Birdwings

So, in my infinite wisdom, all my winterizing prep (getting firewood stockpiled, skirting the house, putting a new rug on bare floor) did not take into account the concept of drafts. The house has begun to leak like a sieve, and since the mild autumn (for which I was grateful every day) was replaced with instant heavy snowfall and below zero wind-chill on December 2nd, this has not been a fun week.

However, on the good side, the shock effect from last winter (where every day felt like three) has worn off and time is moving at a more normal pace. So the blast of cold misery will be over before I know it.

Things I've been doing, to relax during the cold mornings and evenings under blankets, include:

Discography dives. I used to do that for fun as a teen, and I've taken it up again, because everything is available online, and it's fun to have context and actually form an opinion. So far I've done Buffalo Springfield and half of Simon & Garfunkel, writing my impressions in a wordpad doc. I did check to see if there's a music community on DW, so I could post them, but nothing looks like a good fit.

Reading fic. For the past year I have read next to nothing, but I've finally found myself in the mentality to enjoy it properly, so I'm getting back into that. And the Shortcuts stories will be available soon. I don't regret sitting this year out, it was absolutely the right decision for me, but commenting on everything will give me the chance to say hi, anyway.

Writing fic. I have this forlorn ambition to actually finish both Sidelined and Counterclaims this month. I doubt it will happen, but I'm trying to treat it like a real deadline, because that busts up my usual procrastination and makes words happen.

I would also really like to finish reading Dune this month. I respect it, but I've also discovered that I don't actually enjoy worldbuilding. I love lore on TV shows because it's a spaghetti disaster with dozens of inputs that often contradict each other. It provides me a mental workout trying to make sense of nonsense.

Book lore is the work of one vision. The heavy lifting is done and there's nothing to parse. Unless the writer is incompetent, I guess (which Frank Herbert isn't). It's a superior medium for worldbuilding, but it turns out I don't actually care about any of that stuff. I don't want an encyclopedia, glossary and map - that takes all the fun out of it.

One time we were having dinner with David's daughter and somehow The Outsiders came up in conversation. I had never read it. "Stay gold, Ponyboy," she said, and moved on to another topic. The phrase stuck with me.

Well, I've read it now. As the plot took shape, I began to strongly suspect the quote would turn out to be the ( spoilery ) moment of the book, and I guessed it exactly right.

I think the biggest shock in the book was when it turned out Ponyboy and Sodapop were named that on their birth certificates. I hope they went on to form a proto-punk garage band with Two-Bit. Ponyboy could write the songs.

I'm trying to post here more often, just keeping my spirits up.

On Saturday, discovered through network, originating from thefridayfive

1. What is your all time favorite book?

I must concede defeat and go with Vivian Vande Velde's Companions of the Night (1995), which I read countless times as a teenager, and which I revisited a year ago and to my astonishment it still held up as a thriller, as an exploration of vampire lore, as a YA novel skirting the edge of paranormal romance, and as a character study of a teenage girl thrown into insane circumstances. It's still my highest standard for a believably dangerous vampire love interest and I read the book in two sittings because it remained highly compelling after all these years.

2. What is your all time favorite movie?

The Third Man (1949) has continued to beat all comers and has never gone down in my estimation across multiple watches. It's basically a perfect film to me. The feel-good variation on this movie-making perfection would be Casablanca (1942), but The Third Man nudges it because of the score.

3. What are you reading right now?

Arthur C. Clarke. 2001: A Space Odyssey. About thirty pages from the end, though! I will likely make a post about it.

4. What is your favorite show on TV?

My usual comfort show for many years has been the combined twelve seasons of Buffy and Angel. Bad things would happen and that's where David and I would go, curling up and watching it until we could recite swathes of dialogue. Other shows where I have lost count of the number of times I've seen them have been The Wire and Highlander, and my chief source of writing inspiration has been Jeremiah, but the Buffyverse was the only show where we got to the end and instantly started over.

5. What is the last movie you saw in the theater?

That would be Baby Driver, seen when David and I were visiting some of his family in Boston. I had to look it up to remember when it was (2017). It was a surprisingly good time, and it featured a music score I really appreciated, including Queen's 'Brighton Rock.'

Then whatever the hell that was about Kevin Spacey broke, and was followed by a whole bunch of other information about certain Hollywood people, and it leeched all the fun right out of the experience.

Still, the core memory is of a really nice evening.

It is doubtless best if well-meaning people who do not like to read do not gift half-remembered books to distract grieving people from their grief.

The Snow Goose is a novella by Paul Gallico, published in 1941, and it makes a very pretty looking object on a nightstand. It begins with a fairytale atmosphere. A disfigured man shunned by his community, with a beautiful soul, chooses to live in an abandoned lighthouse and run a sanctuary for wild birds. The titular snow goose is brought to him injured and he nurses it to health and it remains in the area. The neglected girl who brings the goose ends up befriending him in spite of his appearance and the stage is set for a rather nicely written, soothing tale of love between societal outcasts who carve out their own corner of the world.

However, this is 20th century Literature. ( Read more... )

This story is commonly referred to as "heartwarming" and "sentimental."

Not recommended for the bereaved.

This probably sounds like a depressed post, but honestly, I'm more incredulous than upset. Also, I am picturing D's eyebrows skyrocketing if I explained this to him. "Really," he would say.

Currently reading Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, lent to me by a coworker, guaranteeing easy conversation for weeks to come. I'm about a quarter in and have never read Sanderson before, though I've heard much applause over the years.

Things I like, so far:

The premise, which combines an Ocean's Eleven plot with a slightly post-apocalyptic variant on epic fantasy with unexpected hints of steampunk. Heist stories are almost always fun, and the mix of genres is entertaining on the face of it.

The character introductions. This is so far Sanderson's strong suit. He introduced over a dozen characters in a handful of scenes and I only had to page back once to refresh myself on who was who. He has the ability to zero in on precisely what a reader will find memorable and build from there. The heroine Vin's seeming character arc (learning to trust other people) appears solid, and the dialogue rarely reads like exposition. It helps that the time-honored "outsider comes into magical power" cliche is alive and well, so Vin gets explanations alongside the reader.

Things I'm not wild about, so far:

Sanderson's writing style. This guy is not much of a prose stylist at all. I would say it reads like a YA novel, except I don't like that kind of generalization (many remarkable stylists have written for teens and children). The plot definitely reads like a YA fantasy, which makes the included violence feel a tad juvenile, but I figure the tone might even out as the book progresses.

Sanderson's celebrated system of magic, in which there are hard rules for everything, and it all makes perfect sense. It's exactly like a video game - press X to do Y, which will happen every time unless your supply of Y is low, in which case go hunting for power ups. Magic is neither mysterious, miraculous nor attached to any kind of morality (power corrupts, magic is not a toy, etc). The video game element is even driven home in the book's first big action scene, in which translucent lines appear around the user, offering a multitude of selections to choose from.

However, I can at least feel safe in that Sanderson's ending for this particular book is likely to be concrete and make sense based on everything established beforehand (unlike the acid-trip dream sequences that tend to fly out of nowhere in, say, Robin McKinley's stylistically superior Damar novels). So like all things, it's a trade off.

Lastly, the action. Rebel visionary Kelsier kills ten men during his first battle scene, and during the course of it he uses magic to be super strong, super fast and with heightened senses so that no matter how injured he gets over the course of the battle, he's basically a superhero who can shrug it off and keep going - which, okay, fine. It's not really where my interest lies, but maybe I'm overthinking this.