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| Anticipating Midsummer by Larner | 2 Review(s) |
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| Lindelea | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 4/15/2026 |
| So many interesting details in this chapter! Did I ever tell you that I have a bookbinder in my family just a few generations back? Some of the books he bound have found their home on a shelf in my dining room. I remember my dad telling how he'd watched, fascinated, as his much older relative split a sheet of paper, then split it again, and yet again, and even (IIRC) a fourth time, resulting in paper sheets that were incredibly thin. The bookbinding reminds me of my dad's descriptions, a friend's demonstration of bookbinding, Mo/Bluejay the bookbinder from the Inkspell series, and, oddly enough, going to Kinko's to have a newsletter copied, collated, and folded via an automated process that rendered a uniform product. All we had to do was apply an address label to each (a labor-intensive process that took much longer than the copying) and a sticker to keep the newsletter together in its folded state, ready for the Post Office bulk mail process. Those were the days... But now all went together as if by magic! Magic, indeed. I can easily believe that Frodo would feel drained after such an exacting, energy-intensive process. I love the maker's mark in the form of a dragonfly. I saw a dragonfly just the other day, flitting above the bee garden. They resemble magical creatures in themselves, with those gossamer wings and the way they can float and dart in any direction. Author Reply: As part of my requirements to become a special ed teacher I was required to take a class involving various manual skills. We did pottery, carding, spinning, and dying wool and fabrics, weaving using finger-weaving, looms of various sorts, braiding, and so on, potato printing (a skill I first learned in Blue Birds when I was a child), and even doing some woodworking using manual tools--AND book-binding. I used the book I bound to write out the script of a Nativity Play I wrote for a volunteer tutoring group I worked with for Goodwill in Seattle when I was young teacher. It was fun to use that experience in this story. It's hard to think of applying address labels and stickers as being more labor intensive than actually copying your fanfic magazines to share with others! The property on which I grew up had swamps, ponds, drainage ditches, and other water features liberally featured throughout the more than two and a half acres we kids played on, so dragonflies were common sights (not to mention leeches and mosquitos). As the water was mostly stagnant we didn't have caddisflies, but we did have fairy shrimp, water striders and water boatmen, frogs of all sorts, garter snakes, diatoms, and even damselflies to watch and study. I cannot remember who invented the idea that Primula Brandybuck Baggins embroidered a stylized PB as a butterfly onto the products of her loom, embroidery hoops, knitting needles, crochet hooks, lace bobbins, and the like, but it inspired me to write Drogo Baggins to use a stylized DB to make a beetle and Frodo a stylized FB to make a dragonfly as their own makers' marks for their own works. And, yes, I suspect that directing this work to make exact copies of books would indeed be a draining experience for Frodo. Thanks for the observations you made in this story. You know I appreciate them so! | |
| Lindelea | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 4/9/2026 |
| Arrgh. Just as I began to read, something crashed in the kitchen. I must go and see what the cats have been up to. Will try again later. Author Reply: Ah! How many times my life has been interrupted by such unexpected crashes elsewhere in the house! Usually it's one of Penelope's progeny climbing on some structure where cats are not supposed to be. Good luck! | |