If there's one thing I've learned from Phineas and Ferb, it's this:
Never underestimate the power of a spontaneous musical number.
What am I reading now?
Anasazi America, by David E. Stuart. Yes, still. It's good, but slow, and I have been interrupting myself. The book promises to combine archeology and history, but I'm still in the early chapters, which are necessarily archeological (pre-dating any written records from that part of North America). The book is talking about climate, changes in tools, food sources, settlement patterns, and economics (in a large sense), and the author promises to draw connections between the collapse of the Anasazi civilization and our own time and circumstances.
King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian Macdonald. Too early in the book to have much to say about it, except that I can entirely understand some of the reasons the characters are annoyed with each other, without anyone actually doing wrong.
What have I read recently?
Aunt Lulu, by Daniel Pinkwater. A cheerful, silly picture book that I reread after spotting it while unpacking. A librarian, sled dogs, and some fine illustrations.
An Excellent Mystery, by Ellis Peters. Reread of a Brother Cadfael that I asked the library for because I didn't recognize the title. Good, but I think I've had enough of these for a while, even if the King County Library System has the middle of the series (the first several, and the last few, are relatively easy to find).
The Highest Frontier, by Joan Slonczewski. I wanted to read something of hers before Wiscon, where she is one of the guests of honor (the other, Jo Walton, is a friend of mine and a writer whose work I like and have read just about all of). This is a coming-of-age adventure about a bright girl from a very political family set about a century in the future, in a world badly affected by climate change, with eerily familiar politics even though the anti-reality forces . Jenny Ramos Kennedy is descended from two presidents, and her family takes for granted that she will go into politics too, but in the meantime she's playing varsity zero-gee sports and being awakened to take EMT/first responder emergency calls.
The story is set mostly in a space habitat, with chunks in virtual reality ("toyspace") and in Somers, N.Y. A kudzu-covered Somers, with a very different fauna and ecosystem than is found there now. It's as plausible a choice as any, but there's something odd about that level of "I've been there" not-really-familiarity for a bit of suburb. The book is fast-paced, the world-building is mostly convincing, and I didn't think the ending quite lived up to the first nine tenths of the book.
What am I going to read next?
Likely something random I download for the kindle (I have a long flight ahead of me) followed by something from the Wiscon dealer's room. Or maybe back to the library stack. [I may drop this section, given that its predictive value has been lower than that of just rolling a die.)
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth (http://redbird.dreamwidth.org/1386472.h comments. I welcome comments here or there (OpenID and "anonymous" are fine if you don't have a DW account).
Some of you will remember my Girl Scout cookie rant, in which I talked about the appropriateness of making five-year-olds “sell” cookies (which meant, functionally, that their parents were doing so in competition with each other). You suggested in that post that I allow you to buy boxes of cookies for soldiers, so I put up a donation button. Counting the boxes I bought, we sent over 70 boxes to our men and women in uniform… which meant Child was one of the only children in the troop to earn the “Gift of Caring” badge.
She received it today, and here it is. It’s the only cookie badge I think we can iron onto her uniform with pride.
Thank you all, for your generosity. You continue to be the most gratifying people to make art for, and I am deeply grateful for you all. :)
Mirrored from MCAH Online.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canad
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canad
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-22622467#s
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canad
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-e
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22621
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canad
http://feeds.livescience.com/~r/Livescie
http://feeds.livescience.com/~r/Livescie
Navigate: (Previous 20 Friends)
