mark to assert the organic, bio-logical, non-Al-generated nature of the novel's creative composition and artistry. The author offers this as an affirmation of her craft.
an excerpt from Helm
In early September, the last piece of the Revelation Machine arrives, slowly down the track to Kirkland, behind two long-fringed piebalds. Lilith. She has been bought and sent over from Harrisons, the agricultural merchants in Penrith, for the bargain sum of fifty pounds.
an excerpt from Helm
This letter must have been sent to Spinlove pinned to the other papers, by an oversight. It shows Grigblay's business to be conducted in the old-fashioned style that still lingers, with the best traditions of the building crafts, in the provinces, where son follows father to the bench or the scaffold, and the master calls his men by their Christian names, knows the domestic circumstances of each, and distributes joints and poultry among them at Christmas. There may be somewhere in this world happier men than these, associated in more delightful work, but it is a hard thing to imagine.
an excerpt from The Honeywood Settlement
Between them sits a jellied gammon and a tureen of anaemic disintegrating potatoes. A mysterious sauce, wobbling under a brown meniscus, is deposited on the table by Midge. Their wine glasses stand empty. The decanter is also empty.
an excerpt from Helm