not falling down

(This line appeared in my head, as a title, just as I finished proofreading this thing: “I walk afine line between literacy and hedonism.” Don’t ask me, I just live here.)

Updates to the site are rapidly decaying, but as it’s summer and nobody comes here now, I think Ican live with it. GSP is a little more work than it was last year, largely because Susan has askedfor my help with her General Studies, whereas Carolyn pretty much told me to take off. Both wayshave their advantages–it’s nice to be needed, but it was nice to have all that free timetoo.

Not that I have a great deal of that anyway, what with talkback books. I have already, in typicalBrendan style, failed to meet one deadline with them, but I don’t think it’ll happen again. Igenerally don’t fall more than once in the same spot. (You are asked not to think of the comic at this time.)

What free time I do have is mostly spent socializing and, failing that, reading. I’ve done more ofthat than I expected, actually. The Word For World Is Forest was great prose, but the story was disappointinglyheavy-handed, and more than a little cliched–Speaker for the Dead did itbetter. Then again, I have to keep reminding myself that the ideas in there are cliches in thefirst place largely because Ursula invented them.

(Weirdly, the site I just found for that link contains my commentary almost word-for-word onTWFWIF. I feel, like… slightly knowledgeable. Or maybe just cliched.)

Hexwood was okay, but then saying something by Diana is “okay” would be “hideous,blinding waste from the pit of Hell” for anyone else. The story was deliberately hard to follow,and the book had an extra chapter at the end just to explain the historical significance of thecharacters who were introduced in the chapter before that. I liked it, really, but I expectedbetter.

Now the good parts: Neverwhere wasn’t as polished as American Gods, but the story was cleaner and the characters some of Neil’s best. I could more than stand a sequel,and I’d like to find out more about the BBC series that inspired it. Actually I want to read itagain right now. Damn.

Finally, the book I finished just yesterday was as good as it’s supposed to be, and that’s reallydamn good. I’ve been meaning to try The Left Hand of Darkness ever since I read the Earthsea books in middle school,but I have a longstanding grudge against “hard” SF that kind of kept me away. All the stuff I don’tlike about it was in TLHOD, all right, but the sheer power of the story and writing made me forgetall about them. Everybody else has said it already, but I want to say it myself: It’s brilliant.It’s worth it.

Reading that really took it out of me, though, so my first of the dozen or so books I got from thelibrary last week is… well, not fluff exactly, but certainly easier than Atwood or Steinbeck(which I have too). So I’m reading The Truth as a treat, and I’ll hold the Feist for after I getthrough The Blind Assassin.

Yeah, it turns out I still like reading.

Oh, and I almost forgot my favorite PAnews item ever:

For us, Zettai Zetsumei Toshi is an allegory for relations between the sexes, and itworks especially well at this because we don’t speak Japanese. She will say things, and we haveno idea what the hell is going on, and then we’ll select from a list of responses, but wehave no idea which one is the right one, and then they’re all wrong. It works on a lot oflevels.

I’mTycho. I like books.