I made a link!

I was trying to figure out how to create a link to a ticket site for our Ursula K. Le Guin Birthday Event. (Come on by if you're near Portland, Oregon!) And the very old program we use to post updates was baffling me. I kept clicking around all the many, many menu options for where to add a link.

Then, I uncovered a note that I could use "unfiltered HTML."

"Can it be," I wondered, "that I could just type in an actual HTML tag?"

And, lo, it worked!

The only reason I remember how to do this after 20 years is Dreamwidth, where I do this regularly (and nowhere else). Thank you, Dreamwidth!

The Mabinogion Tetrology - Review, Rec, & Thoughts

I have just finished The Mabinogion Tetrology by Evangeline Walton, compiled novelizations of the Four Branches of the medieval Welsh Mabinogi. I highly recommend this work to fantasy fans who like tie-ins to traditional stories and don't mind a non-scholarly approach from a cultural outsider (Walton was American). It's a very "faithful" adaptation in that it takes virtually nothing out. The Four Branches themselves are just a few pages each, so Walton interpolates a lot, clearly from a 20th-century cultural standpoint (including idolization of "progress" and a surprising amount of Buddhism). One book was published in the 1930s, the others in the 1970s. The whole work is about 650 pages long, with the first three branches being novellas and the fourth a short novel.

Speaking as a cultural outsider and lay reader myself, I think she does this quite well. Specifically, I think she does good work with the First Branch (The Prince of Annwn), and the Second (The Children of Llyr) and Third (The Song of Rhiannon) are among the most engaging and rewarding works I've read in a very long time! The Fourth Branch (The Island of the Mighty, a.k.a. The Virgin and the Swine), which was the first she wrote, is hit and miss for me but still worth reading. The whole work is generally quite feminist; I have no doubt was a huge influence on The Mists of Avalon.Spoilery review follows...( Read more... )