Book & Bramble - March 2023

Image Description: The driveway’s curve, lilacs against sky, the garden shed, pine boughs – all covered in frost.

                April 7, 2023

            Book & Bramble - March 2023

A Letter from Caitlyn Paxson
Dear Reader,

Living in the Northeast, I have long thought that March is the least romantic month. It is full of too much cold and grey to count as the true beginning of spring, but the pristine, snowy peace of winter is also compromised as the world melts to mud around us. Despite that, we still had some beautiful days on the island. One morning, I woke early to a garden covered in frost and mist. 

Image Description: The driveway’s curve, lilacs against sky, the garden shed, pine boughs – all covered in frost.   
 The cats, meanwhile, are enjoying any sunbeams they can find. 

Image Description: Bruce, Monty, and the Contessa sleeping in a heap. Bruce trying to entice Monty to play with him.       

Reading

Last month I teased a NPR review featuring three fantasy novels inspired by folkloric themes, and now you can read it here. I loved all three of these books, so I really hope you’ll have a look!
 And if you’re into Young Adult fiction, I had a second review go up just a few days ago that covers five new releases that are all books about the art of magic or the magic of the arts! Check it out here. I think of this bunch, my favorite was Unraveller by Frances Hardinge. She does the best worldbuilding, and her books always have a grounded, folksy feeling to them. My perennial favorite of hers is A Skinful of Shadows, which I reviewed six years ago.

Image Description: Two romance novels on a red chaise.  
 This month I also read quite a few queer historical romance novels for a very exciting work project that I have underway! I found two that really delighted me. The Secret Lives of Country Gentleman by K.J. Charles is about a gentleman who unexpectedly inherits his father’s estate in Romney Marsh and moves there from London to try to sort out his estranged family’s affairs. Upon arriving to his remote new home, he finds himself immediately entangled in some sort of smuggling conspiracy that he vehemently feels is no business of his. The problem is, it turns out that the ringleader of the local smuggling clan is none other than the mysterious and entirely too compelling lover he thought he’d left behind when he moved away from London. Now it seems that they have no choice but to work together – if they can find some way to trust each other, that is. 
If you like your historical romance to be conscious of class and politics (which I do), this one is definitely a winner. I love it when the main characters of a romance have solid reasons to be at odds initially and have to work out philosophical differences to end up together, and this one definitely delivers on that back-and-forth. It also has a really thrilling smuggling sub-plot and an atmospheric setting that has me already looking forward to rereading it sometime in the not-too-distant future. K.J. Charles is a new-to-me author who’s works I’ve been devouring this month. This one has been my favorite, but I’ve also enjoyed the audiobooks of Unfit to Print and A Thief in the Night. 
The second book I’m going to recommend is  A Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite. It’s about a young woman astronomer who wants to translate an important book on astronomy from the original French, but her male colleagues won’t support her work. Determined, she secures the help of a wealthy benefactress, the widow of a former member of the very circle that has rejected her. But the longer they work together, the more they realize that there is more to their relationship than patronage and scientific collaboration! 
What really made this book sing for me was how much it cares about the work that women did historically that was so often dismissed – specifically, it engages in a discussion of embroidery as an art form, and how it was perceived as lesser because of who was making it. I think that this is one of the things that I’ve discovered I love the most about (good) historical romance novels. Each one is full of little details and concerns of the past are not the things people usually talk about or focus on when telling more epic historical tales. Because romance novels focus foremost on feelings and domestic life, I think they let us imagine the day to day of the past in a really vivid way.  

    Crafting
This month’s Wreath of the Month is a collaboration! I was feeling so uninspired by the scraggly foraging options that March had to offer that I had decided to let the project lie fallow for a month. But then my husband Magill proposed a plan: he would bake me a wreath! Over the last few years, he’s become a very accomplished baker, from weekly sourdough loaves to pies and even fancy French things like croissants. So I left this one entirely in his capable hands, and thus was born the Queen of Flours.  

Image Description: Me, wearing a bread crown and wimple.      
It’s a bread circlet with sesame pie crust adornments. I had so much fun styling it into a medieval portrait, taking inspiration from these lovely ladies I saw at the Met Cloisters a few years ago. 

Image Description: The busts of three ladies at the Cloisters.    

Musing
Writing this, it seems as though it must have been a quiet month, and yet, things have felt almost frenzied at times. We’ve had a lot of (much needed) construction happening at home to repair damage from the hurricane last fall, museum work has been getting busier as we make plans for summer programming, and I was determined to finish drafting the novel I’ve been working on since we moved here. It’s called A Widow’s Charm, and it’s kind of a Shakespearean comedy/romance, with lots of misunderstandings, blackmail, and kissing, and a touch of necromancy! I hope to be able to tell you more about it soon. 

Ice and sea.   

One of my favorite things about our beaches on the Island is the way the red sand and soil colors the ice in winter. Walking along the shore feels like wandering some alien planet made entirely of rose quartz and water. I hope that wherever you are, you’re able to take some inspiring rambles through nature this coming month. 

Image Description: More ice and sea.   

Until next month, wishing you the best books and the most berry-full brambles,
Caitlyn

I write this from the traditional unceded territory known as Mi’kma’ki. Two books by Indigenous authors that I really enjoyed recently are The Summer of Bitter and Sweet by Jen Ferguson and Saints of the Household by Ari Tison. 

(All opinions expressed in this newsletter are my own and do not represent my employer.)

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