Writing, I keep forgetting, is much more similar to drawing than I'd like, for my own peace of mind. Namely, I'd like to point to the stuff from the Artist Problems tumblr such as as the <5% overlap between what you want to work on and what you actually works on, which are tentatively labeled as "miracles". The other gem that I've referred to before is how hard it is to work up the energy to start and then, once you started, how hard it is to stop even though you definitely don't have the time for an in depth assay on the common elements on the portrayals of good versus evil across cultures.
Which ultimately results in me awake at 11pm on a weeknight musing on the philosophies of aging on while thinking "NotimenotimewhyamInotasleepYET??" (stress does not help with sleeping, no) as well as me, currently, finally sitting down in front of my blog and thinking "...I have no urge to write about any of the stuff I thought up during random hours of the week and actually, no real desire to write at all so why don't I just bleed my thoughts onto the page for a bit to see if that helps releases some kind of pressure...?"
Right, so here we are.
I have just finished scrubbing out the bathroom (the spring cleaning continues but scrubbing out the bathroom's always my least favorite part) (and what am I doing so that I keep getting randomly switched over to Chinese text input from English?) and am pondering what sort of biomolecule it is that gives that particular type of mold that distinctive pink hue. I've seen that type of mold before elsewhere, I'm sure. Perhaps it has special antibiotic properties. Goodness knows that's what some bacteria (Strep aureus comes to mind -- one of my classmate works on it) are doing with their pigments.
I was also going to type about books. You see, I finished some.
I read "The Langoliers" by Stephen King, which is a novella and which, I found, did not suit my taste at all. Make no mistake that he's a great writer and his ability to create atmosphere with words makes me think of Bradbury, but.
All the gore really, really isn't my thing. What with the stabbing and the bleeding all over the place. Horror doesn't seem to be my genre at all, if this is any indicator. And I was unable to suspend my disbelief at all (which you kind of need to be able to do if you read as much fantasy / sci-fi as I do) and so was left bemusedly thinking about dust-bunnies of doom.
I also read Dragonhaven, which I think I mentioned. It's by Robin McKinley, of Beauty fame. It's not quite as good as that but it's both fast and entertaining and I really liked the protagonist. Though it felt like the story had a bit more "telling" than "showing" than I expected. Beauty is definitely still her best work, from my perspective, though.
I started reading Love and Limerence, which was vastly fascinating but I had to return it to the library on the account of my leaving the city and migrating 6.5hrs south. I haven't gotten around to getting an online copy yet. Not to mention now that I'm in lab 24/6 again it's not really the sort of book you can pick up and put down easily. It's committed reading. Like many of the non-fiction items on my "to-read" list. Which is probably why there are more of them on that list.
I did collect a few other online books over break though, including books by Dianna Wynne Jones (to continue the theme started by McKinley, see), specifically the Chrestomanci series. Book one was kind of "eh" -- it's fast read, it's entertaining, but not the stuff I would recommend as the best work by the author (which would be, of course, Howl's Moving Castle, in my opinion). Book two was much better though, and I'd recommend the first story (each book contains a few novellas) "The Magicians of Caprona". It's like...Romeo and Juliet with magic and cats and humor told from the viewpoint of a minor character, bow-tied with a happy ending. Though it might make more sense to read "The Lives of Christopher Chant" (from the first book) first so you can look at it and go "Oooh so that's how he ended up". (Also: lol Christopher you are such a peacock. With good reasons, I guess. But still. ) Skimmed "Conrad's Fate" from the third book mostly to see what Christopher is up to. And Millie, because she's awesome. But. It goes back to the "eh" territory and lacks that certain spark that caught me from very first world-building sentence of the Caprona story.
I suspect a great deal that the reason I'm not as much into the stories is because I'm reading them at age 24 instead of 14. I mean, I read nearly all of Tamora Pierce's stuff at age 13 and loved it (having strong female characters certainly helped).
Oh right, and I finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Which is the sort of book I'd recommend people read at least once, for the experience and the social commentary. Though maybe social commentary isn't the right word...it's more of the sense that the author has a definite world view that he wanted to share, is not afraid to share it, is good at putting it in his story, and is the view that people should glimpse through at least once. That being said, the story isn't my type enough for me to read the two sort of sequels. Nevertheless, this book is very engaging, of the page-turning crime-solving variety but I should probably warn everyone that it has some very disturbing themes of both sexual and violent nature. It probably says something about the story and the writing that I finished the entire thing in a few days despite of the fact that I found the protagonist annoying.
And. While I was reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I also started working on the book of Armenian fairy tales & folklore that Lucy lent me. I'm about half way through so I'll get back to you, dear reading, when I'm finished. (Thankfully the stories are short so that they can fit easily in my day even when the days get Insane.) And I finished Master and Magarita. Yes, at some point I had the equivalent of three books progressing at the same time in my head. Two of them with extensive character lists of foreign names. Somehow it worked for me. Don't ask me how. It probably had something to do with the fact that I was just starting my experiments after break so the days aren't quite as packed yet.
But.
Master and Magarita is pretty awesome. I have to get my hand on a paper copy to re-read at some point. (I have Russian friends. Someone must have a copy somewhere, right? If I poked them enough? It's supposed to be a pretty famous book.) It's...all the themes of Hamlet (well, not the oedius complex, I suppose) structured in 20th century Moscow wrapped in the sort of wry humor that had me laughing manically to myself while driving (it was an audiobook which I started at Thanksgiving and finished last week on the bus -- it was long). And yes, the introduction gave some background to both the time period and the author, and I can just catch enough references to know that 99.9% of it is going straight over my head, but as I've said, Hamlet. Themes of good vs. evil, of what is good and what is evil, of courage and cowardice and love and redemption transcends both time and culture very well. One of my high school classmates pointed out, it's not a great work of literature if someone didn't go crazy and / or die. Well, this book as both. So even if you will excuse my waxing poetic about it, I'll have you know that it qualifies as "great" by someone else's standards as well (though I think mine is better).
So there you go: book review. I did, after all, write something that I meant to write. Is this a miracles? Or is it merely an indicator of it being late enough that I should consider going to bed?
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