cosmic_celery

It's about time for another one of these.

1. The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin (1971)
2. The Book of the Still - Paul Ebbs (2002)
3. Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose (2002)
4. Fear Itself - Nick Wallace (2005)
5. The Slow Empire - Dave Stone (2001)
6. Dark Progeny - Steve Emmerson (2001)
7. The City of the Dead - Lloyd Rose (2001)
8. The Adventuress of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles (2001)
9. Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend - Michael Dregni (2006)
10. Hope - Mark Clapham (2002)
11. Anachrophobia - Jonathan Morris (2002)
12. Fearless Fourteen - Janet Evanovich (2008)
13. The Banquo Legacy - Justin Richards and Andy Lane (2001)
14. Trading Futures - Lance Parkin (2002)
15. The Crooked World - Steve Lyons (2002)
16. American Gods - Neil Gaiman (2001)
17. History 101 - Mags L. Halliday (2002)
18. Time Zero - Justin Richards (2003)
19. Wise Children - Angela Carter (1991)
20. The Infinity Race - Simon Messingham (2002)
21.The Domino Effect - David Bishop (2003)
22. Good Omens - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (1990)
23. Cauldron - Jack McDevitt (2007)
24. Reckless Engineering - Nick Walters (2003)
25. The Last Resort - Paul Leonard (2003)
26. Timeless - Stephen Cole (2003)

In an effort to both keep track of my reading and to inspire myself to read more this year, I'm keeping a list of books that I've finished. If I end up talking about the book, I'll link to where that happened. Also, for my own information, I'm including the year the book was first published to try to get an idea of what eras my reading is coming from. I've got a list of all the Eighth Doctor Adventures I've read here.

So!

1. Halflife - Mark Michalowski (April 2004)
2. Revolution Man - Paul Leonard (April 1999)
3. Lieutenant Hornblower - C.S. Forester (1952)

(some Lovecraft stories ~ 1920)

4. Dominion - Nick Walters (1999)
5. The Fall of Yquatine - Nick Walters (2000)
6. Hard Times - Charles Dickens (1854)
7. Arthur and George - Julian Barnes (2006)
8. Saturday - Ian McEwan (2005)
9. And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks - Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs (1945)
10. Parallel 59 - Stephen Cole and Natalie Dallaire (January 2000)
11. On the Road - Jack Kerouac (1951)
12. Collected Poems of Robert Creeley
13. Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman (2007)

Quick plug for my help_haiti bidding thread HERE. I'm offering drawerings. So, if you like pretty pictures and such, go take a look.

And now it's time for a brief conversation with my body:

BODY: OH GOD WHAT'VE YOU DONE
ME: I just walked to the library...
BODY: THE FEET WE HAVE BLISTERS NOW WHAT KIND OF DEMON SOCKS WERE YOU WEARING
ME: Yeah, I guess the ribbing rubbed a little b-
BODY: DEMON SOCKS.

And thus ends a brief conversation with my body.

I indeed did take a walk to the library today, which was a four mile trip total, up and down a bit of hilly terrain. Considering I've been hermiting away the past few months, it was nice to get out and have a bit of a walk around. I bet I could do that walk once a week (socks permitting) and I'd end up in much better shape than I am now. ...and perhaps the cave-dweller pallor of my skin will warm up a bit. :\

At the library I snapped up Lieutenant Hornblower by C.S. Forester and a collection of H.P. Lovecraft stories. Today is double first initials day on my reading regimen, apparently. I've been wanting to read some of both of these, the Forester for pure entertainment reasons, and the Lovecraft because it seems references keep popping up to him everywhere I look, yet I haven't read a single story. So, yay books. They're due back on the 4th...which I'm writing here to remind myself.

It's not a very big library, and they've set up this digital system for checking out books, which I suppose could be convenient, but (and this is very strange coming from me) the transaction seemed lacking without a person behind it. You scan the bar codes from your card and the books you're checking out, press the screen to let it know you're finished, and then it prints up this little receipt...which is a continually annoying noise if you're just sitting around the library reading.

Are they going to be doing this in libraries everywhere now, or was it just this one?

Also, gosh, embarrassing: I had to get my card updated because the last time I used it was years ago. And then the friendly library staff had to help the old lady (me) figure out the CRAZY MODERN THINGAMAJIG. I'm usually all for automation and electronic ways of doing things, but somehow adding it into libraries seems odd. Libraries should be strange portals into the world of the past where you look up things on cards and someone holding a date-stamp checks out your books for you.

I also took a look by a vintage shop, which wasn't very good...and some big antique store that seemed to have some cool stuff. There was a three book set of Hornblower novels I might pick up later. ...and I won't be getting the cool, yellow, rotary telephone...even if it would be neat to have in my bedroom.

No word back on the casino job, so I guess they aren't interested. I'm thinking maybe I'd be better off if I had some sort of marketable skill, but the only ones I think of that'd also be fun to learn are lock picking and bar tending. ...and bar tending doesn't sound like very much fun. ...and I might get arrested practicing lock picking.

Last week I bought some black and white pillow ticking and some yellow dye, so I'm on my way to the girl!six costume I've been working on off and on for a while now. The actual sewing machine's broken, but mom's promised she'll take it in to get fixed. I just don't know when she's going to get around to it.

Also, got a neat shirt!


Like I said before, I've been re-reading Good Omens, and I got around to drawing a Hugh Laurie inspired Crowley:
( Under the Cut )

I drew Aziraphale too, but he looked too much like Stephen Fry and I drew the eyes a bit too high, so you don't get to see that one.

Just want to show off my new (old) dictionary:



From the spine:

Webster's Twentieth Century Dictionary.
Unabridged.
Many Supplementary Vocabularies
and Articles with Atlas of the World
(This dictionary is not published by the original publishers
of Webster's Dictionary or their successors)



Very unabridged.



My grandmother gave it to me today. She got it in 1942, the year it was published, from a door to door salesman. She had to buy three magazines to get the dictionary, which is what she really wanted.

In the front it has pictures of soldiers, fighter planes, and the "television apparatus". In the back are histories, an atlas, names from mythology and scripture, and quite a lot more.

It is pretty much the best gift I've ever received.

-The poll tells me you guys don't mind fan writing here, so here it will stay, along with everything else. I'll get around to posting those I haven't already posted and I think a links post...uh...later.

-I'm famous! Okay...not really.

-Everyone wants a job in a basement with books. We must be able to set something up.

-I've got clothes and everything ready for the non-basement/books job interview Friday. This includes uncomfortable closed toe heels. Grumble.

-Two finals tomorrow and then one on Monday.

-I made an icon out of my Six/Rani scribble. It is up there. And ridiculous.

I've been listening to a weekly horror story podcast Pseudopod for a while now, that, to my geeky pleasure, is narrated by an Englishman named Brigadier Alasdair Stewart. The stories themselves are excellently written, usually not in the tradition of pulp fiction blood bath horror, and I always enjoy the brief commentary that's given at the beginning or end of the episodes. Pseudopod is part of a group of podcasts (Escape Pod for sci-fi and PodCastle for fantasy) that are really presenting some of the best in short stories coming out of the genre market these days, many of the stories having won Hugo or Nebula awards, and many others that are just good.

Alasdair Stewart's commentary at the end of podcast 104: "The Book in the Earth" got me thinking. Here's what he said:

Perhaps I'm taking him a bit too literally here, but I can't help wondering: Are there are books that have radically changed the way you think? Even the way you construct thought? And if so, if you have returned to them at different times in your life, how did that change the book's effect?