You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September, 2008.
Today I pretty much spent the day in bed, felled by the first, miserable stage of a chest cold. Bleah.
For the Thrill of It : Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Chicago caught my attention Friday night, once I left the section on the crime itself and moved on to the sections about the attorneys and the courtroom. In the end, I think the long first section was necessary for the shape of the book overall. It seems to me that I needed to understand the genesis of the crime, the investigation and the arrest of Leopold and Loeb for the rest of it to make sense.
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I went to the library today, returning a whole bunch of stuff, and borrowing more. Because that’s what I do. I’m pretty sure I brought back more than I borrowed, but the fact I write “I’m pretty sure” indicates it’s a close-run thing. I borrowed more than I could bring home in one trip, in fact. Oh, and I bought a book, too.
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The book I bought is Mike Carey’s The Devil You Know. I bought it because of this post on Robin McKinley’s blog.
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On the bus tonight, I started reading The Dark, a collection of ghost stories edited by Ellen Datlow. It’s one of the books I’ve had out for a while that I’ve finally worked my way to. I’ve only read one story in full, Jeffrey Ford’s ”The Trentino Kid”. It’s a fabulous story, and one line in particular still floors me, the narrator describing a childhood moment with his father: “he held my hand in his big callused mitt, like a rock with fingers.”
God really is in the details.
One of the toughest parts of writing a fantasy is coming up with names. Sure, political systems, histories, cultures and religions aren’t easy, but names? Oh. My.
This need for names is driven more by Notes from Fenis than the wip. If the letter writers aren’t characters in the wip — and they aren’t — then they need names that reflect that. The names have to have some kind of internal consistency so they seem as if they’re part of the same world; they need to please me; and they can’t sound too much like a word in this world.
So I’m spending the next day or two trying to come up with names.
One of the things WordPress does is automatically generate a list of blog posts out there that might possibly be related to one you posted. Friday’s post generated a link to Nerd World: A Blog About Geek Culture, on Time.com. I did a little poking around (because I’m a curious soul) and found this very interesting post on buying used or new online.
My sister G. wonders where I find out about the books I read. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s my sister G’s birthday this weekend, and I ended up spending almost all of yesterday with her, including taking her to dinner with my sister M. G and I finished up the night by watching the episodes of Battlestar Galactica we hadn’t seen before.
Which is why there was no post yesterday. I didn’t expect I wouldn’t be anywhere near my PC for most of the day, so I didn’t plan for anything. So no post.
Okay, I imagine that, going by the title of this post, it’s clear that this is my crazy season, when I get a little baseball-obsessive and have Red Sox on the brain. When the ride ends, I’ll hide in a cave and moan for a little while, and I’ll be reading in between moans, because that’s how I deal with things I can’t deal with: I read to run away from them. Read the rest of this entry »
I know part of the reason I had such a horrid headache yesterday was that I stayed up late Wednesday night, going to the baseball game, but I think it was compounded by staying up ridiculously late, watching the Sox celebrate clinching a spot in the playoffs. I couldn’t not watch.
Afterwards, I got to thinking about Justin Masterson, a rookie pitcher. I thought about how young he is, and how crazy this is — he already has a commercial. (It’s a little commercial for a local sporting goods chain, but still…) Then I realized he’s good enough to have been drafted and signed by the Red Sox, which means he’s a whole lot better than most of the kids he played Little League with.
The thing is, “better” for him is pretty cut and dried: Read the rest of this entry »
For whatever reason — allergies, not drinking enough water yesterday, catching cold from my sister-in-law — I have an absolutely miserable headache, and I haven’t read anything all day long. I didn’t pick anything yesterday morning, so I’m basically without a book at the moment. And my head hurts too much to really think about anything.
So until tomorrow…
No post today. I have an absolutely brutal headache, and I’m stupid with the pain. I’m going to creep off to bed.
Tonight, courtesy of my sister-in-law, I am at a Red Sox game. I’m very excited to be here, but I don’t want to abandon this, so I’ve written a post in advance, and I’m tying to the Red Sox.
When I was thinking about this, I thought I should write about baseball books. The thing is, I’ve only read three: Watching Baseball, 4th: Discovering the Game within the Game by Jerry Remy and Corey Sandler; Red Sox Rule: Terry Francona and Boston’s Rise to Dominance by Michael Holley; and Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season by Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King.
I’m sad to say I didn’t finish the Jerry Remy book — I started it when I knew too little about baseball to really follow it. It’s almost certain I still know too little to follow it.
Red Sox Rule is a very short book, and it’s primarily about Terry Francona. I enjoyed reading it, even if it wasn’t particularly meaty — it took a couple of hours to read.
Stephen King was my favorite part of Faithful. If I had to characterize his writing voice, it would be down-to-earth wiseass, and that quality is all over his part of the book. It’s a good story to read when you know the outcome — it’s fun to read the moaning and worry knowing All Will Be Redeemed in the end.
Hmmm… I think I might have to borrow it from the library again…
