This is what it looked like about a minute ago.




Highlights: A glass of wine (no longer empty), a bottle of root beer (still empty), two sociology textbooks, one paper draft, one cell phone with four missed calls, one crumpled-up page of notes on my current novel, one storyboard propped up against the wall, Shelley (on the right) and Dashiell (on the left). Not pictured: four more sociology texts on the floor to the right, a sociology text to the right accompanied by LIAR, GRAFFITI GIRL, two thrillers I'm never going to read, a book on grammar, an mp3 player, a bag of cough drops, a birthday card, and a draft of MALICE.

Also in there are a usb drive, a post-it note with the shortcuts for Dragon Age written on it (since it does this really funky thing with non-QWERTY keyboards), several cough drop wrappers, and $0.23 in change.

WELCOME TO FINALS WEEK.

I've been playing with the idea of doing something more "serious" with my blogging. Recently I've been writing reviews of books I've read, although I've only posted one of them here. I don't have anywhere near the dedication of calico_reaction to review every single book I read, but I'm going to go ahead and make a bold decision and say I will post one book review a week. I'm still going to use this space for my random personal updates and complaints, but I'm also going to track my genre expansion efforts and my writing more faithfully.

Maybe. I'm hesitant to make such proclamations because I so rarely follow through on them, but at the very least I'd like to start putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and start consciously exploring my reactions to books. These days I finish them and move on quickly and without much thought, except when PLP Caroline and I read a book together or pass one on.

So, to that end, tomorrow I will be posting a review of Nancy Kress' novel Beggars in Spain. If I don't, please mock me.

I have approximately $30 to spend at a bookstore. My problem, at the moment, is deciding what books to buy with that money. So! I'm looking for recommendations for books, especially ones that fulfill any of the following criteria:

-By a new or non-big-name author
-Non-hardback
-Nice cover, since it might as well look good sitting on the shelf

Suggestions?

#1 Cylon Mrow Mrow woke me up this morning (definition of 'morning' variable) with a medley of her favorite techniques.

A. Begin with head bump to the face, followed by purring, cheek-rubbing, and the gentle pawing of my cheek. Result: Thrown to end of bed.
B. Climb Mount Kate. Stand on Kate's side, making biscuits, preferably on some patch of exposed skin. Accompany with riotous purring. Result: tossed unceremoniously onto floor.
C. When all else fails, shred paper. Kate will not know if it is a receipt fallen from her purse, a library hold slip, an old manuscript from the recycling bin, or the check she left out on the desk. Plus, it's loud. Result: Angry half-dressed, half-asleep human makes hissing noises, then finally lumbers out of bed, dumps handful of kibble in bowl (missing completely) and staggers back to bed.
D. Not enough kibble. Repeat.

This isn't a new year's resolution in the January-January sense, but my birthday is on Thursday, and it's a big one, so I thought I'd make some personal declarations and goals.

The first of which is to expand my reading habits. I procrastinated some this morning and broke down the genres of the books I've read so far this year. I somehow came up one short, but I'm too lazy to go back and check where it goes... but I don't think it makes that much of a difference.

22 were science fiction. The majority of those were "space opera" type sf.
15 were YA, and 10 of those were urban/contemp fantasy, three were science fiction, and three were lit, though there's definite blurring between all three of those.
12 were nonfiction of various sorts.
13 were mystery.
11 were adult urban/contemporary fantasy.
3 were secondary-world fantasy.
2 were lit fic.
2 were things that claim to be lit fic but are actually speculative fiction, so I was nice and gave them their own category.
2 were horror.
1 is Jasper Fforde's first Thursday Next novel and I don't know what the hell to call that.

So, my goal for this next year is some equality of the genres. Since I'm keeping SF and UF separate, I'll still be mostly reading spec fic (which, since that's what I write, makes sense). But I want to keep reading mystery, inject a lot more mainstream/contemporary/literary/whatever fiction into my reading habits, and bump up my nonfiction reading just a bit.

The book I'm reading right now is SF. The three books I have on hold at the library are nonfiction (science), mystery, and science fiction. So, a decent start.

But this is going to be haaaard. I like my popcorn Cool Chicks With Powers books.

But I definitely need more variety.

Something is seriously wrong with the world when I can go to the UW Sociology website at work and have it be a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT website than the one that pops up at home.

Something is even wronger when these websites have conflicting information about how to get into the major.

I've had this discussion a few times recently, in differing contexts; to what degree are the art and the artist separate? On the one hand, it can be a matter of distaste at the artist's personal life. Must the behavior of the artist somehow be excused in order to laud the art? Or, alternately, is distaste at the artist's behavior reason enough to avoid their work? In the sense that buying the book/movie/memoir would be supporting this person, I think it's reasonable to decide to essentially boycott someone's work. On the other hand, once they're dead, have at it.

But more recently, I've been complaining about the worship of memoir. I'm reading a book called Methland; it's focused mostly on a single town, Oelwin, and its struggles with the meth 'epidemic.' For the most part, it is a very well-researched and well-written book. The town comes alive, both in its faults and its virtues, and the larger-scale implications of its struggles are explored with care and precision. And then, about 4/5 of the way through, we get a chapter about the author's family. Why? Apparently, because he came from a small town. So we get to read all about his great-grandfather, his various relatives, how his father liked to play baseball.

If the idea is to show how small towns have changed, or stayed the same, why aren't we talking about Oelwin's past (actually, we already did)? The only purpose is to insert the author in the narrative. And you know what? I don't care. I care that the author did his research. I care that he's presenting things accurately, I care that he spent time in Oelwin, I care that he's sought out all sides of the story. I don't care that his father played baseball in a small town. I wouldn't care if he had grown up in a Manhattan penthouse.

The artist is not the art.

Who we are informs our art, to be sure; the art is, in many ways, the artist. Our experiences and personalities and beliefs shape our creations. But those creations are entities in themselves. They are not us. Attaching a day-by-day diary does not make the art more or less real. The artist is not what is being examined. The art is not merely an illustration to glorify or condemn or explain the artist. The art is the art.

Feel free to disagree.

The next section of my 'books I've read', which goes back to August. Wintergirls was the first book I read in October.

( Three months of books )

Ugh.

That's all.

Just.

Ugh.
 

Also, I officially place my 'novel ideas' cap at five. Seriously. I'm good for a few years. Just back off. Let me finish this one first.

The question is not "where do you get your ideas." It's "how do you make them shut up long enough to finish anything?"
 

Why?

This is why.



I love Ilona Andrews. She is my crack of choice when I'm reading urban fantasy. But she gets boned with her covers. Actually, this one is better looking in general than her Kate Daniels series, in my opinion, but the floating shirtless guy? Ok, I realize this is more romance than the other series. It is, in fact, a romance novel, unambiguously. Which I tolerated because the paranormal part was fun and interesting. If I liked romance, I think I would have liked this one instead of tolerating it when it got in the way of my magic and adventure.

So I understand that this is not all that unusual for the genre, cover-wise. But I almost didn't even pick the book up because of it. What can I say. I'm shallow.

This is the cover of her first book:



No floating man, though the lion is actually the love interest (shapeshifter). I hate this cover. The sword is all wrong, the colors are weirdly muted, the photos look inexpertly shoved together. And the title isn't helping much either. Very... generic. In fact, I never would have picked this book up if I hadn't been insanely bored and stuck in the library while the clouds rained themselves out. I liked it quite a lot, loved the second one, and the third one was somewhere in between. Point being, the books are good (if urban fantasy is your thing, and post-apocalyptic Atlanta amuses you). But it's a miracle I ever figured that out.

Dear Ace: Please arrange better covers. Thanks.

This is rather a broad topic, so expect rambling.

( Creativity )

Ages ago Mike did this thing where someone gives you five topics and you write about... some of them? (Goes to check because it's been freaking MONTHS, Mike, geez)... All of them! Ok. They were, in order:

-Steampunk
-Creativity
-Fear
-Games
-Fashion

( So, Steampunk )

-The "Abortion is Genocide" people are back. Right to free speech, etc, etc, but I wish they'd look at a dictionary. They're not the only people to use inaccurate and inflammatory words for political purposes by a long shot, but they're the ones currently waving them in 2' neon letters in my face along with giant pictures of surgical procedures, so they get my annoyance today. And tomorrow. And probably for the next week.

-Finished book #75 last night. It was a very short 400 pages--I started it at 10:30 and finished at around 2am. For those who are curious, the book was Magic Study. It had major flaws, but moved well and was entertaining. I liked it well enough that I'll pick up the next one, since they're quick reads, but it's a low priority on my list of series to get through.

-My new motherboard arrives today. Huzzah! Shelley will be born! (Points to whoever figures out exactly why I'm naming my comp Shelley.) Dashiell will still be around, as he's (mostly) functional and (sort of) portable, but Shelley will be doing the heavy lifting. I will actually be able to play something more graphics-intensive than solitaire now.

-I miss the days when check-ins about how are papers are progressing included phrases like "I'm disappointed to learn that sauerkraut was not as important as I was led to believe." Sigh. Now it's all juvenile delinquency and poverty, nothing interesting like the fight against scurvy and famous pirate trials.

School has officially been going for two weeks now, and I'm settling into a sort of routine. I only have class three days out of the week, so that leaves me a lot of time to write... although it also leaves a lot of empty, unstructured time that's driving me up the wall. On Mondays and Wednesdays I do any class reading that's left, which will probably take an hour on Mondays and 2-3 on Wednesdays, judging by the average length and density of readings so far. After that, I write. But I think I need to come up with something entertaining I can dole out for myself, or errands to run, or SOMETHING, because the more time I have to write the less I get done.

Yeah, yeah, poor me, too much free time.

So far I've stayed caught up with readings, though that rarely lasts the whole quarter. And I admit to skimming some of the lower-level stuff,  which I know from other classes. The big accomplishment this quarter, though, is that I know what my paper topics are going to be already! Huzzah! I have two 10-pagers, which is more than last quarter but not at all daunting. The quarter system definitely involves less writing than the semester system, even when you balance it out across the year.

In other news, Boomer now knows the sound of the laser pointer being picked up. Or even just nudged across the table. She comes bounding over. When the button clicks, she starts jerking around, searching the floor for that elusive little dot.

If she starts to show signs of looking for it when it's not there, I'll discontinue the game. Don't want to give the poor girl OCD. But for now she doesn't go bonkers until the actual stimulus, so so far so good. I hope.

I just finished the book Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson. It was beautifully written, but that's about all I liked about it. Maybe it's because I've never struggled with anorexia--ok, maybe for like one afternoon but then I smelled some fries and I gave up on the idea. Maybe it's because I left high school cleanly and I have no identification with it anymore. Maybe it was because it was obvious from the first page what was going to happen in the book. Maybe it was because I read this book, although with different characters and set pieces and Big Issues, just a few months ago.*

( My inane ramblings )




*The other book is One For Sorrow.

Drinking iced coffee, I'm reminded of an exchange between a coworker, and a customer at Tully's.
PC: Perky Coworker
BC: Brazilian Customer

Setting: Tully's at Pike's Place, on a 90-something degree day.

BC: (finishing order) ...and a small coffee.
PC: Would you like that iced?
BC: (with look of disgust) Iced?
PC: Because it's so hot out.
BC: You think I want it iced?
PC: I just thought... a lot of people are getting their drinks iced, because it's hot out.
BC: In Brazil, we do not drink iced coffee. We drink our coffee hot!
PC: What do you drink when it gets hot out, then?
BC: WE DRINK BEER.

Dear Seattle Public Libraries,

Whatever I did, I'm sorry. I know I have $1.15 in overdue fines I haven't paid, but I just figured I'd wait until it was an even dollar amount. I was going to pay, I swear. And I know sometimes I put books on hold and then decide I don't want them once I've read the first page. I should probably use google books or something so I don't make you spend all that effort and fuel, but it's something like a 10:1 ratio, so I didn't think it was that big a deal.

Is it because I don't spend time with you any more? The holds system is so convenient, and your alphabetizing skills are... well, you know I love you, but they're sub-par. Not to mention your genre classifications. I'd rather just have you find it for me. So yes, I do only spend about sixty seconds per trip inside, but I appreciate every moment of it.

I don't spill things on the books, or kick up a fuss when you don't stock the particular translation of the Iliad I wanted (or the random trashy UF novel). So why have you abandoned me? I understand your budget-cuts have been hard on you, and everyone is entitled to a vacation. But did you have to take away my internet services? My list? My ability to check on the status of my books, and how many I have checked out because I'm too lazy to get them all off the shelf at once? I can't remember what I was going to read. I have no place to easily put new recommendations. I'm dying here, and you're twiddling your thumbs because the city left you with a deficit of a couple million dollars.

I've only read three books in the last three weeks. Three! How can I live like this? One of them was borrowed from a friend!

I don't know if I'll survive the next two days. When you come back and my account starts accumulating fines, you'll know. And you'll know it was your fault.

-Utterly Heartbroken Patron