Athena > Recent Status Updates

"That which you tend, you come to adore with the kind of love that bypasses sense and reason."

"What a feeling it was, after a lifetime lived in my parents' house, to be part of the world and make a difference in it. To do something, however small. To speak, and be heard, if only in my own home."

I'm still waiting for this from the library, but listening to US pre-inauguration BULLSHIT I had to mutter that, contrary to US media crap, the US is far from the only country in the world with a tradition of peaceful transfer of power. Argh. Non-US friends, my deepest apologies for the idiocy of my broadcasting countryfolk. US friends, I'm Primal Screaming with you ...

Max Gladstone writes hellagood opening sentences: in the Prologue we get "God wasn't answering tonight" & Chapter One opens with: "When the Hidden Schools threw Tara Abernathy out, she fell a thousand feet through wisps of cloud and woke to find herself alive, broken and bleeding, beside the Crack in the World." Damn!

"One thing I learned from the Nigerian experience was what it's like to be a civilian in a war zone. You never know what's happening, or who is shooting at whom. You just hope with all your heart that they won't do it near you. I would sit up at night, wide awake …"

" … I am here to tell you that if unexplained western classical music comes over the only radio station of a third world country, the feathers have hit the fan."

As a young woman (c.1950) debutante or "coming out" parties were still much in vogue in better-off white America. "My parents would have nothing to do with such a thing. To them, I think, a coming out party was nothing but an upscale form of pimping." Indeed!

"I've written many articles and two books about my time in the Kalahari … one way or another, the Kalahari is in all the books I've written."

"I've written many articles and two books about my time in the Kalahari … one way or another, the Kalahari is in all the books I've written."

Glad I didn't read the summary here on GR since it's got a spoiler in it. Ignore the summary, go straight to the book!

Glad I didn't read the summary here on DR since it's got a spoiler in it. Ignore the summary, go straight to the book!

oopsie! This is book 2 (like it says at the top of the page, d'oh!). Waiting for book 1 from the library … :D

It's easy to become intoxicated with Valente's prose. This isn't a book to read all in one sitting, it's far too rich and gorgeous to absorb in one gulp (and I can gulp pretty big!).

Hmmm, Ellis seems to be of the anti-Washington school of scholarship, lately so popular (children rejecting paternal figures?); he's not shying from inserting negative descriptors ('scheming', 'awkward', etc.) while not providing reasonable argument for same. Thus far I find his writing rather judgmental & somewhat presentist, though the bones of his scholarship are impeccable.

"Once there was a child whose face was like the new moon shining on cypress trees and the feathers of waterbirds." I don't think I've ever been quite so captured by the short prelude to a book ...

I started '5th Season' book this morning thinking it hard to get into because of the 2nd person point of view of the narration & feeling like I'd end up dnf'ing it. HA! 276 pages & lots of undone tasks later … damn, this is good stuff.

How on earth have I missed this book for the past 31 YEARS! I feel an utter fool, but very happy fool cheerfully reading along. This is the sort of book I'm enjoying so much that I'm parcelling it out to myself to avoid my usual Reading Splurge. Onward!

I want to slap the main character upside the head, along with his entire spineless clan. Analogy: antebellum deep-South slaves had more grit than these Reds who have easy access to weaponry (those mining blade-things that Darrow magically smuggled out of the mines). Thus far: underwhelmed.