"the raven calls/ and the tall girl talking in a long blue dress on her cell phone/ down in nogales"

I have been managing to read, a little. Sometimes. Even if none of it's poetry.

Read: Partner by Lia Silver, which resolves enough I worry a bit that something may have to be negated to create space for the third and final installment of Echo's Wolf, but given the quality of writing so far, I'll trust the author for now.

In Japanese, a handful of short stories by Nankichi Niimi -- the one that stands out being "Kodomo-tachi no suki na kami-sama" ("The god who liked children"), to the point I wonder whether it's worth polishing a translation for publication (in, say, Strange Horizons or the like).

Reread: Lirael by Garth Nix, which is still quite good.

DNF: Dodger by Terry Pratchett, who loved Charles Dickens much more than I do.

In progress: Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones, for which I'll outsource the description to rymenhild:

[It's] (1) a Ruritanian romance (2) about two women, one of whom is (3) a swordswoman with mysterious antecedents who generally wears men's clothing and the other of whom is (4) an heiress who is bored by balls and would prefer to attend university. These women are never happier than when they are (5) in an archival library, closely analyzing minute differences in (6) rituals requesting intercession from Christian saints. Oh, yes, and they (7) fall in love, slowly and subtly, although it takes them nearly three hundred pages to admit it.

... If you like Ellen Kushner's Privilege of the Sword or Caroline Stevermer's A College of Magics, or if you think Georgette Heyer novels would be better with lesbians, Daughter of Mystery is a book for you.

If that doesn't hook you, nothing I say will.

---L.

Subject quote from "Down in Nogales," John Coinman.