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I never know what to put here. Subject?
Jan. 4th, 2003 08:47 pmFinished A WIZARD ALONE. Started in on STEALING THE ELF-KING'S ROSES. I adore Diane Duane's work. She has the heart of the matter in her. It therefore seems ungrateful of me to continue to feel annoyed at minor aspects that are sloppy or simply not quite to my taste. I can seldom get rid of the little voice in the back of my head that wonders why she couldn't just go over that sentence again and keep the rhythm from stumbling; that realizes that if she uses "he'd" or "she'd" or "they'd" once more I'll probably scream, and that if she uses "go" as a verb of change again I'll sigh heavily. It bugs me half to death that the first names of Nita and Dairine's parents change between SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD and the later books. It itches me that in the first book Nita is said never to have been afraid of the dark, and in one of the later ones is said always to have been scared of it.
So I finished A WIZARD ALONE and thought, wait a moment. She didn't do any of those things. And the prose! It doesn't just blossom from time to time. It's a garden at midsummer. Some of the flowers are dandelions or clover or shepherd's purse, but still. Wow, I thought, she's made a breakthrough. I started to read STEALING THE ELF-KING'S ROSES. I'll finish it, I'll reread it innumerable times, it is bound to make me cry, probably more than once, and laugh, also more than once. But the prose is Augustan, a nicely-planned structure for June, now half obliterated by weeds. Weird.
I really liked A WIZARD ALONE. Unfortunately, now I feel I should like to read all the rest of them again, possibly skipping A WIZARD ABROAD because of the idiotic editing of American terms into British ones. No, I rather liked that one too after the second reading. I guess I'll just grit my teeth. Some people. So fussy.
I still wish I could do what she does. But with language added.
I should go do what I do, and soon. Meanwhile, I made a watery black bean soup and some insufficiently crunchy spicy potatoes for dinner yesterday and took today off. I had to go downtown and pick up my prescription, and I had managed to delay calling the refill in until it was too late to pick it up on Friday. I was out of that drug this morning, and overslept, so that all my drugs got taken at the wrong time. I feel okay now, but I felt very weird for a while. I've got to get off of this stuff. But I am not "dieting," no way nohow; nor am I very sanguine about messing any more with my sodium intake. More walking, that's the ticket.
I went to Target and got various things, dodging about twenty thousand arguing families and people with strollers. I bought a $6.99 toaster and am now wondering if it will set the house afire. Will look for the UL seal, as Raphael suggested.
I was starving by then and had had no coffee, and Starbuck's doesn't have soy milk, anyway; so I evilly went to Dayton's Marketplace and bought a tuna salad wrap sandwich and a bottle of Coke and took them along to Eric's. Toliman ate a small fragment of tuna, probably to be polite, and then stuck his entire pink nose right into the Coke bottle. Some people's cats.
Toliman is definitely annoyed with my peripatetic ways. If I am the only human around, then I am supposed to STAY around, dammit. I got him to turn another somersault, though. Eric will be home late on Monday, to the very great joy of both of us.
Raphael and I have reached the end of Season Five of "Buffy." Much more maddening than Diane Duane, because there is so much more not-right stuff, but the same feeling turned up to eleven. Yargh. (Diane Duane causes about a 0.5 occasionally spiking to maybe 2. In case anybody is keeping track.)
Papersky, don't read what follows!
David and Lydy are presently watching the extended-version DVD of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, having first ascertained that I did not, as the nominal owner, think it improper that they should watch it without me. I didn't feel up to it. I did, in the course of fetching an onion for my dinner, sit down with them and Fester and Cholmondeley and catch the scene just after the
Birthday Party where Gandalf comes back and catches Bilbo packing, and they have that magnificent conversation about the Ring. The DVD looks really, really good. I'm looking forward to watching it.
My cat is sitting on the back of my chair. When I get up he will subside onto the seat and sleep there for hours, unless rudely evicted by people who unreasonably want to write their novels now.
Pamela
So I finished A WIZARD ALONE and thought, wait a moment. She didn't do any of those things. And the prose! It doesn't just blossom from time to time. It's a garden at midsummer. Some of the flowers are dandelions or clover or shepherd's purse, but still. Wow, I thought, she's made a breakthrough. I started to read STEALING THE ELF-KING'S ROSES. I'll finish it, I'll reread it innumerable times, it is bound to make me cry, probably more than once, and laugh, also more than once. But the prose is Augustan, a nicely-planned structure for June, now half obliterated by weeds. Weird.
I really liked A WIZARD ALONE. Unfortunately, now I feel I should like to read all the rest of them again, possibly skipping A WIZARD ABROAD because of the idiotic editing of American terms into British ones. No, I rather liked that one too after the second reading. I guess I'll just grit my teeth. Some people. So fussy.
I still wish I could do what she does. But with language added.
I should go do what I do, and soon. Meanwhile, I made a watery black bean soup and some insufficiently crunchy spicy potatoes for dinner yesterday and took today off. I had to go downtown and pick up my prescription, and I had managed to delay calling the refill in until it was too late to pick it up on Friday. I was out of that drug this morning, and overslept, so that all my drugs got taken at the wrong time. I feel okay now, but I felt very weird for a while. I've got to get off of this stuff. But I am not "dieting," no way nohow; nor am I very sanguine about messing any more with my sodium intake. More walking, that's the ticket.
I went to Target and got various things, dodging about twenty thousand arguing families and people with strollers. I bought a $6.99 toaster and am now wondering if it will set the house afire. Will look for the UL seal, as Raphael suggested.
I was starving by then and had had no coffee, and Starbuck's doesn't have soy milk, anyway; so I evilly went to Dayton's Marketplace and bought a tuna salad wrap sandwich and a bottle of Coke and took them along to Eric's. Toliman ate a small fragment of tuna, probably to be polite, and then stuck his entire pink nose right into the Coke bottle. Some people's cats.
Toliman is definitely annoyed with my peripatetic ways. If I am the only human around, then I am supposed to STAY around, dammit. I got him to turn another somersault, though. Eric will be home late on Monday, to the very great joy of both of us.
Raphael and I have reached the end of Season Five of "Buffy." Much more maddening than Diane Duane, because there is so much more not-right stuff, but the same feeling turned up to eleven. Yargh. (Diane Duane causes about a 0.5 occasionally spiking to maybe 2. In case anybody is keeping track.)
Papersky, don't read what follows!
David and Lydy are presently watching the extended-version DVD of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, having first ascertained that I did not, as the nominal owner, think it improper that they should watch it without me. I didn't feel up to it. I did, in the course of fetching an onion for my dinner, sit down with them and Fester and Cholmondeley and catch the scene just after the
Birthday Party where Gandalf comes back and catches Bilbo packing, and they have that magnificent conversation about the Ring. The DVD looks really, really good. I'm looking forward to watching it.
My cat is sitting on the back of my chair. When I get up he will subside onto the seat and sleep there for hours, unless rudely evicted by people who unreasonably want to write their novels now.
Pamela
