book rec! beneath the panic.

Man, I really like this whole "take a week off before finals start" thing, it's so much more relaxing than having two measly study days after the last day of classes before finals start. Because (at least for me, and I assume for most college students) the last week of classes is MADNESS MADNESS MADNESS AND DEADLINES and then you have two days of STUDY STUDY STUDY WRITE WRITE WRITE STUDY and then you have a week and a half of STUDY STUDY TEST TEST TEST STUDY TERM PAPER STUDY and then when your finals are over you go into AGH I AM LEAVING TOMORROW I HAVE TO PACK UP MY ENTIRE LIFE IN TWELVE HOURS AND GET THEE TO THE FEDEX.

So it's nice. Having that week-long break in between. And I kind of lucked out with my classes and my exam schedule, so it might have been different for people with other classes, but damn, it's been nice. I read a lot of books, not for class. After tomorrow I'll start doing more hardcore studying for the finals I need to put a lot more work into, but right now I've just been watching a lot of movies and TV and baking and trying to finish the books I've taken out from the library for leisure reading and also going through one Shakespeare play a day for my Shakespeare final tomorrow. Very nice. I highly approve. Occasionally I pack up a box and then despair because why do I have so much STUFF OMG? (I have one box of clothes and one box of books packed. I am estimating three to four more boxes of books. *despairs*)

Er, anyway, this was going to be a lead up to a BOOK REC.

*

I picked up Virgins of Venice: Enclosed Lives and Broken Vows in the Renaissance Convent from the library a few months ago when I was browsing for ideas for my medieval religious culture tutorial, and just got around to starting it on Easter Day. The title makes it sound a bit more racy and scandalous than I think it actually is. And it's fascinating; I've never done anything with nuns before so I don't know if Mary Laven is really presenting anything new, but she's an excellent writer and the book is organized very well.

( a riot of flying headgear )

Also, I was reading this at the same time as another book on Venice, and now I'm just really pissed at Napoleon and Austria for DESTROYING ALL THE RECORDS. /historian rage

As an interesting end note: two convents, Le Convertite and Santa Maria Maggiore, are now prisons in modern-day Venice. Le Convertite is the women's prison and Santa Maria Maggiore is the city's main jail.

UFO: Narnia fic: "Over the Hills and Far Away"

The last of the UFOs for now! I'm reasonably certain this is the most recent, since the last datestamp on it is August 2009. We first saw Fiorenza Paolucci in Four Things Greater, of course; this is another Fiorenza POV, and it was written after aella_irene and I wrote the bulk of the Junior Pevensie verse (houseofpevensie), so there are bits and pieces of that in there as well. (Namedropping more than anything else, as this still falls firmly within the limits of the Warsverse rather than the JP 'verse.) In timeline it falls shortly after Landslide. (And, for a change, this one I can date fairly well, since it's right after Peter/Susan becomes fairly quiet common knowledge.)

Stylistically Over the Hills probably would have been most like Four Things Greater and The Coastwise Lights, both of which feature action plots and OC narrators. (And were actually both written within a few months of each other, heh. Though Coastwise was when I started slowing down as a writer, if I remember correctly, because not long after that I believe aella_irene and I started working on our original.) The title is from Over the Hills and Far Away, of course, specifically the version from Sharpe.

Content advisory: very brief mention of background incest.

( Over the Hills and Far Away )

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I have notes this time! Mostly on world-building; there's a bit in here that hasn't really made it into the rest of the Warsverse, like Liobsynde Fara's people, the Lothaire tribes of the North. I think they're nomadic, and by the time of Dust they've either moved further west or joined in with the High Reaches tribes. More importantly there's further mention of the Marsh-Wiggles and the Bog People. The Marsh-Wiggles are canon, of course; I believe the Bog People are first mentioned in The Crafting of Narnia as fighting on the White Witch's side, and aren't actually book canon. But I liked the idea of them, so I, er, borrowed them, and they have a running mention throughout the Warsverse as being in constant conflict with the Marsh-Wiggles; the most recent time they've been mentioned was in Dust 24. So at some point we may actually see them. (Over The Hills was going to be that story. Clearly didn't happen.)

Anyway, Over The Hills was going to be one of those stories where there is a lovely action plot and Narnia kicks some ass and the OCs are awesome and there is world-building, which is about all I know. Also now I'm listening to the Sharpe soundtrack and wishing that I could get my hands on the DVDs, or, er, ahem. Wow, my attention span is fragmented right now. I'm going to stop now before I say something even madder.

Oh, hey, as an exercise: there were far fewer italics in here than a lot of my other UFOs. I was improving!