#kirsty logan

[rherlotshadow]

Looking forward to reading these two beauties!

#witches #bibliophile #witch #kirsty logan #camilla bruce #beautiful books #hedge witch

[gennsoup]

"Imagine what we could do if we weren't hungry all the time."

Kirsty Logan, The Gracekeepers

#Kirsty Logan #The Gracekeepers #hungry #hunger #famine #starvation #Scottish literature #LGBTQ literature #LGBTQ author #quotes #quotes blog #literary quotes #literature quotes #literature #book quotes #books

[ceaselesslyborne]

Recent Reads

1. The Disaster Tourist: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

An interesting and thought provoking plot that introduced and explored a range of perspectives on what, I hope, is the no-longer-shadowy world of disaster tourism. I was impressed with the simplicity and ease with which the protagonist and reader were quickly immersed in vividly precarious world. It was both strange and disturbingly real. It was somewhat predictable, but there were a number of well developed characters considering the length of the story, and though I’m not normally a fan of ambiguity, it made a pleasant change to confront a protagonist whose fate/motivations/character are never explicitly revealed or judged. The reader is left to draw their own conclusions, to evaluate their own opinions.

2. Redhead by the Side of the Road: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A slow one, but poignant and, for me, definitely one that resonated personally. A powerful, bittersweet, but ultimately hopeful ending, which honestly... I needed. The characters made the novel, and though I don’t think this book is for everyone, I found warmth and humour and understanding in Tyler’s words that make me want to read more of her work.

3. Things we Say in the Dark: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A really fun seasonal read with a unique and compelling and clever structure. I genuinely can’t choose a favourite story/section; I found the collection to be very cohesive and consistently strong. Logan is a skilled writer easily able to inspire fear, dread, anxiety, disgust, and a host of other heart-pounding sensations. I chose to rate it as I did purely because I felt the tropes and tone were too familiar, though I suspect this has more to do with me becoming slightly desensitised and needing to increase the diversity of my reading choices - or at least switch more frequently between genres. That being said, I really want to read more of Logan’s books!

4. The Death of Vivek Oji: ⭐️⭐️

Struggling to articulate exactly why, but this just... didn’t sit well with me. There was some wonderful explorations of themes such as loyalty, honesty, identity, and family, but it was heavy. Bleak. I understand that stories like this are important, necessary, and that we cannot always have happy or even hopeful endings, but I’ve read too many similar tragedies. There was no payoff for the emotional investment, and it’s difficult to invest in the first place when you know the fate of the protagonist from the beginning, and the protagonist seems... content with that fate? Maybe I just read this at the wrong time. (Pro tip: don’t read sad books when you’re sad!)

5. Ghosted: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Some wonderful character development throughout, and definitely made a significant emotional impact. I do feel that the story drew on slightly longer than necessary, but the reader was kept guessing and I was happy enough to follow the clues and reflect on the myriad relationships and characters offered.

6. White Ivy: ⭐️⭐️

I was disappointed by this book, which had such a promising premise, and started so strongly! Yang is, no doubt, a skilled writer, but it was challenging to persist with a story in which none of the characters seemed to have any notable, let alone likeable, traits. The pacing felt off, and I found myself wanting to skim through most of the book whilst other significant moments seemed to be passed over without making the impact they could have. Though it wasn’t a bad read, it didn’t feel like anything new or remarkable.

7. Earthlings: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ok, so this book is definitely not for everyone, and anyone picking it up expecting another Convenience Store Woman is... in for a shock™️! Please research content/trigger warnings before reading! Heartbreaking and heartwarming and disturbing and, yes, gross, this will satisfy your need for something strange. It was a good palette cleanser (or warper) after some underwhelming and sluggish recent reads, and left me with a not-unpleasant out of body sensation wondering wtf I’d just read. Simply put, this was my jam.

8. Our Wives Under the Sea: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

First, a very unrelated note: I read and finished this in the course on one stormy, muggy night which definitely set The Mood™️. I’m not quite sure how to discuss this book. Armfield has captured the sea itself: something vast and unfathomable, changeable, consuming, incomprehensible, and primordial. Dreamy and viscerally, elementally haunting, Our Wives is surreal, horror adjacent, but hits in a very tangible way. I personally loved the style, and the dual perspective and relatively short chapters made what could have been a slow read a very easy one. Through a fantastical lens, Armfield invites us to explore ideas about relationships, communication, trauma, and grief, loss, and reality. A lot is up for interpretation, and I think you could find something new in this book with every re-read.

9. Becoming My Sister: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Okay, so on the scale of ‘normal’ to ‘introduced to V. C. Andrews at a wildly inappropriate age by a mother who clearly had no memory of the book she’d just given her daughter, and no way to anticipate the oncoming obsession’, it’s pretty clear where I fall. Personally I’ve never been disappointed by an Andrews book, and this one was no exception. The writing is witty and thrilling and subtly eerie, and Andrews is absolutely fantastic at drawing the reader into the grip of twisted, claustrophobic family dynamics. Her characters are lifelike, haunted and haunting. She has a singular understanding of the pain and beauty of girlhood, womanhood, and coming of age. I would almost describe this as a ‘guilty pleasure’ read but honestly I’m not sorry. No shame.

10. Ghosts: ⭐️⭐️

Such a promising premise, and so many elements I can usually connect with, but... I think this is just a story I’m tired of reading. It was vague/disconnected and judgemental in a way that reduced the impact of the book overall, at least for me. There was little to humanise or identify in the protagonist (or indeed most of the characters), and I felt the most interesting aspects of the book were not given the focus they deserved, both of which meant key emotional moments fell flat for me. I think for the right person, at the right time, this is a beautiful and moving story; that person just wasn’t me.

#bookblr #book review #bookworm #cj goes to the library #the disaster tourist #yun ko eun #redhead by the side of the road #anne tyler #things we say in the dark #Kirsty Logan #the death of vivek oji #akwaeke emezi #ghosted #jenn ashworth #white ivy #susie yang #earthlings #sayaka murata #our wives under the sea #julia armfield #becoming my sister #v. c. Andrews #ghosts #dolly alderton

[blockforest]

Very excited to share my collaboration with author Kirsty Logan on a zine / chapbook for spooky season! It has six short stories, inspired by the myths and legends of the British isles, but with a queer twist! It's available on my shop now.

#kirsty logan #book #chapbook #zine #spooky season #halloween #short stories #illustration #linocut #artwork #collectable #myth #legend #folklore #horror

[semper-legens]

25. Now She Is Witch, by Kirsty Logan

Owned: No, library Page count: 327 My summary: Lux’s mother is dead. She was burned as a witch, and Lux was expelled from the convent where she lived. Alone, with few skills but her knowledge of herbs and poisons, Lux meets a young woman called Else who promises to take her to the witches of the north - if Lux helps her with her revenge. So Lux and Else walk their unsteady path through the forest, looking for people like them. Looking for home. My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

Well, this is an interesting one. While I was reading it, I had absolutely no idea whether I liked it or not, and afterwards I find that this is still the case. On the one hand, my knowledge and dislike of popular tropes regarding real-life witch hunts and witch hysteria. On the other, my love for interesting historical women in fiction, and particularly women who aren't the most conventional or straightforwardly good. Enter Kirsty Logan. I've read her work before, and really enjoyed it - her lyrical, fairy tale prose is exactly my kind of storytelling, and definitely what I look for in fiction. And her short story collection, Things We Say In The Dark, was great enough that I near-immediately went out and bought a copy after reading it from the library. So, how does this book stack up?

Lux's world is interesting. It has all the hallmarks of Europe in the 14th century - the Black Death, flagellants, mummers, extreme Catholicism and religious abuse - though I know the witch hunts in England didn't begin until the 1600s. Then again, it's not as though people weren't persecuted as witches before that, both in England and across Europe, and more importantly this is decisively not any place in particular. There are no place names, and many characters don't even have personal names. Places are referred to in the generic (the north country, the south country, the stronghold, the village) and are given no other identifying features. I obviously can't know for sure, but I suspect that this was in order to make the setting more general and its ideas and themes more applicable, as well as taking this out of historical fiction and leaning it more towards the mythic. It's an interesting choice, and a well-executed one.

This book is largely about womanhood and witchcraft, or rather the perception of witchcraft, and the complex intersections of those two labels. One thing I have to give it points for - real witchcraft doesn't exist. Lux sells herbal cures and poisons, as well as things like poppets which she knows do nothing, but she says hold magic so they'll sell. She grows up hearing stories of the 'north witches', the supposed real witches who live in the north and have amazing powers, but they're not real either. It's just women doing what they can to make their way in the world, and the stories that are told to demonise them. And that's the push and pull here - the agency that Lux's ambiguous status as witch grants her versus the ways her life is in very real danger from that status. Lux spends most of her life under the thumb of her mother, then the church, then needing to survive. A common phrase is 'There's no use in a girl wanting'; because of the nature of the world in which she lives, she is denied agency and choice and desire. But taking her agency back and acting on her desires is dangerous. So many are killed for that, for speaking out or being different. And I really love how this book portrays different women - there are women who live within the framework of society and women who live outside of it, women who bury themselves in a desperate attempt to seem 'civil' and women who hide their misdeeds but still keep doing them, women who believe what they're told and women who question, and all of the grey areas in between. And all of this with a very select cast! It's a really cool view on history, especially within its framework of not by necessity depicting reality.

Okay, so here's what I meant about my dislike of certain popular witch tropes. I always frown on the historicity of some books about real-life witch hunts or fictionalised versions of the same, especially ones that try and claim that 1) the person persecuted as a witch was actually a witch in a neo-Pagan framework, 2) people labelled as witches were exclusively women, 3) 'the Burning Times' is a real thing that happened. This...wasn't that. As I've mentioned, this book's setting is highly ambiguous, so I can kind of look past the burning rather than hanging of witches as being a bit of fantasy worldbuilding. And while this book does have the female empowerment narrative of many witch novels, the fact remains that Lux isn't an anachronistically feminist character. You know the sort. "I'm a Strong Independent Woman who can kick a-- like the boys! I hate corsets for no real reason other than symbolism! I have ideas about women's rights that date to 2010 at the earliest!" That kind of character, a feminist ideal of a woman that doesn't engage with the actual lives of women in the time period the story reflects, or otherwise is grounded in 21st century ideas of women's empowerment rather than historical ones, really annoys me. But this isn't that. Lux just wants to have agency, to exist as a woman in the world without being labelled by others, without having her identity be based around one aspect of herself. She's called a witch, a servant, a sacrifice, a maiden. But in reality she is more than that. She has wants, and desires, and learns how to act on them and take what she can from the world. And that's a much more empowering character than the Strong Woman archetype.

Next up, a dark and grim portrait of a serial killer.

#Now She Is Witch #Kirsty Logan #bookblr #book blog #book blogging #4

[judgingbooksbycovers]

The Gloaming

By Kirsty Logan.

Design by Julia Connolly.

#The Gloaming #Kirsty Logan #Julia Connolly #Mermaid #Starfish #animals #books #book covers #folklore

[ladygavgav]

A Short Spell of Reading

New blog post: A Short Spell of Reading.

I have a group of pals who hold a readathon approximately every three months, typically coinciding with the equinoxes and solstices. It used to be an intensive twelve hours but has settled down into a more relaxed two-day format. Ahead of the most recent one on Friday and Saturday, I went to the library and found two short story collections, namely: Her Body & Other Parties by Carmen Maria…

View On WordPress

#carmen maria machado #competition #editing #enjoyment #Kirsty Logan #monologue #readathon #short story #writing

[ghiblilesb]

Kirsty Logan, Things We Say In The Dark

#quotes #typography #typo #kirsty logan #things we say in the dark #horror #books #literature #short stories

[jamiebamberdaily]

Kenny Logan's Rugby World Cup Challenge

To mark the first Rugby World Cup since Doddie Weir’s sad passing, Kenny Logan and friends are set to take part in a unique and gruelling challenge from BT Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, to the Stade de France, Paris to raise £555,555 for My Name’5 Doddie Foundation.

Kenny and supporters will be delivering the match ball to the final Pool B match – Ireland v Scotland, as well as raising important funds for the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation to support their fight against Motor Neuron Disease.

Click ‘Keep Reading’ to find out more about the challenge ahead.

Jamie, along with Ex UK Special Forces and Royal Marine Commando Jason Fox, actor Jimmy Nesbitt, Ex footballer, Scottish international and Rangers legend Ally McCoist, TV and Radio presenter Kirsty Gallagher, Cyclist Mark Beaumont and Kenny’s wife Gabby, will arrive in Edinburgh on September 30th before beginning their challenge the following day.

1st October (135 miles) –

🚴 BT Murrayfield Stadium to Cresswell 110mi

🚶 Cresswell to Newcastle Falcon 25mi

2nd October (111.2 miles)

🚴 Newcastle Falcons to Sutton Park 97.5mi

🚶 Sutton Park to Middlethorpe Hall Hotel 13.7mi

3rd October (117.6 miles)

🚴 Middlethorpe Hall Hotel, York to Belvoir Castle 96.6mi

🚶 Belvoir Castle to Rutland Water 21mi

4th October (110 miles)

🚴 Rutland Water to The Crown, Chinnor 95mi

🚶 The Crown, Chinnor to The Hand & Flowers, Marlow 15mi

5th October (93.9 miles)

🚴 Bisham Abbey, Marlow to Half Moon, Plumpton 80mi

🚶 Half Moon, Plumpton to The Ark, Newhaven 13.9mi

6th October (83.2 miles)

🚴 Dieppe Ferry Port to Brasserie Duplessi, Tosny 70mi

🚶 Brasserie Duplessi, Tosny to Hotel Le Normandy, Vernon 13.2mi

7th October (51.4 miles)

🚴 Hotel Le Normandy, Vernon to Ibis Epinay-sur-Seine 48mi

🚶 Ibis Epinay-sur-Seine to Stade De France, Paris 3.4mi

You can find out more about the challenge here.

You can donate to Jamie's half of the challenge here. He needs to raise £15,000 if you are able to help!

And

You can follow the challenge on Instagram here.

#Jamie Bamber #Kenny Logan's Rugby World Cup Challenge #Kenny Logan #Gabby Logan #Ally McCoist #Kirsty Gallacher #Jason Fox #Charity #Charity Challenge

[nialltlynch]

it's short story month recommend some good short stories

#ill go first: the tooth by shirley jackson is a classic #the broken west by kirsty logan is so [redacted] coded iykwim

[randomestfandoms-ocs]

Any Hallmark holiday au’s for Kristy, Tristan & Logan?

OH okay I have an idea and you inspired it (you’ll understand why in two seconds I promise!)

Kirsty Gilmore had once been the biggest name in ballet, starting her professional career at sixteen and dancing with some of the biggest ballets in the world. But at only twenty-two, a rare heart defect had forced her into retirement and out of the public eye. She settled back into life in her hometown, working at her step-father’s diner, helping at her mom’s inn, and starting up her own baking career. She had lost contact with most of her friends from town, and most of the rest of her friends had no idea where she’d wound up after dropping off the grid. But it was okay, she was happy.

For lifelong friends Tristan and Logan, uniting their family businesses had just been logical. It highlighted their individual strengths, kept them accountable to someone, and allowed for several riskier business moves. Including, hopefully, buying out Stars Hollow. They had a big picture plan in mind for the small town, but there were two locations that were absolutely key to their plan. Luke’s diner, the perfect location for offices, and the Dragonfly Inn, the town’s primary selling point. But trying to talk to either owner had been useless — Luke Danes had simply hung up on them, and Lorelai Gilmore (so much like the daughters that Tristan had once known) had simply talked so many circles around them that it wasn’t until she’d hung up that they realized she’d never answered their question. So, the obvious solution, they would simply go to Stars Hollow themselves in order to talk to them.

The last thing that either of them had expected when they walked into Luke’s diner, three days before Christmas, was to be greeted by Kirsty Gilmore. Tristan’s first — and only — love, who he’d lost contact with when she dropped out of their junior year in order to take her ballet career more seriously. And Kirsty, just as stubborn and stunning as Tristan remembers, has no plans of letting her beloved home become just another corporate exploit. Will she be able to show the two businessmen the wonder and value of a town like Stars Hollow?

Title: The Heart Of The Holidays

#ask #answered #the witching ash #kirsty gilmore #about kirsty #kirsty x logan x tristan

[nolitethoughts]

🍂Now She Is Witch🍂 Review

Now She Is Witch by @kirstylogan Review

‘My great-grandmother’s toy house and my grandmother’s herb books. The owl shrieked under my window and I can still feel her beside me.’

A beautifully written story about the power women has (or don’t) over themselves. Let it be a simple choice from; What should I wear today? to the right of their own function and the choice and forge of their own fate and future with their wisdom that comes from the biggest goddess of all; Mother Earth. 

I truly, truly highly recommend this book to everyone who needs some magic in their life or just a green light to finally be who they are. Kirsty Logan became one of the authors whose work I would definitely follow in the future and catch up on her past. A massive thank you to @tri.northern who brought these gems into my life. Like Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I can finally close 2022 with a satisfied sigh. 

Out by @vintagebooks 12/01/2023 

#NowSheIsWitch #books #amreading #bibliophile #book #bookstagram #book tumblr #bookish #reading #book aesthetic #booksbooksbooks #witchcraft #witches #healing #self healing #historical fiction #kirsty logan books #fantasy #fiction books worth reading #xmas reading

[the-modern-typewriter]

can you rec us some books with very pretty prose?

Beautiful writing style is, of course, always in the eye of the reader. However, these are some books where I really appreciated the prose style because it was either pretty or in some way really compelling/interesting to me in some way:

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller

The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

A Portable Shelter/Things We Say in the Dark by Kirsty Logan

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Bunny by Mona Awad

(These are all from my 'beautiful writing style' shelf on Goodreads. However, I have omitted any where I can't remember what happens in the book anymore or if I didn't love the book!)

#book recs #book talk #book #books #reading #reading lit #book list #book recommendation #book recommendations

[ceaselesslyborne]

02/09/22

First September library selection! Looking forward to introducing more seasonal gothic/spooky reads and, of course, some real horror as autumn gets fully underway.

- CJ

#bookblr #bookworm #tbr pile #cj goes to the library #the disaster tourist #yun ko-eun #redhead by the side of the road #Anne Tyler #things we say in the dark #Kirsty Logan #the death of vivek oji #akwaeke emezi #ghosted #jenn ashworth #white ivy #susie yang #earthlings #sayaka murata #our wives under the sea #julia armfield #becoming my sister #v. c. Andrews #ghosts #dolly alderton

[blockforest]

Fancy some spooky reads in time for Halloween? I still have a few copies of my zine with the amazing author @kirstylogan available over on my shops. Featuring 6 short queer stories inspired by myths and legends from the British Isles. Grab one while you can! www.blockforest.co.uk/links

#zine #spooky season #halloween #art #queer #queer artist #lgbtqia #kirsty logan #scary story #book #author #short stories

[semper-legens]

58. Things We Say In The Dark, by Kirsty Logan

Owned: No, library Page count: 222 My summary: A happy home. A happy family. A happy life. All any woman can wish for. But lurking behind the women’s hopes are the women’s fears. A child spends a pleasant day in a park, with footnotes giving a glimpse of what is truly there. Women give birth to strange things, channel ghosts, cling to their lovers with desperation. There is much to fear in the dark. My rating: 5/5

Ah, Kirsty Logan. I’ve read two of her previous novels, one of which I’ve discussed on this blog, and I really liked her fantastical, slightly surreal form of storytelling. This is a short story collection, not a novel, and it is absolutely fantastic. I really enjoyed it, read the whole thing in two sittings, and immediately went out to buy my own copy. This is exactly what I absolutely love and look for in a dark fantasy/horror collection, and I both enjoyed the hell out of it and got freaked out by it.

For once, I’m not going to discuss individual stories in this collection, I’m just going to talk about broader themes and ideas brought up by this collection. So, with that in mind, let’s talk about womanhood. This collection is about womanhood in many regards, yet it both has the aspects of universality and specificity. Kirsty Logan herself is a white woman, and a cis woman - this collection isn’t going to give the experiences of a woman of colour, or a transgender woman. On the other hand, Logan has a wife, and while not all of the women in these stories are identifiably sapphic, there are still more sapphic women than I would expect from a straight writer. Logan doesn’t appear to be going for broad universality, rather giving her experiences and fears through this abstracted lens, heightened by the ongoing story-between-stories, which starts out feeling as though it’s Logan speaking nonfictionally about herself, then quickly descends into horror.

Speaking of horror, these stories are definitely surreal. Women give birth to lemons and grapes and oranges, grow and shrink, live in houses made of leaves and snow and dirt, are impregnated with diamonds and give birth to strange children. It’s never really grounded in our reality, floating in this space of heightened reality and fantasy where anything can happen and anything is possible. It’s a lovely little bit of magical realism. This is also, sometimes, quite intentionally offputting, which adds to the horror. There’s no blood and guts and gore, no literary jumpscares; the horror is entirely from how weird this world and these stories are. It’s psychological horror, but the kind that makes you think about your own fears and anxieties, and how they can be abstracted in this way. I loved it so much, and I’d encourage anyone for which this concept sounds interesting to go and check it out.

Next up, more Roman Mysteries, as we see the aftermath of Pompeii.

#Things We Say In The Dark #Kirsty Logan #bookblr #book blogging #book blogger #5