"City of Ashes" by Cassandra Clare

Why I read it: The boy was nagging me to. I finished book one what, three weeks ago?

Bookmark: Chapters love of reading fund (this one is getting a lot of use)

Tastes like chicken: Book one? That's pretty uninspired, I know.

What I liked: The story was really fast-paced and had plenty of surprises -- Simon, for one. And it was good, because it was so well planted, what wound up happening to Simon, and yet I didn't expect it, because there was so much else going on. I guess that's the trick -- have lots of stuff going on.

Not so much: Just one quibble: on page 70, Simon says he's kosher. He is so not kosher. People are treyf. Surely a good jewish boy would know that. Also, the introduction of a new character to set up book three on the second-last page of the book, to set up book 3? WTF? This seems like an example of editorial interference to me...

Lesson: Seeding the story -- different than foreshadowing, and yet similar.

Best TW feedback ever

Over at the dayjob, SMEs are feverishly trying to get documents back to me all marked up, in preparation for the release that's supposed to happen the week I'm back from VP. Today's best comment: Unfortunately not true. SMEs, they're so cute.

Moraine

So a couple of days I thought I was done with this short story, and I wrote the last line of the story. I even dated it (that's how I can tell it's over). It was a little long, at 6600 words (I was aiming for 5000). But then I was walking to work, and I thought, "My, that was a lame ending. My endings are all crap." So yesterday morning, I scribbled out the date and wrote a bit more. And this morning I wrote a bit more again, and I dated it and called it done. And still, that ending seemed lame. So a few minutes later, in the last paragraph, I scratched out "the Oak Ridges Moraine" and wrote in "that stupid moraine". Much better. Now I can move on. But in the meantime, I was doing a little research about the Moraine, and I discovered that EGTourGuide lives on it. Only by one or two hundred feet, but I thought it was funny. Good for you, EGTourGuide, with all those excellent plants growing on that substandard soil, where in the olden days (you kno...

What I read: March 2024

LHC #240: "Vita Nostra" by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko. Translated by Julia Meitov Hersey. All I knew going in was dark academia. This was a neat thing to read after A Deadly Education last month. The students can leave this school at summer and winter break, but maybe they shouldn't. Also, interesting education method, providing Sasha with a CD player and punishing her if she leaves it in the mode where it plays all the tracks in sequence. "Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman. When I finished Ragnarok by AS Byatt (last month? January?) I was thinking it might have made more sense if I had any knowledge of the subject matter. The boy had left this lying around, and it was not a tough read. LHC #241: "Science on a mission: How Military funding shaped what we do and don't know about the ocean" by Naomi Oreskes. I deferred this once because it was so long. History of science is challenging for me to read, because of the need to get a grasp on dispr...

Robynettely

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