Sanguinity

Is it too late to post about Yuletide? Surely not!

For Yuletide 2024, I tried to pick up a Hornblower-TV pinch-hit. Alas, even though I had the first part of the story written, I wasn't quick enough to get assigned the pinch-hit. Which turned out just as well, because the story stalled out and while I told myself I could post it as a treat, I never finished it. I ended up quasi-trunking it that spring as a hopeless job.

But in November I finally figured out what its plot needed to be (sadly, it would require a complete rewrite!), and then one of the Yuletide 2025 requests was even a better match for the overhauled story than the original 2024 pinch-hit would have been. So I rewrote it, and published as a Yuletide treat, hurrah:

The Worst Part of Waking Up for BromeliadDreams

Bush/Hornblower

Hurt/Comfort, Dying Declarations, First Kiss (is also the) Last Kiss (or it should have been damnit), Everybody Lives (as embarrassing as that is for some), When He Made This Bed He Wasn't Expecting to Wake Up In It, Episode: Loyalty

Summary:

At the end of Loyalty, Bush is too late to save Hornblower. With his dying breath, Hornblower requests a kiss from Bush…

…only to wake up a week later and discover he's going to live after all. Damnit.

The title btw, was only meant to be provisional, but it was as sticky as fuck and time was tight and I never got around to changing it. I do realize it's the perfect title for a Folgers Incest fic (and I had a serious conversation with myself about whether I really wanted to waste such a great title on the wrong fandom), but in the end I don't have any real ambition to write Folgers Incest fic. And anyway, it's funny. So there it stayed, sorry for the earworm.

This morning I was tidying my WIP folder, archiving the stories I've finished since the last time I cleaned up, and remembered I still had the first version of the story, which is in Bush-pov. I still like it very much, and it's mostly all stuff that doesn't appear in the rewrite, except by implication.

So this morning I published it as a bonus:

Too Late, Too Late

Hornblower/Bush

POV William Bush, Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Episode: Loyalty

Summary:

Bush is too late to the beach to stop the firing squad.

Bonus Bush point-of-view on the beach scene.

One of the things I love about fic is that there doesn't have to be one canonical version; you can post alternate povs and alternate endings, and bits and bobs and scraps of things. And a lot of times people enjoy them! And if they don't enjoy them, they don't have to click. It's great.

So if Bush-pov on the beach scene is the kind of thing you might enjoy: enjoy!

In the Humanities 110 alumni bookgroup, we have moved on from the Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean, to Mesoamerica! Woo-hoo! I have been waiting for this for AGES.

We got off to a slow start: most of our readings were pretty minimal, and many of us (including me) got frustrated and started doing a bunch of extra reading, just to get a better grounding in the time of place. Consequently, I lagged on doing monthly posts: in a lot of cases, I didn't have much to say until I'd finished my supplementary reading. So here, have it all at once!

Assigned plus supplemental readings from September through December, minus one book I'm still working my way through. Pre-Conquest (i.e., pre-1521) through 1649.


Camilla Townsend, Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs (2019)

What it says on the tin! Episodic history of the Mexica from their coming to the Valley of Mexico through the first century after the Spanish conquest, drawing primarily on Nahuatl-language sources. Each chapter begins with a fictionalized epigram of a key moment in a historical figure's life, then spends the chapter itself expanding on the historical context. Very much intended to be a Mexica-pov history, Townsend's primary sources are Nahuatl annals, the most useful of which are discussed in an appendix. She is careful to point out where the annals are ambiguous or contradictory, or what aspects of a narrative rely on inference, or are found only in Spanish-language sources, or are just plain conjecture, which I appreciate.

I found this a good read, and a satisfying introduction to Mexica culture and history.


Frances F. Berdan and Patricia Rieff Anawalt (eds.), Codex Mendoza (1541/1992)

On its own, this was relatively dry: neither the original glyphic writing nor the Spanish nor English translations were that compelling. (Although it is cool to see how significant items such as shells, rubber balls, and feathers were as tribute.) But when taken with this next work...


Gordon Whittaker, Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs: A Guide to Nahuatl Writing (2021)

Not assigned for the course/bookclub, but I very much wish it had been. One of the lectures on the Codex Mendoza invited us to try to interpret its heiroglyphs on our own, without any instruction. When in fact it is more than a rebus writing system! There are many non-literal conventions! Some glyphs are used phonetically, not literally! Some glyphs have multiple meanings! Glyphs have multiple forms and the different forms mean different things! AGH.

( Thorough introduction to Mexican glyphic writing. )

Great book, hugely recommended, sometimes a bit more technical than I could quite grasp, it helps if you already speak some Nahuatl (but Whittaker teaches you most of the Nahuatl you need to know to follow the text), and lots and lots and lots of glossy full color illustrations and scans or photographs of various codices and carvings.


James Lockhart (ed. and trans.), We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico (late 1500s / 1993)

Translation of several Nahuatl-language texts about the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The vast majority of the page count is devoted Book Twelve of the Florentine Codex (La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España -- in English, The General History of the Things of New Spain), an encyclopedia compiled by Bernardino de Sahagún during the latter half of the sixteenth century. La Historia General was conceived to fill two primary purposes: to be a primary source for an eventual Nahuatl dictionary, and to be an encyclopedia to Mexica culture, to better aid the twin projects of colonization and conversion. In the Florentine Codex, La Historia consists of two parallel texts presented on facing pages, the original Nahuatl and a Spanish translation created by Sahagún, plus additional illustrations (which for the most part are European-style illustrations, and not the heiroglyphic texts of earlier Mexica codices). Books 1 through 11 are an encyclopedia of various cultural and natural history topics; Book 12 is a narrative of the Spanish conquest. In We People Here, Lockhart provides side-by-side English translations of both the Nahuatl and Sahagún's Spanish translation -- which is fascinating.

( Nahuatl and Spanish )


Luis Lasso de la Vega (eds. Lisa Sousa, Stafford Poole and James Lockhart), The story of Guadalupe (1649/1998)

Earliest written account of the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe, set to pen nearly a century after the first written reference to the famous artifact. There's a lot of fascinating context about who wrote it (a white Spaniard) and in what language (Nahuatl) and for what purposes (to persuade the Mexica to be more Catholic about their worship at a holy site for the Mexica goddess Tonantzin; to convince the Iberian Spanish elite that the New-Spain Spanish elite were as legitimate as the Iberians and/or should be the new center of the Spanish empire).

Almost none of that context is actually in the story (except its being written in Nahuatl, which is made much of at the beginning). Instead, this is the story of Juan Diego, lowly and humble, and the visions that appeared to him, and his attempts to make the Bishop listen. There's some interesting symbolism about Spanish birds and flowers appearing miraculously, but the event we liked best is the part where Juan Diego decided he didn't have time to be harassed by Mary and tried to ghost her, and she called him on it. (And then, very graciously, solved his other problems so that he could return to working on hers.)

2025 media in review! I'm not gonna try to do a best-of/highlights summary, but please do ask me about anything that interests you. (There's a Mesoamerican books post still coming, plus another general books post.)

( 2025 Books )

( 2025 Movies )

( 2025 TV )

I picked up three pinch-hits for ficinabox!

Still Here Together for Shinzuku206
Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Laurence & Temeraire
Hurt/Comfort, Hospitalization, Plushies, Recursive Fic

After his injury, Laurence is confined to the hospital for many weeks. Temeraire bears up bravely — then Laurence, too, learns what it is to worry.

Direct sequel to shinzuku206's story, With You By My Side, in which Laurence is hospitalized with a broken leg, and Temeraire is very sweet about it.

I, of course, had to make it worse. ;-)

(Don't worry: despite it all, Laurence and Temeraire are still very sweet together.)

 

Privileges of the Purse for StableState
Doctor Odyssey
Max, Avery, Tristan, Original Character
Worldbuilding, Humor

Most people wouldn't put a CT scanner on a cruise ship. The owners of the Odyssey aren't most people.

Or: Max meets Hugh "Doc" Laurent.

StableState prompted:

Who put a full-sized CT scanner on a cruise ship? Not to mention the HGTV feature wall of unlabeled medication in glass bottles (on a boat. With waves.) or the gene sequencer. Even the usual equipment is oddly gold and sleek. They have to be custom-ordered, or medical design is very different in our world.

I read that prompt, laughed, and immediately grabbed the pinch-hit. "Privileges of the Purse" is my best crack at the first three questions.

(The final question is unaddressed in the story, but I assert there is a medical supplier out there who does fake-gold-plated medical equipment for a few select customers overly invested in faux-opulence; chief among them is the Trump Organization.)

 

What Does the Spleen Do? for stablestate
What Does the Spleen Do? ft. Harvard Medical School Class of 2016
Cryptic Crossword

A splenic (but not asplenic!) cryptic criss-cross.

Just after I finished my Temeraire story, a second pinch-hit came up for StableState. After I confirmed with the mods that my "excess" 600 words from the first pinch-hit could be applied to this one, I picked it up. After all, there had been a second prompt of theirs that had interested me: one for a music video about spleens.

Fic In A Box has options for non-traditional fills: in addition to stories and art, it's possible to create works that fit various format or media opt-ins, one of which is cryptic crosswords. Which StableState had opted into for the spleen prompt! And what a lucky coincidence, I had just that week downloaded a course on how to do cryptic crosswords! I had read the first three chapters! Surely that was enough knowledge to design my own cryptic crossword??

(grrlpup laughs and confirms that I have always been like this.)

So I sailed in and did my best. It was fun! My grid was sub-standard (and I need to figure out how it is that people make up good grids), but it was neat to try to make up clues.

Happily, I had the wisdom to ask seekingferret, who is well-versed in all things puzzles, to beta. He warned me off the worst of my errors, kindly informed me that what I had created is called a criss-cross and not a crossword, and confirmed that it was in fact solvable.

(I am... not sure that anyone has solved it who isn't Ferret? But the recip left a nice thank you, and I shall be content with that.)

There's a bunch of reading I need to write up, but there was a little knot of Bujold books in there, so let's begin with those.

Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion (2001)

The initial offering in Bujold's Five Gods universe, a set of several loosely-related fantasy series. This particular novel has medieval-Spanish inspirations with an original theology; I can't speak to the others.

I went into this 100% unspoiled, and enjoyed that experience very much. Since finishing the book, I've read a number of jacket blurbs and library catalog summaries and... meh. 1) We're AT LEAST two-thirds of the way through the book before ANY of that stuff happens, and 2) none of those blurbs had anything to do with what I enjoyed about the book.

So let me see if I can say some spoiler-free things I loved right from the beginning.

1. Lupe dy Cazaril, our protagonist, spends the entire book trying to solve the problem directly in front of him. He's got shit resources, shit influence, and shit big-picture perspective -- in fact, it's not until near the end of the book that he figures out what the plot arc even was! -- but by god he'll solve the problem right in front of him or he'll die trying. I love this for him.
   
   
2. A couple of chapters in, when we started to unlock Cazaril's backstory, I incredulously messaged phoenixfalls: "omg. Bujold took Aral Vorkosigan and broke him. Made him realize the tyrrany of meat. Put him through so much trauma that his only remaining ambition is to live."
   
   And I hold by that characterization of Cazaril: the once noble and principled master strategist, for whom everything, but everything, has gone so wrong that he has surrendered pride and principles and ambition and is grubbing in the mud after dropped coins. He is physically disabled. He has crippling PTSD. He would be content to live life as a kitchen scullion if it meant a guaranteed warm place by the fire to sleep.
   
   (But first he has to solve the problem in front of him.)

It is also worth mentioning that Bujold's plotting is as masterful as ever, and as usual, there is a fine array of worthy female characters across a wide range of ages.

It is probably also worth talking about the theology of this world? Except 1) I haven't really made up my mind about it, and 2) that discussion is nothing but spoilers all the way down.

I already have its immediate sequel, Paladin of Souls, in my hot little hands, although from the state of my reading list, it might be a bit before I can get there.


Lois McMaster Bujold, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (2012)
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Flowers of Vashnoi (2018)

Read alouds to grrlpup; re-reads for me and first reads for her.

My reviews from last year, which I still largely stand by.

re Ivan: I still laugh to see Ivan thwarted; I still have fine-but-lukewarm feelings about Ivan and Tej. This time around, I particularly enjoyed how EVERYONE who found out about Ivan's emergency marriage IMMEDIATELY asked the important question: DOES YOUR MOM KNOW YET?? Sadly, the second half of the novel doesn't compel me the way the first half does: the in-law circus just can't live up to all of Ivan's nearest and dearest getting in line to make him squirm.

re Vashnoi: I still think this is a great novella, still appreciate how messy and intractable history is, and still very much appreciate Bujold leaving the ending as an exercise for the reader. Fair warning: this is one of the darker books in the series.

An anon on tumblr asked me about my writing habits, and since half of my writing community is over here, I thought I'd cross-post the question and answer, in case it's interesting to anyone else.

would you be willing to elaborate on your writing routine? you seem like a very consistent writer, and as someone who's not, i'm always curious how people approach their writing. do you set aside a particular amount of time/word goal/just go with the flow? do you have a single piece that you'll work on or does it jump around? do you have a way to push through writer's block or do you take a break? feel free to say as much or as little as you want ofc, but i've just been curious after seeing the few things you've said on here about it, and i'm trying to get better about my own writing routine 😅

( General process )

( Specific questions )


(Side note: does anyone know if DW has markdown code for adding a cut? Copying from tumblr to DW would have been a lot easier with it...)

Two recent historical romances, both featuring two working class protagonists. I know both authors, which I take to be a sign of my exquisite taste in friends and acquaintances.


Alison McKenzie, The Blacksmith's Bride (2025)

Elizabeth finds herself pregnant by her local lord, and thereby at grave risk of punishment for bearing a child out of wedlock. Happily, her childhood friend Matthew, who works in the nearby town and has been carrying a torch for her for years, is willing to marry her, thus kicking off a quiet and lovely marriage-of-convenience to love-match arc. Elizabeth, who has endured years of emotional abuse at her mother's hands, and who has poured all of her wherewithal into protecting her younger siblings from their mother, has to learn to make herself open and vulnerable to love. Meanwhile, Matthew, has to learn to temper his protective streak: when it is wise to speak out and when it isn't, and to respect his loved ones' decisions on their own behalves, however much he yearns to thrash anyone who is cruel to them.

Set two years after the Peasants Revolt of 1381, there's a good deal here about trying to safely navigate the whims of those with wealth and power. To marry, Elizabeth must first get the permission of her lord, who stands to lose both her labor and that of her future child. Likewise, Elizabeth's efforts to save her younger brothers from their mother's abuse must take into account their lord's interest in the boys' economic value. Meanwhile, Matthew's sister, who married up into the merchant class, is thrown upon the mercy of her husband's family after his death. But while everyone is subject to the whims of wealthy and powerful men, no one is powerless, either: there is space for cleverness, and the possibility of carving out a tolerable space for oneself in the larger system.

The Blacksmith's Bride is billed as the first in a series, and I'm looking forward to reading the next, whoever it centers. But I'm hoping the second book will feature Matthew's sister and his best friend: I'd enjoy seeing Isabel's pov centered and her getting a happier ending than she manages here; I'd likewise enjoy seeing the feckless Roger buckle down to the task of making Isabel happy -- God knows, she deserves some happiness.


Annick Trent, By Marsh and By Moor (2025)

Jed is a deserted pressed sailor, desperate to return to his family, village, and former career. Within minutes of washing up on the beach, he falls in with Solomon, who, in addition to aiding Jed in his escape, is also helping a friend escape an abusive former lover. Unhappily for all, the former officer turns out to be in charge of the local press gang.

I've been eagerly looking forward to this volume since I first learned it would be about a pressed sailor, and it did not disappoint. The textural details are lovely, as is the lived-in-ness of their lives. Both Jed and Solomon have prior lives and entanglements, so no matter how smoothly and naturally they come together in the liminal in-between now, they each have loyalties and desires that complicate a more lasting partnership.

Along those lines, I liked how messy things got:

spoilers

At a key moment, Solomon betrays Jed, giving way his position to the press gang, but it holds up as a tactical calculation: Jed would likely eventually have been found in any case, but by giving up Jed right then, Solomon created a distraction for Wallace to get away -- and Wallace having his liberty ennabled him to rescue the other two later. One of the three having his liberty is undeniably a better tactical position than none of the three, and it's easy to see why Solomon chose it -- even if he didn't already feel protective of Wallace, even without a solid plan in mind for Jed's own escape, it was still the smart move.

And yet there is no denying how cold-blooded a betrayal that felt to Jed, hearing Solomon choose Wallace's liberty over Jed's; no denying how it intensified every weakness and insecurity in the relationship between the two. Jed, after all, didn't see them as a trio. Instead, ever since they first met, Wallace had been Solomon's first loyalty, sometimes to the detriment of his relationship with Jed. Of course this felt like more of the same!

Naturally, that moment sandbagged any further opportunity for Jed and Solomon to work as a team during their capture and imprisonment -- especially with the pressers determined to prevent them working as a team! But I did like how things ultimately worked out -- and liked, likewise, Solomon acknowledging that it had been hugely presumptuous for him to make that decision for all three of them, and that Jed had every right to feel as he did.

While we're talking about spoilers:

a man and his horse

I did very much want a tender reunion between Jed and Bess. I'm down with Jed not returning to his former village and profession -- he had been fantasizing about a world in which those five years of impressment had never happened, and I'm glad he finally came to grips with the impossibility of that. But I would have liked him to have a tender moment alone with his horse.

ETA: Bess is okay! She seems to be well taken care of by the guy who currently has her. No need to worry about Bess! I just wanted Jed to feed her an apple and share a nuzzle with her -- whatever it is you do with horses.

Over the course of the last year, I read a bunch of stuff that was adjacent to our assigned reading for Humanities 110 book group. Some fiction, some non-fiction:

Eric Shanower, Age of Bronze
- Vol. 1: A Thousand Ships (2001)
- Vol. 2: Sacrifice (2004)
- Vol. 3, Parts 1 and 2: Betrayal (2008, 2013)

Epic graphic novel series aiming to tell the complete and coherent story of the Trojan War, weaving together sources from Homer to Shakespeare, as well as contemporary archaeological research.

( an epic project )


Michelle Ruiz Keil, Summer in the City of Roses (2021)

A very loose retelling of the Iphigenia story set in 1990s Portland. With respect to "loose retelling", I spent most of the book mildly confused as to whether this Iphigenia and Orestes were meant to be those Iphigenia and Orestes. HOWEVER. I didn't really care about that, because I absolutely adored this portrait of 1990s Portland, and particularly of the feminist counterculture scene in and around SE Division and Hawthorne. (Remember when SE Division was working class and lesbian? I do.) Yes, those were the books we were reading that year, and yes, that was when Cinemagic played nothing but The Secret of Roan Inish for, like, a year. (Was it a money laundering scheme? grrlpup and I were never sure.) Our protagonist, Iphigenia, is five-to-ten years younger than we were (she in her last year of high school, us fresh out of college), but I remember that scene vividly. I only caught one anachronism: during the 1990s that wasn't the "Portland" sign yet; it was either still the White Stag sign, or (during the closing years of the decade), the Made in Oregon sign.

As a love letter to a particular time and place and social scene, it was amazing. Re the Iphigenia retelling, the heavy slide into magical realism at the end didn't really work for me, mostly in that it seemed to take narrative agency out of the hands of the characters. And for some reason

(spoiler)

it's Orestes who gets sacrificed and turned into a deer? Because, um, feminism, I guess? Hm.

But whatever, that wasn't what I was here for. Loved the characters, loved the setting, loved their adventures, I hardly cared that it didn't stick the landing.


Charles Freeman, Egypt, Greece, & Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean, 3rd ed. (1st ed 1996, 3rd ed 2014)

Veritable doorstop of a book at 700+ pages. I read the first half, at 360 pages: Egpyt and Greece, which also includes chapters about ancient Mesopotamia and the rest of the fertile crescent before we begin in on Egypt. In fact, this book almost perfectly mapped to our progress through the first year of our Hum 100 book group: every month we'd be assigned new primary sources in bookgroup, and every month I'd read the next two-to-three chapters in here to get the historical context.

Engaging and clear high-level overview of what we know about these societies, built from a combination of the literary and archaeological records. Some chapters are about the rise and fall of empires; other chapters are about the cultural goings-ons within and between those empires. There is a generous supply of maps, plus two sections of full-color plates of art. Plus lots and lots of in-text pointers to more in-depth discussions of this or that topic, should you want to dive deeper about anything. I know there's a ton of detail that didn't make it into this volume, but if you want an accessible high-level overview of these societies, their major figures, and what we know about what they did and made, this is superb. I enjoyed it immensely, and the only reason I didn't finish it is I lost my library access to it. (And also I just don't have the bandwidth to spend the next year reading about the Romans in depth on my own while simultaneously reading about Mesoamerica in book group.)

*sorrowfully removes my seven bookmarks so I can return it to the library*


John R. Hale, Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy (2009)

So, at some point along the way my Hum 110 bookgroup figured out that I was a maritime nerd (shocking, I know!), and decided that made me the in-group expert on triremes. (Spoiler: I knew jack shit about triremes.) But hey, classical Athens had a maritime empire, and its navy (and the sea battles it fought) was super-important in both Herodotus and Thucydides, and I'm game: I said I'd see what I could find out.

Lords of the Sea pulls from multiple sources to build a coherent and continuous history of the Athenian navy from Themistocles and his first advocacy for a navy (ca. 494 BCE), through Athens' defeat in the Lamian War and the death of Demosthenes (322 BCE, post-Alexander the Great). Includes diagrams and maps of the ships, the campaigns, and the battles, plus useful additional context for things that Herodotus, Thucydides, et al. did not feel a need to explain because they would have been obvious to Athenian audiences.

( maritime nerdery )


Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles (2011)

Explicitly queer novelization of the Achilles-and-Patroclus story. This was wildly popular (and apparently still is -- even though it's over a decade old, at my local library there are perpetually 80-100 holds on the hardcopy and 100+ holds on the ebook).

Reader, I hated it.

( woobify those gays! )

Manoeuvres Under Fire (2013 words) by sanguinity
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Jacobite Trilogy | The Flight of the Heron Series - D. K. Broster
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ewen Cameron/Alison Grant/Keith Windham, Alison Grant/Keith Windham, Ewen Cameron/Keith Windham, Ewen Cameron/Alison Grant
Characters: Alison Grant, Keith Windham, Ewen Cameron
Additional Tags: Emotional Repression, Angst, Affection, Midnight Confessions, Polyamory
Summary:

Alison's husband's new lover is all irony, deflection, and formality. She likes him well enough, but she also finds his reserve frustrating — and apparently so does he.

Because I've been on a Keith and Alison kick lately. (At least judging by my wip folder.)

For tgarnsl, because we both have an obsession with Keith being feral cat who never properly learned affection as a kitten.

Alison Bechdel, Spent: A Comic Novel (2025)

The Dykes to Watch Out For cast returns, absent Mo, who is replaced by "Alison," a neurotic graphic novelist who is suffering (not very graciously) through the indignity of her bestselling graphic novel about her father's death, Death and Taxidermy, being made into a hit TV show. Meanwhile, Alison is struggling to write $UM: An Accounting, a graphic memoir about the role of money in Alison's life.

(...which is, presumably, Spent itself. Spent does talk a little bit about Alison's finances, but I didn't think it had much to say on the subject that was terribly insightful.)

Mo always annoyed me back in the day, and I don't like her doppleganger "Alison" any better. In fact, "Alison's" griping about the success of Death and Taxidermy leaves me wondering if Alison Bechdel resents those of us who loved the musical Fun Home? Idk, it all just left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

However, I loved getting to hang out with the core the DTWOF squad: Ginger, Lois, Sparrow, and Stuart. Sparrow and Stuart's offspring, J.R. (they/them), is college-aged now, and absolutely steals the show. They are so righteous and black-and-white and angry. The kid believes that the older DTWOF generation are all bourgeois sell-outs, and everything the older generation says only confirms it. J.R. is aces at pushing all the DTWOF crew's buttons, and I love the kid to pieces.


Neil Sharpson (illus. Dan Santat), Don't Trust Fish (2025)

Children's book riffing on the cladistic incoherence of "fish" and launching from there into a full-blown conspiracy theory. (After all, every conspiracy is fueled by a seed of truth, is it not?) I note, however, that this conspiracy theory serves a second purpose as pro-crab propaganda, and internal evidence suggests that the book may even have been written by a crab! (The author's bio strenuously denies this, but the book's pro-crab agenda cannot be denied.) Those of us well up on our evolutionary biology, however, note that "crabs" are also cladistically incoherent, and thus no more trustworthy than fish. Hmmm...

Moral: trust neither fish nor crabs, and most of all, do not trust this book.


Jonathan Green, The Vulgar Tongue: Green's History of Slang (2015)

Less a history of slang, and more a history of lexicographer's sources for slang. Beginning with beggar books of the fifteenth and sixteeth centuries, Green traces the ever-expanding sources for English slang up through the present moment. Early on, sources mostly consist of moralizing glossaries serving the dual purpose of titillation and warning; later on there were lexicographies for lexicography's sake; eventually, however, slang expanded into plays, novels, lyrics, and newspapers. There are dedicated chapters for the slang of Cockneys, Australians, Gays, African-Americans, the military, and other groups, as well as a dedicated chapter on (hetero)sexual slang. Most chapters give a smattering of newly coined words from each source, plus a discussion of how the source (and its description or use of slang) fit into its societal moment. For some topics, he'll also discuss trends, influences, and evolution in the slang itself.

( Random notes )

Anyway, it was a fascinating read, lots of good gossip, learned a ton of stuff, nice multi-century tour of the underbelly of Anglophone social history, and you could build a suggested reading list from this that would keep you going for the rest of your life, easily.