What I read -- November 2017

“A Gathering of Shadows” by V.E. Schwab. I asked the boy for this for my birthday, but apparently he’d already gotten it. My favorite thing is that it’s got a sticker on the cover saying that it’s Barb’s staff pick.

It’s been probably a year and a half since I read book 1, and I wonder if that’s why I found the first 350 pages pretty tough, because I had forgotten any reason I might have liked Lila Bard. I just found, every time I got to a Lila section, I hated her so much. I really wanted her to suffer.

“Water for Elephants” by Sarah Gruen. My sister gave me this one because she was done with it. I found it immensely readable, and while reading the interview at the end I totally could not guess what the whole biblical parallel to Jacob was, and woke up in the middle of the night thinking that one particular instance of redlighting was really convenient for the author (I hadn’t thought this while reading… so)

“All the Birds in the Sky” by Charlie Jane Anders. I’ve heard so much about this one! It’s very charming and stylish. I wonder how it will hold up.

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.

In progress: August 2024

Wind/Water/Salt Chapters 39-51: Still n eed to take up comments and revise. Persephone (probably not its real name): Continued to think thoughts. Short Stories: After posting that short story from last month onto the workshop, I picked one of those short stories I'd started and forced a plot onto it. Critted 5 Got back 4 Submissions 0 Out there 0 Rejects 0 Knitting Cathar (self). Started month with two inches done above the armholes. Listening to audiobooks, I finished the fair isle portion, cut the steeks, and set up and knit the neckline. Just the endless finishing now. Blushing Cloud (Knitty S/S24). Started the month with (still) three inches of back done. Socks take priority. Elbrus socks (Knitty first fall 2024). Finished. Elbrus socks II . Started the first. Pole shorts (Joan McGowan-Michael). I knitted these several years ago, but the...

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...

Robynettely

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