An https://clck.ru/MfRfs An Stevenson

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Good afternoon

 

 

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An Stevenson

Tilly Bagshawe, wtf bbq???

I'm not finishing a book.  I started it, read about half, and decided to give it back to the library.  

This has nothing to do with late fees.  I have no fear of late fees. I should actually have a chair with my name on it in my favourite branch because of all the fees I've paid in my life.  

However. I very rarely stop in the middle of a book. Once, when I was very young, I watched a kid's show about a boy who never finished the books he was reading until they all came after him in the night. Since I am all about avoiding things that come after you in the night, I am all about finishing books. Plus, I hate not knowing.   

The book is Showdown by Tilly Bagshawe, an author I thought I liked*.  The book begins in the UK, and features rich people. The heroine is a young rich girl** whose daddy breeds horses for racing but is not allowed to ride herself, even though she is the bestest horse-rider ever. She meets Booby who is a real-life cowboy who inherits a ranch in Texas. The bad news is he's poor, and so is his ranch.  He needs to live up to his dead father for some reason, and he chooses to do it by getting into a partnership with an ultra-skeezy land developer who wants make a ton of money off Booby, mainly by ripping off Booby's oil and whatever else he can get his hands on. Booby (it works better) wants to save the family ranch by breeding quarterhorses for racing. His dad (a terminal moron) was all about the cowboy way, which apparently, in T. Bagshawe's world, means no oil. Drilling for oil desecrates the land or something.

My suspension of disbelief faltered, failed and would not be revived. First of all, Texas = oil. And cowboy ranchers? cowboy ranchers = paying your damn bills and not losing the ranch because you've got no money because you are stupid. 

Now, I don't know any ranchers but I do know quite a few farmers. I don't even have to call them up to ask what they think of this guy.

TOTALLY FAKE INTERVIEW

Me:    So, the bank is going to foreclose on your farm and you're going to lose everything. The reason they're foreclosing is because you are poor, behind on the mortage, and they are pretty certain there's oil on your property. What would you do? Remember, this is the West, and in the West, your code of honour is apparently more important than having a place to live. 

Farmer:    Wtf? I'm not broke, I have oil. Lease the mineral rights for loads of cash, throw a party, buy a boat and go on vacation. In that order, and finishing in Hawaii doing some deep sea fishing.*** 

  

END MADE UP YET TRUE INTERVIEW

So, there you have it. My complete lack of belief in the stupid reasoning behind the conflict = putting it down and not picking it back up.  Well, and the fact that most people in this book were head-splittingly annoying, crazy or just plain stupid. 

Life is too short for this.

*and now I realize that I actually really liked Louise Bagshawe's books, not Tilly's. Boo british writers who have the same distinctive last name! Boo!

**I forget her name, but she had long blonde hair, and was kinda annoying and seventeen for a really long time in the book. 

***Actually, this part is true. Including the deep sea fishing part.

So So Very Bad

I've just finished reading a very poorly written book.

At first I thought it was this book, The Key to Conspiracy by Thalia Gryphon. Which was recently reviewed at Dear Author. Except that I read number one in the series, The Key to Conflict.  

I have several issues with this book.

1. The characters

2. The dialouge

3. The writing

It is a comprehensive list.  Be warned. There are spoilers ahead, although why you'd care after reading this review, I'd never know.

The characters were generally annoying.  After about halfway through the book, I really got tired of the parade of SUPER HOTT! OMG SEXXXY para-whatevers! Apparently in this world, there are no normal-looking people. 

The main character, Gillian (or Gill, the author uses a nickname to break up the flow of Gillian does... sentences instead of rewriting) is TSTL.  This is not a label I throw out lightly, but I feel it is warranted. We are endlessly told how smart, tough and skilled this woman is. We are never really shown anything.  She whines, she gets drunk in dangerous territory, and she is really confused about issues a real psychologist should understand. Like the definition of rape. 

She is repeatedly assaulted without her knowledge (she was dreaming) and did not consent to having sex with her attacker or consent to him coming and making her have dreamsex with him. She does not know who is in her dreams or what is going on. This is rape. Saying otherwise is terrifying. If you are so drunk you cannot say yes or no, it's rape. If you don't know what's going on, it's rape. Does the fact that she had orgasms negate her lack of consent? Apparently Gillian thinks so, which makes me wonder how she managed her PhD, her internships, and well, her life so far.

For a psychologist, she is very lacking in self-awareness.

"I did not survive battlefield conditions in Serbia...blah blah blah I'm not delicate or stupid!" I know someone who did, and they wouldn't be caught dead saying something like that. Also, they wouldn't be caught dead being as TSTL as she is over and over again. Because they survived Serbia and where ever else she said she'd been. I'm not going to re-check that quote, but "survive battlefield conditions"? Who says that? 

The dialogue forgot it was supposed to sound like people talking. There was a consistent lack of contractions.  People don't really speak the way they write. Perhaps vampire=super formal diction, but with all of the other issues, I'm doubtful. 

Technically, this book was in need of a rewrite. The repetition, the mixed constructions and complete lack of showing the action (remember that old rule? show, don't tell) made me feel like someone was telling me about this story that could have been really interesting. Except that I needed to stop listening to the teller, and just read the book myself before the end gets blabbed. 

This book is filled with wasted detail. So much time is spent on unnecessary information. We are told who characters are after we have met them several times, we are told boring and unnecessary information on the different types of the magically-inclined, we are even told who JRR Tolkien is, and that he wrote the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. 

Surprisingly enough, the sex scenes we the best written in the book. Even though I have no desire to read more about the exact dimensions of Gill's canal (and am so unbelievably sick of the phrase "ridged canal") Gryphon uses imagery, description and setting to show the reader the action, instead of telling us what is happening. 

This book was one big info-dump. 

This book had a lot going for it. I really liked the idea of psychologist to the undead. How many times have you read an urban fantasy and gone "Hey, that dude is totally messed up, therapy is totally necessary." I thought the flame thrower was cool. 

I only wish that Gryphon had a more aggressive editor. Apparently LKH's Darla was a line editor (?proofreader?).  I would suggest a professional editor who is willing to suggest more substantive and aggressive changes. There is a good book in there, waiting to get out. It just needs a lot of help.  If that doesn't work, Gryphon may want to switch to writing erotica. Writing sex seems to be her stronger suit.

Connie Willis

As a review goes, this should be somewhat short.  

I love Connie Willis. She's wonderful, go read her stuff.

Why do I love her?

I've only read two of her novels, To Say Nothing Of The Dog and The Bellwether. They both were wonderful.

TSNOTD is a time-travel story about a young man and the boss from hell. It is a mystery and a who-done-it as well as a what-the-hell-happened? 

The Bellwether is also a mystery of a sort.  

They are both laugh out loud funny. The characters are amazing and real and the stories aren't flashy, but they will be amazing. 

I read both of those books a while ago, which is why there's a distinct lack of detail, but you should still read them.  These books are smart and also entertaining. I still giggle when certain scenes from these novels drift through my consciousness.

Go. Read.

testing...

Funner than I thought

http://www.bitstrips.com/read.php?comic_id=18097&feed=a_x

yup. now I've just gotta figure out how to post this directly.

well, here's something

update: I'm imbedding it now that I know how.

Returning....

I'm back. and with a purpose.




I've joined Samurai Knitter's Strikke-along.

I feel myself very qualified, and in several ways.

How I am qualified to Strikke-along:

1. I do think that Viggo Mortenson is extremely hot.
2. I will be knitting things to get me ready for winter. As a Canadian living in Edmonton, winter lasts a long long time. Wardrobes become necessary.
3. A proper winter wardrobe consists of several hats with matching mittens and scarves. These items should be also of varying degrees of warmth, so that you are covered from October to March.
4. I worked for Ikea. And I definitely shop there too.
5. There will be colourwork. Definitely two colors, maybe three. It depends on how I feel. There will be stars and lice and crosses and flowers, all looking properly Nordic.
6. I will (sometimes) be knitting on alpaca that I got from a Norwegian friend of mine. But it will be a lacy scarf, so I'm not sure how much this applies.
7. I think Norway looks pretty. I've never been there, but I've seen pictures.

No Motivation, So Much Work

That just sums up where I am right now. I have a ton of things to do, both interesting and completley horrible, yet I really don't want to do any of it.

Spring has sprung, and being inside, in the big old building of work is not really as appealing as it could be.

I'm finally getting over Daylight Saving Time Anger because the sun is now rising when I'm leaving for work. To have the sun being up when I'm going to work in the morning and then to have it go away was... crushing. Now that it's back, going to work in the morning is not quite so horrible as it once was.

I am not a morning person, and to be up when the freaking sun isn't even up yet makes me cranky.

In other, better news, I can knit again.

Yay! I've dropped my project, my pink mitten things, and had to rearrange things a bit. I'm not too crushed becasue stockinette is now evil, and the colors were seriously beginning to pool. I will probably have to do a big old chunk of ripping anyway now, and put in some sort of change so that the pooling gets fixed and I don't have to spend the rest of my life knitting the exact same stitch over and over and over again. Which makes it that much harder to not get sore wrists.

My new Plan

1) Knit in seed stitch, avoid the stockinette. Long strings of the same stitch = hurting non-fun.
2) TAKE BREAKS. Do serpent arms and serpent fingers to loosen up.
3) Use laceweight yarn and 2.75 mm needles. all in all my current project weighs 50 grams. This includes the ball of yarn, needles and knitted fabric.
4) If things super hurt, take a break and try some tiger balm. It stinks, but it really does make things feel better.

This is good because lace is good for spring, super cheap per project, very travel-friendly (as long as your pattern is not too complex) and did I mention cheap? And tends to be very very impressive to the non-knitter's gaze.

I am around...

So, work has been really busy lately, and on top of that I have bad news.

My forearms hurt. In an achy bad sort of way. I'm pretty scared that I'll have tendonitis or carpal tunnle and that will mean no more knitting.

I'm taking a week off of knitting, and trying (ha! ha! ha!) to take it easy with the typing at work. I keep thinking about lace, and how it is really light and filled with different things and moves, so maybe it is just the stockinette that is bad for me. Bad repetitive stockinette.

Maybe I can crochet? I like crochet. Maybe that will work, and I can do loads of superfun crochet.

In better news, Charming and I are planning our honeymoon in Hawaii. It is shaping up to be freaking great.

Working, still working

I'm drinking chamomile tea because I'm too close to a migraine to even think about caffeine and chocolate, but I am.

Oooh, I am.

Monday Monday....

It's Monday. I'm at work. I slept most of this weekend, which was nice, because I had a migraine Thursday and Friday evening.

I did get some things done this weekend though.

I did most of the laundry.

I finished knitting my hat, and discovered that I need to rip it and add more depth to it. However, one of the people I work with, Sarah, decided that she needs a hat and loves my yarn, so I'll whack this little hat into a pattern for her and then she can make it.

I snapped one of my 2mm dpn needles (actually, that was this morning. arrgh. stupid bamboo.)

I did some reading, and found some good books.

Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge

I've loved Vernor Vinge for a long time. He writes excellent excellent science fiction. It is intelligent, and has very real seeming science stuff in it Which is logical, since he was university science professor.

His characters also seem real. I've read a collection of his short stories, A Deepness in the Sky, and A Fire upon the Deep. The two novels are written in the extreme future, (more than 1000 years from present) and definitely involve some interesting changes from the present. They both get a super-recommendation from myself, if you like science fiction that involves some science. Or if you like science fiction itself.

This latest book reminds me quite a bit of Neal Stephenson, who tends to deal with the immediate future and the effects of modern technology on society. However, this book has some things that Stephenson tends to lack completely, and those are realistic and dynamic characters. I ended up caring about the characters, and felt that instead of the characters merely being flat illustrations to explain differences from the present known world, the characters were dynamic creations in their own right.

With the character of Robert Gu, a world-renowned poet and university professor, Vinge takes a very unsympathetic character and shows how his personality has and hasn't changed as a result of technology and through the events in the story. Gu is and has been verbally abusive and toxic to a nuclear level. He is cured by the wonders of medical technology from old age and severe Alzheimer's which leaves him stuck in a world where technologically, he is decades behind, and in great danger of never being able to catch up and find relevance in a society where the aged must struggle to keep up to their children and grandchildren or become obsolete and wither away.

Gu changes, and is forced for the first time to actually have to work at reschooling himself while he is in a vocational track in the local high school, along with other people in similar state to himself (that is, seniors who have been made physically and mentally mobile to differing degrees) and the rest of the second tier students.

There's also bits about access to information, and how that is changing, and what does that mean? Should we hold onto old methods of storing information? Should these things be made? What use is a library when all the data can be put onto a single disc?

It's an interesting book, and I think everyone should pick it up, if you like science-y fiction. It's good stuff.

2nd Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Silent Poetry Reading

After discovering while at work (with all my poetry books at home) that today is the Second Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Silent Poetry Reading Day, I find myself looking for an appropriate poem to post in order to join along with others.

City

if one is not looking closely enough,
one might think that the snow had leapt from its tidy boundaries
and spread itself over the sidewalk again

but it is only salt, left behind.

one day,
will the grass not change back to green?

Not much interesting today

Well...

I'm working. At work. Today was ok.

I had one person quit on Friday, and another person tell me that they needed a week off. Starting the 30th.

Arrgh. The schedule was done.

WAS done.

Aftermaths

1) Felting.

Did not happen. I started to do it by hand, and after approximately 15 seconds with no noticeable change, I gave up.

I will be throwing it into the washer tonight, with the rest of the laundry that I didn't do over the weekend.

2) More knitting.

I stopped using the Bernat Harmony because either I got a bad ball, or they changed how it was made last year sometime. I found the receipt, and am going back to Zellers to return it due to extreme suckiness.

I'm still using stash yarn to knit my shawl though, but now I'm using some Lion Brand Homespun (light blue/white blendy colour) that I couldn't return. It was going to be an afghan crocheted for Charming, but then I realized something. Charming doesn't wear sweaters. Charming would happily wear shorts until the snow fell. Charming used to have two sheets on his bed. One white and one blue. The blue one was his "blanket".

So - Charming has no use for a cozy warm blanket. He'd just get uncomfortably hot.

I've ripped my mitten again, and am redoing the decreases. I think I've got it the way I like it, but who knows. One day I'll finish this project and move on to mitten number two. And then matching hat number one.

3) Haircut.

Is effing fantastic. I still have longish hair, and it's all jagged at the ends and the back, and I have these superfun asymmetrical longish bangs that kindof hang in my face in a very sexy way.

Oh yes, I have sexy fun hair. I also have much easier to blowdry hair, because putting in layers meant taking out a lot of weight. There was a huge pile of hair on the floor after the razoring was done.

I do like my hair. Oh so much.

I LOVE FRIDAY!!!!

Friday is the best.

It is the quietest day of the week. There are no students (I work in a school). There are no professors. There is hardly any staff. The accountant doesn't come in. The staff that are here are usually in meetings all day.

And tomorrow is Saturday.

Saturday is usually a stay home and sleep and laundry and snooze and knit or whatever day.

Tomorrow will be slightly different, because I am getting a haircut, and possibly some color as well.

Wheeee! I'm ready for a change. I'm so bored with my hair right now. It seems like every time I grow my hair out, there is this stage where it becomes every long haircut I've ever gotten.

Well every long haircut except for when I was really little and my mum cut the never ending bangs of ginormousness. You know the ones I mean. We all got them.

The person doing this magic cut is a friend of Charming's and mine. In a previous life, he used to own a salon and now he does other things.

Words Used to Discuss Haircut
razoring
layers
more layers
lots of razor
beige dye
long bangs

In other news, I'm almost done my first item to be felted. I've done the knitting, I just need to do the sewing together. I couldn't quite stay awake long enough to finish that part. I've been desparately wishing to try felting. I keep seeing felt everywhere and it taunts me.

I used the last of the wool scarf yarn from the Christmas scarves. It's all Lamb's Pride Bulky. Which is nice, but sheds when I knit it. And makes me wheeze a little bit.

But anyway, now I've done it. Almost. There WILL be pictures.

Well, maybe. I have no idea how it will turn out. AT ALL. I cast on for that project when I had a migraine. I worked on that project while I was still recovering from the migraine. I finished the project as I was coming off the last effects of the migraine and realized I never did a swatch. At all. I've also never felted before. Ever.

This should be interesting. I'm going to try and sew it together tonight and felt it too. There is only a little bit of sewing up to do before the big washie washie.

I seem to be taking a bit of a break from the mittens. I think it's because I have to rip them again. I don't like the decreases that I've done and so now I must redo them. Again. And then do the thumb.

I've started another new project as well. I've discovered that knitting anything that even remotely requires thought does not work on the subway or at work. So - I'm knitting a shawl. And it is out of my stash. I have two balls of Bernat Harmony in black that I bought that was going to be a Christmas scarf, and when the yarn is done, the scarf is done.

Unless it looks stupid or too short, and then we'll see.

So far, the shawl pattern is just cast on three, knit first row. Next row - knit one, yarn over, knit until you have just one stitch on source needle, yarnover, knit last stitch. Repeat until you almost run out of yarn, then cast off loosely.

I'm being good. Stash-knitting and all.

Except I'm going to have to switch needles. I'm currently using my one bamboo circular by Clover, and the acrylic sticks too much. I'm going to have to use my knitpicks circ in the same size.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

I'm not sure if I've got all that I need from Pitney Bowes, but I did get some of it. And found out that the phone lines were indeed down, and that the PB people couldn't actually call out. Sucks to be them.

I didn't realize until the next day but I picked the day of Canada Post's big rate change to call to order printing supplies.

Am I not as smart as I could hope?

Oh yes. Not the smartest bunny in the clover patch right now. Smart bunnies call stupid companies when it is not Crazy Busy Day.





Whatever. It's Pitney Bowes.

On hold....

I'm waiting for Pitney Bowes to pick up their phone.

I've been on hold for over 45 minutes. After being repeatedly disconnected from one of their numbers many times, and discovering that their previous ordering phone number is no longer in service or something.

I hate pitney bowes. If you are a company thinking to use them - do not. Save yourself the aggrivation. Find another company.


On a happier note. I want to share a few links. Because I can do that while I'm holding the phone to my ear with my shoulder.

New Favourite Links (or one day I will update my links, but not today)

1) Samurai Knitter - She's fun, she knits and she has a cute baby. I'm not so obsessed with the cute baby thing, but it is nice to hear someone talk about parent-life in a way that seems kindof realistic. You know her baby is cute, but that she also will have bad days. I knew I would like her blog when I read her discription of her arm pain, and when I read the phrase "demented weasels" I knew that this would be a blog I would enjoy.

2) Yarn Harlot - Also funny, and it's nice to know that someone who knits as wonderfully as she does also makes mistakes. It leaves me hopeful. The only downside - she doesn't like crochet. However, she did leave comments on my blog. Yay! I'm cool. Almost.