...for reasons. <w<;;

My bro & sis, Mr. & Mrs. Crabcake Factory got the beaches sizzlin’! #1 seafood bar & grill in Jax! Much love to you bro and wishing you the best of luck on this business journey!! Support your local black owned businesses!!🤟🏾 . . . . . @crabcakefactoryjax #crabcakefactoryjax #seafood #seafoodbarandgrill #beach #penman #mybrother #blackbusiness #blackbusinessowner #blackonbeach🖤 #barber #jacksonvillebarber #jaxbarber #jaxbarbers #jacksonvillebarbershop #jacksonvillebeach #sanpablo #jacksonvillebeachflorida #igersjax @igersjax #wavy #buddykutz904 #BuddyKutz #buddykutzbarbershop #barbershopjax #duvalbarbers #jaxbarbers #syndicatebarbers #nastybarbers #floridabarberselite @floridabarber #barbersofinstagram @barbersofinstagram (at Jacksonville Beach, Florida) https://www.instagram.com/p/CqJvtgHLj4r/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

New York City - by Phil Penman, English/American

NYC by Phil Penman (2020)

Harlem. June 2018

Photo: Phil Penman

Having such an obsessive hobby or pursuit can be a cover for small otherwise unacknowledged lacks in one's life. This kind of cinephilia or cinema hunger, belonging to no academy, this kind of always-at-the-movies life, can in the end be a convenient way of postponing the living of real life, out there. At the movies, life's nagging pains and banal repetition are all sublimed into something like a dream.

Ian Penman, Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors

Re-reading When Christ and His Saints Slept reminded me again of just how absolutely insane it was that Viserys did not attempt to provide anything for his children with Alicent. This is how Henry I (Empress Matilda's father, so Viserys' real-life counterpart in GRRM's version of the Anarchy) made sure that one of his bastard sons Robert would be provided for (alt text in image description):

And Henry I had at least 6 illegitimate sons who survived to adulthood, all of whom ended up either with the church, or as lords with holdings of their own, some of them quite substantial. Viserys has three trueborn sons and intends for his daughter to inherit the kingdom ahead of all of them, yet makes zero effort to make his sons marriages or grant them holdings or positions that might secure their futures otherwise. And he sees no problem with this! Apparently Aegon and Helaena and their three kids are meant to freeload indefinitely off of Rhaenyra in the Red Keep when she inherits? Seriously, what do they have to lose by challenging her claim at this point, when they have good reason to think their lives will eventually be forfeit anyway?

I don’t know how I missed it but I only now found out that Sharon Kay Penman passed away in 2021.

I am in mourning now. She was one of my all time favorite novelists. Her incredibly thick and detailed novels set in various periods of medieval England and other parts of the world are my permanent reads and rereads. I have never read a book of hers that I didn’t love.

The first book of hers I’ve read was her novel about Richard III - The Sunne in Splendour - which I read and wept over in high school. I read and wept over her Welsh Trilogy in college. And then I read and wept over her other novels as an adult.

There is only one of her novels I have not read yet - her very last book - The Land Beyond the Sea, a mammoth (of course) novel about the fall of Outremer, focusing on Balian of Ibelin.

I was hoarding it because it took years between her novels and she was getting on in years and so I was worried this would be the last. And it was.

I have obviously never met her and literally know nothing about her except what’s on the blurb on the covers of the books and I still feel like crying. It’s the same sinking feeling of losing someone important though a total stranger because their books became a fabric of your life as when Dorothy Dunnett died.

PS if you’ve never read her and love incredibly solid, immersive, historically accurate novels with a huge cast of complex characters, you should read her. Though with few exceptions there are pretty much no happy endings to be had (I am pretty sure she finally created a couple of secondary fictional characters in her Welsh Trilogy so at least someone could escape the meatgrinder.)

“Grand Sunset”

Rialto Beach, Olympic National Park, Washington

By Dustin Penman

so i'm taking a break from the dune craze to continue reading the mirror and the light, and as a leading authority on these books as well, what would you suggest reading after finishing the trilogy? i know nobody did it like miss mantel but is there a book with writing that good, similar vibes or characters like cromwell? i'm scared all that's going to be left are her other books😭

there licherally is nothing like it anywhere. I'm so serious. to me anyways lmao I was genuinely in a reading slump for like a good three months post the mirror and the light 😭😭 I have since come to terms with the fact that ill never read a better book than wolf hall ever and there is a certain freedom in that but. yeah maybe someone else got something?

“145. Today, all his petty tyranny and sexual serfdom and emotional blackmail and out-front substance abuse wouldn’t be tolerated, right? Of course not. (Or, at least, not in the same way.) Even back then, everyone involved doubtless knew it wasn’t ‘OK.’ But – I mean, look at the results! Rainer is so productive, he has such discipline! Which is true enough. He writes, shoots, casts and completes all his films with scarcely credible economy. In Hollywood, all that cocaine mania and ego indulgence and extensive use of close personal friends would result in films that took years to complete, with studio-destroying budget overruns. And they would still be deeply disappointing, if they were ever finished at all. 146. He's not performative, not a subtle gaslighter, not a carefully conniving narcissist and control freak. If he has monstrous flaws then, well, at least they’re all upfront. There was no duplicity about what was on offer, positive or negative. If you didn’t like the setup why then just leave and go find another director to give you all these roles. He was the one holding purse strings and casting reins. Private life and working life became one and the same. Decisions made in camera. I suppose in 2022 we really should condemn such behaviour – but what would that achieve? I suppose it might make us all feel better about ourselves for a minute or two.” – Ian Penman, Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors  

New York 2020, Photography by Phil Penman

Washington Square Park. New York. October 2019

Photo: Phil Penman

Any recommendations for authors with a beautiful writing style that will make me feel emotional? I mean something like Robin Hobb (or even Juliet Marillier and Patricia A. McKillip). Some classic literature also have it because they used to be very dramatic with their feelings. That's what I want.

I appreciate some quotes as examples just so I can check if it's the kind of writing I am looking for.

Authors I have on the list to try already: Dorothy Dunnet, Mary Renault, Hilary Mantel, Sharon Kay Penman, Carolina de Robertis

Some examples of what I am looking for:

"The knowledge that he had left me with no intent ever to return had come over me in tiny droplets of realization spread over the years. And each droplet of comprehension brought its own small measure of hurt...He had wished me well in finding my own fate to follow, and I never doubted his sincerity. But it had taken me years to accept that his absence in my life was a deliberate finality, an act he had chosen, a thing completed even as some part of my soul still dangled, waiting for his return." (Fool's Assassin by Robin Hobb)

"I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave the things I had glimpsed to resolve themselves without me." (Winter Rose by Patricia A. McKillip)

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can." (Moby Dick by Herman Melville)

I started rereading When Christ and His Saints Slept and I had forgotten how adorable baby Stephen is:

Favorite Historical Fiction || Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman

“You’re not hurt?” He waited only for her to shake her head before he swung around to confront his son. “All your life I’ve made excuses for you, found reasons to explain away your deranged behavior. I cannot even begin to count the times I’ve overlooked your tempers, your blunders. But no more. This time you’ll answer for what you’ve done.” “But it was not my fault!” “It never is, is it? You’re always the injured innocent, never accountable for your own actions. It’s as if your entire history begins and ends with those years you spent in English prisons. Well, that was thirteen years ago, Gruffydd, and my patience has at last run out.” Senena was tugging frantically at Gruffydd’s arm. “Do not argue with him, love, I beg you. Do not say what you may later regret!” Gruffydd ignored her, did not even hear her. “Your patience? What of mine? You talk of making excuses for me. What do you think I’ve had to do for you? I’ve watched for years as you shamed yourself, shamed us all, watched and could do nothing about it. I do not know why this last surrender surprised me so. You’re so eager to stay in the good graces of the English King that nothing else matters to you…least of all, pride. I once accused her”—he pointed toward Joanna—“of bewitching you, and you denied it. But how else explain your actions? You demean yourself before the English King, allow de Burgh and Pembroke to humiliate you, to—” “That is enough, Gruffydd!” “What do you call it, if not humiliation? You can posture all you want, boast that you’re a brother sovereign of the Scots King, but the truth is that you’ve shackled us to the English throne, made us vassals of John’s son. And yet we’re likely to look back upon your reign as the Golden Age of Gwynedd, in comparison with what would befall us under Davydd! Christ, Papa, you must see him for what he is, a craven weakling, a pampered milksop who’d panic at the first hint of trouble, and yet you’d have him over me! You’d forsake your firstborn, abandon our ancient laws of inheritance, and all to please a Norman-French bedmate!” “I do see Davydd for what he is, and I see you for what you are, irresponsible and willful and foolish beyond belief. You talk of governing Gwynedd, and yet you cannot even govern your own temper. You’re a child, Gruffydd, a child at two and thirty, and it is time you faced the truth. I would never have turned Gwynedd over to you. Should evil befall Davydd in my lifetime, I’ll choose Tegwared then, or even Adda’s son. But not you, never you, for you’d blunder into a war you could never win, destroy the work of a lifetime in less than a twelvemonth.” Gruffydd was stunned. “You’d do that? You’d truly choose Tegwared over me?” “Yes.” Llewelyn’s voice was very cold. “If it came to that, I would.”