Read and seen — December 2020

A strong commonality among the December books was a twinned sense of costuming on the one hand, and becoming more who you are on the other. How that turned into a moth girl I’m not entirely sure, but that was where the associations started.

Books

• Borrowed Dreams — May McGoldrick (romance, villainy, benevolent interference)
• A Skinful of Shadows — Frances Hardinge (ghosts! the English civil war!)
• Powder and Patch — Georgette Heyer (Georgian makeover montage — I always thought this was a silly book, and it is, but I liked it so much more on the reread)
• Reading Like a Writer — Francine Prose (appreciating sentences)
• Every Tool’s a Hammer — Adam Savage (this was about more than just fitting your studio space to the way you work instead of the other way around, but that was the main revelation for me)

From Every Tool’s A Hammer: an epiphany

• Drawing is Magic — John Hendrix (it is — also, ways to keep a sketchbook)
• The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern — Lilian Jackson Braun (interior design snark! cats! more on a short scene from the book in this post)
• Wild Robert — Diana Wynne Jones (ghosts! tourists!)
• Hamlet, Revenge! — Michael Innes (grand homes! murder! more on a paragraph from the book in this post)
• The Duke Who Didn’t — Courtney Milan (romance, secrets, sauce, deliberate playing with some tropes)
• Design for Dying — Renee Albert (fashion! murder! Hollywood!)
• Hex — Thomas Olde Heuvelt (horrible things in the woods/town)

Other

• The Happiest Season
• Darren Hanlon’s Regional Xmas Tour — The Majestic Theatre, Pomona