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Haven't posted for a while
I know I've been quiet of late (at least on my own journal), but I feel like I don't have all that much to say. I've been reading - that list of books I posted a while ago. All done. Well, not quite. I'm still working on The Castle Corona, which I'm finding disappointing, and I gave up on the Anne McCaffrey as not being worth reading (which is not entirely a value judgment on the book itself; a large part of this has to do with the fact that I'm not keeping up with the series terribly much. Of course, it also has to do with the fact that I've found the Acorna series to be less interesting the longer it went on, and I've now given up on the children.). But mostly done.
The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio was quite good. I'd call it the best of Lloyd Alexander, which is not to say that I felt it was his best book, or even really in the running to be so, but it had many of the elements of his style that I enjoy, and incorporates several of the things that he does well.
Most of the others were re-reads, so I won't tell you about them . . . what other new things were there? Ah. Reserved for the Cat. It was about a ballerina, which was a bit so-so, but it was a retelling of Puss in Boots, which I enjoyed. And it had a good cat in it (well, clearly).
And The Traitor's Gate. Also so-so. The beginning was slow, the middle was okay, and the end, to my mind, had too much betrayal and double-dealing. Like . . . okay, my brother got copious amounts of Monty Python's Flying Circus for his birthday/Christmas. And he's been watching it, which resulted in me seeing a sketch about spies and the dental association, where someone new comes in every 15 seconds or so carrying a larger gun with which to double-cross everyone in the room. I don't know if any of you have seen the skit, but the end of the book was like that, except without the humor. I wouldn't really consider Avi to be one of my favorite authors (although The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle was good), but I've enjoyed other works of his more than I did this one.
Since I finished (almost finished) that lot, I had started on Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik, which I got from my aunt, but I seem to have stopped reading that one in order to save it for the train ride north. Instead, I've been reading other books on dragons - Jane Yolen's The Pit Dragon Trilogy, which I hadn't read for a very long time, and am quite enjoying. Funny story about that, actually. I was at the library yesterday, hanging out with Teresa, and there was Knitting Club because it was Thursday. I was hanging out and working on my scarf (and noting the changes - my memories of that group are of a bunch of elementary-school-aged children, and more than half the people yesterday were grown women). A boy showed up and, when queried, declared that yes, he thought he would like to learn to knit. Teresa had him pick out some yarn and bustled off to pick up someone's dropped stitch, leaving him sitting next to me. After he picked a ball of yarn, he commented on the books sitting next to me, declaring that Dragon's Blood was a "weird" title. Based on my hazy memories of the trilogy, I tried to explain in a way that would interest him. I'm not sure that I succeeded, but in the process we got into a discussion of what kinds of dragons these were, with me walking the narrow tightrope of both catering to his stated interests and trying to remember what the books were actually about ("Are they Water Dragons or Air Dragons?" Me: "Um . . ." well they fly, but I don't think that they really fit into any kind of elemental system " . . . yes." Him: "Do they talk?" . . . and so on.) He didn't seem to have much patience for learning to knit, and had terrible fine-motor skills (I hadn't realized how dexterous all the people I've taught to knit/do other crafty things are, but I have a new appreciation now that I've seen someone yank all of his stitches off the needle when trying to start the next row - he didn't seem to have any concept of a soft pull). But he might surprise me. And who knows, perhaps I did convince him to try some Yolen.
In other news:
In proof of the fact that my room at dad's house is really freaking cold - I could see my breath yesterday morning. In my room. Not all the time, but if I breathed in warm air from under the covers and breathed out outside the covers, the misty little cloud was quite evident. (I decided not to check this morning - I didn't want to know.) Needless to say, this does not encourage me to get up in the mornings. Luckily there's not really anything to get up for, and if I manage to not encounter my brother in the morning before school, so much the better.
I've been house-sitting, so I have been spending a great many hours sitting around with Ghengis's paw or chin on my hand. It's very relaxing. Madison may know how to purr, but she hasn't managed the trick of making the air around her vibrate when she does. Ghengis isn't the best purrer I know, but he's certainly the best among the cats I see with any frequency. And I think Ghengis's old-cat attitude of just sit still and relax - unless, of course, he wants Food or Out, in which case everything should be done immediately - is very calming for the soul (except on the occasions when he's yelling at you and you're not sure what he wants. It was much easier to talk to that cat before he went completely deaf). Everyone should have more cat hand-holding in their lives.
My dad made pork and sauerkraut, our traditional New Year's dish - albeit a few days late. I'm very glad. While my mother did make some for when we had her family over on New Year's Day, she doesn't do it as whole-heartedly and I feel that the result is an inferior product - not that I would EVER tell her so, mind you.
New Year's (Christmas) with mom's family was good. Festivities with dad's family were fine (Islept badly couldn't get to sleep and stayed up to read Emperor Mage instead (oh, that was the other thing I've been reading - I re-read The Immortals quartet), and then I was short on sleep for church the next day - I do not like my grandparents' church at the best of times (it's too big, and we sing off the wall (meaning with great big screens that project words but no music, so there's no harmony line) and I can't hear anyone singing anyway, and the sermon is like a badly done powerpoint presentations ("Now, this bit is the most important, pithy portion of my message today, but it's up on the screens, so I won't actually bother to say it." grr. I understand that some people take in information better if they read it, but I really feel that a sermon ought to be spoken. And if you aren't going to speak it, please don't give me a fill-in-the-blank handout in the bulletin.) And the attitude of the whole church really irks me. There's something about Evangelical Christianity that often strikes me as terribly smug. Maybe I just see the wrong services, but it feels like the whole point of that big, huge church is to send out missionaries to convert The Heathen in South America and Africa and India and especially the Heather Muslims and the Heathen Atheists . . . and if Christianity calls for any change in the way the community lives, well, that can be remedied by giving more money to the church, right? Which is Sacrifice On Our Parts.
Quite aside from the fact that I refuse to believe that a kind and loving god is going to sentence good people to eternal torment because the missionaries didn't get their act together quickly enough (same for other good people who aren't Christian), I feel that there's something more to Christianity. Self-reflection, or emulating the model of love, or something. I'm not even sure what it is, but I sure don't see it in that church. And the fact that the church needs x dollars to meet their 2007 budget, and it's the last Sunday of the year, and x is bigger than my church's entire budget . . . leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It feels so Pennsylvania Bible-Belt Mega-Church. Add to this the fact that I'm only getting three Sundays at my home church and I'm missing one to attend this hour-and-a-half of drivel - leaves Miriam Not A Happy Camper. And they can't even get the words on the carols right. I admit that there's variation, but egads, it's "all ye citizens of heav'n above" - not "angel hosts" or whatever they replaced it with. I really like the meaning of "citizens" in that verse . . . unless you're singing in latin, which I did for the chorus at the end. Since no one else was going to sing, I figured that I might as well sing however I pleased, and I pleased not to sing the words the screens were instructing me to sing. Which small rebellion made me feel much better.
I'm normally more-or-less well behaved and do as I ought and am a good girl, but there's something about the way that service is run that brings out my rebellious and stubborn streak. Which is perhaps appropriate, since that's one translation of my name.
Anyway. It was nice to see my grandparents, even if seeing them meant attending their church. I spent most of that time reading or playing board games (some of which, it should be mentioned, I lost) and trying not to watch tv (it seems to be eternally on at my grandparents' house).
Wow, that was a giant rant.
The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio was quite good. I'd call it the best of Lloyd Alexander, which is not to say that I felt it was his best book, or even really in the running to be so, but it had many of the elements of his style that I enjoy, and incorporates several of the things that he does well.
Most of the others were re-reads, so I won't tell you about them . . . what other new things were there? Ah. Reserved for the Cat. It was about a ballerina, which was a bit so-so, but it was a retelling of Puss in Boots, which I enjoyed. And it had a good cat in it (well, clearly).
And The Traitor's Gate. Also so-so. The beginning was slow, the middle was okay, and the end, to my mind, had too much betrayal and double-dealing. Like . . . okay, my brother got copious amounts of Monty Python's Flying Circus for his birthday/Christmas. And he's been watching it, which resulted in me seeing a sketch about spies and the dental association, where someone new comes in every 15 seconds or so carrying a larger gun with which to double-cross everyone in the room. I don't know if any of you have seen the skit, but the end of the book was like that, except without the humor. I wouldn't really consider Avi to be one of my favorite authors (although The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle was good), but I've enjoyed other works of his more than I did this one.
Since I finished (almost finished) that lot, I had started on Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik, which I got from my aunt, but I seem to have stopped reading that one in order to save it for the train ride north. Instead, I've been reading other books on dragons - Jane Yolen's The Pit Dragon Trilogy, which I hadn't read for a very long time, and am quite enjoying. Funny story about that, actually. I was at the library yesterday, hanging out with Teresa, and there was Knitting Club because it was Thursday. I was hanging out and working on my scarf (and noting the changes - my memories of that group are of a bunch of elementary-school-aged children, and more than half the people yesterday were grown women). A boy showed up and, when queried, declared that yes, he thought he would like to learn to knit. Teresa had him pick out some yarn and bustled off to pick up someone's dropped stitch, leaving him sitting next to me. After he picked a ball of yarn, he commented on the books sitting next to me, declaring that Dragon's Blood was a "weird" title. Based on my hazy memories of the trilogy, I tried to explain in a way that would interest him. I'm not sure that I succeeded, but in the process we got into a discussion of what kinds of dragons these were, with me walking the narrow tightrope of both catering to his stated interests and trying to remember what the books were actually about ("Are they Water Dragons or Air Dragons?" Me: "Um . . ." well they fly, but I don't think that they really fit into any kind of elemental system " . . . yes." Him: "Do they talk?" . . . and so on.) He didn't seem to have much patience for learning to knit, and had terrible fine-motor skills (I hadn't realized how dexterous all the people I've taught to knit/do other crafty things are, but I have a new appreciation now that I've seen someone yank all of his stitches off the needle when trying to start the next row - he didn't seem to have any concept of a soft pull). But he might surprise me. And who knows, perhaps I did convince him to try some Yolen.
In other news:
In proof of the fact that my room at dad's house is really freaking cold - I could see my breath yesterday morning. In my room. Not all the time, but if I breathed in warm air from under the covers and breathed out outside the covers, the misty little cloud was quite evident. (I decided not to check this morning - I didn't want to know.) Needless to say, this does not encourage me to get up in the mornings. Luckily there's not really anything to get up for, and if I manage to not encounter my brother in the morning before school, so much the better.
I've been house-sitting, so I have been spending a great many hours sitting around with Ghengis's paw or chin on my hand. It's very relaxing. Madison may know how to purr, but she hasn't managed the trick of making the air around her vibrate when she does. Ghengis isn't the best purrer I know, but he's certainly the best among the cats I see with any frequency. And I think Ghengis's old-cat attitude of just sit still and relax - unless, of course, he wants Food or Out, in which case everything should be done immediately - is very calming for the soul (except on the occasions when he's yelling at you and you're not sure what he wants. It was much easier to talk to that cat before he went completely deaf). Everyone should have more cat hand-holding in their lives.
My dad made pork and sauerkraut, our traditional New Year's dish - albeit a few days late. I'm very glad. While my mother did make some for when we had her family over on New Year's Day, she doesn't do it as whole-heartedly and I feel that the result is an inferior product - not that I would EVER tell her so, mind you.
New Year's (Christmas) with mom's family was good. Festivities with dad's family were fine (I
Quite aside from the fact that I refuse to believe that a kind and loving god is going to sentence good people to eternal torment because the missionaries didn't get their act together quickly enough (same for other good people who aren't Christian), I feel that there's something more to Christianity. Self-reflection, or emulating the model of love, or something. I'm not even sure what it is, but I sure don't see it in that church. And the fact that the church needs x dollars to meet their 2007 budget, and it's the last Sunday of the year, and x is bigger than my church's entire budget . . . leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It feels so Pennsylvania Bible-Belt Mega-Church. Add to this the fact that I'm only getting three Sundays at my home church and I'm missing one to attend this hour-and-a-half of drivel - leaves Miriam Not A Happy Camper. And they can't even get the words on the carols right. I admit that there's variation, but egads, it's "all ye citizens of heav'n above" - not "angel hosts" or whatever they replaced it with. I really like the meaning of "citizens" in that verse . . . unless you're singing in latin, which I did for the chorus at the end. Since no one else was going to sing, I figured that I might as well sing however I pleased, and I pleased not to sing the words the screens were instructing me to sing. Which small rebellion made me feel much better.
I'm normally more-or-less well behaved and do as I ought and am a good girl, but there's something about the way that service is run that brings out my rebellious and stubborn streak. Which is perhaps appropriate, since that's one translation of my name.
Anyway. It was nice to see my grandparents, even if seeing them meant attending their church. I spent most of that time reading or playing board games (some of which, it should be mentioned, I lost) and trying not to watch tv (it seems to be eternally on at my grandparents' house).
Wow, that was a giant rant.
no subject
And for cheap thrills, a hot water bottle at night can help heat the sheets. Your extremities might thank you.
no subject
Kitty-communing is a decent term for it, although I'm sure Ghengis would be outraged to be referred to as "kitty." But he can't hear and he can't read, so I guess the secret's safe.
What I really need is a hot water bottle that stays just the right temperature for nine or ten hours.