#pamela dean

[sixofravens-reads]

📚☕

#books #tam lin #pamela dean #books and tea #been a while since i posted a photo #i am absolutely not procrastinating writing oh no

[morhath]

sometimes you're reading a book based off an older story and you encounter a hint and just have to sigh, glare at the book, and put it down for a moment. that was such a smart place to put that. the author can't keep getting away with this etc etc

#tam lin brainrot continues but this time it's the Pamela Dean book #life #reading #books #tam lin #pamela dean #music #fairy tales

[bookfirstlinetourney]

Round 1

Sing, Goddess, sing of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus

-The Iliad, Homer

Reginald Gatling's Doom found him beneath an oak tree, on the last Sunday of a fast-fading summer.

-A Marvellous Light, Freya Marske

Edward Fairchild, Prince of the Enchanted Forest, Lord of the Desert's Edge, Friend to the Unicorns, and King of the Secret Country, wished he were somewhere else.

-The Secret Country, Pamela Dean

#polls #tournament poll #round 1 #books #reading #the iliad #homer #a marvellous light #freya marske #the secret country #pamela dean

[muchadorks]

#tam lin #child ballads #pamela dean #the perilous gard #elizabeth marie pope #fire and hemlock #diana wynne jones #winter rose #patricia a. mckillip #an early knight #janet mcnaughton #the mirk and midnight hour #jane nickerson #tithe #holly black

[outpastthemoat]

saving each other from death, and life.

I think that of all the musical adaptations of “tam lin,” my favorite is the arrangement that anais mitchell sings because it gives such insight into janet’s character.  she is so often portrayed as reckless, bold, heedless in tam lin adaptations, a headstrong eowyn or a britomart who swoops off to fearlessly rescue her love from the faeries’ tithe, but not in this version: here, janet does all that she does because she is so terribly, terribly desperate.

and it’s that haunting sense of desperation and silent despair that drive the narrative, from the very first stanza with the desription of janet alone in her bower, looking out on carterhaugh.  that description really gives a sense of isolation to janet’s character -- she’s elaine locked in the tower, she’s rapunzel trapped by the witch, she’s kept apart and isolated from all other living things -- how then could anyone blame her for running off to somewhere where the roses bloom green, or for allowing tam lin to take her by the sleeve and lay her down among the roses red?  

and when janet returns to carterhaugh, she does so not out of fear of rebuke or rejection from her father, or fear of entrapment in a marriage to a man of her father’s choosing -- but because she cannot face her own life, the future that now must come to pass.  she does not want a life, even one spent raising their child, if it is spent alone.  and tam lin cannot be her husband, because he is no earthly thing.

but, janet says, if my child was to a gentleman, and not a wild shade, then I would rock him all the winter’s night, and all the summer’s days.

and so tam lin tells her how to win his life, and thereby saves hers.  

janet has nothing to live for, even before she returns to carterhaugh pregnant and husbandless; it’s why she dares goes to such a haunted location in the first place.  carterhaugh is a place of the dead, and for the dying.   

janet always goes to carterhaugh to pick the roses.  

and in carterhaugh, the roses are always poison.  

but tam lin stops her from plucking the poison rose, both times janet visits this graveyard of thorns.  he takes her by the hand, and doesn’t that mean something?  tam lin gives janet something to live for.  and janet gives him a reason in return.  as thomas lane tells janet carter in pamela dean’s adaptation, it’s a story about saving each other from death, and from life.  

and it’s not so very strange for a fairy tale to be about saving the one you love from death, but saving them from life, when it’s life that you need rescue from -- if your life is what you need rescuing from, when your life, your own future is the horror you cannot face, that’s a story that doesn’t get told so often.  but sometimes, that is the kind of story that keeps its readers holding on.  

and I feel like that’s why so many people are drawn to adaptations of tam lin, particuarly the ones that don’t turn away from that sense of desperation that haunts the original ballad.   it comes up in certain moments in fire and hemlock, like when polly stands wavering on the bristol bridge, about to let herself fall, or in pamela dean’s version, when peg says she’ll imitate the lady of shallot should her lover spurn her.  

and that, i think, is why when i first read the ballad of tam lin, the hair on the back of my neck stood up with recognition.  because if you have ever been ready to pick a poison rose, then you know that sense of desperation.  you don’t forget it.  you can’t.  and you can recognize it in others just as surely as if you’d splashed your eyes with fairy ointment.

there was a time when i needed to learn how to save myself.  tam lin was one of the stories that showed me how.  

because at its heart, tam lin is a story about learning how to survive, when the person you are in most danger from is yourself.  janet saves tam lin, and in doing so, she saves herself.  

and when you save each other from death, and life, you are bound together as surely as any marriage vow.  and that -- that connection they have forged between themselves -- that is the true magic.  because connection is the antidote of despair.

#tam lin #fire and hemlock #diana wynne jones #pamela dean #my meta

[namedafterflowerstournament]

Botanic Tournament : Main Bracket !

Round 1 Poll SS

(Gentians and hyacinths)

#botanic tournament #tournament polls #round 1 #pamela dean #juniper gentian and rosemary #gentian meriweather #hyacinth cookie #cookie run kingdom #cookie run #cr kingdom #gameblr

[stainlesssteellocust]

ily molly

#tam lin #pamela dean #books

[kazz-brekker]

read among others by jo walton, tam lin by pamela dead, and ballad by maggie stiefvater all in the span of a week and so now my brain is a nice smoothie of thoughts about books about creepy faeries causing trouble for characters away at school

#normally i don't have much time to read during the semester #but i am taking the bus twice a week for a class so i can read on the commute it's very nice #pie says stuff #books #pie reads #among others #jo walton #tam lin #pamela dean #ballad #maggie stiefvater

[e-b-reads]

Books of the Month(s): Nov + Dec 2023

Books from the end of last year! Only one of these is from November, which is part of why I just waited to do one post for both months. Here are my books of the month(s):

Tam Lin (Pamela Dean): I liked this one a lot. It reminded me some of Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock, which, duh, they're both based on the ballad Tam Lin - but also because with both books, I only realized afterwards how well some of the images and themes from the works inspiring the books were incorporated. Also I kind of wish I read this book while I was in college, because despite being set in the 1970s and in the Midwest, it somehow still is a spot-on depiction of my experience of what it is to go to a little liberal arts school with kooky traditions that everyone knows by osmosis.

The Dark is Rising (Susan Cooper): A classic and a reread. I have reread this one more often than the others in the series (it's technically #2, but it was the first one I ever read and I think it can stand alone). I guess the eternal struggle of Light vs. Dark isn't a particularly novel plot, but the specifics of this story, and especially the images and feelings of it, I think are strong. As I wrote elsewhere, I liked it when I was a kid in a simpler "fun adventure!" kind of way, but I still like it now.

A Killer in King's Cove (Iona Whishaw): This is first in a mystery series (I read 6 of them in December). Set in Canada post-WWII, main character is an ex-British spy woman who moved there to escape her post-war life. They aren't as ~fun~ as some cozy and/or historical mysteries, because they're a little darker and more thoughtful, but I have decided that I like that. I also decided that the reader is supposed to figure out the murderer before the characters do (via short chapters from varying POVs), so once I got used to that I didn't mind. And finally, the main character makes a habit of very competently saving herself from perilous situations shortly before her love interest detective shows up with the cavalry, so I like that part too.

#books of the month #book recs #tam lin #pamela dean #(also re: tam lin: love molly! the bio major who loves shakespeare and accepts the weird fairy goings-on w few questions) #(also she seems to wear exclusively ratty/overlarge sweatshirts - ie we are not dissimilar) #the dark is rising #susan cooper #a killer in kings cove #lane winslow mysteries #iona whishaw

[the12thnightproject]

If you haven't read it...

(the previous post got me nostalgic...)

I have three copies of this book. One with this lovely original cover, signed by the author (she is local to me). A trade paperback version with a new cover (that I don't like nearly as much), that I purchased when my well-worn copy began to disintegrate.

And an ebook version to make sure that I always had a copy available in the cloud.

If you love Shakespeare, and old Scottish ballads, and words, and historical fiction (set in the 1970s, which... is historical by now), and found family, and slow burn friends to lovers... find a copy of this book.

#book recommendation #tam lin #pamela dean

[sixofravens-reads]

📚☕

#books #tam lin #pamela dean #books and tea #been a while since i posted a photo #i am absolutely not procrastinating writing oh no

[morhath]

Asking for a friend what's the good Tam Lin retelling you like again

TAM LIN BY PAMELA DEAN BOOK OF ALL TIME

#life #myriad--starlings #tam lin #fairy tales #music #reading #books #pamela dean

[atmilescross]

Playlist on repeat all day ✔️ Binge reading all my favorites ✔️ It's Hallowe'en 🎃

(oh! forgot to put Out of This World by Catherine Lundoff in the picture but I do have a copy of that as well which contains the short story "A Scent of Roses")

#tam lin #my collection #ref #dwj #fire and hemlock #pamela dean #the perilous gard #thorn jack #katherine harbour #tithe #holly black #sj tucker #the forgetmenauts #glasglow reel #fairport convention #steeleye span #anaïs mitchell #fuze wanted to be in the picture too #the ballad of tam lin #cotillion #delia sherman #hold fast #leah bobet

[lairn]

Book 19/24: Tam Lin by Pamela Dean

Rating: 3/5 

An interesting book. Very slow paced, but I often enjoyed that. It’s packaged as fantasy, but the meat of the story focuses on a young student, Janet, as she adjusts to college life and relationships. I like Janet’s journey through school. Sometimes she can be very wrong about things emotionally or academically, but the writing approaches all of this from her perspective and commits to Janet’s beliefs. The reader has to accept Janet’s thoughts as true right up until she realizes she’s wrong. The reader is carefully immersed in the feeling of being a confident college student ready to embrace the world while assuming they understand it already. Dean has a lot of talent for building a convincing reality.

Until near the very end of the book the fantasy elements are elusive. The mystery is compelling and I like how the ambiguity made me unsure things would ever be explicitly magical. I think other readers have met the fantasy elements in the book’s conclusion with relief, but I don’t think they made an adequate finale to match the tension built by the doubtful presence of the supernatural up to that point. I almost would have preferred Janet graduate college unsure if anything strange was happening. Alternatively, if Dean had more actively committed to some richer fantasy imagery, it might have honored the original ballad more.

Not a book for people who dislike frequent and explicit literary references.

#tam lin #pamela dean #reading challenge 2022 #oh i won't talk about this in the main post but #the book is so shyly and strangely queer #like everyone feels at least a little bisexual #but this is mostly skirted around #i might see if there's a review that breaks down what dean is up to there #dean is definitely a sharp writer and has some serious chops #but this book was maybe more interesting that actively successful

[outpastthemoat]

reading my favorite Halloween fairy tale tonight

#tam lin #pamela dean #tis the mirk and midnight hour

[namedafterflowerstournament]

Botanic Tournament : Junipers Bracket !

Round 0

#botanic tournament #tournament polls #junipers bracket #round 0 #james juniper eastwood #juniper eastwood #alix e. harrow #the once and future witches #juniper merriweather #juniper gentian and rosemary #pamela dean