So I am reading a sci-fi saga right now, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton. If you are looking for 1500 pages of old-school space opera, you could do worse. It's fun, but it feels like I'm never going to get to the end of the freaking story! Part of this stems from the fact that the first 200-250 pages of the first book are just spent introducing the major characters (of which there are easily 30+, although some of them have died by the point where I am now (150 pages from the end of the book). There are a lot of characters, and we have to check in with all of them on a regular basis. Also, I have been super-tired lately, so I haven't been getting any in-bed reading (especially not on these books, which could potentially be involved in a nose-breaking incident if I fell asleep reading one of them).

As I approach the end of the book, though, certain things are starting to bother me, though. The copyediting, for instance. You probably made up the word trollybot, Peter F. Hamilton, so you can spell it however you want; it would be nice, however, if you could stick to one spelling per page*. Also the women characters, although plentiful and strong, are very other-ized. Also, these people live in the future, and they live for hundreds of years generally, and most of them seem to marry and divorce several times over their lifetimes, which is expected in their future-people culture. So why on Earth (I'm sorry, why in the Intersolar Commonwealth) do women take their husbands' names? That makes no sense!

( Also, spoilers... )

Some of these things might not bother me in a shorter book, but since the whole story is taking approximately FOREVER to play out, and I, unlike the characters, do not expect to live for hundreds and hundreds of years, I think I can be excused when I say JUST GET THE FUCK ON WITH IT!

All that aside, I am really looking forward to someday getting a chance to read the last 150 pages. But when even the Thrilling Denouement takes me a couple of days to read through, I get irritated.

Anyone have any other fabulous epics to recommend? I'm in an epic kind of mood. Also when the hell is Rosemary Kirstein going to write the next (last?) Steerswoman book? I would really like to find out how that series ends. It looks like it's going to be called The City in the Crags but that's all I've heard about it (not that the Steerswoman books are anything like the saga I'm currently reading, really -- I do very strongly recommend them though, even though they are currently incomplete and likely to remain so for who knows how long).



*I would go with trollybot over trolleybot, myself. Although actually I'm not sure why they're trollybots at all, unless perhaps they're more like a tea trolley and less like a streetcar. And I suspect that if all these bots are as ubiquitous as they seem to be, people would have started dropping the -bot suffix by now and they'd just be trollys and dollys and sneeks.

Now that the solstice has come to pass, and the days are getting longer, and likely colder and nastier, I find my mind turning to spring and summer clothing. Specifically, my twirly Gap skirt from last year that is really way too big for me but still very nice and twirly. I'm trying to decide whether I can muster up the energy and/or skill to alter it so that it will fit this year. On the face of it, it shouldn't be too difficult. It's just a skirt, and it's not shaped around the hips at all so basically all I have to do is make the waist smaller. There are four seams and they're all quite straight. And it's made out of lightweight cotton that shouldn't be any trouble to sew. There's a lining, but it's basically a duplicate of the overskirt, so if I can fix one, I should be able to fix the other. I also want to remake this skirt in another fabric, maybe something dressier but still lightweight and swirly. That would make me happy.

Also, I think I am going take on the Knitting Olympics challenge, in which one is supposed to cast on for a new project during the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics and finish it by the end of the Closing Ceremonies. I am going to try to knit an Aran sweater that I've been meaning to knit for ages (i.e. since a few months after I learned to knit, i.e. about three and a half years ago). I've even ordered yarn and needles, and swatched. This would require major time-management, and possible risk of repetitive stress injury, but it's the Olympics! It's all about pushing yourself, or something, right? So I'm going to try. (And I would like to point out that I will likely not be knitting in front of the TV whilst watching the Olympics, since all the good stuff is on at night when I am at work. Although I suppose I could TiVo. But then I'd be fast-forwarding all the time, and I can't knit and fast-forward at the same time.) It's going to be the sewing-up that gets me. I hate seaming. Also, I hereby pledge that I will not let my knitting get in the way of my schoolwork, because that would be stupid. But it's during the first month of school, so nothing too heavy should be going on yet.

OK, back to work so I can finish the ILLs and move on to knitting and listening to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which I downloaded from Audible a week or two ago because it was very inexpensive, like $6. I like it very much, more so than I expected. I think there's a thread on it at chicklit, and I will have to check that out.

Tomorrow I am showing my room to 7 prospective lease-taker-overers. It is to be hoped that at least one of them will, A) want the room and B) meet my roommate-who-is-staying's approval. So hope on that for me, if you will.

I've just started reading The Egyptologist, by Arthur Phillips. I'm not sure how I feel about it right now; it could be really good or it could be awfully tedious. And/or confusing. Also, the frontispiece is a picture of a pornographic cartouche (which could be good or bad).

Lastly, I want cookies.

OK, I have discovered a place I really need to go: Child at Heart Art Gallery in Newburyport. They sell childrens' book illustrations. Including the original cover art from that immortal work of literature, Claudia and Mean Janine. Plus original Care Bear art, and all kinds of fabulous prints and original illustrations from all sorts of illustrators. I will have to stop by next time I'm in Newburyport.

Here are some of the things I really love and would think about buying if I had a bit more cash and especially if I had a child's room to decorate:

Baa, Ed Emberley

Cover art for Red is a Dragon, Grace Lin

Lovely engravings from The Man Who Planted Trees, Michael McCurdy

Want!

For all those of you who have been desperate to know: today I am wearing a knee-length natural linen skirt. Since there is no way to stop the linen wrinkling, especially in weather like this, I don't even try.

Today I bought The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, which is pretty freaking hilarious. I had resisted it because I wasn't 100% sure I would like it and $16 is a lot to spend on a little bitty funny book, but stellanova's rave about it convinced me (mostly because I'd had the same sort of concerns about its potential nonfunniness as she did), and, indeed, it is extremely funny. I would guess I am laughing somewhere between once and twice per page. And they're little pages! I've only got a few pages left, but I'm saving them for a reward for after I have done some of my schoolwork. (Note that I am apparently not saving reading and updating livejournal as a reward for after I have done some of my schoolwork. Sigh.)

I also picked up Sufjan Stevens' album "Illinois."* I heard about this album on Slate, then noticed an interview with Stevens on the Onion AV Club, and apparently he is the Next Big Thing and it sounded like something I might dig, so I looked at the disc on Amazon, and there were tracks to download, and I loved them. The arrangements are really cool -- interesting things going on with horns and voices, sometimes there's a sort of Steve Reich-y kind of vibe, especially when he's got women's voices matching the trumpet. So I went and got that at Newbury Comics, and I was not disappointed (indeed, I am listening to it right now).

Also, apparently I got the first pressing of the CD, because my cover art has Superman on it, and the next printing will not have Superman on it because of legal issues with DC Comics (they didn't pull the already-printed Superman covers, though). So I hope that Stevens goes on to record albums for all fifty states (as he says he intends to do) and becomes enormously influential, so that my Superman cover will become valuable (of course, I will probably lose or rip the insert long, long before this happens). I don't think that's super-likely, though.



*"Illinois" is the official title and it's on the spine of the CD case, but on the insert and the disc itself the title is "Sufjan Stevens invites you to: Come on feel the Illinoise" and I wonder what the proper way to catalog this would be; I know we are supposed to go by what it says on the disc itself, so I guess the long title would go in the 245 and "Illinois" would go in the 246 as the spine title with an added entry? /cataloging geekout

Firstly, I think you all need to know that I got a FREE TOTE BAG with the purchase of this book. And it has a picture of the book cover on it. So in the future my groceries will be graced with the elegant mugs of Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter.

( Well, that was rather good, wasn't it? )

So, yesterday I took the Chinatown bus down to New York (Lucky Star, because #1 they have a cool dragon logo, and #2 I have never heard of one of their buses catching on fire, unlike some other Chinatown bus companies I could mention). It was my first time on the cheap bus, and honestly I didn't find it any worse than a regular bus, though it did not compare with the Diamante Class bus I took in Mexico at Christmas time. Also not comparable to the Mexican buses: the view. I-95 in Connecticut is not one of our country's more scenic stretches of highway (while the trip from Cuernavaca to Acapulco was pretty much continuously breathtaking).

Anyhow, you would think that, as a person who is able to find her way around pretty well any neighborhood in Boston, I would find numbered streets laid out in a grid to be a Piece of Cake, but I still managed to get all turned around on my way to hook up with asvern and M. But hook up we did, and artistic photographs were looked at, and dinner was eaten, and Avenue Q was seen (and was pretty awesome; at first, I was like, "Oh, shit, what the hell did I spend my money on this for?" but by about 10 minutes in I was loving it).

Anyhow, today I got up at 6:00AM and got on the train back to Boston (the train is faster than the bus and I was supposed to be at work by 11:00AM). I bought Half-Blood Prince at the train station (continuing my run of never buying Harry Potter books from actual bookstores -- 1-3 were from a book club, 4 was from Target, 5 from WalMart, and now 6 from a train station newsstand), but I finished Laurie R. King's excellent new Mary Russell book (Locked Rooms) before I started it. Now I'm about halfway through, and it's quite good, isn't it?

I forgot to buy any snacks before I got on the train, and I am always so disappointed by Amtrak food that I just couldn't muster up the strength to walk to the snack car, in spite of having had nothing to eat since the gin and tonic after the show, so by the time I got to Boston I was FREAKING STARVING, but I was also late for work so I didn't get anything to eat until 2:00PM. Now I am enjoying a truly enormous salad, with fresh greens and herbs and feta cheese and Yasou! dressing.

Even though I just worked in an un-airconditioned museum for the last 7 hours, I think I should easily be able to finish the book before I pass out, so I am looking forward to that. Also: the baby monkey is even cuter than it was last week.

I figure I might as well not read livejournal until I've finished the book, so I can happily click away on all the spoiler cut tags.

Things are getting in the way of my Harry Potter reading: I'm going to New York tomorrow, which will be fun, and I'm only staying the one night and then coming back in the morning so that I can work all day at the museum, and then Saturday night I think I might go to a party that one of the girls in my cataloging class invited me to (or said she was going to invite me to; I don't actually know, like, where it is or anything), and I am finding building Dewey numbers rather more difficult than I expected, possibly because I totally failed to listen in class, and so now I'm not even sure when I'm going to get the chance to buy the book, much less read it. I'm being silly, because really the worst-case scenario is that I don't buy the book until Friday, when I'm done with the cataloging assignment, but I don't care if I'm being silly! I want it now! Saturday morning would be OK too!

Also, I don't even have enough time right now to read the other stuff I want to read -- I've got the new Mary Russell book in my bag right now, and I haven't even finished the library books that are due tomorrow. I should be able to read most of the Mary Russell on the bus tomorrow, though, assuming I am not so tired I just pass out. I am too busy right now. I feel good, and I think I'm handling it well, but I'm just not getting to do all the things I want to do, and that makes me sad.

I finally read The Handmaid's Tale which, seriously, how did I get to the ripe old age of 27 without having read this book? And I call myself a feminist and a book person! Anyhow, it was awesome, and it scared the shit out of me, and all you Canadians have to promise me that I can come crash with you when they freeze my bank account, 'kay? I loved the Cambridge setting, too, because it gradually became more obvious to me as the book went on, and it's so nice to see familiar places in books, even dystopian books. Given the current state of affairs, though, I suspect that when the theocracy comes to power they'll just nuke Massachusetts as irredeemably evil.

I also went in the museum today to see the baby monkey, which is freaking adorable. The mother is carrying it around a lot, which didn't happen last time (the dad was definitely the primary caretaker for the ones born last summer) and the son seems to be paying a lot of attention to the mom and baby, while the daughter seems less interested. Now the mom and daughter have to get little monkey Norplants again, because there were only supposed to be two pregnancies, according to the species survival plan people, so no more baby monkeys, at least not for the next year or two.

Would it be a very bad thing to order my cataloging books from Amazon and then return them when I am done with them? There are five more weeks of the class, and I have 30 days from the day I receive the books to return them. If I neglect to return them, I am out $160-some-odd, although I might be able to resell the books, so let's call it $80-some-odd plus the work of having to resell the books. Hmmm. If I'm going to order them, I should do it ASAP.

Never mind, I've done it. Must remember to return them, is all. I didn't go with the free shipping, so at least they're getting some money out of me!