Category Archives: Books

Monday Miscellania

The aqueduc truck just went by sounding the water-off alarm. There’s roadwork happening the next street over. I wonder how often this will happen; it’s the second time in two weeks.

The interview I did last week is up. Gwinevere says of me that “She is totally wise to the Wiccan ways, and I loved reading her books!”, which is very sweet of her and made me feel all warm inside.

I’m back to sequential nights of poor sleep. Last night HRH woke me up by saying “What was that?” after a loud sound on the back steps around twelve-thirty, and that was it; I was up for the next four hours. I reread most of the first Harry Dresden book while awake in the wee smas of Saturday night, and last night I got a third of Busman’s Honeymoon read. (How on earth was this book ever done as a play?). I read Shannon Hale’s latest paperback Princess Academy last Friday and was mildly disappointed that it wasn’t as rich as her Bayern books; it felt less deep, and I wasn’t as drawn into the characters or the style of the storytelling. I’m less intrigued now about her newest books Book of a Thousand Days and Austenland.

We had a lovely visit with the ADZO household Saturday afternoon where Liam had his first experience with a wagon and adored it enthusiastically, as I suspected he would: he pushed it, pulled it, and talked about riding in it the whole time we pulled him along. Thumbs up, Self, for the suggestion of a wagon as birthday gift to the grandparent contingent. (Pats self on the back.) Sunday afternoon was coven, and we roughly outlined stuff we’d like to do over the next few months and how we’d like to approach it, as well as roughing out the Midsummer ritual at the end of the month. Unfortunately HRH scheduled the meeting to begin right at the end of Liam’s nap time, so he spent most of his time chasing after the boy. This is what frustrates me about daytime coven meets: we constantly lose one person to childcare. Fortunately as it is now summer we are shifting to Monday evening meetings, because so much happens over the weekends that it gets nigh-impossible to schedule everyone on a weekend afternoon, so the boy will be in bed. Much easier to have everyone participate when one of us isn’t fielding/entertaining a toddler.

I made brownies Saturday morning from a new UK recipe (Nigella, natch), which meant I got to use my little scale as well as my funky measuring glass with the different weight measurements for various ingredients on the side. I used dark Tolberone for the chocolate. Divine. Very buttery, though. Liam called them “magic”, which was hugely amusing.

Three-word sentences are becoming the norm where Sparky is concerned. It’s mildly astonishing every time he produces one.

The Jam Sessions release date seems to have been pushed back to September. I am irked. I played through the first chapter of Phoenix Wright last evening and enjoyed it immensely.

And now, I go to clean my office window. On grey days such as this, one needs to maximise the amount of light coming in at all costs. Also, where is the rain? We were promised a downpour. Perhaps HRH jinxed it by saying, “See you in a couple of hours!” as he pulled out of the driveway this morning. I was kind of looking forward to going to the party store later with him to look at candles and such for a certain birthday cake, and maybe a new large sheet cake tin and a cake board. (Things I will never do: make a 3D owl cake. Yikes. How do you serve something like that?)

Meer, Meer, Meer

I just spent half an hour moaning for various reasons at Ceri, who gave me pats and made me laugh. She also gave me the thumbs-up for my interview when I asked her to read it, having reached the unrewarding poking-at-it-with-a-sharp-stick stage where I couldn’t see if it was making sense or not. So now it’s off to the editor of the e-zine.

And Ceri just logged back in on her way out to lunch (which I am missing, meer meer meer) to send me over to this LOLcatz poetry thread over at Making Light. Do not miss the Pride & Prejudice summary, or the Iliad, or the text-based Inferno (and the sequel).

What I Read This May

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling (reread)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling (reread)
Megatokyo vols 1-3 by Fred Gallagher et al
Someplace to be Flying by Charles de Lint (reread)
Ironside by Holly Black
The Book of Dreams by O.R. Melling
Nodame Cantabile vol. 1 by Tomoko Ninomiya
The Tomb of the Golden Bird by Elizabeth Peters
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers
Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher
Deep Magic by Diane Duane
The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

It Never Gets Any Easier

Today I’m working on a set of interview questions, and as always when I do something like this I’m staring at the screen and wondering what on earth to say in response to questions I’ve answered elsewhere, or how to encapsulate huge philosophical rambles in a paragraph or two. And to my amusement I just found this in an online horoscope today:

You may feel as if you are right, but explaining your point of view can be quite a challenge. It’s not that you are an ineffective communicator; it’s just that your feelings are outside the normal sphere of language. There just aren’t any words to describe the subtlety of your emotions. Talking about them can actually alter your mood and change the direction of your day. Act on what you know now, but don’t try to justify yourself until after the Full Moon tomorrow night.

The deadline is Friday, which is after the full moon. How convenient.

Interviews make me fret, because they represent a very narrow and static slice of an author’s philosophy. I’m never sure when I sound grounded and confident, and when I sound mildly delusional or out of touch.

LATER: There, four pages of first draft: all questions except one answered (one of those only in point form, but the outline is there) and the missing question is one that needs research in the form of going back to one of my books and checking to see what I said the first time so as not to completely repeat myself. Now, off to see a movie with HRH.

Sparky Update

He grows every single night. We swear.

New words: “Arctic tern”, “Pacific salmon,” “eels”, and he attempts “garden warblers”.

The “k” sound in “milk” and “Mark” has finally caught up and is now on board with the rest of whatever word he’s saying.

His comprehension of language has taken a leap recently. It’s like his vocabulary folded over on itself and made hundreds of new connections overnight, and now he uses short sentences all the time. “Juice now.” “All done, down please.” “Tractor outside?” “Birds eating.” “Liam hug Maggie.” “Mama drawing now.” “Read more?” And I can see him struggling to make sentences out of abstract concepts, too, not just concrete things. “Liam happy; hug Dada.” Verbs are now active pretty much all the time — running, talking, reading, flying, and so forth — unless it’s a command, and I find it really interesting that he can discriminate between the present participle and imperative forms. “Liam dancing — Mama dance,” he says when he wants me to join him as he dances.

When he wants to talk about the alphabet he calls it “E F.” Trust our kid to buck the popular catch-all term and come up with his own.

He has figured out that when we make certain lines on a piece of paper, his name is involved. “Liam,” he’ll say, pushing a crayon and his drawing book at us. So we print out his name while he watches closely, and when we are done he runs his fingertips over the letters and says, “Liam.” He’s asked us to write out other words and names, too.

There is more, but there are so many new things every day that quite honestly, we’ve forgotten them by the time night rolls around.