Dinner is over and the dishes are washed! Go me! *does victory dance*
We had game hens with pomegranate glaze, mashed potatoes, greens, and yams. I've done the hens before, but that didn't stop me from ruining the first batch of pomegranate molasses. Fortunately, I'd made a small batch and only used half of the bottle of Pom so I was able to do a second batch, to which I paid a great deal more attention.
Mashed potatoes are something I could do in my sleep; I used some really nice little red potatoes and the results were creamy and buttery and yum. This was the first time I'd been the one to make the greens, usually that's Nancy's thing. She walked me through it and they were tasty and good.
We cheated on the yams. While we were shopping at TJs the other day, they were giving out samples of their frozen yams with brown sugar, pecans and cranberries and they were fantastic so we picked up a package and they were every bit as good as they'd been in the store. I might have to grab a couple of packages of them and stash them in the freezer.
We both had water and Two Buck Chuck--Nancy had the white zin and I had a half glass of the Cab that I'm still working on. It's raw, but not bad, and it remains to see if it'll give me a headache.
Dessert will be a vanilla bean cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. After we picked up up yesterday, we went to Cocos for coffee and their oh so yummeh Harvest pie; it's standard pumpkin pie with pumpkin chiffon on top. I love it, but not a whole pie's worth so the cheesecake will be perfect.
This hasn't exactly been the greatest year for us. Never the less, I'm grateful for my wonderful friends, my great family and my lovely wife. I'm grateful that this country elected a President we can be proud of and I'm grateful that, even though it took a defeat to do it, my people and our allies are energized and ready to fight for our rights.
I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving or an enjoyable Thursday!
Anathem by Neal Stephenson science fiction 935 pages
I've been putting off this review for a while because I feel a little like Wayne and Garth--not worthy. However I need to move on and so here I am, taking my best stab at it. I'm going to try to avoid too many spoilers, but some are inevitable, as are excessive italics, due to many made-up words.
On a world known as Arbe, the study of science, mathematics and philosophy is limited to the avout, cloistered scholars who live in maths or concents (a concent is a large community often made up of more than one math) and who only interact with the Sæculum (secular world) on a limited basis during the Apert, a yearly period of ten days when the gates of the concent open and people from both the secular and mathic worlds can mingle. The concents are divided into groups: the Unarians (one-offs, whose members remain cloistered in the math for a year), the Decenarian (tenners, whose members are cloistered for ten years), Centenarians (hundreders, whose members are cloistered for one hundred years) and the Millenarians (thousanders, whose members are cloistered for one thousand years). Within the cloistered world are many different Orders who study different things and have many different philosophies, but all of them abide by the long-established rituals and rules of the Cartasian Discipline.
Sounds like the set up for a fantasy novel set in some medieval not-quite-Earth, right? Not so much, actually. The world outside the concents is modern and technological, with cars and cell-phone analogs (called jeejahs, which is a great word) and TV and so on, and the work done inside the concents is scientific and not religious. This is an old world with over 7,000 years of recorded history; there have been set backs and failures of the system more than once, including three great Sacks (when the outside world attacked the concents), and something called The Terrible Events, which sounds a lot like a nuclear war or some similar technological planetary disaster.
The story begins with our hero, Fraa Erasmus (known to his friends as Raz), facing his first Apert. He's a tenner who's been at the Concent of SauntEdhar since he was a small child and is now at a point where he needs to decide what he's going to do with his life. During the Apert, he meets his sister and we get a look at the difference between the thinky, mostly low-tech world of the concents, where everything is discussed to death and beyond, and the secular world, full of commerce, industry, somewhat mindless entertainment and flash in the pan religions.
After the Apert, Raz and his circle of friends realize that something is going on within the concent; the starhenge (observatory) has been closed off and the older fraas and suurs (the concents are co-ed) seem to be a little worried. Things come to a head when Raz's mentor, FraaOrolo, an astronomer who's made a dangerous discovery, is tossed out of the concent in a rite known as anathem (a lovely portmanteau word made up of "anthem" and "anathema"). As Raz and his friends figure out why, they are called to leave the concent and travel to a world-wide convocation, where they will help advise the secular authorities on the crisis. Normally, the secular authorities would provide transportation for the avout, but with so many being called, the scholars are forced to make their way on their own.
And so, Raz, his sister Cord, Sammann (an ita--one of the concent's technology experts), a thousander named FraaJad and several others set out on a journey across Arbe. Their quest includes adventures along the way, as well as several detours while Raz attempts to find his mentor, but finally, they reach the convocation, only to get caught up in plans to defend the whole planet from the threat from space discovered by FraaOrolo.
If Anathem were nothing more than the story of Raz's journey and subsequent mission to save his planet, it would be a fantastic addition to the quest genre of SF. The world-building is excellent and nuanced, the characters are engaging, the story is fascinating and the climax is exciting and enjoyably convoluted. Even the background romance between Raz and one of the suurs from his order is handled well.
But this is Neal Stephenson and so the book is much much more than that; there are layers upon layers here. One of the layers is historical--for someone up on their history, it's easy to see that Arbe is what our world would be like if the ancient Greek philosophers and scientists had retreated behind walls and all their knowledge had not been lost, but rather added to throughout the subsequent centuries. It's a lot of fun to read about historical events on Arbe and say "oh hey, I know where he got that from!"
If you're a long time Stephenson reader, you're probably either really really intelligent and educated and can follow his digressions, or you're the kind of person who takes what he's talking about on faith and reads his books for the sheer enjoyment factor and the possibility that you might learn something new. Either way, you're used to books with huge amounts of information about various subjects woven into the narrative-- language theory in Snow Crash, for example, or cryptography in Cyrptonomicron. In other writers this kind of thing is annoying and info-dumpy, but somehow, Stephenson makes it work.
One of the things you look for in computer/video games is the level of replayability--do you want to play GTA: San Andreas again when you finish, or are you just done with it? For me, that's a concern with books as well--can I reread them and get something new out of the book? Anathem is going to be one of those books I will return to again and again, and each time, I'll pick up something I missed the time before.
While Stephenson uses a number of made up words for this (including bullshytt, which only kind of means what you think it does), there are definitions scattered throughout the book and an glossary at the end of it. There's also a historical timeline as well as several appendices that help illustrate some of the concepts Stephenson uses in the novel.
So yes, at 900+ pages, this is a massive undertaking, but seriously, if you have the time, read it. It's easily Stephenson's best novel since Snow Crash and as his first attempt at setting a story in a world other than Earth, it is truly brilliant and detailed world-building. The characters are engaging, and, for all the discussion that goes on, the action sequences are gripping.
Of the twenty-two books I've read so far, this is the one I want everyone to take the time to read. Trust me, it's worth it.
Side note: someone actually made an amateur trailer for the book. It's a bit cheesy in places, but it's an interesting piece of transformative fan work.
Both Marra and Figgy did this, so let's make it a Cannonball Meme, shall we? To quote Figgy, "a 'Freebies List' consists of the 5 celebrities you'd most like to do whoopie with. No consequences or regrets. Just pure enjoyment."
Because I love the laaaadies!
5. Allison Janney -- Fabulous, talented, hot and also? Tall.
4. Kate Hewlett -- Actress and playwright and generally gorgeous. (and yes, that's her brother down in the "honorable mention" section of the guys. It's a talented family.)
3. Rachel Luttrell -- Unless you're a Stargate: Atlantis fan, you undoubtedly don't know who she is. Poor you.
2. Gina Torres -- I've lusted after her since the Xena days.
1. Carrie-Anne Moss -- I'm sorry, were we talking about something?
Honorable mentions: Monica Bellucci, Gillian Anderson, Lucy Lawless, Tilda Swinton...okay the list could go on and on.
Guys I'd switch back for, a list that proves that I'm a big, geeky fan-girl.
5. Joe Flanigan -- Someone else from SGA. To be honest, he's hardly the best actor out there and he's a Republican (which is why he's fifth on the list), but I really do think he's hot in a dorky kind of way.
4. Jason Momoa -- Another obscure SGA alumni. Just look at him for a minute, okay? Now, any questions as to why he's on this list? Even I like a little beef in my cake now and then.
3. Liam Neeson -- Yeah, he's a little craggier these days, but still...
2. Sean Bean -- Because everyone needs a bit of rough from Yorkshire.
1. Viggo Mortenson -- Smart, funny, sensitive, talented and really really hot. The question is: why wouldn't you? (yes it's a huge picture but I've always loved that shot.)
Honorable mentions: Jason Isaacs (Brotherhood and Harry Potter) and David Hewlett (SGA again)--two guys I'd love to just hang out with.
So, over in this post and in reply to comments to it, Artaxastra thinks the GLBT people and their allies who have taken to the streets are like the KKK. She thinks we should concentrate on getting people to like us, that we should be conciliatory and we should step back and work carefully and not try to scare anyone.
I say...BULLSHIT.
On September 5, 2008, Nancy and I, along with two very dear and wonderful friends, went to the county clerks office and got married in a ceremony recognized in the city and county of Sacramento and in the state of California. Why we did it doesn't matter. What matters is that we had the right to do so. It was a right determined by the highest court in the state, doing their job interpreting the Constitution of the State of California.
Apparently, our marriage and the 17,999 other same-sex marriages that took place after May 16, 2008 offended a group of people. They didn't like it, didn't like that we had that right. And so...they decided to take it away from us. They got help from many places, but the chief source of funding and people to man phone banks and protest--did you know that they bused people in from Utah to protest on California streets?--was the Mormon Church.
And they did it. A combination of factors that are even now being debated enabled a church from Utah to scare the people of California into taking away a right granted to a minority under the law.
Should people be scared of gays and lesbians, bisexual and transsexuals, people who somehow don't fit into their narrow view of sexuality that we call straight?
No, of course not.
Should they be scared that an out of state church was able help to pass a proposition to amend a state's constitution to take away a minority's right ?
No.
They should be terrified. You should be terrified. We should all be terrified.
They took away our rights.
The tragedy here isn't that 18,000 couples now have to wonder if that piece of paper means something. The tragedy here isn't that many many more couples who dream of being married someday now have to wait even longer than they already have. The tragedy here isn't that the GLBT folk and their allies took to the streets in protest, thus upsetting some delicate balance that some people think might some day down the line get some people to LIKE some of us.
The tragedy here?
The tragedy here is that MORE PEOPLE aren't out there in the streets.
They took away our rights.
Are we angry? No, we are fucking outraged.
They took away our rights. Here in the United States of America.
They took away our rights.
Of course we took to the streets. I don't want to live in a country where a minority has its rights taken away and DOESN'T take to the streets.
They took away our rights.
What if women had been granted the right to vote and then had it taken away. Would you expect our suffragette fore-mothers, women who fought and marched and went to jail and were force-fed, to just sit down and wait for people to LIKE them?
What if everyone who ever marched or spoke up for their civil rights, MLK and Black people, Césear Chavéz and the Hispanic workers, the stone butches and drag queens and the fags and dykes of color...what if they'd been given the rights they deserve as citizens of America only to have them taken away? Would you expect these people who fought and talked and marched and argued and bled and, yes, sometimes died to just sit down and wait for people to LIKE them?
They took away our rights.
Everyone in this country who believes that all are created equal, that what we as Americans strive for is a more perfect union....
Everyone should be out in the streets, because they took away our rights.
Guilty Pleasures 265 pages The Laughing Corpse 293 pages Circus of the Damned 329 pages The Lunatic Cafe 369 pages supernatural detective fiction by Laurell K Hamilton
You know how I said I was going to review Anatham next? Yeah, I lied. For one thing, I'm totally intimidated; I doubt I can do it justice. For another thing, well I'm kind of depressed and so I holed up in bed yesterday and today and read four rather dreadful books, one right after the other. Somewhere in there I slept a fair amount as well.
Mind you, I didn't go out and buy these; it seems a certain person I'm married to went on a kick several years ago and so we have a whole stack of them on the shelf. I grabbed the first one because...well, because I didn't want to have to think or read anything complicated.
Anyway, I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail on these; they don't really deserve it and I just want to get them on the list and move on, hopefully to a much better, brighter day.
Guilty Pleasures is utter "how the hell did this woman ever get published" crap. In it Hamilton introduces Anita Blake, animator--means she can raise the dead--and vampire hunter and sets up her world, in which supernatural creatures are real and the public knows about them. To be honest, she does a crappy job of world-building; I just can't buy some of the changes she makes in the legal system, but whatever. In this one, Anita is hired by the chief vampire of the city--St. Louis, which apparently is vampire central--to find someone who's illegally killing vampires. In the middle of all this, Jean-Claude, owner of a vampire strip club called Guilty Pleasures , ends up putting two of the four "marks" that can turn a person into a "human servant" on Anita. Jean-Claude is an arrogant asshole who calls Anita "ma petite" and the fact that I think we're supposed to find him sexy is just another strike against the book. The mystery isn't all that complicated and the writing is stilted; Hamilton is better than Stephanie Meyers, but that's about all I can say for her.
The Laughing Corpse pits Anita against a Mexican voodoo queen while investigating a number of truly grisly murders. Oh yeah, there's also some rich guy who wants Anita to raise a zombie, only the zombie's been dead long enough that a human sacrifice will be required and Anita won't do it. On top of it all, there's the annoying Jean-Claude, now Master of the City, who's being threatened because he can't even keep his human servant in line. He keeps after Anita, trying to convince her to let him put the rest of his marks on her so, presumably, she can spend the rest of an unnaturally long life dealing with a condescending jerk. Anita's not exactly my favorite fictional character ever, but honestly, I can't blame her for trying to avoid this clown. Of the four books I read, this is actually the best one--the plot moves along nicely, the writing's smoothed out some and the mystery is actually fairly complicated. I'd say that if you had to read one of these books, this would be the one to read.
Circus of the Damned has Anita dealing with what looks like a rogue gang of vampires on a killin' spree. However, near as I can tell, the main purpose of this book is to introduce us to Richard, the junior high teacher who also happens to be a were-wolf. And here's where I say, with all due sincerity, Laurell, honey? Stick to the action/adventure genre and leave the romance writing to someone, anyone, else. Reading Anita and Richard flirting is enough to make you want to kill yourself. It's not the painful but realistic flirting of two people who aren't supposed to be good at it; on no, this is supposed to be cute and snappy. Also, there's more Jean-Claude, who manages to put his third mark on Anita, but then, after the final battle with more rogue vampires, removes all his marks. Whatever, he's still a tool. This one isn't nearly as good as Laughing Corpse; it's not a mystery so much as a little action/adventure and a lot of romantic set up.
The Lunatic Cafe is the werewolf novel. Well, there are other were-creatures as well, but in this one, there's a mysterious death by critter and also some icky were-creature snuff porn floating around. Mostly, though, it's about Anita trying to deal with her relationship with Richard, the sensitive New Age were-wolf. Also there's a ton of posturing; seriously, there's this one meeting with several were-creatures that's pages and pages of people talking about dominance and who's in charge. I kinda wanted to scream "I fucking get the point, okay?" but it wouldn't have done any good. Also, yes, there's more Jean-Claude, this time he demands equal dating rights or he's gonna take Richard out even if it means that Anita will come gunning for him. The mystery part of this one is only so-so, but I don't think you're really supposed to care because this is all about setting up the big love triangle.
Part of my problem with these books is that I rarely like anyone in them. There are a few side characters--a couple of cops and Anita's private detectiveBFF--who aren't bad, but that's just not enough. Some authors can make unlikeable characters work, but you have to be much better at the craft than Hamilton is. In the end, I just don't care about Anita, or which of her two annoying suitors she picks or what her next supernatural case may be.
I have no idea what I'm reading next, but I know it'll be better than these four books.
Also, OMG is that like the cheesiest cover in the history of...well, forever?
Knowing that I lived in Iran for a couple of years in the '70s, a friend of mine just recently gave me the very nice, all-in-one-volume version of Persepolis by MarjaneSatrapi, which I've been wanting to read for a while. And then today....
Well, today we got a new car. My mother-in-law, for reasons surpassing understanding, bought a brand new Jetta last year, in spite of the fact that she was hardly driving at all and had a perfectly good, late model Volvo. Now that she's living with a cousin and has sold her condo, she doesn't need the car and so she had it shipped from Chicago to us here in California. It's completely paid for, has only 900 miles on it and it even still smells like a new car.
Now ever since she decided to sell her condo, she's been asking Nancy if there was anything she wanted, since Nancy had left some stuff in the basement way back when she went to college. And Nancy kept saying, "no Mom, I really don't need any of that stuff, except that it might be cool to have all my old Nancy Drew books." So, there in the surprisingly roomy trunk of the car were two boxes of Nancy Drew books. I flipped through some of them, thinking I might read a few, only...they're all under 200 pages.
The point--other than OMGYay New Car!!!--of this long-winded digression is that I seem to have changed my reading habits to the point where I won't let myself read anything that doesn't qualify for Cannonball. It's kind of stupid really; I'm doing pretty well--last I checked, I'm in third place--and Godtopus knows that I've got more free time than a lot of other people doing the Read. I could probably take some time to read something--other than fan fiction--that doesn't qualify, but I just feel like it would be wrong or something.
My brain, she is weird sometimes.
Come next September or 100 books, which ever comes first, I'm probably going to have a huge stack of graphic novels--I mean really, I've never read Watchman or Y, the Last Man and recently I've been wanting to reread the collected Sandman--and short books waiting for me.
Valor's Choice 282 pages The Better Part of Valor 315 pages science fiction by Tanya Huff
Okay now that I'm (mostly) recovered from Election Week and am writing again, it's time to get back to the books. Or book. Or books.... A Confederation of Valor is two books in one, which made my wallet kind of happy because I'm old enough to remember when paperbacks weren't eight or nine bucks a piece. *rattles walker and shouts at clouds*
Tanya Huff is one of those versatile authors who really should be more popular than she is. She writes pure fantasy (the Quarters series), modern/urban fantasy (the Keeper series), the vampire/magical detective genre (the Blood Ties series and the Smoke series) and military SF (the Valor series) and all of it's good. She's also a filker* and a lesbian who frequently puts gay characters in her books--Tony, the protagonist of the Smoke series is gay and, unfortunately, in spite of the fact that the books are really good and properly creepy, there probably won't be any more in the series because her publisher pulled the plug on it. Apparently gay doesn't sell enough books. Her Blood Ties series was made into a really cheesy, but fun TV series; it was filmed in Canada on the cheap and then played on Lifetime for two short seasons.
I happen to have a soft spot for military SF and, honestly, I don't really know why. Most of the people writing it are pretty right wing/Libertarian and their politics often show up in their work. Still, gimme a band of Marines battling the odds on an alien world, or a steely-eyed starship captain going up against the enemies of her empire and I'm a happy camper. So finding out about this series was great because I know that Tanya's politics are much closer to mine and I already like her writing.
The Valor series is about Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr of the Confederation Marines. The fact that she's female isn't such a big deal; David Weber's Honor Harrington series is about a female starship captain, for example. Still it's not all that usual in the space marine genre, which made it a nice change.
The other really nice change is that unlike most of the books you run across in this genre, which are about Humans only or Humans fighting aliens, Huff's Confederation is made up of many different species. The older and wiser species have sociologically evolved beyond aggression, which created a problem when they encountered the Others, who were not interested in peaceful negotiations. And so the Confederation recruited younger, more aggressive species, including Humans, who had barely made it into space when the Confederation came calling.
In addition to Humans, the Marine corp includes the di'Tayken--an elf like species who give off so many sexual pheromones that they have to wear mechanical maskers--and the Krai--a species that can and will eat literally anything, including the bodies of both their enemies and their own honored dead. So in addition to the usual personality tensions in any military unit and military politics in general, there's also some species tensions.
Valor's Choice is the first book of the series. Kerr and a platoon of Marines are sent on what is supposed to be easy duty: guarding diplomats and helping show the flag on a mission to the planet of the Silsviss, a reptilian race that is looking to join the Confederation. As the senior NCO, Kerr is also responsible for breaking in a new Second Lieutenant, something made complicated by the fact that he's a di'Tayken she had a one night stand with, not knowing he was an officer.
Of course things go awry; after an initial round of "getting to know you" encounters, the suborbital ship containing the diplomats and the Marines is shot down over a wilderness preserve used to test Silsviss males during their aggressive adolescence. It's up to Kerr to see that everyone survives and the ensuing struggle is exciting, to say the least.
Kerr's a good character--smart and dedicated but not without a dry sense of humor--and it's easy to like her and to give a damn about what happens to her. Huff also does a good job making what could be boring stock characters come to life; the baby officer from a military family who's afraid he's not up to the task; the trouble-maker with a heart of gold; the card-shark; the alien who knows more old Earth expressions than the Humans, and so on. There's even a nod to a common trope of these stories; one of the guys is reading letters from home and counting the days until he sees his family, and his friends all remind him that in movies, he's the guy who always buys it. The diplomats from the older species of the Confederation are interesting as well; not only is she good at inventing aliens with cool cultures, Huff does a good job envisioning how true pacifists would react to a sudden plunge into a combat situation.
The Better Part of Valor takes place shortly after Valor's Choice. Having insulted a general, Kerr gets pulled from her platoon and is given the dubious honor of leading a recon squad and a bunch of scientists into a mysterious derelict ship floating in space. In addition to a thrown-together squad, a politically appointed officer who's more concerned about his PR status than anything else, Kerr has to deal with a news crew and the wise-cracking salvage operator who discovered the ship.
One of the things Huff's good at is setting up a good creepy situation and then running with it. (The mummy in Blood Lines, for example, is really fucking freaky and I don't normally find mummy stories to be all that scary.) A big abandoned space ship with an interior that changes into rooms pulled from the minds of the explorers offers plenty of opportunity for creepiness, particularly when a group of the mysterious Others--the Confederation's bug-like enemies--show up to explore the ship as well.
Both these books move along a nice clip; they're fun and exciting and, unlike so many books in the genre, there aren't any right-wing politics buried under the surface. There are two more books in the series and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on them. If you like the genre, run, don't walk, and if you're not sure about the genre but like a good, well-written SF adventure, give them try.
Next up...Neal Stephenson's latest masterpiece. That's not a word I use lightly; Anatham is utterly fantastic.
*For people who don't speak Geek, filk is folk music for SF/Fantasy geeks. The songs are usually SF/Fantasy based, but there's filk about computers as well. Sometimes both the music and the lyrics are original, but a lot of the time people rewrite popular songs with their own lyrics. It's a true nerd pastime that mostly goes on a SF cons. Thus endth the lesson.
One of the reasons that the whole "Blame the Brown People for Prop 8 Passing" thing pisses me off so much is that it's yet another case of making assumptions about a group of people as if they were part of some sort of hive vagina mind.
How often have we seen the Far Right and the evangelicals claim that the GLBT community has a Gay Agenda? And on the Left? How often have our votes been taken totally for granted because they know that, for the most part, we're automatically going to vote Democrat?
Both attitudes are insulting and both drive me crazy. My own personal agenda is probably a little different than Nancy's, and both our agendas are undoubtedly miles away from the single gay guy next door who seems to love perpetuating several gay stereotypes. There is no monolithic Gay Agenda; there are, in fact, GLBT people who don't give a damn about the right to marry.
As for counting on my vote.... I'm used to that, both as a far left Liberal and as a dyke. It's conventional political wisdom that actively courting the gay vote is the kiss of death to a campaign. Which you know...step inside my Docs for a day and think about how that feels. "We want your vote, but we can't actually promise you anything at all or even acknowledge you except in the vaguest way. I'm sure you don't mind."
My point is that for white GLBT folk or allies to turn around and act as if there's a monolithic Black or Hispanic hive mind with a homophobic agenda is hypocritical. It's what people have been doing to us and it saddens me to see people turn around and do it to another minority, particularly when the numbers everyone's using to insist that Black voters were responsible for 8 passing are, to quote Rodney McKay, Wrong Wrong Wrong!!!!
If you're doing that, if you're assigning certain characteristics across the board to certain racial groups, well...that's racism, plain and simple.
Dear people out there in CA who voted yes on 8, including some of you in my freakin' hometown (and thanks a lot for that; I like to think of Sacramento as a nice blue spot in a Valley of red),
I'd just like to take this moment to tell you that me, Ruth, the big fat dyke? Still married. Screw you.
Bear in mind that this is the same Court that declared for equality back in June. I don't know these people and I'm sure they'll be all fair and impartial and stuff when they do their judge thing , but you know? It's got to be kind of annoying to have done your damn job, interpreted the Constitution, and then had a bunch of people spearheaded by a church in freakin' Utah (we don't even share a border with them!), try to get around something you said was legal. Also I bet they didn't take kindly to being called "activist judges."
May I just say that I'm personally glad we have State Attorney General Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown on our side? Say what you will about him, but the guy's a solid liberal and is the one who insisted that Prop 8's language be changed to reflect the fact that it was taking away rights. It probably would have passed with better numbers if he hadn't done that.
Also, Joe the Plumber? Screw you too. My union plumber voted for Obama.
So, three people in the room--two plumbers and me. Who knew where the nearest hardware store was? I should have asked them to drop in at Butch n Nellies to get me another coffee; the one I had at 6 has long since faded and I'm running on freakin' fumes here.
PS, I read two books, so I'm up to 17 now and I'm halfway through Neal Stephenson's utterly awesome Anathem. I love how he entertains, makes me feel smart and makes me feel kinda ignorant, all at the same time.
Nancy and I will still be married. We will still be two women who love each other and nothing anyone does can ever change that.
It's not over. There are still things that can be done, law suits to be filed and a fight to be fought.
Am I happy that my state cares more about chickens than my rights?* No, of course not. But I am happy that my friends did their best; many gave money to the No on 8 campaign as wedding presents and many more voted against it. It means a lot.
And for the haters out there, the ignorant and the stupid, the people who voted for discrimination? I'm sorry. It must be hard living your life in so much fear.
*Prop 2, which is all about humane standards for confining farm animals is passing with a very healthy margin.
And you know? My ancestor, the one who fought in the Revolution, would probably be appalled at what happened tonight. Women running for office? A Black man being voted into the highest office in the land? His female descendant, the lesbian married to a Black woman, voting?
Jehu would have been shocked and probably bewildered.
And that? That's part of why I'm proud.
Because we can change and we can become better and we can continue to perfect this union.
After reading Tigana, or any book by Kay, you aren't surprised to discover that he's an accomplished poet as well. In fact, when Christopher Tolkien took on the job of publishing The Silmarillion from his father's notes, Kay was one of the people who worked with him. Trust me, Kay's better when he's writing his own stories.
Fortunately for me, Tigana was the first book by Kay that I read. His earlier trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, suffers from such a bad case of "everything and the kitchen sink" fantasy that you end ip thinking that Kay never met a fantasy trope he didn't like. Thankfully, he got that out of his system and sat down to create Tigana.
Roughly half a generation before the events of the book, the lands of the Palm--a peninsula divided into nine tiny duchies and principalities with vaguely Italian names and language--was conquered by two different sorcerers. One, Alberico, is a pretty straightforward villain, but the other, Brandin is a much more complex character. Unfortunately for the Principlaity of Tigana, Brandin's beloved son died at the hand of Tigana's prince. In revenge, Brandin performed a mighty act of sorcery that prevents anyone not from Tigana from hearing or remembering the name of the principality. As a result, when the last person alive at the time Tigana was conquered dies, the name of the country will be lost forever.
And so the stage is set for a band of rebels, including Alessen, the youngest son of Tigana's last prince, to try to win back their freedom and the freedom of the rest of the Palm's provinces, because along the way, Alessan has realized that the only way the divided provinces can prevail is through unification.
All that sounds pretty normal; talk about your common fantasy tropes. But where Kay excels is in...well, honestly, pretty much everything. His heroes and heroines are flawed, complicated people and Brandin is an excellent example of how to do a villain right. In fact, while I do love the rebels, particularly Devin, a young singer who falls almost accidentally into the conspiracy, it is the story of Dianora, a native of Tigana who is taken captive and put into Brandin's harem only to struggle against her love for him versus her desire for revenge that makes me love this book.
Well, that and the sheer beauty of Kay's prose. He's a simply stunning writer who uses language and imagery perfectly, and who knows the power that words have. If you like truly sparse prose, then no, his books aren't for you. However, you never feel that he's throwing words at the page in order to bring up his page count; each word seems placed just so, much like the mosaics created by another one of his characters from another book. The result is a picture of love and loss and honor and responsibility that will stay with you for a long time.
If someone came up to me and said, "I don't normally read fantasy, but can you recommend a good starting place?" I'd hand them Tigana and tell them to sit down and savor it from cover to cover. While there is magic in the book, it never takes over the book the way it so often can in fantasy.
Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn fantasy 287 pages
Taking place in the Three Countries, a place much like feudal Japan, Across the Nightingale Floor is the first book of the Tales of the Otori. It tells the story of OtoriTakeo and ShirakawaKaede, two young adults caught up in the intrigues of their time.
Takeo is a young man raised in an isolated village by his mother, a member of a forbidden religious sect. The local lord, Iida--an ambitious villain with no real redeeming features--with his men, destroys the village. Takeo is saved by a mysterious stranger by the name of Lord Otori, who takes Takeo to his lands and adopts him.
Meanwhile, the beautiful Kaede is a hostage, held by one of Iida's vassals to compel her father's loyalty. When a man attempting to rape her is killed and the man she is betrothed to dies, she becomes the object of superstition, although that doesn't stop her captor from setting up yet another betrothal--to Lord Otori--for her
Takeo learns that he is the son of a member of The Tribe, an ancient group of ninjas. He has an almost magic ability of super hearing, which serves him well when Lord Otori summons an old Tribe friend to train Takeo. Their ultimate goal is to assassinateIida, who is so paranoid that he has a "nightingale floor"--a floor designed to make chirping noises when someone steps on it--surrounding his chambers.
The book rushes on with an almost breakneck speed and yet there are moments where Hearn pauses to describe a landscape or a room with an appreciation that adds a Japanese touch to the novel. It's not written in the style classical Japanese literature, which, as someone who gave up on The Tale of Genji, I appreciate, however, you never forget that you are in a world of samurai and ninjas.
There was a moment when I was sure she was leading up to a pretty common trope, but then, when I was wrong, I realized that I was thinking of Western tropes and Hearn was using a common Eastern trope. While she doesn't actually bring anything new to the table, she tells her tale well and gives us likable characters and deeds of ninja derring-do in enjoyable settings.
I call Across the Nightingale Floor fantasy because that's what it's categorized as, but, aside from Takeo's super-hearing and his family ability to hypnotise people, there's no magic; this could be read as a straight-forward action novel with a nice touch of romance in the background. I most certainly recommend it; I sat and read it in one go tonight and I'll be getting my hands on the other books in the series; there are three more that deal with Takeo and Kaede and then a prequel about Lord Otori.
I'm a 40something, recently married, disabled lesbian living in domestic bliss with my partner Darkrose and our two cats.
I read, write, play computer games, cook, and occasionally make a vague stab at doing housework. I'm a Liberal with a capital L and I have opinions. About everything.
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