If you or your child love fairytales, the new series by @albatros_books_, Fairytale Shape Books, may be the perfect addition to your collection. These small boardbooks have fun shapes, following the adventures of the main characters of each story.
I have less of a point or argument here than a musing. But I wrote about my fascination with fairy-tale time, its unpinnability, and how I keep wondering what relation that might have to the pseudo-contemporary non-time we find in many realistic stories.
My second audio post for patrons this month is a recording from my own song archives. The song is a strathspey port-à-beul titled "A Cur Nan Gobhar," which is all about goats...and kilts.
I've finished: A Spindle Splintered by Alex E. Harrow
A Spindle Splintered has all the right elements, examining the sleeping beauty archetype in folklore through a feminist lens. Connecting the dying princess story to that of a contemporary terminally ill girl.
So why didn't I enjoy it? The writing is clunky, there is hardly any challenge, Zinnia can just walls into a mediaeval castle and do as she pleases. All she needs is attitude. The opposition is ludicrously inept or turns out to be on her side.
I recommend reading: Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir instead.
In my first audio post for patrons this month, I'm talking about my bibliography for The Songwriter's Guide to Folklore project and returning to a discussion of ideology and symbology in black metal via an undergraduate class I taught on the subject while I was a PhD student. You can check out a preview at the link below.