flemmings | Entries tagged with reading

Actually did stay up late enough (studying kanji; hush, it's à chacun son goût) that the fireworks down by the waterfront drew my attention. Went to crane at the distant sparks from the study window, even though the clouds were so low-hanging that the CN Tower's lights were invisible. Recall that ten years ago was exactly the same: mild wet and overcast, but the fireworks were more spectacular then.

(I can see the tops of the lakeside fireworks, two miles away and change, only because TO is built on a gentle hill and I'm at the point where it just starts to get steep. Three blocks away I'd have an even better view.)
( Cut for Dec stats )

I'm sure everyone has seen this on

daegaer, but it looks like they've found Cao Cao's tomb.

Also, happy birthday to

joasakura

And otherwise, finished Unseen Academicals. With all allowances made for 'first time reading newly published Discworld in hardcover' which, truly, has a different feel from 'reading all of extant Discworld any way I can get it to catch up to everyone else', I really think this is one of the best in the series. As proved by the fact that the staff of UU did *not* get on my nerves as they customarily do, because ordinarily UU ranks down there with Rincewind for 'stuff I can take or leave alone, and would preferably leave alone.' (Earlier I had a feeling the football thing was going to prove too British even for my second-gen appreciation, but I got over it.) Also-- Vetinari and his squeeze. Also Pepe. Also Glenda. Also Nutt. I am a happy camper.

In the 'two countries divided by a common language' dep't, I learn from myriad entries on FFLs (and my own) that Americans 'call out' when they're not going to make it to work. Canadians 'call in'. Because it's the weekend I did neither, of course. Instead I stayed at home almost all of yesterday, as I'm supposed to, and felt vile, as I do when I stay home-- weak, ear-achey, and inclined to burst into tears over things like my 1998 line-a-day daybook.

So today I took half an ativan because it's supposed to help virus-caused balance problems, though it may help by making you not *care* that you've got virus-caused balance problems, or care much about anything, in fact; got on my trusty iron horse and pedalled happily in mild sunshine (above freezing) over to Bloor and Brunswick. And bought books, which is exactly what I need, of course. But everything at BMV looked so fascinating, I was hard put to get away with a mere $40. Knowing that the attractiveness might be just the ativan speaking, I read a few pages of each OMG wonderful! find, and so passed up on Donald Richie's novel about the life of Atsumori's killer, Mr Darcy's Decision, the fictionalized account of the real-life Chinese Imperial princess who spied for the Japanese in WW2, and a book of essays by Natsume Soseki which read as floaty-ungraspable as Japanese theorizing always does read to me in English. I should try it in Japanese and see if it reads better there, but my guess is not. I've heard that the Japanese, like the French, prefer to wander about a point rather than actually come to it, an approach that makes me scream whenever the French do it.
( The haul at the end of the day )

Two pages into Lieutenant Hornblower (ancient Pan copy, price 35p) and it's obvious that O'Brian is the better writer, 'mud and stars differential' type. Id est, two pages of tell don't show and appalling run-on sentences. He thought this but then he thought this but then a smile from those frank brown eyes made him think this. Cover blurb: What a tremendously good writer he is! Err- no.

There's often a reason why second hand books are second hand.

I go to my doctor's appointment and come back with a backpack full of books from the used bookstore up by her place.

'You could have gone out to dinner on that $22,' Superego says. 'Now you can stay in and eat mush.'

'I merely emulate Erasmus,' I reply. '"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes."'

'Yeah, but Erasmus read his books.'

Erm. This is true. Still, I might read these?
( Cut for swag and snow )

Trailers and stats--

From

i_am_zan, previews for The Treasure Hunter, aka what Uncle Ming does to pay the bills.

( Cut for November book-chat )

( Read more... )

Dipping into The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes as a break from Dragon Kings' Souls. Read The Adventure of the Yellow Face, which is simultaneously 'GO! Conan Doyle' and 'Oh Conan Doyle NO' ie amazingly advanced for its period (or a good fifty years after its period, if not more) and still oh dear oh dear oh dear.

Which is indeed a Neat Trick.

( Cut and numbered for convenience )

Oh look. I *do* have a copy of Vol 3 of The Soul of the Dragon King. It was down in the front room all along, while I waded through 40 pages of vol 4 wondering Who are these people anyway?, convinced that 3 was the volume I failed to find back in '96.

Of course, now I have to *read* it. Oh well.

Equally, it's fine to be lavish and pound foolish and to buy five volumes of the English translation of FMA in a single fell swoop. (Must look up 'fell swoop' and find what it refers to. Birds, I bet. And yes, birds it is. Also Macbeth, a play I've never got far with because it has, well, too many famous quotes that get in the way.)

But of course, now I have to *read* them. Oh well.

Reading in English is a tremendous brain suck. No, scratch that. Reading Amelia Peabody is a tremendous brain suck. I had trouble getting through the last two books (Camel and Snake), so what do I do? Start on another (Hippopotamus), like the will-less puppet I've become. Last time I did this was with Pratchett who varied wildly in story and setting from one book to the next, and required some recup time after each. Peabody is all the same, except it's different enough from book to book (and well-written enough, an important point) to keep me going. Truly insidious.

I so want to be done so I can start making inroads on my stack of indifferent Japanese novels and indifferent manga, and I don't want it to end because it's so comfortable and it's *cold* outside and it's pleasant sitting in the rocker wrapped in a quilt and reading Amelia Peabody while all ambition goes down the drain. Arghities.

ETA- also I want to bike to the 24-hour 365-day grocery and buy a mint truffle pig. I don't need a mint truffle pig. I want one anyway.

Amelia Peabody and her Master Criminal are getting on my nerves, so I've been having recourse to Sherlock Holmes, both the original and in pastiche. Both the original and the pastiches move me to reflect that the Victorian Era had many conveniences (for the middle and monied classes, of course) that must have proved a major impetus to the rise of labour unions. Three mail deliveries a day, for instance. But even this lavish attitude to other people's time and convenience fails to make me believe that there was *always* a train to the most god-forsaken reaches and the tiniest towns inside England, not merely several times a day, but usually within half an hour of whenever the need to get there first arose.

Though for all I know, maybe England really was as wrapped about with railway tracks as an overdecorated Christmas tree with lights and glitter chains. One just wonders how this left enough space for, yanno, fields and forests and the like.

( Cut to spare FLs )

On Wednesday I wrote "Amelia Peabody and I are not long for each other's acquaintance." On Thursday I went to Eliot's Books and bought four more volumes in the series.

I blame Pratchett for this. I read him last year after the op; and now recuperative periods, even if they aren't *actually* recuperative, require an easy series of English language books to distract me from the lack of small people. (Easy series of Japanese books require coffee shops and the ingestion of bakery items which I cannot afford in any sense of the word. Alas.)

Thus, Amelia Peabody. ( However-- )

( Cut and numbered for your convenience )

Hari Raya is already over in S'pore, but Happy Eid to

i_am_zan and anyone else who celebrates. Next up-- mid-autumn festival. I told me I couldn't have mooncakes unless I broke the weeping-point 200 lb mark. I have done that, quite unwittingly. Thus-- mooncake. Singular. When I'm quite sure lotus paste won't upset my fragile innards again.

Otherwise have succumbed and am reading my first Amelia Peabody. Also Komahoshi, which at the end of vol 10 suddenly reverted to the desperate edgy happenings of the first volumes after about five tanks of Happy Skool Daze rabu-rabu.
( Vol 10 also has a family tree, and needs it )

I was going to write the Sep 16 prompt at

31_days-- had it started and was hacking away because writing is no longer an easy act for me. Intended to have it done at least for

i_am_zan's birthday yesterday. ( Best laid plans and all )

My current life is eerily reminiscent of post-op back five years ago. Walk two hours every morning (slowly, this time because my knees and feet hurt), eat small lunch, browse internets, read Japanese all afternoon, eat small dinner, browse internets, read some English, go to bed exhausted at ten. (I miss the 'write dragon story' part of that. I also miss the 'drop ten pounds in ten days' bit.) This regime is supposed to lose me weight, strengthen muscles, and increase reading speed. Can't see that it's doing any of those.
( Chronicles of wasted time )

Started reading The Years of Rice and Salt, and after three chapters had to stop and google to discover just how AU the AU is. Um well, Timur died in 1405 and Zheng He's first expedition was 1413, and I'm not sure it'd take one man eight years+ to walk and ride down from (that end of the world I can never keep straight) somewhere north-east of Turkey to the Mediterranean, though it might. But people in Mombasa are talking like Zheng is a known fixture, not an admiral on his first voyage to the Indies (and anyway, didn't it take him longer to get to Africa?) More to the point, the Black Death ravaged Europe in the 1340's, so if it's Black Death we should have bleached bones 75 years later and not still-preserved food. So, yeah, AU.

It's fascinating reading so far but I hope it's not all going to be the Great Figures of History Diorama with Guest Apperance by the Parthenon.
( Cut for Komahoshi brainlessness )

( Cut for natter )

Why am I reading The Wizard Hunters when I'm morally certain the woman has mixed that nasty SF into a perfectly respectable fantasy? I suppose I could reread The Death of the Necromancer instead, except that I recall that one as kind of Riverside manqué, in that Swordspoint had more atmosphere, and Riverside itself as a kind of Points manqué, in that the Points series got the atmosphere better. Not that anyone else read Swordspoint for the atmosphere, grump.

OTOH the Sapphic-or-possibly-polysexual pirate in The Fall of the Kings was wonderful, and I should have been happy to see more of her.

Maybe it's flu, maybe it's wanhope, maybe it's a weekend spent at a cottage on the Niagara peninsula-- a flat unbeautiful stretch of land always covered in heat haze, where people watch television because there's nothing else to do but drink. Yes, yes, they grow wine there. But you'd have to be either drunk all the time or a Buddhist recluse not to go mad at the excess of nothing on all sides, which (even worse) requires a car to get you to it. Auden's estate is ferociously copy-righted so there's no online version, and the poem itself is too long for me to type, but his Plains contains the line, "I cannot see a plain without a shudder,/ 'Oh God, please, please don't ever make me live there." Yes. Yes. *This*, as the wacky mono say.

And think of growing where all elsewheres are equal!
     So long as there's a hill-ridge somewhere the dreamer
Can place his land of marvels; in poor valleys
     Orphans can head downstream to seek a million;
Here nothing points; to choose between Art and Science
     An embryo genius would have to spin a stick.

Knowing what the cottage can do to me in its worst moods (ie hot sweltering mug, shimmery grey hazed sky, stink of polluted lake, and no, that's it, sorry all but I'm never going to LRD ever) I brought a backpack of books to read, including that simple-minded White Hart novel. But wanhope/ flu/ ferocious muscle spasms ruled out anything Japanese, as they did the undistinguished Martha Wells I'd also brought. (Why do so many fantasies read like tapwater? and tapwater written on a computer, to boot.) If I must suffer, let me suffer to some purpose, so I gnawed doggedly away at The Fall of the Kings. And finished it today, finally, dragging feet and ripping nails out all the way.
( What does tFotK have in common with morphine? )

Finished Ackroyd's Hawksmoor. I wish someone would do for Tokyo what he does for London except you can't, because Tokyo streets have no names. It was enlightening however to go online and look at the real churches involved, which seem much less ominous than Ackroyd writes them. And then I look again and enh, dunno. Hellenic architectural motifs plastered (literally) onto grimy London edifices are a bit weird and uneasy-making after all.

There's the other thing about Tokyo. Buildings don't last three hundred years there so the past never gets a chance to pile up in the masonry.

I admit the hanging black clouds, tattered at the hemline, that scuttled across the just-post-sundown sky ahead of the storm were eerie and wonderful, like pantomime assassins hastening to do the dire deed. (ETA or Ringwraiths, or something even nastier in black cloaks.) The two hours of NOISE and DELUGE that followed were totally unnecessary, in my ever so very humble opinion.

And since I couldn't be online, and since I have a hard time concentrating on things like plot and dialogue when there's NOISE and DELUGE happening, I rousted out one of my ancient White Hart Japanese novels (the one where the silver-haired amethyst-eyed magic-wielding biseinen is called 'ill'-- lower casing it because ariel font makes it look like a Roman 3-- and read fifty pages of it. Read fast, I stopped being bothered that the author informs me every three lines that ill has (clear, cold, fathomless) amethyst eyes and that the quondem Dragon Prince (never got far enough in the series to find out does he turn into a dragon) has (sparkling, mischievous, teasing) onyx eyes, and concentrated instead on remembering the Japanese words for rowan, elm, yew, and mistletoe. My pleasures are recherche indeed.

I wonder if it's late onset adult ADD, this inability to concentrate on anything for any period of time, this restless search for something to divert me, and the inevitable return to addiction solitaire. Currently in my reading lineup, begun and discarded and picked up again half-heartedly, we have--
( Cut for loose ends )

--but not this year, apparently. My Gruesome reading continues unabated, a scant ten days after finishing my last fantoddy work. Started Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor and was totally todded a mere twenty pages in. (Possibly should postpone until next door comes back from wherever and I hear their comforting footsteps through the wall.) Yes I knew it was Like That because Ackroyd is Like That, and frankly I think London is Like That too. Horrible place (shudders.) But The Fall of the Kings is too complicated for my poor brane (can't keep people straight) and The Years of Rice and Salt is too heavy-- literally: weighs the backpack-- and I need to sit with my poor swollen summer feet up so they can deflate, which means reading through the To Read bookcase. Luckily serendipity brought me the perfect sweetness and light antidote to Ackroyd, not that I expect you to believe it. But a fast reread of Ze 4 and 5 has settled my stomach marvellously.

Which is good, because 6, 7 and 8 are in the mail to me.

( Come scribble away and balance the books and sing an accountancy shanty; also Holmes )

Is why I finished Archer's Goon within twenty-four hours. A Diane Wynne Jones I somehow never read. Mind, there are a bunch of infinitely-confusible-in-my-mind DWJ titles, so I probably thought I had and then it turned out I hadn't. (Have I read The Ogre Downstairs? I don't think I have. But again, unless I read her two or three times I never remember her plots either.)

From which you may see that I like DWJ but find her a tad head-hurty. Partly the twistiness, partly all the stuff left out one is expected to supply. Truly, her books read as if they're only sixty-six per cent there and random chunks of text are just missing. AG however is almost straightforward, and the twists were predictable in a confused way-- as in, it's DWJ so there must be twists so what's the most likely one ah hah.

But it makes for a change from the stuff I've been reading, and change was what I wanted. Should probably tackle The Fall of the Kings again. Only a straight diet of English reading always makes me feel two dimensional, but padding it with manga just makes me feel futile. Unless it's 100 Demons. So maybe I should go puzzle out those confusing stories in vol 15...

Muscle relaxants are love (and good sleep) but they do leave you going blinkety blink when you see lines like 'I was just hoping that anyone could tell me how tall Hong Kong is?' on lj. Then you realize it's a hetalia community.

Reading Cherie Priest's Four and Twenty Blackbirds. Bemused and amused by the fact that though this deals with supernatural Thingies, ghosts, nasty-type (dead) (male) witches, murder, secrets from the past, and what all, it's almost completely devoid of a sense of menace. (Unlike everything else I've read this month.) 'Oh yeah, there's these three grey ghosts of murdered women who keep looking at me-- and giving me sensible advice from the back seat of my car. Am I scared? No. Why would I be?' See, *this* is how 100 Demons reads in English. Ghosts, infanticide, homicidal cousins-- all in a day's work.

The unidentified white blob in the mirror in the camp lavatory OTOH.... Terrifying because unidentifiable. The thing that always gets me in southern gothics are the unspeakable secrets, unknown and terrible and half-buried, whose rotting stink poisons the book's atmosphere. You could have that here too if you wanted, but Priest doesn't want. Her Eden is a perfect Ritsu. So far, because I'm wondering where the tension in the book is supposed to come from if neither crazy cousins nor dead great aunts hold any terors for her.

Finished Cloud Atlas, skimming bits right to the end. I mean, the guy does voice and style in bravura fashion but I'm not sure what it's all in aid of. Shall keep it for the centre section whose voice and vocabulary are indeed new and useful, but for the rest-- enh, no. Not my thing, and smelling oh so faintly of 'less here than meets the eye.'

Of course it had to contend with 100 Demons 18, which is something of a classic. ( Cut for generalized squee )

Should not go to Seeker's when I have no money. Or possibly, given my To Read bookcase, I should only go to Seeker's when I have no money. However I was tickled at finding two books by people I know from LJ sitting in the same P section. One was by Cherie Priest and the other wasn't. (Am on muscle relaxants for stubbornly spasming back so no, I don't remember who the other was. Who else do I know has a name starts with P?)

Mind you, I've somehow stopped reading 3K again. It's those 9 hour no-break days; I want a reward afterwards, and the downward spiral of Book 3 isn't it. "The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily," and I don't happen to agree with the author's definition of good and bad. Everyone Dies, in any case. Yawn.

Well, not exactly. The dawn came up kind of flat pre-storm tropical, the red-tinged grey I associate with Tokyo. Of course I was awake to see the dawn, which peeves me, but one cannot fight those light = awake instincts. The storm came along a little later and was occasionally louder than it needed to be; but mostly it just rumbled constantly, in the way non-TO storms do, and monsooned rain as if from fire hoses. And I read the first chapter of Cloud Atlas which definitely suited that weather, and in the sunny warm blowy afternoon the second chapter, which was fun. I love epistolatory novels except when they forget they're epistles; and yes, Mr. Richardson, I *am* looking at you. Now I'm reading the third chapter, set in the 70s, and wondering sourly if the flat unconvincing female protagonist is a clever shout-out to those flat unconvincing 70s female protagonists written by men-- we could be channeling Pyncheon here-- or if Mitchell is just incapable of writing women, the way China Mieville is. You know where my money lies.

As for why I'm reading Cloud Atlas, ( that's another story. )

Came home from my cortisone shot to a package in the mailbox. Good, my Judge Dee from England arrives almost promptly. Gather necessary impedimenta ie current manga, wordtank, current novel, current 3K volume, package, and mandatory icepack for the mandatory six hours with feet up following shot. Finish current novel (Gifts), current manga (Ouchy Romanse 2) (both gifts from

kickinpants saved for just such an occasion as the present; and thank you again, TTG) and turned to open package to suss out my new book. Which was smaller than I'd thought-- somehow I had the idea it was a hardcover-- and heavy, and was not a book at all but

nojojojo's prezzy zooming up from Noo Yawk.

Chinese vocab fridge magnets; children, Chinese studying, for the use of. Equally useful for Canuck obasans doing the same. I can't put them on my fridge as yet because a repairman's coming to look at it tomorrow; but I spent a happy half hour trying to express Kliban's poem in Chinese:

My cat is fat so I will dine
And eat up all this cat of mine.

'我的貓是大;我吃我的大猫' Well OK, 'my cat is *big*', and I'm not sure how the future works in Chinese, if it works, or intentionality, if that's what it is, and the grammar book is downstairs. But this is still loads of fun. Thank you so very much, N!

Second time through with a dictionary and third time through looking closely at the pictures, I finally get what's happening in the grandfather story in 100 Demons 16. Half of me thinks manga shouldn't *be* that difficult and the other half is rather charmed. Ima makes you work for your story but the work is very satisfying. Of course, I bet native speakers don't have to work like this. *They* always know who the absent subject refers to and what the absent verb is and the exact identity of that sketchily drawn person at the end. (deep sigh)

Now to find where the streetside palmist who lures Akira away somehow in the first story comes from, because it seems I'm supposed to know who he is and I can't remember him at all. While I'm at it I might try to figure out what it actually *is* that happens to Akira in that story, because first she's gone missing for a two days and suddenly there she is, no explanation at all. But I'm tired.
( Cut for stats )

Mh. Finished le Chateau du Lac Tchou-an. OOC, M. Lenormand, totally OOC. As also is Ti's obsession with the quality of the food he gets to eat. Thus we redraw canon characters to meet our society's values, or our own kinks, pick one.

I mean yes, au fond, it's Judge Dee fanfic, as van Gulik's Dee was Di Gong An fanfic. (And Gulik redrew the Judge to meet modern sensibilities and his own preferences quite as much as Lenormand does.) In a case like this one sees the true accumulative story telling tradition at work. One assumes the anonymous author of Di Goong An was drawing on oral versions but adding his own takes; reinterpreted by van Gulik, reinterpreted by Lenormand. Van Gulik is the better detective writer, for sure; and I'm not competent to judge whether Lenormand's French reads as jauntily as van Gulik's English.

But still--- it's French fanfic. If I want to read French, and I do, I'll read this before anything else I have in the house. (Gide and Sartre and dear god *what* was my mother thinking of? Whatever she was thinking of when she bought Steinbeck and Faulkner, I dare say.) I, umm, think I may order vol 2, if the loonie is as high as it was. And vol 1 goes out to

incandescens after my new fridge arrives and I'm free to leave the house.

Continue to read Judge Dee in French, hindered by not knowing words like 'paving tiles' and 'grumble' and 'wizened.' It's still close but no cigar. Surely it's not merely the fact that I'm reading it in French that makes le juge Ti seem more French than the original? Gulik's Dee was a moral Confucian prude, sniffily disapproving of Buddhism and brothels-- viewing the latter as a necessary evil, the former as an unmitigated one. Ti however has an eye for female charms, thinks in terms of Divine Providence and fate, and is impressed by large quantities of gold, without moralizing on the evils of any of these.

I should like to pass my retirement in writing Judge Dee in English, but of course there's always the problem of plot. Those three-stranded Ima Ichiko type Gordian knots are beyond me (and beyond the French writer as well, though I grant you this is only the first book in the series.) So I fear anything I did would resemble late van Gulik only, and only if I was lucky. I could still do van Gulik pastiche better than Wossname; the only question is would I want to? sniggery chauvinist piggery and all...

So, about those vanishing texts.
I try to persuade myself that it's just me remembering incorrectly what book the thing I'm looking for is in. In the one case where I finally found the missing text, that's what happened. The story of a wastrel son that I remembered being in Tales from a Ming Collection was actually in An Anthology of Chinese Literature. I've never succeeded in finding the story of the girl who elopes but leaves herself at home, that I remember being in the same Tales.

It is, in fact, in Black Water 2, a copy of which I picked up off someone's lawn ten days ago and opened today, because starting Charles Williams' All Hallow's Eve made me wonder if BW2 had the short story by him that I remember as being in one of the Black Water collections. It doesn't. Must be one of the others, unless it's in 'The New Yorker Book of Short Stories' or something.

Still, I'm cheered. At this rate I may eventually find my disappearing Chinese poem about the east wind, with Chinese text and notes.

( Cut for brief gripe )

Finished Victory of Eagles. ( Cut for thoughts on dumb boyfriends )

My sort-of impromptu sort-of holiday continues on a perfect June day through a delicious lunch of tilapia and lemon and rice, and dinner al fresco with my next door family. I'd thought I'd spend the time in my rocking chair reading myself silly-- the more so as I must wear my bunion splints several hours each day since I find it impossible to sleep in them. But instead I continue this year's erratic tendency and *clean.* Today's object of attack was the bunker floor, probably untouched for seven years, and the garden pathway, awash in the cherry pits of yesteryear.

In amongst all this I finished Empire of Ivory which really was good, and started Victory of Eagles which has me all a-wibble. If god loves me I have another ten days of this and then comes work and heat, pretty much together. 3 Kingdoms vol 3 isn't going to happen this month but that's OK. No-brainers is what I need in July.

( Cut for tetchiness )

There's a package in the mailbox when I get home. Ahh, the latest WARD, hotfoot from NY! Ohh, last of the dragon kings! Now to see what Goujun was actually saying--- Only I won't. Because it's not WARD, it's my manga from Japan, sent SAL. Go Jpn PO, and Canuck land surface whatevers too. Six days door to door. Boo US postal service: can't get a parcel to TO from NY in five days.
( Read more... )

Oh, the vampire Sforza duke *isn't* Ludovico. Funny, Ludovico /ought/ to be a vampire.

Been reading my old Saiyuki / Gaiden/ dragon stories. Almost as good as time travel. Still bothers me that they were all written six years ago and more.

On the plus paw, the latest WARD is in the mail and the new Ima Ichiko is in the mail. On the minus paw, how can it be only Tuesday?

Reading The Dragon Waiting. It's the kind of book that could stop a person writing entirely.

Mind, so could the sudden frequent inexplicable Word97 crashes. Open Office, here I come, I guess. (No, online advice person, Wordpad is *not* good enough. It won't let me open two documents simultaneously and it wants to save everything as rtf.)

The Dragon Waiting-- which I must not think of as The Dragon *In* Waiting because that's another kind of court, another kind of A/U, and another kind of dragon entirely-- arrived today. The back cover blurb had me at 'the Vampire Duke Sforza.' Except-- except-- this had better be A/U in the time line as well, because if Lorenzo de Medici (d. 1492) is alive, that nasty piece of goods Ludovico de Sforza (reigned 1494-1499 after reputedly poisoning his nephew Gian Galeazo) is not yet duke of Milan.

We shall see in short order. Thank you,

incandescens!

(Shaking head at Gian Galeazo's biography. 'We think he screwed himself to death but the doctor swears he was poisoned.' Truly, *why* is the Italian Renaissance considered a pinnacle of western civilization?)

( Cut because )

Don't want to read Empire of Ivory. Will I be totally lost if I just dive into Victory of Eagles?

The theory is I have Monday off, bar Dolorous Phonecalls. It will be interesting to have a holiday Monday that no one else has. If it happens. Note the fine line between 'pessimist' and 'realist.'

Discussion of fave female BFFs. Since I spent my early teen years wishing I was at Kingscote school with the Marlows while being at an all-girls Catholic high school in reality, female BFF to me was synonymous with adolescence. Now it's synonymous with LJ FLs. Am still trying to think, through the chronic mental fuzz, what fictional BFF I know currently, and conclude there aren't any, aside from Ya Yu and Yuan Luo swapping books, or Sybil and her coterie of well-born semi-aristos caring for sick dragons. Possibly there's something wrong with my reading habits.
( Cut for prolix )

Finished Armor of Light in Sunday's sun. Not as much fun as the Astreiant books last March, and I missed having Tasty's restaurant as a backdrop to it this time round (sighs for the defunct Tasty's) but still alright. Also resonates a bit, which it didn't last time through.

One note especially clear in the resonance: Burleigh and Cecil. ( Who? say my American readers )

My French Judge Dee arrived yesterday. I need a French wordtank; otherwise, the tone isn't *that* far off van Gulik's so far, except for the bit where Dee, mid-tempest, 'abandons his customary Confucianism to breathe a prayer to the deity of the river.' Mhh, don't think so.

For no good reason, this weather comment makes me happy.

Novik's website says Victory of Eagles paperback will be out July the something. Err uh hunh?

Book City doesn't have it but BC doesn't have much. So off I pedal to Bakka and look for VoE, which should be displayed everywhere if out. No displays. Ask the clerk. 'It'll be out in June." 'Anh, but, someone said it's out the 19th...' 'We don't have a definite date but we'll be getting it in June. You can pre-order it and I'll give you a call.' 'Ah no thanks, I'll come back.'

Odd. I could swear Shay bought it. So off I pedal to the World's Biggest Bookstore. Which has Victory of Eagles, that isn't available to the independents until next month. I have no idea what this is all about, but I fancy someone's getting shafted somewhere along the line.

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