What I Read -- March 2015

“The Brides of Rollrock Island” by Margo Lanagan. The first section was a challenge. You know sometimes you read something and you think “I wish I’d written that”, and other times you read something and you think “I could never write that”? This book was the second type. I have a hard time being mean to my characters. Margo does not have this problem. The sense of place was brilliant as well – so well drawn, and yet it could be Scotland, or Newfoundland, or Maine… This was a different way of coming at lovecraftian horror, really. Wow.

“Authority” by Jeff Vandermeer. So I read http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/01/from-annihilation-to-acceptance-a-writers-surreal-journey/384884/ and thought I should read on in the series. And then my library got flooded.

“Red Spikes” by Margo Lanagan. I needed some short stories, and she had some! Short stories are always a mixed bag, I never connect with everything in a book, but the one about the budgie was truly fantastic. I want to force that story on people. And the one about wandering around purgatory, so cool. Her voice is something I can't imagine pulling off, but I love the themes she tackles.

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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