Bike Envy

Things I Want to Do to My Bike:

1) Get a rack on the back to hang packs. Then I can put an ever-classy milk crate on the back of it. Storage!
2) Get better lighting (front & back).
3) Decorate with this.
4) Replace it with a faster one.
5) Go on a road trip with it, with a group.
6) Water bottle holder. Why don't I have one?

Essential backpack kit: swiss army knife, pliers, batteries, water, extra layer, mittens, hat.

I own a weird duct-taped bike. It's slow. I'm slow. But we do the job. Here's to you, bike. And all I want to do to you.

PS: After a rough Christmas, I'm reading this: She's a children's/teen book author, which means short sentences, easy to read aloud, and palatable fantasy junk reading. So far only one character is getting on my nerves - too much of a gimick in the way she speaks. Otherwise, it reminds me of my glory days as a 5th grader, staying up late and reading Tamora Pierce. Yes, I admit it with pride. Wrede is showing her stuff off in this book, predictable for an adult, but good steady use of multiple plot lines, wizardry and coming-of-age nonsense. The parental issues are not shoved down the reader's throat. Wrede's touch is natural, which should (paradoxically) be the heart of every fantasy novel. Don't expose the ordinariness or the allegory of the story. Just let it flow and don't let it get too strange. I'm enjoying my procrastination. I should be reading Midnight's Children.

Saint Germain!

You won't get many fangirl squees out of me, but whenever Chelsea Quinn Yarbro writes another book (vampire-related or no) the squee is non-stop. I've got my hands on Burning Shadows, the latest in the Saint Germain saga. 5th century, Huns invading - all stuff I've covered in an early middle ages history class. I feel more historically prepared for Yarbro than ever. It's amazing how much research she does and still cranks these books out fairly quickly. Sharp lady. I began reading these books in high school after I'd exhausted the Anne Rice spectrum (I used to let out a piteous wail or two about her conversion back to Catholicism, but I'm over that now) - I think I found her through one of those library flyers "If you liked X, you're sure to like. . ." - hey, don't look down on those flyers. They gave me this! A novel that is at once delicious romantic fluff, dreamy man and chock full of historical data. Granted, she doesn't exactly lecture on Monophysites, but she gives the reader the general idea, states it more clearly than the textbooks. She should write a textbook.

Anyway, I'm settling down to some hot cocoa & Burning Shadows. Maybe some popcorn later. If you haven't picked up Yarbro pick up Hotel Transylvania, Blood Games, The Palace (in that order). I think I ended up reading Night Blooming first, for some reason. I'm looking forward to re-reading them someday.

That Anne Rice conversion wail may have ended, but my other addiction remains unsated. Melanie Rawn - troubled fantasy author keeping me from The Captal's Tower, the final delicious book in her awesome Exiles trilogy. This is something I've been nursing since freshman year of high school. Serious. I read this lady along with the Dragonlance novels. We nurse one addiction while fulfilling another. The saga of fluff reading continues.

Definitions:
fainéant (n) One who does nothing; an idler. Often with allusion to the rois fainéants, ‘sluggard kings’, a designation of the later Merovingians. (adj) That does nothing; indolent, idle.

Yak Tails and Wells Tower

Finished Karoo yesterday morning and started on Wells Tower's Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. I'm a third of the way in and I'm noticing he's a got a pat way of ending the stories. They're stunted novels. He follows a character to a cliff, lets the reader jump off and moves on to the next. There's no Dickensian or Hardy-esque wrap-up. The modern edge, perhaps? I'm not complaining, I'd just like to see what he does with the novel form. He's an already up-and-came big cheese in the literature department. My guess is there's an echo in the back of the book jacket saying "Norton Anthology, here we come!". The echo is not wrong. Like Hardy, he isn't kind to his women. He's got male relationships down though (and he should). One theme does seem to make him unique. He's got image-centered pieces, or uses an image as a turn, but they aren't obnoxious Holy Grail symbol-allegory confections. They just are what they are - the anchor that makes sure the character falls swiftly at the abrupt end. The meat in "Retreat," the sea cucumber in "The Brown Coast," - these are the images that distract the reader from the estranged family motif that seems to unite the collection. Well, that's the style to sell creative writing. What's your project and why is it unified? It was an interesting move he made, putting the title story at the end, an almost-satire of fantasy that suddenly turned tragic, touching and relevant. It's probably what made publishers pick it up. That element of surprise - a shift in time but a maintenance of theme, an uncertain but vibrant tone that buzzes in perfectly to create surprise and ease the reader's feelings - this is what puts Wells Tower in for the win.

Speaking of pretensions: have you ever visited a shop that has you ring a bell to enter? Seriously. The door is locked until they buzz you in. Needless to say, I spent too much for little gifts. They are impressive little gifts though, from Tail of the Yak. Well worth the 5 mile round-trip walk. Plus I got so jealous looking at the grad student housing for UC Berkeley.

Karoo.

Honestly, Midnight's Children is not a book you read. It's a book that must be eked out like a quarry with only one worker harvesting the rock with a pickaxe. I bought Steve Tesich's Karoo a while back, opened it and started reading it aloud. The guy is engaging. Tesich's style reminds me of Russo's Straight Man (also involving the decline of a professor-like main character) and his plot reminds me of the hilarious Duck, Duck, Wally, a silly book worth reading if only for the giggles obtained reading chizapters instead of chapters.

Everyone probably knows this but me, but Tesich's also the guy who wrote Waiting for Guffman. Here's a sample:



With the chaps? Sure, Corky. On the high wire.

Definitions:
manque (adj) As postmodifier. That might have been but is not, that has missed being.
Used chiefly to describe a person who has failed to achieve a role, profession, etc., to which he or she aspires or is suited.

lepidopterist (n) one who studies butterflies and moths.

Random fact of the day: John Frusciante's kicked the Chili Peps. Yeps! He's out on his own now. If he does more songs like "The Sides" (he did this with Ataxia) and "The Past Recedes," I'll be happy, but honestly, I can't sit through a Frusciante album like I can sit through a Chili Peps album. I can sit through Stadium Arcadium more than I can through anything off his discography. We'll see what happens to the Chili Peps. AK's vocals have been lacking punch for me, but I'd rather he be healthy than a rawk star. Flea can do whatever. He's solid gold.

All Definitions, All The Time

I think the OED is a stand in for my grandparents. It's old, it reclines on the internet, occupying a strange place amidst bookmarks. I find myself puzzled by the context of the word? I go to Grandma OED and am satisfied. There's a role reversal though. I am the senile one, going back and back again for the definitions of ontology, epistemology, qua, leitmotiv and other multisyllabic monsters.

qua (adv) "In the capacity of; as being."

leitmotiv (n) "In the musical drama of Wagner and his imitators, a theme associated throughout the work with a particular person, situation, or sentiment."

I've started on Rushdie's Midnight's Children, a complex allegory about India during the struggle for independence. The first 50 pages remind me very much of Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude because of the crawl back into genealogy. We're talking why grandpa married grandma and then slogging through why mom married dad and what was up with auntie 1 and auntie 2. But Rushdie pulls it off with literary pizzazz. I think he's a forerunner of Joss Whedon because he coins Rushdie-isms (tacking on ism to any tense and making it a noun, just like Buffy turns adjectives into nouns). Here's a review of the production Columbia Univ. put on with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

One of many favorite Spike moments: