France 1940: an elderly British man struggles to transport an ever-growing number of children--and a kitten!--out of the war-zone and far from the tender mercies of the Luftwaffe, the Heer, and the Gestapo.
I can't remember if it ever occurred to me before last night's re-read of Jane Yolen's Neptune Rising: Songs and Tales of the Undersea Folk (1982) that her Greyling (1968) resembles Gordon Bok's "Peter Kagan and the Wind" (1971) in that both are stories of selkies who return to their seal-selves not despite the bonds of human love but because of them—a father in one case, a husband in the other, both fishermen in peril on the sea. Bok and Yolen knew one another; she partly dedicated the collection to him. It's slightly nuts to me that he never set either of her sea-songs published in it, since it takes so little imagination to hear "The Ballad of the White Seal Maid" or "The Selchie's Midnight Song" in his deep-grained swell of a voice. I don't know whose version coalesced first. I grew up on both of them.
This week I'm reading: I am currently in the middle of Naomi Mitchison's To the Chapel Perilous (1955), the paperback reprint sent me by boxofdelights in 2022 as a replacement for my long-lost, lent-out college copy. Also re-reading Yolen's Merlin's Booke (1986), the Ace first edition inherited from my god-aunt in 2000 which I had not then read since my childhood in the Cambridge Public Library. For the first time, Jonas Kreppel's Adventures of Max Spitzkopf: The Yiddish Sherlock Holmes (trans. Mikhl Yashinsky, 1908/2025), a present from my parents earlier this year. With snail-mortifying slowness, I am continuing to poke at the modern Greek of Nikos Kavvadias' Πούσι (1947).
My favourite book of all time is: Impossible to answer. I did that hundred books meme last spring and kept having to append titles that had slipped my mind.
My current favourite book (read or re-read in the last 3 months): With apologies to Molly Crabapple and Seamus Heaney, almost certainly Leon Garfield's The Stolen Watch (1988).
The last book I bought was: Joan Coggin's Dancing with Death (1947), a present for my mother which she promptly loaned back to me so that she could discuss it. The last book I bought for myself was Andrew Hiller's Hornytown Chutzpah (2026), brought to my attention by mrissa.
The first book I bought with my own money: No clue. My first real job was in a science fiction and fantasy bookstore when I was fifteen and they might as well have paid me off the shelves.
The first book I received as a gift: Equally impossible to estimate. I can remember receiving Brophy's The Prince and the Wild Geese (1983) early on, but it would not have been the first.
The last book I received as a gift was: Molly Crabapple's Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (2026), courtesy of a_reasonable_man.
The last book I borrowed from the library: Either Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City (1960) or What Time Is This Place? (1972), whichever was not checked out first.
The book physically closest to me right now: Robinson Jeffers' Such Counsels You Gave to Me (1937), the burgundy-boarded, jacketless first edition from my grandparents' house. After that, Imogen Sara Smith's Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy (2008), which I gave some years ago to spatch.
Do you read bookfic, and if so what is your favourite bookshop fic? I don't think I have ever read a bookshop fic. I read Satoshi Yagisawa's Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (trans. Eric Ozawa, 2010/2023) when spatch gave it to me for our last anniversary.
This or That
Physical book or e-book: Physical book if at all possible, since I process them differently. E-book in the inevitable event that I can't get hold of something and there's one copy digitized maddeningly on the Internet Archive.
Used or new: As a reading experience, I don't think it makes much difference to me. If I own a book, I try to keep it in good shape.
Fiction or non-fiction: At the moment I seem to be reading more fiction than nonfiction, which may or may not be the case in another three months.
Read at a coffee shop or at the park: I haven't been inside a coffee shop in years. Last Friday I was reading on the stone wall overlooking the water at Spy Pond Park while waiting for ladymondegreen.
Paperback or hardcover: In terms of preferred reading format? I don't think it makes much difference to me, either.
Romance or Crime: More crime than romance.
Yes or No
Stream of consciousness? Yes.
Poetry? Yes.
Memoirs? Yes.
Philosophy? Yes.
Thrillers? Yes.
Chronicles? What?
Dialogue heavy? Alan Garner?
Current Music: Gordon Bok, "Peter Kagan and the Wind"
The World Cup is upon us. Insofar as I have opinions about it beyond the strong feeling that this country is currently too authoritarian to have been allowed near anything that even pretends to internationalism, I am rooting for Cape Verde: it is their first year and the diaspora in these parts is second only to Brockton. I may also have found myself, for the first time in my life, in a house divided by team affiliation. spatch ancestrally favors Scotland for this weekend's match and I am hoping Haiti beats the kilts off them. Anywhere the man in the White House disapproves of, let them shine. The 1936 Olympic spirit.
Jane Yolen has died. Her books were some of the first I read. Even with my library in storage, I can see several of her titles just by turning my head. Her shadow sisters got into my Jewish demons. She ushered me through the corridors of the sea. I had the fortune of sharing some panels with her; I did have the chance to tell her how much of my sense of story she had shaped. Tam Lin and Commander Toad, White Jenna and Merlin, dragons and owls and selkies and golems and cats and always, unsentimentally, words. Which remain, but it still feels like a great light blown out.
I saw a sailor once shed his skin as quickly as a crab sloughs its shell. He danced alone, easy in his bones, amid the coral memories of his sunken ship. When he opened his mouth, little colored fish swam in and out, avoiding his brittle teeth, his stripped and shining jaw. They were quick and bright as laughter, running their zigzag course through the silent syncopation of the sea.
Worldcon in Memoriam reports: "Author Jane Yolen (b.1939) died on June 11. She wrote books and novels for all ages, including Briar Rose, How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?, and The Devil’s Arithmetic. Yolen won 2 Nebulas, a World Fantasy and was named Grand Master by SFPA, SFWA and World Fantasy. She served as SFWA President."
I have partly triumphed over bureaucracy! The parking ticket which it made no temporal sense for the car to have incurred was dispelled by a perfectly friendly clerk, exasperated with his computer and overheated in his office whose fan seemed just as overworked. Other forms of bureaucracy remain to contend with, but nonetheless.
Hollywood Hotel (1937) is otherwise such a prefabricated meta-movie musical that neither spatch nor I expected it to bust out with the three-minute jam of "Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)" that directly encouraged the legendary 1938 Carnegie Hall concert, but it justifies the entire film especially when it's chased by the integrated magic of the Benny Goodman Quartet on "I've Got a Heartful of Music." I pulled myself upright on the couch at the speed of Pavlov at the instantly recognizable Gene Krupa. The proto-Singin' in the Rain (1952) shenanigans of the plot also offer a chance to see the normally prim and mustached Allyn Joslyn as a clean-shaven, fast-talking publicity heel, in which capacity he is a sarcastic delight, but the total experience really shoots one of its feet off when it sets up a very funny and totally deserved parody of Gone with the Wind and then tops it with blackface. Just watch Lionel Hampton instead.
It makes me happy to hear about the musical version of Pride, not least that the original miners and the lesbians and gays who supported them approve.
I spent far too much of my day engaged in the further pursuit of bureaucracy. Ironically I feel that I may be coming out of the tunnel vision of the last few years when I was focused almost exclusively on not dying because I seem to be seized with chronic low-grade grief. I was able to present spatch with his CD of Harpo Speaks! The Riverside Symphony Concert (1964/2026) which I had ordered for him the second I knew of its existence. Yesterday I did actually run screaming into the afternoon and took a couple of pictures to prove it.
WERS played the Last Dinner Party's "Big Dog" (2026) and I have been playing it ever since. I haven't heard someone wail like that into a chorus since '90's PJ Harvey.
Jump-start your tabletop fantasy roleplaying campaign with the hundreds of pages of system-neutral tools and tables in this all-new Dungeononomicon Bundle from Raging Swan Press.
Two things stand between Kim Wooram and victory: rival contestants and institutional misogyny so entrenched women aren't allowed to compete at all. For the first, Wooram has exemplary skills. For the second, a cunning plan.
Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer’s personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today’s post is with Ellipsis, who volunteers as a Tag Wrangler and also a Technical Assistant for the Communications Committee.
How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
I currently hold two roles with the OTW.
I wrangle tags on AO3 for a couple of smallish fandoms with lots of characters. So I’m frequently digging through wiki pages and scrubbing through episodes to figure out if the character someone tagged is from canon or an OC. It’s always very satisfying to provide new canonical character tags.
I am also the “Technical Assistant” for Communications. My primary responsibility there is managing the “OTW News By Email” automations. I set up all the automations and keep an eye out for and troubleshoot any issues; this occasionally involves reaching out to Systems or the newsletter service’s support team. I also help out if any subscribers reach out for help with their subscriptions. Beyond the “News By Email” stuff, I also help with investigating or suggesting other tech solutions for the Communications committee and occasionally help to write/research some of the more technical news posts.
What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
I do most of my focused volunteer work on the weekends, since I’ve got a full-time job during the week (and by the time I’m done work for the day and figure out food and whatnot I don’t have much time or energy left).
Every Saturday evening I work on Comms tasks. Exactly what I’m doing depends on what I’ve got on my plate. One thing I frequently work on is writing documentation about how the News By Email automation works. (Right now I manage everything myself but it’s important to make sure there is good documentation in case someone else has to hop in and do something.) I also researched and drafted a news post recently, which involved a lot of rounds of feedback from different committees since it was inspired by a request from Support and relates to AD&T. Other common tasks include helping answer support queries about the email subscription, adding new functionality (the ability to subscribe just to recruitment posts went live recently), and cleaning up unsubscribed users.
If something breaks or otherwise goes weird I’ll jump in outside of my standard hours, but most of the time things can wait.
Every other weekend I tend to do wrangling work sometime during the day on Saturday or Sunday. Often I’ll host or attend a “wrangling party” (set times when lots of folks wrangle and cheer each other on). During that time I’ll check through whatever new tags have come in for my fandoms and sort them accordingly. I’ve got a few fandoms with lots of characters, so there are almost always some new characters or relationships to make canonicals for. I’ll also occasionally dig through the additional tags to check if anything has gained enough usages to get a canonical.
What made you decide to volunteer?
I initially joined as a tag wrangler. As an avid reader of fic, a programmer, and someone who finds categorization interesting, I find the tag system on AO3 really awesome. So when I found out how it worked and that you could volunteer to wrangle tags, I started eagerly watching for recruitment posts. It took a couple rounds before there was a post that was recruiting for wranglers for a fandom I had experience with.
A couple of years ago (once I’d been a wrangler for a while), Communications was looking into sending out news posts by email. They asked for volunteers who were willing to be test subjects and report back on receiving emails. However, the services they were testing weren’t a good fit and they were running into a lot of issues. I got curious and fell down a research rabbit hole and suggested another service. The service was one that required a bit more technical knowhow, though, and the volunteers running the test weren’t comfortable setting it up, so I offered to test it out and report back. They ended up going with the service I suggested and asked me to help set it up for real. Then eventually Communications asked me if I was interested in officially joining the committee as a “Technical Assistant.”
What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
Executive functioning. I’ve got ADHD (and Autism) so I struggle with intrinsic motivation and easily lose track of time, especially when I’ve got a full-time job eating all my spoons (energy). When I first started volunteering, I had been laid off and was unemployed so I had a lot of spare time and energy. So finding the balance once I was back to working full time was tricky.
In the last year or so I’ve started being firmer on scheduling specific times to do my volunteer work to help avoid losing track completely. For Comms work, I have a scheduled time set up each week that I work. And at that time another Comms volunteer will poke me on the volunteer messaging service to check in and ask about what I’m doing that evening; having that sort of external check in is massively helpful for me. Signing up to host wrangling parties serves a similar purpose in giving me external accountability about being present at a specific time to wrangle.
What fannish things do you like to do?
Mostly reading so much fic. I started reading fanfiction when I was a kid, probably around 8 or 9 years old. One of my real-life friends introduced me to it and in their words they “created a monster.” (I don’t know exactly when I started reading because I no longer have the email I used at that time and my autistic kid brain was hung up on “you aren’t supposed to have an account if you aren’t 13” so I read for quite a while before getting my FFN account). I occasionally count up how many words I’m reading per week and I’m frequently somewhere around 200k words per week. (It varies a bit depending on the density of the fic and how much else I’ve got going on. When I’m unemployed, it goes way up.)
I try to leave lots of comments as my way of giving back to all the authors who provide all the wonderful fics I get to read for free. (I’ve recently started using the sticky note app on my phone to compose comments with blockquotes while I’m reading so I can call out favorite bits or “live react” a bit.)
Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you’d like, you can check out previous Five Things posts.
I have spent the majority of my day in the pursuit of bureaucracy, which is obfuscating and elusive and in our supposedly frictionless digital age requires multiple rounds of phone tag, and am seriously tempted to run screaming into the afternoon. I hadn't known there was a documentary about Pete and Toshi Seeger and the Clearwater, but it's playing the Somerville in July. Recent fruits of college radio include Violet Grohl's "Bug in the Cake" (2026), the Japanese House's "Boyhood" (2023) and Noah Kahan's "Doors" (2026), which the DJ at WERS declared would make her cry all summer as she drove around Boston, unless she'd actually just been looking at the price of gas. I took a picture of myself yesterday with the late-blooming dogwood in my mother's yard.
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