Current mood:	calm
Entry tags:	aefb

Midweek Ramble
Good evening, my friends. It's occurred to me that it's been several days since I posted, and though I don't have much to comment on, I want to check in periodically. You know, if I can't be bothered to actually think through and write out an interesting entry.

-Currently reading Tamora Pierce's Bloodhound, which I have comparatively little issue with (it's obviously written for a younger crowd and the semi-constant animal sidekicks annoy me). Since it is a library book, it has temporarily replaced the other two books I was reading (A Swiftly Tilting Planet, accidentally read out of order, and Princess Ben).

Question: Does anyone else ever read books that were gifts and feel guilty for not liking them? Or--and I'm not sure if this is worse or not--reading them, thinking them mediocre, and keeping them for years just because they were gifts?

-I lifted the important information out of the draft of AEFB and now am working on compiling it into a semi-legible set of notes. It's not terribly interesting, but it's something I can do every day and listen to music or something while I do it (something I can't do while actually writing).

-Music of the Week: "Little Sister" by Rufus Wainwright and "Take This Waltz" by Leonard Cohen, with a side of "Wild Geese" by a band with a long and complicated name I can't remember. (It is Flowers From the Man Who Shot Your Cousin. I think.) I can't get enough of these two songs, though I admit it's "Little Sister" that gets stuck in my head all day.

-My apartment building has a smell this week, especially on the main floor area in the stairwell, but the smell drifts up to my floor sometimes. It's like a painty or gassy smell or something else unpleasant. Possibly from the first-floor renovations?

-I finally got around to doing the dishes and doing some gentle apartment cleaning--yay! I'm going to do more thorough cleaning this weekend and I'm psyched to have a weekend at home.

This has been an exhausting week, and on top of it all my hair's been frizzed out nearly every day (et tu, MoroccanOil?), but whatever, it's nearly over, and I'm starting to find a rhythm. The next time I post, I will also post a generous handful of Design*Sponge links.

And now it's a very pleasant and rainy evening, with sweet cool air drifting through the windows, not nearly hot enough to need to take a shower before going to bed, so I think I shall make some tea (possibly peppermint, which I like enough to save for special occasions, at least until I use up the like two boxes and two tins I have otherwise of tea) and lie in bed reading, though currently Bloodhound is waning in my interest.

(...not so much that I dislike Bloodhound, but rather Pierce's writing patterns. I can't possibly deny that I don't adore the Song of the Lioness and Immortals quartets--though possibly out of nostalgia--but the more stuff she wrote, the more I noticed it. Kind of like Joss Whedon! There are several major factors I get annoyed by, and these factors show up in all of her novels (I like her short stories a lot--they are so fresh and different, most of the time!). 1) Characters are warriors 2) Oftentimes, characters are mages in addition to warriors. In my opinion, this puts way too much power in the character's hands to make the character interesting, but whatever. 3) There are ALWAYS animals around, which puts me very uncomfortably in mind of Disney movies, especially in the more modern era (starting with, oh, The Little Mermaid) when suddenly every single movie had some form of animalesque friends, intended for comedy but often just being annoying... I suppose I feel like Pierce goes out of her way to write SUPER SPECIAL characters, and I would really like for her to write about someone who isn't super special, someone who's just ordinary. (I think that's what she was trying to do with the Protector of the Small quartet, but...it didn't work for me? Possibly because it was just like the Song of the Lioness except less interesting.) Someone who isn't a warrior, someone who doesn't get pretty gifts from her friends, someone who doesn't know any kind of magic at all, someone who can be an interesting person and have interesting things happen to him/her without having some kind of unique and awesomely badass skill.

Honestly, it's not just Pierce, but I see this a lot in fantasy in general, and it's the kind of thing I strove to avoid in AEFB, only to look back and realize I'd done the exact opposite. I hope to tone that down in rewriting. Pierce just annoys me because otherwise I mostly like her work, but she's been essentially writing the same thing for twenty years and I really love some of her books and I just want her to do something new that I could love just like the really old books.

Anyway...)

That was a much longer ramble than intended. There is something vaguely interesting for you to read. (I assure you, it's much more interesting than the other thoughts in my head, a mix of the show and AEFB and the hilarious episode of Lois & Clark I watched tonight.) So now for tea and reading, I suppose.