Snowflake Challenge: Day Three

[stripytights]

This is a surprisingly difficult one! I love a lot of things, but the things that I really love, that really stick in my mind and grow teeth are not usually the things that I'm fannish about. They're also far and away usually pieces of books, and not just because they're the canons that I consume the most. I can name thirty, forty books that are so integral to me that I reread them regularly, but none of them have the exact interaction of fannishness that I wanted for this challenge. I wanted something that had that fannish feel to it. So in the end I went half-half and picked The Lantern Bearers which is a book by Rosemary Sutcliff.

I love a lot of her books (Sword at Sunset, The Eagle of the Ninth, Simon, Frontier Wolf) and cordially dislike only a couple (The Silver Branch) but The Lantern Bearers is the book I feel the strongest about. It's about Aquila - a Roman who is taken into thralldom and wears the physical and mental scars of it for the rest of his life. The first half of the book is bleak, bleak, bleak, and the second half is only very marginally brighter (he finds things that makes life better) but always there's the unspoken shadow of the past between him and the people he loves. I recommend for anyone who likes iron endurance, stoic silence, and the past playing as big a role as the future. It's not usually difficult to source, but if anyone would like a copy let me know.

Comments

[ermingarden]

That sounds really interesting - I've never heard of that book, but I will definitely check it out! I can also definitely relate to what you say about the disparity between things you love and things you are fannish about. My own favorite book is Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, but I definitely don't interact with it in a fannish way.

[stripytights]

I really hope you enjoy it if you get a chance to read it! I really like The Glass Bead Game as well - which does spark an interesting question of what on earth fic would look like for it!

[ermingarden]

Oh no, now I'm curious what that would look like too...hmmm...

[isabellerecs]

That sounds super interesting, though perhaps a little more hardcore than I think I'd be game for but one never knows. :)

[stripytights]

I probably overegged how hardcore it is /o\ I mean technically it was written as a children's book! So there's nothing particularly graphic in it, but the mood itself is very heavy and surprisingly dark. If you do read, I hope you enjoy it - there is definitely redemption and hope in it as well :)

[osidiano]

I've also struggled to get fannish about books, even for stuff that I think should lend itself really well to fannishness. I just can't get into their fics. But if a book series has a movie adaptation that I've seen, even if the fic isn't set in movie!verse, I don't have a problem (e.g., Harry Potter). It's so strange!

[stripytights]

It's difficult to examine exactly what makes something ripe for fannishness! Maybe something to do with the visuals?