Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 03:06 pm
Still haven't gotten my copy of The Willows. Not worried yet, but starting to miss it.

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Spent most of yesterday reading up on quantum physics. I feel like the last panel of that Calvin and Hobbes strip; the one where Calvin's dad has explained that a point on the outside of the record completes the same number of revolutions as one closer to the center, but is actually moving much faster. And Calvin is just lying there, little icons of bafflement floating around his head.

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Apparently the local magazine store won't be carrying Weird Tales (couldn't meet the distributor's minimum order); neither will my preferred comic book shop. A subscription is in order. (Probably the one that gets me H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror.)

(Jesus, was *everyplace* I'm moderately interested in mentioning the Dances of Vice festival? Some other year.)

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Finished Old Man's War by John Scalzi (the fourth book (not counting one magazine) I've finished since the move; the commute to work is proving to have unexpected advantages). Very fast read, well-written. I can definitely see the Heinlein influence, although honestly I keep thinking more of Haldeman's The Forever War (given that I preferred that to Starship Troopers, this probably constitutes a compliment). Expect to read the sequel.
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Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 11:43 am
John and I got a popup book of "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" for his nephew. Our nephew.

Since it's been suggested that perhaps I should avoid reciting the Gashlycrumb Tinies to the kid now that he's old enough to understand them, this is perhaps an acceptable alternative. :)

(Also picked up a four-pack of small skull-shaped erasers, for personal use.)

Read an interview with Gary A. Braunbeck in Apex. Am beginning to understand appreciate get an inkling of where some of the impact from In Silent Graves may have come from. When your daughter is born and lives six days and you don't ever get to see her because you and your wife are having problems and the only chance you get to say goodbye is from an intern sneaking you into the morgue and she's going to be cremated so they didn't patch her up after the autopsy and you only ever hold her for a hundred and twenty seconds and you try to cope a little by putting some of the recollection into your work--

--yeah. Okay. It has impact.

Finished Mr. Hands and "Kiss of the Mudman". I'll be picking up the rest of his stuff, I think.
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 11:22 pm
There's either a long short story or a short novella, set in the Mythos (at least, I was sure it was set in the mythos when I read it) that I read a while ago.

The title is something within spitting distance of "A Happening An Incident at Coldcreek Farm". It concerns a protagonist who has rented a room at the farm to get some work done far from meddling distractions. The couple who owns the farm seem perfectly normal at first, although I have an impression that the wife cooked notably good food. And then there are terrible huge pale moths, and dead bodies animated by some strange alien intelligence--fairly standard stuff, you know. It was okay, it's just that I've gotten a sudden craving to read it and if I own it then I *know* it's packed right now, and I can't exactly go looking for the anthology to get out of the library without having the story title.

Help?

EDIT: Found! "The Events at Poroth Farm".
Friday, November 30th, 2007 12:59 pm
To be tagged along with the previous post on happy endings, for ease of finding in future...

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Full circle, he thought while the final lethargy crept into his limbs. Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever.
I am legend.
- Richard Matheson, I Am Legend
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Pleasant memories.
Monday, November 26th, 2007 08:08 am
I spent just over four hours running a game session. Had dinner, came back, and then spent just under five hours at a Storyteller meeting for the LARP.

I think that, in future, I may try to avoid putting nine hours of storyteller work into one day.

(Also, can you believe that Wikipedia's entry on literary references to blue roses involved neither Peter Straub's Blue Rose Trilogy nor his short story "Bunny is for Bread"? The oversight has been corrected.)
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 12:34 pm
The latest issue of The Willows arrived last night. Haven't had a chance to sit down with it yet, but am glad of it. (Hmh. I suppose in a couple of months I need to renew my 'scription...[1])

Also, ran across something called tiny ghosts. It's a photo/caption webcomic, two lines and two pictures each strip. I'm not usually a particularly fond of the style, but find this one oddly fascinating. Part of it is that there's something subtly odd about a two-panel comic strip; I'm much more used to three and four. Part of it is the sweet macabre mood that a lot of them have, and the odd twists. Worth looking at, I think.

Finally, [livejournal.com profile] _anacrusis continues to provide 100-word bites of great amusement every morning. Here's a quick take on Genesis.
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[1] *Total* tangent: Angel is currently eating prescription cat food that can only be obtained from the vet, as did her brother before her. I derive great amusement from referring to her as a 'scrip kitty.
Saturday, November 17th, 2007 08:28 pm
Perfect Books, down on Elgin, has the trade paperback of World War Z as their featured book this month. Means it's going for $18.50, 20% off.

Should you be at all moved to pick up this excellent book--and I cannot figure who would *not* want a well-written, smart, neatly thought-out epistolary history of the zombie apocalypse that neatly avoids both schmaltz and schlock--now is a good time to do it.
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 11:04 pm
First, I have begun watching The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.--it's hokey and occasionally a little stiff, but it's funny and has that oddly gentle/sweet mood that dashing heroics often evoke. I mean, it also has spoiler ), but I consider that to be an fairly essential element of heroism.

Second, I picked up Wolf's Complete Book of Terror from the library--purely on spec, just a case of a saffron-orange cloth-bound book where the spine was so scuffed that I only noticed the word "TERROR" and saw the little screamy-face icon the library uses--and it's great. (Anthology; the contents list is here, maybe two-thirds of the way down the page.) I've read about half of them before[1]; it's just nice to sit down with a heavy old book and quietly work through them.

Sadly, when I say "picked it up", I mean "borrowed it", not "bought it at Ex Libris". I need to buy a copy.
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[1] I actually reread Boucher's "They Bite" about two days before I'd picked up the book. It was included in an anthology of stories based on real crimes--a short story by Abraham Lincoln, Ellison's "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs", etcetera--which was kind of interesting. Then I picked up Wolf's book, and it opened to the middle of "They Bite", again. I kept expecting a reference to show up someplace in a chat or post somewhere. You know how it is when you get several references to something, you start expecting another one...
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 06:10 pm
(1) [livejournal.com profile] commodorified bought me a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. No, I didn't already have one. Yes, I love it. :)

(2) {Local} The public library[1] has a copy of James Lovegrove's Days. This is good, as all my efforts to lay hands upon a copy for lending out to people have failed. I will continue to scour the used bookstores. Meantime, I *really* recommend this one.

(3) Picked up a book at the library called My Work Is Not Yet Done, attracted by the screamy-face on the spine. (SF/F and mystery have their own categories for hardbacks. Horror does not. Horror paperbacks are shelved waaaayyyy over in the corner on a shelf marked "Horror/Western", a label which always makes me smile.) Dustjacket had no information (beyond the author's name, Thomas Ligotti--yes, I have heard of him). Frontispiece, on the other hand, had the subtitle "Three Tales of Corporate Horror".[2]

This will suit my mood, I think. Work has gotten a little odd lately.
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[1] Where I have recently renewed my card, see (3).
[2] Also, the information that the book was published by Mythos Books, LLC, which got me to look up the entity in question. Looks potentially interesting, if not as easy to work through as Subterranean Press.
Thursday, October 25th, 2007 11:25 am
"Standardization is excellent, per se. When I buy an Ingersoll watch or a Ford, I get a better tool for less money, and I know precisely what I'm getting, and that leaves me more time and energy to be individual in."
- Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis - chapter seven, from the end of the fourth section

It's odd; it's a mellow little book, happy drippy rambling-along kind of narrative voice, and every now and then the knife just slips in and... not twists, exactly. Pricks a tender spot. Up at Project Gutenberg here.

Also: five months today. And I am eating sweet cold (temperature) hot (spicy) curry, and life is good.
Monday, October 22nd, 2007 06:18 pm
'kay. I have finished 13 Bullets. (Honestly, with the tagline "There are only thirteen bullets between the world you know and the world they rule", and the dramatic final fight scene, I am getting the impression that this was an expanded short story.)

The idea of how vampirism is transmitted is new and really damn smart. Once you're infected by vampirism in potentia--which depending on the power of the vampire can be done in a variety of ways; the particularly old or strong ones can apparently do it at will by making eye contact--then you become a vampire *if you kill yourself.* And the vampire having its hooks in your brain may hurry this process along; they can inflict horrible dream sequences which start to make suicide and vampirism seem very appealing. Ties into the old suicide legends; maintains the concept of infection; gets rid of the "doesn't everyone a vampire kills become a vampire" thing, which incidentally is probably a useful thing as the vampire in question are really horribly brutal.

(The book runs with an alternate history--one in which vampires have always been known to exist, but were beaten back. They're currently thought to be extinct in the wild--the book suggests a setting where one pops up somewhere in the world perhaps once every decade or two.)

There are also half-deads--zombie bodies, coherent minds--that have been fed vampire blood and are loyal to the vampire, right up until they fall apart. (There's an implication that vampires don't have to create half-deads out of the living; at one point Scapegrace[1] quickens (awakens, enlivens) a newborn's skull and hands it to someone, simply so he doesn't have to watch them closely--if they don't cradle it in both hands, it will start screaming. However, that might've been something rather slightly different. I don't mind not getting a catalog power listing.)

However. The book presents vampires as being tougher in direct proportion to how much blood they've drunk--I believe the phrase "so full of blood a bazooka couldn't hurt him" is applied to a vampire who's gorged on four or five people at one point. Similarly, the climactic fight scene involves a vampire who's fed so well that she's completely ignoring bullets fired at her heart from point-blank range. Know your own rules. )

Given how hard that fight was played up, I felt rather cheated.
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[1] Have I mentioned how much I love this name? It's not Gabriel Grey, but it's damn good.
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Saturday, October 20th, 2007 09:20 am
Apparently there's a crime called "uttering"; involves knowingly presenting and putting into use forged documents. Ran across it in a summary of what was wrong with Double Jeopardy, legally speaking. I just like the term.

Got the third Eden Moore novel by Cherie Priest on Thursday night; just meant to walk in to browse, saw it, picked it up. This one's Neither Flesh Nor Feathers, and I am expecting it to be at least as good as the last two. Should have it done in a week at the latest.

Finishing up 13 Bullets. Still have no indication of the eponymous thirteen bullets, although I suppose there might be that many bullets in the clip of one of the guns the cops use--would have to check. Interesting setting, workable story, but there's a kind of anti-Mary-Sue vibe going that's a little distracting and the writing sometimes seems a touch repetitive. (Sidenote: "Scapegrace" is a lovely name.)

Finished Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box, having bought it on Tuesday and started it Wednesday night. Fast read. I like it; while the style is about as close to King's as King's early short stories were to Matheson's (very), there tends to be less description more evenly spaced throughout the story, and the tone of events described are very different; much more immediate and accepted, I guess, though I realize I'm judging based off one novel alone. Had a little trouble accepting Georgia's characterization--I don't know *why* she didn't try to leave--but as events got worse it made much more sense. Would definitely like to lay hands upon his short story collection.
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Friday, October 12th, 2007 11:54 pm
*Was* feeling better.

After not getting to sleep until at least 2:00, woke up at 5:30 with screamingly sore throat. Drank heated Gatorade and took painkillers. Fell asleep until 9:00, when I needed to be woken up twice. Stuffed head, tender scrapey non-functional throat, intermittent coughing up of muck, breaking a sweat at the insupportable exertion of walking three blocks...

Went to work. No, I don't know either. Mostly kept thinking that *I* was thinking it was worse than it was, due to the lack of sleep and me hating being sick. (Note: I might be describing it as worse than it was. Yay, unreliable narrator.)

Got doctor's appointment. Was prescribed two different types of inhaler, since am apparently one of those people who occasionally gets asthma-like symptoms from a cold. For the rest of it: painkillers and hydration.

Finished day at work. I'd left a document partway through formatting when I headed out for the appointment, you see. It was just sitting there. Waiting. I *had* to go back.

Went home. Lay down on couch. Pizza and entertainment magically appeared in my vicinity. (I married a magician.) Garlic is great when you're sick. You can actually *taste* it, and eating becomes interesting again.

I'm sure I did something useful today outside of work... Sewing advice! Right. I found useful sewing advice to give to a newbie. And... I... *cudgels brain* ...read stuff. Discovered at 1:00 a.m. this morning that I don't actually have much to read when tired, drinking chamomile tea, and trying to fall asleep.[1] Eventually resorted to 1000 Wild Little Weird Tales, which worked relatively well.
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[1] I have learned to *not* use the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies for this purpose. Also, no Tiptree. In fact, I think I have a moratorium on ever casually reading Tiptree. Sheldon. Whoever. Wonderful work. Not to be taken lightly. This is a tangent.
Thursday, September 27th, 2007 11:53 am
First, some quick notes on readables:

I somehow missed the fact that Tom Piccirilli had a novel out about the unnamed necromancer and his familiar Self. I loved those characters--I picked up a tiny little 124-page short story collection called Pentacle back about seven or eight years ago, and it was (and still is) like nothing else I've seen. Stories written in modern prose and feeling like they should be illustrated with woodcuts. A Choir of Ill Children didn't grab me, but for the necromancer and Self I will happily pick up another paperback. (Even with the god-awful eighties evil jester cover art which I *swear* I have seen before, somewhere. I mean, come on. The necromancer and Self, and they can't come up with better cover art than this?)

Also, ran across the poem "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home", by Craig Raine. Short little thing--thirty-four lines long--and weirdly... elegant. Not beautiful, but elegant. (William Caxton, by the way, was the first English printer, setting up a press at Westminster in 1476. His translation of "The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye" was the first book printed in the English language.)

Sewing. )

BPAL's Typhon? *Does not* work on me. )

End-of-the-month bills were taken care of, even before the insurance payment for my teeth came in. And I walked down to CIBC and paid the registration fee for Sunday's Run for the Cure.

It's weird. I don't feel like I've been productive. And yet it seems like it slipped in there sometime over the last week.
Sunday, August 5th, 2007 09:51 pm
Alex felt that she could persuade the corpse, woman to woman, to yield up her genetic secrets.
Which seems like a really weird way of looking at it, especially in a straight modern-setting thriller, but, you know, okay. My main question was why is there curly shoulder-length hair flowing loose in a forensic lab?
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Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 11:43 am
On the first page, first column of Matters of Justice: An Overview of Major Articles and Trends (the let's-make-sure-we're-all-on-the-same-page section of the DOJ Strategic Plan for FY 2007-2012, tenth page of the PDF):
As reflected in the plan, the Department of Justice (DOJ or the Department) will focus in the next few years on achieving the Attorney General’s priority goals:
(1) To detect and prevent terrorism;
(2) To combat violent crime;
(3) To combat computer crime, especially child pornography, obscenity, and intellectual property theft;
(I am a little thrown on the association of those three, here. Also, they specifically discuss intellectual property theft as a threat to "the health and safety of our citizens"--but that's distinct from the threat this multibillion dollar illicit economy poses to national economic security, and they make a distinction between IP theft and ID theft. Doubtless I am missing something very obvious as to where the health and safety threat from IP theft is coming in.)
(4) To combat illegal drugs;
(5) To attack corporate and public corruption; and
(6) To promote civil rights and civil liberties.
Oh, good. I'm glad someone is planning to keep an eye on that last. I was starting to get vaguely nervous. But their expanded summary addresses housing discrimination (especially in areas with bias-related crimes), human trafficking, and enforcement of the minority language provisions of the Voting Rights act. I can rest easy.

On the first page, second column of same:
The Department has disrupted terrorist threats through aggressive prosecution and by leveraging criminal charges and long prison sentences to gather intelligence.
That said, I get the feeling that perhaps whoever edited the document didn't comb it for connotations. Maybe it's just me.

Next paragraph:
Terrorism remains the Nation’s greatest threat. Unless potential evildoers are monitored and thwarted, large numbers of innocent Americans can be killed in an instant.
I'm sorry. I'm clearly not in the restrained and reserved mindset required for reading five-year plans from the Department of Justice from the United States of America. Clearly evildoers, thwarting, and instantaneous death are serious concepts which are used only to calmly and rationally communicate the specifics of a situation, and are not at all intended to evoke an emotional response.
Friday, July 20th, 2007 02:13 pm
Three things worth taking a quick look at:

[livejournal.com profile] 365_tomorrows has a short and pleasant story on the possible consequences of a society which recognizes and legislates protection for the pre-pregnant.

Phil Foglio's Girl Genius: the 101 Class (early stories) have caught up to the Advanced Class (later stories), so you can now read the whole thing through--it's not *over*, but there are no gaps left. The first eighty pages are black and white; colour starts here and handily recaps the (engaging) situation in the first three pages. Comedy begins on the fourth.

Lea Hernandez's Texas Steampunk I: Cathedral Child is online here. It's an entirely different feel from what I usually think of as steampunk; more polished, more golden, adobe walls and open plains with a kind of slow dreaming machine intelligence.
Thursday, July 19th, 2007 03:54 pm
Off Beat: Uncollected Stories
Richard Matheson
(edited by William F. Nolan)
Subterranean Press, 2002 - I love the paper they use
Hardcover, library stickers on dustjacket, three library stamps
Copy 483 of 750 numbered copies
Signed by Richard Matheson (thin black ink) and William F. Nolan (fatter red ink)
$0.50

Mine!
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Monday, July 16th, 2007 07:42 pm
Frances?
Yes, Frances?
You know how you came home from work and fell over and still haven't quite woken up all the way yet and are in that weird almost-punchy dazed mode?
Yes, Frances. I thought I'd sit down and read some of the new books I bought. Reading is generally a quiet self-involved thing, and not a problem in this state.
That's a good idea, Frances. However, Frances...?
Yes, Frances?
Perhaps not the James Tiptree Jr. short story?

...heh, I need separate icons for conversations with myself.

(It might not be as effective as "The Screwfly Solution". It might simply be a "Painwise". I just don't feel like checking right now.)
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Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 04:27 pm
Right.

Anyone who, when discussing Dr. Henry Jekyll as presented by Mr. Stevenson, makes statements along the lines of "deliberately created the elixir so he could get away with horrible perverse things" or "didn't feel bad about it at all" (or "only stopped being Hyde because he was afraid Jekyll would be tried for murder", dear ghad that one especially annoyed me)?

No longer allowed to have the statement "I read the novella" carry *any damn weight whatsoever* when it issues from their mouth or keyboard.

*fume* *snort* *hmph*