From New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Jennifer Donnelly comes a revolutionary, gender-swapped retelling of Beauty and the Beast that will forever change how you think about beauty, power, and what it really means to follow your heart.
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.