What I read -- January 2020

LHC #62: "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner. I was intimidated by the length, and got confused by the vast cast of characters, but it was still really good.

"The Book of Dust" by Philip Pullman. The boy gave it to me for Christmas, and I devoured it. Now I need to watch the HBO His Dark Materials series, and also read some other books in the series.

LHC #63: "Cyteen" by CJ Cherryh. The first 30 pages were a slog, but then this one was no problem at all to read. Apparently it was originally published as a trilogy. I cannot see how that could have possibly worked. There didn't seem to be wasted scenes anywhere, either. I don't feel like it answered the question it asked at the beginning, really, and I felt like it was going to. Apparently that's in the sequel.

LHC #64: "Spin" by Robert Charles Wilson. Weirdly, I have a different book by RCW in my TBR pile. But I own that book, so the necessity to read it is so much lower! This was a totally entertaining read. Great characters, really interesting story, though I disagreed a little bit about Mars.

Very exciting news, also! I discovered what happens when I don't read something on my holds list and it expires after two years: they just disappear like they never were.

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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