a memory less ephemeral: August 2023

Saturday 19 August 2023

review: Or What You Will

Jo Walton.
Or What You Will.
Tor. 2020

Sylvia is a renowned fantasy author, coming to the end of her life. This is a problem for her muse, who doesn’t want to die with her. He has a cunning plan.

This is simply amazing. It is wonderfully imaginative, very meta, and deeply moving. Each of the worlds is fully realised: Walton’s love affair with Italy is evident, and the weaving together of various Shakespearean characters in their lives after the plays and Sylvia’s subsequent tales, is fascinating. In particular, the consequences of Sylvia’s authorial choices about immortality and change play out in complex and satisfying ways.

Walton just gets better and better. Highly recommended.

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Saturday 12 August 2023

Anglesey Abbey

Labels: Anglesey Abbey, books

We went with some friends to visit Anglesey Abbey. We met up for lunch in the nice cafe, then set off to look round the house. The house itself is rather fine.

Although actually old, it was occupied up until the middle of the 20th century, when it was left to the National Trust. The interior is a mix of the old and the (relatively) new. The library is particularly fine.

The Library, with about 6000 bound books

One of our friends who knows we have a lot of books, but not quite how many, jokingly asked how our collection compared. He was somewhat startled when we said we had about two and a half times as many as this. But not all in one room, of course!

A close-up of the central shelves above, showing the curious uniform binding of different height books, under a wibbly-wobbly paper dust cover.

Once we'd finished with the house (and its surprising number of moonscape paintings), we went to walk round the gardens. There were a variety of styles.