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Well, actually I didn't tank out as horribly last year as I did the year before that, so....let's try this again! Reading fifty new books in 2008, not counting rereads. I want an easy way to tell how much fiction/ nonfiction I read in a year, so nonfiction books will be color-coded red. I hope I'll be able to update this later with links to musings/thoughts/reviews, but.... ( January )( February )( March )( April )( May )( June )July31. Ink & Steel, Elizabeth Bear 32. What the Dead Know, Laura Lippman33. Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams, Lyle Leverich( 2008 50 books challenge covers quilt )Tags: 2008 50 books challenge, hott like orhan pamuk, my name is red(redshoes), no frigate like a book, orhan pamuk is my pinup boy
feeling:  determined
hearing: Zero 7 - Today
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April - May - JuneNonfiction is in red.( Books bought July 2008 )Tags: 2008 books bought, 6342 books and counting, a book of one's own, a million candles have burned themselves, bookses preciousssss bookses, more books than you, more pretentious than you, more tags than you, read a motherfuckin' book, reading is my superpower, reading: it's what i do, yeah i have more books than you, yeah i read more than you, yeah i really read all these, yeah i was a fucking prodigy
feeling:  tired
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BELLA: I know what you are. You're impossibly fast....and strong....your skin is pale white and -- ice cold -- OUR HEROINE: HE'S MR FREEZE!  NO? UM. ( DR MANHATTAN? )( NEO? )( YOU'RE SURE IT'S NOT DR MANHATTAN...OKAY OKAY FINE. )Ohhh my God. I may have to see this movie. IF ONLY TO HEAR THE LINE.RIGHT AT :45 IN 'YOU BROUGHT A SNACK'AND I LOVE THE WAY HE SAYS IT, TOO, OMG AND OMG OMG, DID YOU SEE, AT LIKE :32, THE SLO-MO POWER WALK, WITH THE 'MOST DANGEROUS THING OUT THERE' AND THE LONG-HAIRED REDHEAD WRAPPED IN, LIKE, A TATTY SHEEPSKIN THROW FROM 1973 OR SOMETHING? THAT'S HER THAT'S MY GIRL VICTORIA//SWOONS SHE SMELLS LIKE UN-FREESIA SHE'S GOING TO GUT THEM LIKE FISH ....OH WHAT IN MY UNIVERSE THAT'S HOW THE BOOK ACTUALLY ENDS OKAY ....THEN SHE HOOKS UP WITH REDHEADED KICKASS AUMERLE AND A ZOMBI ELIZABETH I AND TOGETHER THE REDHEADED TRIUMVIRATE OF EVIL RUUUUUULES THEEEE WOOOOOORLD I DON'T BELIEVE I HAVE TO HEAR ABOUT THIS SHIT UNTIL DECEMBER NO WONDER I'VE SNAPPED ....aaaaaand, other than those two things, I honestly think the first teaser trailer was better because it had 1) less of kstew's 'acting' (I love the way she looks but, omg, she's like Cordelia in that Angel ep. 'LINE? LINE?') and 2) it did not make everything come down to a vicious battle between two cold, undead, SPARKLY guys over why they haven't fucked since 1643.... Bella.//cries COME BACK J.K. ROWLING ALL IS FORGIVEN Tags: twilight_spork
feeling:  OMG.
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-- if even they will be interested in it: Heinlein came up while they were driving us home and poor ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) singingnettle said she'd been unable to reread Stranger in a Strange Land, and I did the sort of culture-vulture half-assed-half-hat-trick of recalling what Writer A said about Writer B which reminded me of what Writer C said about Writer D and so on. (If you are me, this can quickly regress to infinity, books all interweaving and locking and looping together like some kind of Borges literary maze....) Altho I couldn't really recall what Brian Aldiss had said about Heinlein that was sort of like Orwell writing about H.G. Wells, so everyone just sort of looked at me with blank politeness. (There was also the really priceless spectacle of -- since T had never read Stranger and I don't think indeed he's ever read any Heinlein, except maybe Starship Troopers loooong ago -- I know he did read a lot of Asimov as a kid, as I did -- three people simultaneously trying to think of how to explain Stranger coherently to someone who hadn't read it in about two minutes, while in a moving vehicle, and almost instantly giving up.) BUT ANYWAY, this is what I was sort of trying to compare-and-contrast, and since I'm so spoiled by living in the digital age I didn't even have to go digging through my collection for Inside the Whale, so much text is just all out there. (If I could, I'd be a sentient digital library. Upload! Upload! More! More!) Thinking people who were born about the beginning of this century are in some sense Wells's own creation. How much influence any mere writer has, and especially a ‘popular’ writer whose work takes effect quickly, is questionable, but I doubt whether anyone who was writing books between 1900 and 1920, at any rate in the English language, influenced the young so much. The minds of all of us, and therefore the physical world, would be perceptibly different if Wells had never existed. Only, just the singleness of mind, the one-sided imagination that made him seem like an inspired prophet in the Edwardian age, make him a shallow, inadequate thinker now. When Wells was young, the antithesis between science and reaction was not false. Society was ruled by narrow-minded, profoundly incurious people, predatory business men, dull squires, bishops, politicians who could quote Horace but had never heard of algebra. Science was faintly disreputable and religious belief obligatory. Traditionalism, stupidity, snobbishness, patriotism, superstition and love of war seemed to be all on the same side; there was need of someone who could state the opposite point of view. Back in the nineteen-hundreds it was a wonderful experience for a boy to discover H. G. Wells. There you were, in a world of pedants, clergymen and golfers, with your future employers exhorting you to ‘get on or get out,’ your parents systematically warping your sexual life, and your dull-witted schoolmasters sniggering over their Latin tags; and here was this wonderful man who could tell you about the inhabitants of the planets and the bottom of the sea, and who knew that the future was not going to be what respectable people imagined. A decade or so before aeroplanes were technically feasible Wells knew that within a little while men would be able to fly. He knew that because he himself wanted to be able to fly, and therefore felt sure that research in that direction would continue. On the other hand, even when I was a little boy, at a time when the Wright brothers had actually lifted their machine off the ground for fifty-nine seconds, the generally accepted opinion was that if God had meant us to fly He would have given us wings. Up to 1914 Wells was in the main a true prophet. In physical details his vision of the new world has been fulfilled to a surprising extent.
-- George Orwell, "Wells, Hitler and the World State," 1941 I can't find either of my TWO copies of Trillian Year Spree or Billion Year Spree, so ARGHGHGHG. But Aldiss has this great line about why the fuck should we care if Heinlein deteriorated to the level of Number of the Beast (there is a wonderfully Aldissian culture-vulture moment of shock and horror: "Homer to Baum indeed! What a culmination!") -- "Space cadets wore eyeliner in his stories decades before David Bowie!" It had the same flavour as the Orwell-on-Wells quote, is all. so ANYWAY, THAT was what I was trying to get at. Also IE is FUCKING STUPID and has just frozen part of my puter, so this might not get posted. feeling:  thoughtful
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Sometimes I am absurdly shy, even with people I know well, but sometimes -- rarely -- I talk a great deal more like the inside of my head sounds (usually only with people I know well). The way I blog is a lot closer to how I think than the way I speak (I've always always been much more comfortable with a keyboard than speech). (DISCLAIMER: I HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE AND I THINK HEATH LEDGER WAS A FINE ACTOR. I AM TALKING ABT THE HOLLYWOOD MACHINE.) SPOUSAL OVERUNIT: ((making polite after-dinner conversation)) Soo, anyone seen the Dark Knight movie yet? singingnettle: Actually, we -- OUR HEROINE: OH MY GOD I am SO SICK of hearing about that movie. And the hell is up with giving Heath Ledger an Oscar? The Academy's going to be lobbying hard for that one -- they'll have his moppet run up and accept the statue for him, I bet. That's what I'd do, if I were them -- ratings through the roof. ((jerks thumb up contemptuously))singingnettle: Well, I have heard he really is that good -- I haven't seen it yet. ihgreenman: And isn't that the point of the Best Actor Oscar, to reward performances that are really good, no matter what kind of piece of 'fluff' they may be in? I'm not saying the movie's fluff -- I haven't seen it either. OUR HEROINE: ((having no such niceties of scruple)) Yeah, but just -- it almost doesn't matter how good he is, you know? No Academy member is going to vote against Poor Dead Heath, and even if they did, the viewing audience would hate them for voting against Poor Dead Heath, so who else really has a chance? Why don't they just give him a special honorary Oscar or something? They do that all the time. Has anyone ever won an Oscar posthumously?ihgreenman: It could be the "We're Sorry You're Dead Oscar." OUR HEROINE: ahahahaha. No, wait -- it would be the "We're Sorry You're Dead and Here's the Oscar You Didn't Get for Brokeback Mountain Oscar." singingnettle and ihgreenman: TRUE DAT. feeling:  bouncy
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'God bless the poor lady,' said she, 'why she is as weak as a child; sure you must have come a great way from home.' 'Yes,' answered Albert, the servant's name, 'we have indeed, and my poor lady is worn down by sorrow and fatigue; I fear she must rest some time before she can pursue her journey.' 'Well,' said Bertha, 'she may stay as long as she likes here, no body will disturb her in the day time, I am sure.' 'And what will disturb her at night?' asked Albert. 'O, my good friend,' answered she, 'nobody will sleep in the rooms up stairs; the gentlefolks who were in it last could not rest, such strange noises, and groans, and screams, and such like terrible things are heard; then at t'other end of the house the rooms are never opened; they say bloody work has been carried on there.' 'How comes it, then,' said Albert, 'that you and your husband have courage to live here?' 'Dear me,' replied she, 'why the ghosts never come down stairs, and I take care never to go up o'nights; so that if madam stays here I fear she must sleep by day, or else have a ground room, for they never comes down; they were some of your high gentry, I warrant, who never went into kitchens.' -- Eliza Parsons....I do think "Monk" Lewis stole that joke for his book. Bad boy, Matthew Gregory. Tags: gothick_spork
feeling:  amused
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men 
calm
crushed
giggly
cheerful
lustful