FF: Before Dreaming

Coco Admires Momin Physique

I haven’t quite finished Hide Me Among the Graves because not only is it quite long, I can’t read it before bedtime.  Not scary in a slasher sense, but in the fact that many of the characters are essentially addicts, and so their own worst enemies.  I need something less fraught before bed or I have nightmares!

For those of you unfamiliar with this column, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.  The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.  And it’s also a great place to tell me what you’re reading. 

Recently Completed:

The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson.  Translated by David McDuff.  The first Moomin book.  You can see her feeling her way into the characters.  This edition contains an introduction by the author, talking about how she began the story in 1939 when “it felt completely pointless to try to create pictures” and how, instead, “I suddenly felt an urge to write down something that was to begin with ‘Once upon a time.’”  Her take on that trope was remains unique…

Moominsummer Madness by Tove Jansson.  Translated by Thomas Warburton.  Much later in the series.  Oddly enough, once again, a flood is what forces the Moomins out of their cozy lives.

In Progress:

Hide Me Among the Graves by Tim Powers.  A semi-sequel to The Stress of Her Regard, focusing on the son of characters from the previous novel and his interactions with Christina, Dante Gabriel, and others of the talented Rossetti clan.  I had no idea until I read this that John Polidori was their uncle.  Truth is phenomenally weirder than fiction.  Then, when Tim Powers gives his twist to the material, I end up believing his “secret history.”

Ikenga by Nnedi Okorafor.  Audiobook.  Hamlet meets The Incredible Hulk in the person of a twelve year-old boy whose police chief father is murdered.

Also:

A few scattered magazine articles.

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Tags: Friday Fragments