Wow. That was a good book.
It was a little hard for me to get into at the beginning. This excerpt is from the first chapter, and if you don’t feel as–jangled?–as I did, perhaps it’s just me. But I kept at it, because there was so definitely something there. Continue reading “Review: Sunshine by Robin McKinley”
That’s a relief. I was getting quite worried. She spent most of the weekend sleeping or looking like a zombie, eating only what Sam could coax into her, and using heating pads. I’m starting to think that we should accept the offer to refer her to a pain management doctor, if only to have something she can take during a flare.
So I read the latest Anita Blake novel, Blood Noir. I’m not sure why I continue to read these. Honestly, Hamilton is a decent writer. I enjoy her prose. She just needs to go back to plot school! Or maybe work with a co-writer who is strong on plot, but not relationships or descriptions?
There was no plot at all for the first few hundred pages of the book. When something involving a previous “big bad” did happen, it was nothing but an inconvenience, and over within an hour of Anita finding out about it. Whoopee. There was a crisis and danger, of course, but I found them anticlimactic after the villains Anita has vanquished in the past.
There was, of course, lots of sex. This one could have been called, “Anita gets a fuck buddy.”
Oh well. On to Sunshine by Robin McKinley. Someone recommended it to me years ago, and I happened to see McKinley’s name somewhere and remembered it. I don’t think that I’ve read any of her novels before. Short stories, maybe.
I remember reading a book–no, a series–in the early 90s or so. The clearest memory I have is that there was some sort of drug that made anyone who took it “perfect”–healthy, beautiful, athletic, etc. It was also addictive after just one dose, and there was no way to get off it–to stop taking it meant death. The main character’s wife was dosed with it so that the suppliers could control the hero. I think the protagonist was white, and seem to recall that his wife was described as having an Afro.
Does that trigger any memories for anyone?
Totally unrelated to anything else: Squee! (Thanks, AMQ!)
For some odd reason, I got this weird notion about tracking down as many of the books I’ve read as possible. No, I don’t know why.
Continue reading “Books & Cute Photo”
Taken from
These are the 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.
Continue reading “Books People Don’t Read”
I’m so tickled! In the last two weeks, I’ve found not one, but two books that Sam and I have wanted for ages at good prices on eBay!
First, I’ve been looking for
Seeing Red: The Rapture of Redheads by Howard Schatz for years and years. Seriously, it has to be at least five years since Sam first mentioned that he’d love to have it. Unfortunately, it’s out of print, and the only thing I found for the longest time were used copies for $150 or more. It’s a gorgeous book, but that’s far more than I could pay for it.
I had the book on my wish list at Half.com, which is part of eBay, but for some reason I also set up an eBay search a few months back, and finally got found a copy going for $35.1 I didn’t happen to see the email until a day later, and by then the seller had dropped the price further for some reason. It was more than I pay for most books, but after five years, it was more than worth it. We received it in the mail earlier this week, and it is just a beautiful as any new copy.
That gave me an idea, so I set up a search for another book I’ve wanted for a while, but couldn’t afford. John C. Lowe’s tome Your Guide to Metabolic Health came out in 2003, and I haven’t ever found it in stock anywhere. It must have gone out of stock quickly, because Amazon has only ever had used copies that I’ve seen. And again, they were always pricey—$180 was the price I’d seen most recently.2
Today, eBay came through again! The “buy it now” price was very reasonable, so Sam encouraged me to go ahead and get it instead of chancing the auction route.
Dr. Lowe has also written another book that’s specifically about the metabolic treatment of fibromyalgia, but it runs over $500. Apparently, that one is intended for physicians, rather than laypeople. I have an eBay search going, but I’m fairly certain the book I bought today has the information I need in it. From what I’ve heard, it’s mainly about fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.3
I’m busily reading my ARC of Women, Work and Autoimmune Disease: Keep Working, Girlfriend! It’s good stuff.
1 For what it’s worth, Half.com still shows only the higher prices. Weird.
2 It’s available more cheaply now, but I still got a deal.
3 Aha—the publisher actually sells the latest version of that one for $99.95. Why would anybody pay the used price? Why do the used sellers think they can demand so much?
I suppose it could be called a Bookcase Tree, because of its iasic deisngn. It wouldn’t be the best choice of design for sleeping quarters for a claustrophone lke me, and procratinators wpuld find it even harder to quit reading and go to sleep. I would love to have this for a little one
Warning: The following photo may engender extreme reactions in bibliophiles. View with caution.
Continue reading “Stairway to Heaven”
I did more webifying today, and got all happy because I resolved a template problem. I don’t “know” php, as in I don’t write my own scripts. I’m learning more and more about it working with other people’s templates, and have gotten to where I can mix and match from different templates to get the effects I want. I also spent some time in mysql, trying to clean up some of this site’s tables to make it load faster.
I also read a little, and I’m really, really trying to finish the book I’m on before diving into the delicious stack of books my sweetie brought home from the library for me. I wrapped up the week’s class assignments, too. I wanted to stitch, but I was attacked by a rogue nap.
My project management teacher released the study guide for the final, which is 3–4 weeks away (you can do it any time during week 8, and we just finished week 4). Um, does anybody really study that far in advance? I’ve never been very disciplined about studying.
Sam is editing a chapter of Fledgling, which he re-recorded because he was displeased with the sound quality. He edited Square One earlier. Sorry, Hope, but I don’t think he got to record the latest chapter of Heart of the Hunter 🙁
It’s still February, right? The temperature was way up in the 70s today! It’s back down to 50 now—outside. Inside, the temp is still too hot for sleeping comfortably. Pout.
Are there any WordPress geeks reading this? I could have sworn that I saw a plug-in that allowed commenters to send a private message to a blog’s owner, sort of like having comments screened in LJ except that the owner doesn’t ever (couldn’t, as I understand it) make the “whisper” public. I can’t find such a thing in the official plugin repository at WordPress.org, though. Anybody know of such a thing? I don’t want to use a comment form, because of security concerns.1
1 All the comment plugins and forms I’ve seen use the web host to send the message, instead of the sender’s outgoing mail server, making it harder to get anything done about inappropriate messages.
My creative time today was spent webmistressing. I tweaked some WordPress templates to work better, and moved more stuff over from my old site format to WordPress. It may not seem like much, but I always rewrite and update as I do that, so I figure it counts.
Sam and I had lots of fun in our game tonight. It’s a little weird to realize that someone is an avatar of a deity and that not only does he not know it, he’s nowhere near ready to realize it. Then there’s the whole issue of not letting that little fact slip at all, because an entire race of people is waiting for his return (and they really, really need him now, of course).
I really should go to the library tomorrow, but I don’t know if Sam will have time to drive me there. I have books to return and books on hold to pick up. I’d best go to bed now, to improve my chances of waking early enough to ask him.
I need to give Kioshi some extra scritchies, though, and I’m thinking about Jen and her family, who had to let go of their newest feline family member today—he had feline leukemia. I always think of our Andre and Tom-Tom whenever feleuk comes up. I’m glad Kioshi didn’t catch it from his parents, as our babies and theirs probably did. Please, vaccinate all of your pets! Even if you don’t ever plan for them to go outside!
