Not a Pretty Girl

Three Books

So far I’ve read three of my five books for October and I’ve loved them all, but for different reasons.

The first book I read was Jo Walton’s Half a Crown. This is the third (and final) book in her Small Change series, of which I am a tremendous fan. The series is incredibly dark and disturbing and every time I finish a book I say, “Poor Carmichael.” There’s is hope at the end of the third book–to say anything more would be a spoiler–but I still said, “Poor Carmichael.” Walton’s such a fantastic writer–she shifts between first and third person narration seamlessly and her three female narrators (Lucy, Viola, and Elvira) all have very different voices, even as they’re caught up in the same nightmare as Carmichael. It’s very satisfying to see all the pieces fit together at the end of each book, even as you’re cringing at the result–Walton never flinches. These are, I think, important books. They are a warning of what can happen if we give in to fear. I will probably never reread them. I don’t know if I can bear to.

The second book is The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson, final book in the Mistborn Trilogy. I love Sanderson’s fantasy so very much–I am not a fan of Robert Jordan at all, but I feel pretty confident that he’s going to do a great job with the last book in the Wheel of Time series. He knows what’s what in epic fantasy. His world-building is intricate, logical, and consistent. He doesn’t have an overwhelming cast of characters, but he has enough so that there’s a good variety and they’re all distinct. The magical systems are really interesting and well thought out. And the very best part of all? He knows what all the tropes and cliches are in this particular sub-genre and he goes to town with turning them all upside down. It’s really fun to watch the plot unfold and you say to yourself, “Self, he can’t possibly be going there,” but then he does and he makes it work. So often these days epic fantasy seems to be a synonym for “big fat books with a million characters where it takes 300 pages for them to walk across town”, but I guarantee you that not a single page is wasted in the Mistborn Trilogy.

Finally, the last book I’ve read is Mercedes Lackey’s Foundation. It’s a Valdemar book about the founding of the Heraldic Collegium (first in a trilogy if I’m not mistaken–Lackey’s website is woefully out of date). And if this book were fan fiction, it would be of the flavor known as “crack fic”. Because it is compulsively readable and there’s a metric ass-ton of coincidences and guess what? I. Don’t. Care. I love the sentient telepathic white horses (er, Companions), I love the complete and total improbability of the plot line (our Hero is an abused child laborer at the start of the book and a trusted Herald Trainee by the end), and I love the complete and total wish fulfillment of it all. Everyone needs to read a fluffy candy coated book once in a while and there’s no shame whatsoever in indulging.

And not only do I need to write reviews of these books, I need to assign a rating to each one. I don’t get a lot of words to actually say what I think of the books–what I’ve said about each one above is more than I have space for in RT, because I need to do plot summary, too–so it’s complicated and a bit difficult. If I give them all the same rating–I did, after all, love them all–I’m somehow implying that they’re interchangeable when they’re not, but if I don’t then I feel like I’m making some sort of value judgment on the type of books they are, when they’re each a very fine example of their particular sub-category.

That’s probably the part that’s really frustrating–I don’t want to fall into the rut of liking every thing I read so much that I want to give them all 4.5 and 4 stars, but I also don’t want to downrank a book for a something that may technically be a flaw but that also may also be something that is expected in the type of book that it is. I’m not grading papers, I’m reviewing books for people who are pretty damn hardcore readers with a wide variety of tastes and preferences (this is where the tired phrase “fans of $foo will enjoy this book by $bar” comes into play).

And honestly, it’s really unusual for me to have a month where I absolutely love the majority of the books I’m reviewing. It’s more likely that I’ll feel sort of neutral towards most of them with one or two standouts. I’ve found that it’s a lot easier to write a review about a book I’m neutral towards than about one I absolutely love or hate.

Posted in Reviewing, SF/F | No Comments »

La di da!

My husband and my oldest (and most beloved) cat were briefly famous on the internets. That is, a picture I took of them madethe front page of I Can Has Cheezburger?:

more cat pictures

We were way more excited about it than we probably should have been.

Whereas all I have to console myself with is a profile in the August issue of Romantic Times. I’m on page 16. I have obtained copies for everyone in my family. SHUT UP.

The last couple of evenings I’ve been working to get all my CDs digitized. Six years ago when I left Nebraska, I had really limited space for non-essentials so what I did was put all my favorite songs on MP3 CDs–which means that I have bits and pieces of lots of albums. Then, after I got my first iBook, I had a pretty small hard drive. And my second iBook wasn’t a whole lot better in terms of disk space. Now that I have a machine with a 500 GB hard drive and room for at least two more (I think, the video card is really honking huge so I may only have space to plug in one more SATA cable) as well as a 500 GB external drive (used for backups), I’ve decided to digitize the rest of them.

Apparently when I was in college I had a thing for buying EPs/CD singles. I have two different versions of R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” CD single. I have at least 3 Nine Inch Nails EPs with multiple mixes of different songs from Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral (the latter of which I have yet to find). Do I need a song called “March of the Fuckheads”? Probably not, but I have it. Go me, I suppose.

I’ve been playing with the Spore Creature Creator quite a bit (my handle on the Spore community site is the usual) and I’ve managed to achieve one of my goals in World of Warcraft–obtain a silly title for my character:

As a casual player (and some would call me a scrub since I don’t devote my every waking free hour to playing), this one was the most easily obtained. The other two PVE titles (Champion of the Naaru and Hand of A’dal) require participation in 25-man raids and I don’t have the time to commit to that sort of thing. I like not having to log on every night. I like that no one’s depending on me to show up except for those events that I specifically commit myself to–and right now, that’s one 10-man a week. For a long time, I wanted to be in a raiding guild that was focused on endgame progression and I’ve found that I’m generally happier if I don’t put that sort of pressure or expectation on myself. My next goal in-game is to get exalted with the Darkspear Troll faction so I can get a dinosaur mount.

And just for fun, here’s my current interface (I use a compilation called ArkiveUI):

I feel so intensely nerdy now. Woot.

Posted in General | 2 Comments »

O hai!

I’m not dead, just busy and without a whole lot going on that I feel like talking about publicly.

I went to the Romantic Times convention in Pittsburgh which was a lot of fun.  It was crazy, weird, and even though I hate flying I”m seriously considering getting on one so I can go to the convention next year (it’s in Orlando).  I’ve also updated my list of books I’ve reviewed–with links to the actual reviews on RT’s website.

I bought a second spinning wheel and have been working a fair amount on that.  I’ve done a lot of reading.  I bought a new computer–or, rather, I bought all the components for a computer and a friend assembled them into a computer for me.  It is the most awesome computer that I’ve ever owned.

Consequently, I’ve been playing a lot of videogames.  It’s so nice to be able to play World of Warcraft on a computer that gets more than 5 fps in highly congested zones–it’s like a completely different game.  I’ve also been playing Hellgate: London which, despite being a bit flawed, is still a hell of a lot of fun.  I’m really looking forward to Spore in a couple of months and I am really geeked at the announcement that there’s going to be a Diablo III.

Life in general continues to be fantastic and I love the whole world.  Or at least most of it.

Posted in General, Reviewing | 1 Comment »

New glasses!

After over 4 years of the same boring brown metal glasses, I got new ones yesterday:

Shiny! Red! These frames are actually a bit bigger than my old pair–the same height, but wider. And they sit higher on my nose, which is interesting. I’m still adjusting to them, but I like them lots–a definite improvement over the old pair, which had been in desperate need of replacement for quite some time.

As for what else has been going on… Life continues to be pretty darned good. I’m going to Pittsburgh in a few weeks for the RT convention, which should be a good deal of fun (and a bit daunting!), the day job is chugging along, and there’s really not a whole lot of excitement. Which, honestly, is how I like things. (Which is not to say that my life is boring, because it’s not, it’s just that there’s no drama eating up my energy. My life is a no-drama zone, dammit.)

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

What we did over the weekend

We made bacon ice cream.

See?

We used this recipe, with only two modifications: we swapped one of the cups of cream for half and half because the other time I made ice cream with 3 cups of cream, there was an thin layer of butterfat left on the spoon after ingestion, and we used about three quarter cup of bacon instead of half a cup.

We also made a very simple maple cream sauce to put on top: Combine one cup maple syrup (the real stuff!) with one half cup cream, boil until it hits the soft ball stage (240^F, 115^C), stir like the dickens for a minute, add one teaspoon vanilla.  You do need to heat it up a bit before drizzling over the ice cream, otherwise it won’t drizzle, it’ll just sort of glop.  It’s really rich, so you don’t need much.

The most interesting thing about the concept of bacon ice cream is the fact that the base ice cream is incredibly sweet, much sweeter than you’d want to eat normally.  So you need the savory saltiness of the bacon to balance that out.

It really is quite a magnificent dessert.   Daleks like it, too.

Posted in General | 2 Comments »

More bullet points!

Life continues, with a few bobbles here and there, to be good. In no particular order:

• I got a new monitor at work. It’s really, really nice. (The fabulous red stapler was a Christmas gift from two of my favorite people. I’m very fortunate in the company I keep these days.)
• I had a bad head cold, but due to pseudoephedrine now being a regulated substance, I was able to buy OTC drugs to control the symptoms. Hellooooooo NyQuil! Nice to meet you!
• Due to my immune system being worn out from the cold (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it), I got my very first UTI this week. I went to the doctor and got antibiotics. I also bought some OTC stuff to help with the symptoms.
• The OTC stuff has turned my pee bright orange and for whatever reason, I’m finding it really entertaining. (Easily entertained, oh yes.)
• I’ve been poking along, slowly and badly, at some thread crochet. I keep screwing up and having to rip, so the chances of actually finishing a doily are pretty small at this point.
• I’ve been following the Cassie Edwards plagiarism case with a good deal of horrified fascination.
• I’m going to the Romantic Times Convention in Pittsburgh. It should be interesting. It will, however, be the first time I’ll be staying more than one night in a row in a hotel. I’m 33 years old and I’ve never had a vacation that wasn’t spent crashing with friends or family. I’m not sure what that says, honestly.
• Ken Jennings has a blog and it’s consistently funny and entertaining. He seems to have the right sort of perspective and personality for his odd sort of quasi-fame. Also, he was the college roommate of one of my favorite newer SF/F writers, Brandon Sanderson, so that’s totally another point in his favor.
• Seriously, Brandon Sanderson’s stuff is brilliant. Mistborn was one of my favorite books of 2006, I can’t recommend it highly enough (it is the first book in a trilogy, the last book will be out next year). He’s doing all sorts of fascinating things with standard tropes in epic fantasy–Mistborn, for instance, is about a peasant uprising that succeeds and the second book, The Well of Ascension, is what happens after the dust settles and the peasants have to govern themselves–among other things, of course. I can’t wait to see what tricks he pulls out of his hat for the third book. I’m a bit less enthused about his being chosen to finish the Wheel of Time series–mainly because I never read beyond the first book, so it’s not something I’m particularly interested in reading (or reviewing, for that matter). It’s a great opportunity for Sanderson, though, so I hope he’s able to pull it off to his and the fans’ satisfaction.
• Speaking of reviewing, the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award nominees have been made public. I helped put together the nominees for Science Fiction, Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, and Urban Fantasy. I have no idea who is going to win. (The way it works is that I’ll let them know my pick in each category in which I have nominees and then there will likely be some discussion until a winner is determined. Winners will be announced at a luncheon during the convention.)
• This made me laugh more than it probably should have.

…and I think that’s it, really. Woo.

Posted in Books, General, Reviewing, SF/F | 1 Comment »

“You were the soundtrack to my life.”

(The street I lived on from January 1987 until I went to college in August 1992; I was there for breaks from school until August 1995, but it was never really home after 1992, not really.)

In 1987, I discovered Europe. Not the continent, the band.

And I fell in love.

Now, I know that some people think that they’re terribly cheesy and in a lot of ways, I’d agree. (I’d argue, though, that musically they were no worse than any of their contemporaries in their peculiar little subgenre and in many cases they’re better.) Their songs are often mawkish, awkward, derivative and plain difficult to listen to now, 20 years later. On The Final Countdown album, in addition to the title track, there’s a power ballad about some girl named Carrie, one about rocking the night away (the video for that one is in a Hard Rock Cafe), a song about the Cherokee tribe and one about ninjas. Yes, ninjas. Also a song that might about bloody highway death or beating up a mugger on a running track, I’m not completely sure–and that’s after reading the lyrics.

But you know what? It doesn’t matter that the songs are, essentially, Velveeta.

In 1987, I was 13. We’d just moved from the Tidewater area of Virginia to the northern Detroit suburbs. I felt more out of place and unpopular than I probably was, but I do know this: I was deeply unhappy and remained so for a long time. My parents’ marriage was clearly going down the tubes, I was having to spend a lot of time with my father’s family–none of whom seemed to understand me–and I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on (as all 13 year olds do, really).

One of the few bright things in all of that teenaged angst (and compared to what I’d go through a few years later, that angst was nothing) was my small pile of cassette tapes which I’d saved nickels, dimes, and quarters for–Europe, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Guns ‘N Roses. I didn’t get an allowance, so anything I wanted to buy extra for myself had to be bought from lunch money leftovers, hence the scraping together of the loose change. So those six months when my mother thought she’d taken them away from me? I was totally sneaking them into my room and listening on the sly (while reading her romance novels, she was particularly fond of ones featuring sheikhs and hapless English lasses). I was also able to circumvent the parental lock she’d put on MTV because it made me grumpy. Looking back, I’m pretty sure it’s being a teenager that was making me grumpy, not Adam Curry and his big hair.

Of them all, Europe was my favorite, though. I’m not completely sure why, but possibly because of all the hair bands that were getting a lot of radio play at the time, they were the least popular and who doesn’t love an underdog? I do know this, though: they were the first music that I had that was mine that wasn’t my parents’, wasn’t my sister’s. Mine.

In many ways, Europe was my first fandom. I bought magazines with interviews and pictures of them–my bedroom wall was plastered with Joey Tempest’s face; I had all their albums, even their eponymous self-titled debut which, at the time, was nearly impossible to get in the US (my copy was a vinyl LP); and then there’s this little fact: I wrote execrable fan fiction about them. Which has disappeared into the ether forever and ever amen and thank God, because what I remember about it is truly cringe-worthy. It’s one of the little ironies of my life that I lived on Mary Sue Street at the time.

And you know, I stuck with them for years, before moving onto more socially acceptable bands: R.E.M., Guadalcanal Diary, Indigo Girls, The Connells, Ani Difranco, John Wesley Harding. But always, there in the back of the cassette collection, then the CD collection, and now the MP3 collection, was Europe. I’d pull the songs out once in a while for a listen, and initially, it was in an ironic sort of way. But now? I listen to Europe because I like them, because in a dark time their music brought a little light to my life and it does me good to remember that.

One of the most interesting things about Europe, though, is that they really do seem to get what it’s like to be a fan–one of the singles from their 2004 album is a song about how they were fans of Thin Lizzy back in the 70’s and how much that band meant to them–and there’s something just so earnest and fannish about that and how can you not love them for it?

(Also, I’m totally convinced that Joey Tempest likes SF/F. It’s a persistent theme throughout their music from the 80’s, I mean, “The Final Countdown” is about space travel! To Venus! Many light years to go! Things to be found! Totally science fiction!)

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

Update

Well.  I am a terrible blogger.  Not really, I just tend to do most of my writing behind the mighty friends lock over at LiveJournal.  And we won’t talk about the posts here that I started and never finished.  So, a summary:

•  Life is really fucking amazing right now.  There is so much shininess going on that it completely blows my mind sometimes.  I’m still not sure what I’ve done to deserve it, but I am certainly grateful.  “It’s fate, but call it Italy if it pleases you, vicar.”
• I had a very nice birthday.  I’m 33 now.
• I’m very happy that Old Navy has extended their range of plus size clothing available online.  I know a lot of folks are upset and angry that the plus line isn’t available in the stores, but I’m not one of those people.  Cause, see, when it was available in the stores, they didn’t carry my size.  Now they do.
• My college roommate has a blog and it’s very entertaining.  Y’all should go read it.  All three of you, that is.
• Work chugs along, work-like.  I’ve resolved to actually look for something new after New Year’s, instead of just talking about it.  We shall see if it actually happens.
• I’m still playing a bit of Warcraft, but not nearly as much as I used to.  I tried the progression raiding thing and it just wasn’t for me–too much of a time commitment.  I’m much happier playing a handful of hours here and there with friends.
• I’ve made a few tentative forays into Second Life, but the interface is awful and it often makes me feel stupid.  And I’m just not sure what to do there.  My avatar is awfully cute, though, for one that’s decked out all freebies.
• We don’t have any big fancy plans for the holidays, which is really my preference.  I haven’t started present shopping at all, and in fact, I’m pretty much stumped as to what I want to get anyone.  And I really don’t see that particular state of affairs changing.  Meh.

Posted in General | 2 Comments »

So.

It seems as if I’m not nearly in as bad of health as I thought I was, had convinced myself that I was.  Went to the doctor and had a complete workup.  And, well, it’s interesting.  Everything is pretty much normal.  My blood pressure is on the tippy top end of normal/low end of high (but the doctor doesn’t seem terribly concerned) and I seem to have mild-to-moderate sleep apnea for which my doctor is willing to explore alternative treatment options, but other than that?  Normal.  Normal, normal, normal. Well, what passes for normal within the medical establishment.

And I seem to have randomly picked a great doctor, too.  I don’t have to weigh and I don’t get pushback on not weighing and she’s only mentioned my weight twice: once when she asked me if I was interested in weight loss and again when she mentioned that she’d like to get me on a CAT cat scan check out my headaches and the machines often have a weight limit.  Other than that, nothing.

And it’s weird.  Since I’ve found out that all my “numbers” are “normal”, I’ve felt a hell of a lot better.  The troubling symptoms I was having have pretty much gone away completely.  I’m still out of shape and not eating as well as I could be, but those things will come.  One of the big things that was stressing me out is gone, and I’ve been working to mitigate the other stressful things in my life, too–having my own car has been a huge relief in so many ways, the big one being that I can leave work whenever I want to.  It’s just really strange–the more I convinced myself that I wasn’t well, the less well I felt.  And now that I know that my body is, overall, in pretty good shape all things considered, I’m feeling much more well.  It’s an interesting thing to see how the mind can definitely influence the body in some ways.

I also think it helps that other aspects of my life are decidedly rosier now than they were even six months ago–I’ve had a pretty rough year in a lot of ways, and it’s extraordinarily nice to be coming out on the other side of it intact and a lot wiser.

Posted in Fat Revolution | No Comments »

Disturbing Yet Awesome

When we went to hang out with our friends Donna and Garrett last week, they loaned us a few things.  One of these things was Paul Anka’s Rock Swings. And it is the most disturbing–yet awesome–album ever.

You haven’t lived until you’ve heard a big band version of “Black Hole Sun”.  Or “Eye of the Tiger”.  Or “It’s a Sin”.

Really.

Posted in General | 1 Comment »