|
|
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
| |
10:07 pm - Black Moon Over Alcatraz
|
Black Magic Woman, by Justin Gustainis
This book went through all the right steps in the right order, but I was unimpressed by the dance as a whole, somehow. It's perfectly serviceable urban fantasy, nothing I can point at to say, "*That* right there was the problem," but our relationship was flat and lacking in passion. It's not you, book, it's me.
(85/300)
Blue Moon over Thurman Street, by Ursula K. LeGuin and Roger Dorband
An excellent book for reading-and-walking. Thurman Street is a street in Portland that LeGuin'd been walking for years, and so this is a book of Dorband's pictures of it (late 80s, early 90s, with some earlier than that) and her spontaneous-seeming poems about the pictures and the odd bit of oral history and some bits of Bhagavad Gita sprinkled in for flavor.
(86/300)
Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians, by Brandon Sanderson
Silly books written for kids are either really good or really lame, and I think this is one of the really good ones. People who were disappointed in the Artemis Fowl series would probably like this book; people who were disappointed in the Series of Unfortunate Events would probably like it too. Personally, I liked both those series, and I still think this one's the bomb. I hope he can sustain the wonderful narrative voice in the sequels. The constructedness that is a flaw in Sanderson's adult novels has been transformed into a virtue of this one.
(87/300)
current mood: so far behind! how to make 150 by the end of june?!!?!?
current music: people in GTA4 yelling at each other
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, May 20th, 2008
| |
4:27 pm - The Cruellest Aviary
|
The Aviary Gate, by Katie Hickman
So not only did Bloomsbury give me this book because they are awesome - they gave me the real book and not just an ARC. All shiny and hardcovered with a lovely odalisque on the dustjacket. Yay Bloomsbury! Bloomsbury rocks. Also, the book was grand fun; both the historical and contemporary strands of the tale were engrossing and sweet and skillfully written, with moving characterization and nice solid concrete descriptions, and the plot was tastily twisty while still somehow being predictable enough to feel mythic and soothing, and while I know very little about the habits of British academics, and even less about the Turkish sultanate of the 16th century, everything rang true. This was very hard to put down. Highly recommended to fans of historical fiction with a touch of the dreamy-eyed about them.
(83/300)
The Cruellest Month, by Louise Penny
The first two books in this series bowled me over, and this one wasn't quite that good. A little too disjointed, perhaps? Or maybe there were too many people crowded into the story. However, it was still a top-run mystery novel, full of tasty things, and the ending was not only a satisfying resolution for the individual book, but also for an arc that hard started back with the initial story, Still Life. Ending multi-book arcs is hard, and Penny did so very well. Hope she has more novels in her, and that they go back to being incredible all through rather than patchily.
(84/300)
current mood: lazy yet productive
current music: The Duhks, "Greenfields of Glentown"
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| |
9:32 am - kitty update
|
Angry Squirrel (the one who dropped crab apples on my own cat's head when she tried to sun herself out there, until I gave him a stern talking-to - albeit an admiring stern talking-to, the nearest crabapple tree is a block away) is Most Displeased that I am not only feeding cats in HIS backyard, but I am feeding two of them at once.
PutativeDadCat came in to the yard this morning, I surprised him by dropping some food down, he hid in the bushes, I left to make breakfast, he came out and was eating the food by the time my breakfast was ready. I came out on the porch, he saw me and left, leaving about 1/2 the food behind. Angry Squirrel started chittering about 10 minutes later so I looked out through the door sneakily, and la, Mama Cat was eating all the remaining food while PDC looked on and licked his chops. Once the food was all gone I dropped another can out there, they both hid in separate bushes and watched me (PDC with an appraising look, Mama with a 'hope she doesn't know I'm here' look) and then when I went back in and peeked from the door, they were both eating away while Angry Squirrel perched safely about 12 feet up our big ash tree and read them their rights non-stop. He's still out there yelling, and it's been about a half hour. I find this interesting because he never cared they were there before I started feeding them...
current mood: when I'm excited, I comma splice
current music: dryer noises
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Sunday, May 18th, 2008
| |
9:19 pm - oh dear
|
So, the pair of feral cats that've been hanging out in our backyard for the past month or so as the neighborhood cats are wont to do? The ones we were ignoring since a) it was fairly likely they actually belonged to one of our neighbors seeing as everyone lets their cats run loose around here (not us! but many of our neighbors do) and b) they were very skittish, very healthy, and mostly just seemed to want to be left alone to sun themselves? The ones we were certainly *not* feeding and *not* trying to befriend? The ones that seemed to have their home base in the storage shed belonging to the neighbors in back of us, whom I don't think actually live in their house but I'm really not *sure*, so I don't want to go back in there in case I get shot?
Are in fact a family of feral cats, with three kittens that look to be no more than a few weeks old. Bloody hell. Mama, Papa, and all 3 babies *do* look fit as fiddles though, we got a good look at them through our basement windows which are at ground level - they were only a couple of feet away. Mama Cat also seems to be a good mother, as when she spied us looking at her she immediately stood up and put her front legs in front of the still-nursing kittens in a wary-not-aggressive-but-protective fashion. Then once we left the window, she'd moved them away out of the backyard within 10 minutes of us stopping watching them.
So the new strategy is to go out on the back porch (about 8 feet higher than the kitties), which seems to be the only way of approaching them that doesn't make them run off, and let down some food to them. And otherwise try to win their hearts and make them trust us, so that eventually we can catch them all and get them spayed/neutered. And probably try to socialize/tame the kittens and make them housecats, in the long run. But for now, we're just thinking it's ONE thing not to feed random strange cats in one's back yard, and another thing not to feed a nursing mother...
I recognize that there are a lot of strong philosophical arguments for doing things differently, but I'm not really that interested in hearing them... I looked that mama cat in the eyes and I don't think I could bring myself to take her babies away from her. She's been doing a very good job, far as I can tell, and I just want to make things as safe for them as possible in this all-too-contingent world.
Practical advice, though, would be appreciated.
current mood: bemused
current music: "Spreadin' Rhythm Around," Billie Holiday (Lady Bug remix)
|
|
(10 comments | comment on this)
|
| |
7:56 pm - Prince Caspian
|
They've figured out how to do Narnia movies, I think. This movie was farther up and farther in than the last one.
(I wept through the entire closing credits.)
current mood: to the quick
current music: Carbon Leaf, "Let Your Troubles Roll By"
|
|
(6 comments | comment on this)
|
| Saturday, May 17th, 2008
| |
7:44 pm - incidentally?
|
|
| |
3:19 pm - Riding with Sharp Lavinia; Bitten Lying Captivity
|
|
| Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
| |
11:54 pm - sometimes you just want something where you know how it works
|
The Bishop at the Lake, by Andrew M. Greeley
I'm not sure if I'm getting more demanding or if these aren't as good as they used to be - or maybe it's got more to do with the circumstances under which I was reading this one ... but even still, it was a fun, quick read, very good for shutting out the last couple of very stressful days in 15-30 minute snatches. Even when I'm a little frustrated with certain aspects of his writing, I still feel very happy reading it.
(76/300)
current mood: tired and charmed
current music: "I Like to Move It Move It"
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Sunday, May 11th, 2008
| |
1:50 am - music as autobiography, some more
|
I just realized the reason I love Liz Phair's song "Perfect World" so much is that if I'd heard it when I was about fifteen or sixteen, some part of me would've sat up and said "OMG MY SONG IS WROTE OMG TEH BRILLYENZ!!!!" And even if I never feel that way now, my inner tenth-grader's still in there somewhere, you know? And it gives a lot of extra resonance to a song that really isn't about me in any immediate way.
PS Yeah, yeah, I know nobody was speaking in LOLcat in 1993. Cut me some slack, man.
current mood: cool, tall, vulnerable, and luscious. sorta.
current music: BIG, "Niggas Bleed," actually. But I'll probably go back to "Perfect World" when it's over
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Saturday, May 10th, 2008
| |
8:49 pm - oh, yeah, I read another book
|
Stelaluna, by Janell Cannon (spanish version)
I never read this in English, so I had no idea what was going to happen. It was pretty cute. And I figured out about 90 percent of the text, without a dictionary. Go me! One of these days I will work my way up to La trompeta del cisne, I will, I will!
(75/300)
current mood: clever like a monkey
current music: Gamelan Tunas Mekar, "Puspanjali"
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Friday, May 9th, 2008
| |
10:39 am - you've got mysteries you can't hide
|
Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow
So I either want my werewolf books to move fast and have a gripping plot, or to have compelling characterization, or to be lyrically & powerfully written. Sometimes I get lucky and get all three (cf. A Companion to Wolves), but mostly I'm happy to settle for one of those. The problem I had with this book is that I get splashes of all three things I want, but not any one of them all the way through. This is not to say it's a bad book; it's not, I rather enjoyed it. But I ...
I think it's because it's written as blank verse, and thus bumps up against my Extremely Demanding Poetry Standards. If you want me to read your poem, it damn well better be polished and repolished and every damn word better be exactly the right word and you better have agonized over euphonic word choice vs. clarity of meaning for every. single. word. you. put. down. Or something close to that. I really don't think a novel about werewolves in modern L.A. should have to stand up to that kind of scrutiny, but the choice of format triggers my most precise attention. And that's an awfully high bar to clear, over the course of 308 pages. Still and all, the tasty bits were more than worth the bits where I wanted wanted wanted it to live up to its potential a little bit more. And the plot/story/characters were interesting enough that I'll keep reading Barlow's stuff, should he make more of it.
( Here are some random tasty bits, so you can see what I mean. The book had lots more than these though. Loved the Coyote/prime mover thread, frex. )
(74/300)
current mood: possibly waking up
current music: Corinne Bailey Rae, "I'm Losing You"
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Thursday, May 8th, 2008
| |
10:51 pm - I really do need to read more Iain Banks, I know
|
"it felt like faith, like revelation: that things went on, that life ground on regardless,
and mindless, and produced pain and pleasure and hope and fear and joy and despair,
and you dodged some of it and you sought some of it and sometimes you were lucky
and sometimes you weren’t, and sometimes you could plan your way ahead and that
would be the right thing to have done, but other times all you could do was forget about
plans and just be ready to react, and sometimes the obvious was true and sometimes it
wasn’t, and sometimes experience helped but not always, and it was all luck, fate, in the
end; you lived, and you waited to see what happened, and you would rarely ever be sure
that what you had done was really the right thing or the wrong thing, because things can
always be better, and things can always be worse."
- Iain Banks, from Espedor Street, as quoted by Mike Higton
current mood: thinking thinky thoughts
current music: Green Day, "Working Class Hero"
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| |
10:05 pm - fyi
|
My hairs are approximately 1.5 inches long at the present time.
(A couple people've asked.)
current mood:  amused
current music: R.E.M., "#9 Dream"
|
|
(16 comments | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
| |
10:42 pm - lazy traditional subject haiku
|
crabapple blossoms
still wet with the morning's rain
anoint eager lips
current mood:  thoughtful
current music: Rose Cousins, "Lost in the Valley"
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| |
10:39 pm - Midnight Kinki Animal Reading Bonk
|
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt
This was a lot of fun. A lot of terribly engaging secondary characters. Not sure it would've gotten published as nonfiction these days, despite prominent disclaimers. Want to go reread Lady Chablis' autobiography now.
(69/300)
Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States, edited by Thomas Augst and Kenneth Carpenter
Fairly academic in tone, but full of interesting tidbits of information, even for a more general reader. Loved the articles on African-American reading rooms and on Marianne Moore & Nella Larsen...
(70/300)
The Animal Dialogues, by Craig Childs
I started reading this book, was irritated by the author's narrative voice, wandered off, and came back a month later to fall in love. Full of poetry and sharp observation - and the author is one of those people who takes all sorts of risks I find appealing but choose not to take, and then comes back and writes stories down for my voracious reading pleasure. I have no idea what I thought I was reading first time around - something more pretentious and less grounded, maybe?
(71/300)
Kinki Lullaby, by Isaac Adamson
Enjoyable mystery, latest in a series starring Billy Chaka, gaijin journalist writing for fans of Asian youth culture. I sort of felt like it was trying too hard or something; it didn't have the hallucinatorily lovely quality that I vaguely remember from, say, Dreaming Pachinko - but I still read it in about a day, and it was yummy. Just a tiny bit ... by the numbers, I guess.
(72/300)
Bonk, by Mary Roach
The doyenne of highly-informative research-dense black comedy takes on the world of sex science. If you like her stuff, you'll like this; if you haven't read any of her stuff, start with Stiff (unless you're really interested in sex research, then you probably want to read this anyway). I'm not sure I liked this as much as her other two, but that might just be because I was more well-informed about the field to start with... less 'oooo, really?!?' going on.
(73/300)
current mood: post sugar-high
current music: Utah Saints, "What Can You Do For Me?"
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Monday, May 5th, 2008
| |
10:04 am - oh the pretty
|
University College London Neuroscience has a new website up, UCL Views, and it sports some LOVELY LOVELY neuron pictures. Go look. (props to Neurophilosophy, who posted this first)
current mood: lucky
current music: "Precious Stones," Frank Trainor
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Sunday, May 4th, 2008
| |
9:43 pm - I'm not a runner, but this is beautiful
|
Richard Wilbur on Johnny Kelley:
Legs driving, fists at port, clenched faces, men,
And in amongst them, stamping on the sun,
Our champion Kelley, who would win again,
Rocked in his will, at rest within his run.
(ganked from Hugo Schwyzer, who frequently posts excellent poetry and who tends to exasperate me in useful ways. Er, not that he exasperates me all that often. Mostly I just think he's interesting.)
current mood: relaxed
current music: Rose Cousins, "If You Were For Me"
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| |
12:03 pm - mary, mary
|
So today I was going to sleep in no matter what, since my last several attempts at such had been inadvertantly foiled by the well-meaning. ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) birdmojo very considerately got up and went downstairs at 7ish, without even waking me. And then my internal alarm clock went off at the completely unusual time of 7:55 and demanded I get up and start doing stuff already. So far today, I have: gone out for breakfast, read the last 3/4 of one of the half-dozen books I was in the middle of, practiced my saxophone, and washed the dishes. In a little bit, I think I will do laundry and either finish another book or maybe sew and watch the rest of the Branagh _Hamlet_.
I'm so blessed contrary I won't even do what I tell me to.
current mood: bemused
current music: "Still Alive" which is now stuck in my head THANKS FISH
|
|
(6 comments | comment on this)
|
| Saturday, May 3rd, 2008
| |
11:47 pm - thermopylae, kind of
|
I was walking home tonight and I stopped at a corner and a firetruck came flashing past all lights and sirens and then almost immediately slowed to a crawl right in front of me. What the hell, man? And then I saw a black dog in front of the firetruck, barking and hopping and generally giving the firetruck what for. Half-lab, half-something-rather-bigger, but totally dwarfed by this huge red fire engine. The firetruck crawled down to the next corner, dog raising a ruckus and nipping tires the whole way, and then pulled over and stopped. I don't know what happened next, but the firetruck pulled out, turned a corner, and took off hellbent for leather again.
I continued walking, kind of worried about the dog, but, you know, not worried enough to go check up on a dog that was already known to be just a wee bit aggressive. About half a block further on, the dog came tearing along the sidewalk, skippin' and hoppin' and prancin' and yippin' and obviously delighted with himself. He did all the puppy play behaviors I've ever seen in one glorious rush, and waggle-tailed around me for a bit after that, trying to get me to chase him. I just barely managed to fight off the urge to race him into next week; he eventually peed on the nearest 5 or 6 trees and then zoomed off down an alley.
It was a beautiful thing. So much joy, so completely absurd.
current mood: charmed
current music: Teresa Bernard, "Out on the Mira"
|
|
(4 comments | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
| |
8:51 pm - how did it take me until now to read this?
|
The Iron Dragon's Daughter, by Michael Swanwick
This is exactly the sort of book I like, gritty and thorough and so full of interesting ideas that you can't help thinking, 'hey, wait, I want more of that part!' from time to time. And told straightforwardly enough to be read while sick, but still dense and lush and full of tasty odd words and complicated sentences.
Except, that's not all. And I can't get at what I really want to say about this book, what really matters about it, because I'm sick and my brain is uncooperative, but it has something to do with it being a lot more morally complicated than most of the books I read. Not *darker*, I've read lots of things this dark, some things darker, but just ... the dark things are dark because dark things shouldn't be left out of something true; they make the story *realler*, rather than being there to be transformative or exciting or triumphed-over or shown-to-not-really-be-dark or ... bah, can't splain it, brain too fuzzed. If you just go and read it, you'll either see or you won't. Hm. Maybe?
Also, the pale man's story was something else - that's the point from which I couldn't put the book down ... though I did fall asleep for about 30 minutes with it still in my hands at one point. Woke up, kept reading. Glad to have this one in my brain.
(68/300)
current mood: still wobbly
current music: Vixy & Tony, "Erased"
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
|
|
|