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Life in a Cold Climate

@lifeinacoldclimate

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LICC chronicles my attempts at life (and style, occasionally) in a cold climate. Books. Dresses. Perfume. Food. Dahlias. Brussels/Tallinn/Kotinuka.

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September was a nice reading month with Exit Party being my favourite and then a bunch of really good reads right on its heels. No five stars, but very glad to have finally gotten to Butler’s Dawn - the parallels between her and Le Guin are really interesting. Kingfisher and Osman are two of my favourite comfort writers and they delivered again. Regime Change and Trade World were both well written and informative, one of them more rage-inducing than the other. Diamond was a disappointment. All together 10 books, although Butler’s essay is very, very short.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️+
📖 Exit Party, Emily St John Mandel

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
📖 Dawn, Octavia E. Butler
📖 A Few Rules for Predicting the Future, Octavia E. Butler
📖 Space Crone, Ursula K. Le Guin
📖/🎧 Trade World, Ed Conway
📖/🎧 Regime Change, Maggie Habermann & Jonathan Swan
📖/🎧 We Chase Shadows, Richard Osman
📖/📱/🎧 Daggerbound, T. Kingfisher (yes, I got all the versions)

⭐️⭐️⭐️+
📖 Autumn, Kate Mosse

⭐️⭐️1/2
📖/🎧 Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings, Jared Diamond

#septemberwrapup #whatiread #bookstagram by @lifeinacoldclimate

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6 days ago

I haven’t posted any flowers for a long time, but found these autumnal lilies today and had to share. I love this colour year round but it feels particularly right for now. These also smell like proper lilies, but not overwhelmingly so. #lilies #flowersoftheday #instaflowers by @lifeinacoldclimate

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15 days ago

I have not posted my August favourites because I was sure that I had Astrid Lindgren’s Bullerby book with me in Luxembourg, but after two weeks of searching I have to admit defeat. I (re)read 10 books last month, many of them for my essay project, and it resulted in thee 5-star reads. None of the three were surprises, I knew I would still love Lindgren and Le Guin and RJB’s Ana & Din mysteries are my favourite ongoing series. I am also very glad that the project ‘forced’ me to read The Disposessed and some early works of Le Guin. But I am especially glad to have found an Estonian book I loved, Jim Ashilevi’s literary memoir Inimese kostüüm. I hope he forgives me for it being upside down in the stack…

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
📖 Bullerby lapsed, Astrid Lindgren (reread)
📖 The Left Hand of Darkness/Pimeduse pahem käsi, Ursula K. Le Guin (reread)
📖/🎧 A Trade of Blood, Robert Jackson Bennett

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
📖 Inimese kostüüm, Jim Ashilevi

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
📖/🎧 The Disposessed, Ursula K. Le Guin

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
🎧 Planet of Exile, Ursula K. Le Guin
🎧 Rocannon’s World, Ursula K. Le Guin (reread)
📖 Noore romaanikirjaniku pihtumused/Confessions of a young novelist, Umberto Eco

⭐️⭐️⭐️
📖 Life of M, Rachel Cusk
🎧 Reinventing You, Dorie Clark

#whatiread #augustwrapup #bookstagram by @lifeinacoldclimate

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a month ago

Let’s start this season as we mean to go on - reading, writing, lifting and wearing velvet.

📸 @krxxt_tarkmeel
💋 @stylebysolveig
👗 @riinapoldroos
#backtotheoffice #autumn #reading by @lifeinacoldclimate

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2 months ago

The Shadow of the Leviathan series (also known as Ana and Din mysteries) by Robert Jackson Bennett is my favourite ongoing SFF series. It‘s the perfect mix of amazing high fantasy world building, well-crafted mystery plot and compelling characters (RJB is one of the few male authors that I will trust to write a female character and not worry even a little bit). The biologically weird Empire is such a unique setting - think a sophisticated multiethnic state with an obscure past and a touch of body horror - that I treasure every morsel of lore, while Ana (the detective) and Din (the sidekick) have a delicious dynamic inspired by the Nero Wolfe books. You have to start with The Tainted Cup, but that‘s not a problem, as all three books that are out are excellent. A Trade of Blood, the most recent instalment, is possibly my favourite so far, but who knows, it’s difficult to choose. RJB has said we‘ll get more than 5 but fewer than 10 of these and if these are the parameters, I hope it‘ll be 9. #robertjacksonbennett #theshadowoftheleviathan #atradeofblood #fantasymystery by @lifeinacoldclimate

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2 months ago

This summer’s perfume rotation is up on the blog, including Lilyphéa by @diptyque , Mango Sticky Rice by @dannam.parfums and Fleur Narcotique by @exnihiloparis . #summerscents #nicheperfumes #sotd by @lifeinacoldclimate

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2 months ago

July reading was all over the place, as my original plans were disrupted half-way by a project that requires me to do lots of rereading. It’s not a problem, I love to have a reason to reread some of my all-time favourites, but it means that I’ve been reading (and will for a while) fewer new releases than planned. I’m also late to post as I took the photo before leaving Luxembourg and wanted to finish everything on it. In the end, I DNF-ed The End of Everything, as I just did not enjoy reading it at all. Otherwise, rereading The Name of the Rose was a wonderful experience, How to Kill a Language is nicely written non-fiction and both Nonesuch and Green City Wars will be great for the right reader. I also read a Mouthful of Dust, another good entry in the Singing Hills Cycle, but forgot to include it in the stack🤷‍♀️ All together 14 books, 2 pretty chonky ones and one extremely short.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
📖/🎧 The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco (reread)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
📖/🎧 How to Kill a Language, Sophia Smith Galer
📖 A Mouthful of Dust, Nghi Vo
📖/🎧 Nonesuch, Francis Spufford
📖/🎧 Green City Wars, Adrian Tchaikovsky
📖 4:50 From Paddington, Agatha Christie (reread)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
📖/🎧 Carthage: A New History, Eve MacDonald
🎧Homer: A Very Short History, Barbara Graziosi
📖 Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, Emily Wilson
📖 Air, Christian Kracht
📖 Hyperpolitics, Anton Jäger

⭐️⭐️⭐️
🎧 Bad Influence: How the Internet Hijacked Our Health, Deborah Cohen

🤯
📖 Helen’s Exile, Albert Camus (opaque and too short to rate)
📖 The End of Everything, M. John Harrison (DNF)

#julywrapup #whatiread #bookstagram by @lifeinacoldclimate

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2 months ago

I love all kinds of seas, but the Baltic Sea will always be what a ‘real’ sea looks like to my brain. #balticsea #finnishbay #estonia taken in Liimala Beach by @lifeinacoldclimate

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2 months ago

If you like languages and are looking for an enlightening but accessible non-fiction book, How to Kill a Language is a good option. It covers 10 languages with different challenges, from Emilian to Karuk to Kichwa in a mixture of memoir and reportage. I am not entirely uninformed when it comes to linguistics and the history of languages, but there was plenty of new stuff for me here - there are thousands of languages in the world, and we know very little about many of them. My favourite chapters were on Shehret (Shehri/Jibbali) - a Modern South Arabian language in Oman -, Ukrainian, Kurdish and Hebrew. There are of course trade-offs when it comes to maintaining the world’s linguistic diversity, but Smith Galer makes a good case for the benefits of bilingualism and linguistic richness in general. #howtokillalanguage #sophiasmithgaler #languages #nonfiction #bookstagram by @lifeinacoldclimate

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2 months ago

In Estonia for a month. #ducks by @lifeinacoldclimate

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3 months ago

Rice has been a very popular perfume note in recent years, but to give credit where credit’s due, I first encountered it in 2002 or 2003 in Champaca. It is a gorgeous, subtle tropical floral (if you don’t usually like tropical florals because they are too much, do give this one a chance!) that has a lovely steamed rice aspect. It also has an unusual green note that is probably a mix of bamboo and green tea (both listed), but to me it almost has a very light touch of basil. It is a pretty, laid-back floral that gets muskier as the flowers fade. I have always thought that @ormondejayne florals (especially the original ones) are underrated and Champaca is a great example of that. #champaca #ormondejayne #nicheperfume #scentoftheday by @lifeinacoldclimate

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3 months ago

I have been doing suprisingly well with reading new literary fiction releases this year (less well with SFF, to be fair) and following prizes, but this is my PSA to inform you that I’m going to be doing less well on that front in the coming months. I am working on a project that requires lots of rereading, which is fun, but also means I have less time for everything else. I will tell you more when I can/when everything is more certain, but meanwhile you’ll see me reading some of my old, pre-social media favourites. Which hopefully is also interesting! #bookishproject #favouritebooks #writing by @lifeinacoldclimate

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3 months ago