Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

It seems like ever since I started keeping my laptop next to my bed (it's been over a year now) I've grown terribly lazy (and cheap) in my reading habits, reading (and often re-reading and even re-re-reading) fanfics online instead of actual books by even favorite authors.

I even read the latest Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan-verse novel Captain Vorpatril's Alliance in a free electronic copy last September, thanks to missmurchison . . . and lost a lot of sleep, being unable to put down the laptop until morning's light, when I was just ten pages short of the ending and couldn't keep my eyes open a second longer!

But yesterday I became reacquainted with "my old self", in a sense, by spending all day and all night reading two novels by new-to-me (but probably not to anybody else!) author Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal . . . in super-cheap, used, library-surplus editions shipped to me from England, courtesy of Amazon, of course. :)

( How fanfic based on movies I didn't really enjoy got me interested in the books (possible spoilers) )

I haven't decided whether to go back and read the first Lecter novel, Red Dragon, yet (it was included in one volume with Silence of the Lambs in the old hardcover library edition I bought, and I read the first 60+ pages of Dragon before deciding that I'd prefer to dive right into Silence with the less damaged Clarice Starling as the protagonist, instead of Will Graham). And from some things I've heard/read in the fanfic, it sounds as though Hannibal Rising might be too much of a credibility stretch (plus, no Starling, of course, so . . . ).

Anyone out there have an opinion to offer? Am I missing out on some essential "Lecter-ness" if I never get around to reading the other novels?

********************************

( Selected fanfic recommendations, mostly Starling/Lecter of some kind )

I just finished reading the long-awaited final chapters of VogonGuard's BtVS/Miles Vorkosigan crossover story, The Vor Slayer over on Twisting the Hellmouth, and I am so big with the Ivan-love right now!

There are plenty of typos in the story (especially in the final five chapters, all of which were posted within the first week of this new year), but I enjoyed the resolution so much (not to mention the many Miles-isms along the way) that I'm in no mood to quibble.

If you're a fan of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, starting with Shards of Honor (and yes, Countess Cordelia is still very much alive and kicking in this story, as are a middle-aged Miles and his cousin Ivan Vorpatril) as well as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", I'd strongly recommend checking out this story, in which Miles' daughter Helen is called as a Slayer in Barrayar's hour of need (when it doesn't hurt to have the military might of Aunt Elli Quinn's Dendarii on speed-dial, just in case).

The story is actually an authorized sequel to another author's one-shot, DonSample's With a Star, in which Miles and Ekaterin visit the Sunnydale Lagoon on Earth and Miles starts to wonder about the names on a memorial obelisk. That one's definitely worth a look-see, even if you're not sure you're up for 15 chapters worth of BtVS/Vorkosigan crossover with The Vor Slayer right now.

Yesterday, appomattoxco mentioned the 2002 novel by Rosemary Edghill (who also writes under the name "Eluki Bes Shahar" according to one reference I found), The Warslayer, to me in a comment, noting that it's now available free from Baen's free e-book library:

I was thinking of you yesterday as I read,"Warslayer" by Rosemary Edgehill. It's about an actress in a Xena/Buffy like role kidnapped "Galaxy Quest" style to save a fantasy universe. The kidnappers read a Greg Cox [hee!] penned tie- in to "The Incredibly True Adventures of Vixen the Slayer" (TITAoVtS for short.) They decide that Aussie ex-gymnast turned SF TV star is what they need to save their world from the Warmother.

DO check this book out, if you've never read it but are a fan of genre TV shows about women warriors or of what-happens-when-our-fantasy-becomes-reality fiction in general. (And thanks, appomattoxco, for the welcome reminder and recommendation!)

In case anyone wants more information about The Warslayer, I went looking through my old e-mail archives for the review I'd written after gleefully devouring this book, on June 18, 2002, now reprinted below:( my 2002 review of WARSLAYER by Rosemary Edghill with no actual spoilers )

I just got back from 75-minute meeting on the reorganization of structure and priorities of my publishing house (by "my" I mean the publishing house that employs me), where we were all told to go out into the world (or at least the parts of it reachable without using scarce travel money!) and build information networks of "Idea Leaders".

Since LJ is my pre-existing network of some of the smartest, most creative, and most up-to-date-on-current-and-future-trends people that I know, let me ask you all to be my Idea Leaders on the item that's at the top of my bosses' current wishlist for new acquisitions: a new fiction series for young adults.

( Read more... )

So, let me ask anyone who has an opinion or bit of information or a recommendation to offer:

1) Have you (or your kids, perhaps?) read any good Young Adult fiction (preferably books that were part of a series) in your lifetime? If so, please tell me the titles and/or authors, and what made those books GOOD, from your perspective.

2) If you read YA fiction or keep in close contact with those who do, what would you LIKE to read in the future? What sorts of themes, genres, issues would you find appealing? Or what kinds of themes, genres, content, etc., are you hungry for?

3) Do you know anyone who's writing in the YA age-range and not already committed to a publisher? Or, do you know someone who's been meaning to branch out into the YA market? Would you recommend taking a closer look at their work?

I don't ask for much, do I?

( Read more... )

Any helpful hints or recommendations from friends, or friends-of-friends-of-friends, or people you just happened to encounter in a chatroom or con-suite, would be much appreciated.

Before I forget, yes, I did see "Casino Royale" last Sunday night, and was very positively impressed with Daniel Craig as the early James Bond.

( no real spoilers, but some mild 'Casino Royale' squeeage )

However, that's not what I meant to write about today.

No, right now I wanted to get a few thoughts off my chest -- thoughts that have been piling up there ever since I went to a matinee of "The Fountain" on Tuesday.

Admittedly, I might not have gone to see "The Fountain" if I wasn't such a big fan of Hugh Jackman, but I'll also admit that I found the film more watchable than I'd been expecting, as well as surprising in its willingness to let the viewer deal with ambiguities and uncertainties. And yes, I'd recommend it -- particularly if you like puzzles and lots of Hugh Jackman showing that he's got real acting chops.

By the way, I noticed that the reviewer of this film at the website Sci-Fi Weekly made several comparisons to the Kubrick film "2001: A Space Odyssey" (a film that never flipped any of my switches, I'll confess, but makes several of my male film buff friends drool in admiration, just thinking about it). Apparently, the comparison focuses on that tolerance of ambiguity, that willingness to leave one wondering just EXACTLY what was going on at various points. And though my chief enjoyment in puzzles is solving them, I did find it refreshing and even fun to watch a film ("The Fountain", I mean -- NOT so much "2001" because I never did care about any of the characters in that Kubrick film to the slightest degree) that was willing to make me work so hard to come up with a 'solution', and still leave open the possibility that my solution might be quite other than what the film-maker had intended.

( some spoilerish comments about 'The Fountain' )

( relating 'The Fountain' to Orson Scott Card's story 'Mortal Gods' )

Over all, I'd have to say that I'd still prefer that Orson Scott Card story to "The Fountain" -- except that the story didn't have Hugh Jackman in it! ( spoilerish summation of 'The Fountain' )

Finally, Izzy's favorite phrase from her Mayan tour guide, that "death is the road to awe", actually seems to be MORE meaningful in light of Card's short story, than it was in the context of the film itself. But, either way, the point is a good one to make, and the film was quite watchable (not to mention that Jackman was in top form in all his incarnations during the movie).

Yes, I'm still here, though I've been playing hermit for the past week, both electronically and (for the most part) physically.

A few updates:

I don't yet have a completed chapter, or even very many pages to show for my dissertation, but I have somehow managed to re-read all the later Miles Vorkosigan novels over the past couple of weeks (Mirror Dance, Memory, Komarr, A Civil Campaign and Diplomatic Immunity . . . as well as the short story about Miles and Ekaterin's wedding, "Winterfair Gifts", of course). I guess I needed a 'safe' but still growth-provoking place to retreat to for a while, and I gained a lot from finally re-reading Mirror Dance and Memory especially.( spoilery only if you've not read those two novels, but plan to )

And I haven't yet told my parents about my difficulties with the university, even though my Mom called Sunday afternoon and gave me the perfect opportunity (nobody else in the family was currently going through a major crisis, apparently, so perhaps it was my turn?). However, I did tell my sister when she called me on Monday morning, wanting to know what had happened on Prison Break the week before, so she'd be caught up for that evening's episode. Sister's reaction was completely supportive and actually quite comforting, and her very sincere offers of any and all assistance in my time of need actually brought tears to my eyes.

Meanwhile, my five wonderful students have turned in their term papers (or have promised to do so before tomorrow morning -- what a wimp I've turned into!) for our New Testament class, and tonight was the most fun I think I (or possibly, anyone) have ever had talking about the last chapter and a half of the pseudo-Pauline (probably) letter to the Ephesians! I love that class.

On the TV-watching end of things, I missed slightly more than the first half of Bones last night, in spite of taping the whole two hours of the Fox primetime lineup, because the local Fox affiliate was doing non-stop coverage of the POSSIBLY dangerous storm front moving through the state, and talking about where tornados MIGHT form, for the entire first 33 minutes of my show. However, the rest of the show seemed quite good to me, continuing to build my interest in the characters on Bones, and House was as obnoxious and intriguing as usual, when I got around to viewing my tape this morning.

Happily, I was actually watching the WB line-up last night, and the WB affiliate (unlike ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX) felt no such need to show off its expensive blue screen and radar equipment ad nauseum, so I got to watch ALL of Gilmore Girls in peace. Still loving my Luke and Lorelai, and liking Rory much better now that she's "come to herself" once more. And Supernatural didn't suck, either.

Tomorrow, I absolutely MUST work on my dissertation some more, rather than spending most of my prime working hours doing blessedly impersonal paperwork at the publishing house, as I have done every other day so far this week! I am resolved. The lure of money will NOT be permitted to lead me astray, again . . . unless, of course, they really need me. Wait! . . . No! No, no, no -- no escaping to pleasantly mindless clerical chores tomorrow! I must and I will work on MY stuff, for a change, even if nobody's paying me for it or giving me pats on the back for it. I must be strong!

We'll see how that works out, come tomorrow morning. Arrgh!

For those whose major home-maintenance and auto-repair tools are a Swiss Army Knife (left-handed, in my case) and a roll of traditional silver-gray duct tape (colored duct tape might constitute a minor heresy -- I haven't heard the final word on that, yet), and who consider MacGyver to be their patron saint (the saint of narrow escapes and making mile-high lemon meringue pie when life sticks you with a pile of lemons), a major holiday is fast approaching.

September 29, 2005 will be the 20th anniversary of the airing of the pilot episode of the 1985-1992 television show MacGyver, so I propose that it be properly celebrated as the Feast Day of Saint MacGyver. Let it be a day for celebrating the off-beat, nonconformist, tree-hugging, intellectual master of improvisation within each one of us. Anyone else interested?

And on a different-but-related topic . . . ( review of 'Saint Vidicon to the Rescue' by Christopher Stasheff )

As soon as I started thinking about what made Elsie Lee stand out for me in the Gothic genre (capable heroines who are smarter and often more dangerous -- when they need to be -- than the b**tards who try to grind them down: illegitimii non carborundum, or however it's spelled!), I had to give credit to a male science fiction author who did the same thing, only more so, against all expectations in the 1950's and 60's: James H. Schmitz.

Like most of his more recent readers, I suspect, I first encountered Schmitz through a library copy of his best-known novel, The Witches of Karres (in which the protagonist is, most unusually for Schmitz, a male, but quickly gets paired up with a young female hero who's even more ready, willing, and able to save the day than he is, for most of the novel). Then I encountered the first of his Telzey Amberden stories in an anthology (long before there was Buffy, Telzey Amberden was the adolescent girl who got to save the world or worlds with surprising regularity), and I was hopelessly hooked and desperate for more (which, until the New England Science Fiction Society re-issued a fairly complete collection of his short stories in the 1990's and several collections of his stories and novels set in the same universe were re-issued within the last few years, was pretty hard to find).

It's late and I haven't eaten since breakfast (albeit a breakfast that was delayed into early afternoon, since I slept too late to eat before church and had errands to run thereafter), so I won't bother to run through the whole list of James H. Schmitz titles. But let me just say this: if you've never read his Demon Breed, you have a treat in store for you. I've re-read that novel at least every few years since I first encountered it, and I continue to get a major kick out of watching a lone, unarmed woman (albeit with the help of a couple of mutant sea otters) turn back an alien invasion through her intelligence and talent for psychological warfare.

I just caught up with missmurchison's answers to the "dork" meme from last night, and I have to confess that

1) I, too, own nearly every book ever written by Georgette Heyer, and would not dream of surrendering any of them -- even the duplicate copies, and even the attempt-at-contract-busting mystery novel Penhallow. ( Read more... )

2) I do not own a toga, but I do own some medieval garb ( Read more... )

3) I, too, am seriously tempted to spend the MERE $27 required to pre-order and ship (free) the complete first season of Remington Steele on DVD ( Read more... )

4) I've seen all the Dr. Who episodes starring Tom Baker (numerous times) through Sylvester McCoy (once was enough) and I even kind of enjoyed that lame made-for-TV movie from the late 90's in which Eric Roberts became the Master, though I know others hated it. And yes, I have crocheted MANY colorful 6-foot scarves in my time, for friends and family.

However, what I'd really like to be able to get hold of on DVD is every episode of The Scarecrow and Mrs. King.( Read more... )

5) I haven't had much practice with spreadsheets, but I'm incredibly addicted to buying up back issues of puzzle magazines (only the Logic Problems and Math & Logic Problems are worth the effort, since those are the puzzles I always do first) and keeping a stack of them in "the littlest room in the house." ( Read more... ) I just love figuring out the only possible answer that fits and knowing that I've solved the puzzle -- unlike in my academic life, where questions of human relationships and faith and Biblical interpretation are NEVER answered with one right answer that means you'll never have to think about this problem again.

If anyone needs more than five reasons why I might rightfully be considered a dork, I have at least a dozen more popping into my head right now. But most of those are really embarrassing (unlike the examples above!), so maybe I'll just stop right here.

I see that missmurchison (among others) already broke the sad news of Andre Norton's death on LJ today (we found out about it via the same e-mail list, I suspect).

According to the forwarded letter from her care-giver, she died peacefully in her sleep this morning at 2:23 AM (Central).

If you haven't already seen this, here are Andre Norton's final wishes regarding memorials, as well as her thanks for her fans' expressions of concern and affection during her last year of illness: ( Read more... )


Like many of her fans, I suspect, I feel like I've lost another grandmother or great-grandmother -- someone whom I may never have met in person, but whose voice was an important part of surviving my adolescence and young adulthood.

I'm trying to remember the first Andre Norton book I ever read. ( not-so-brief jaunt down memory lane )

(Picture me, like Scarlett O'Hara in the vegetable garden at Tara, holding my first purchased Andre Norton paperback aloft and vowing, "As God is my witness, I'll never have nothing to read again!")

I need to leave the office at a reasonable hour tonight, so I can dig out one of my Andre Norton's before bedtime. It's been too long since I visited with "Grandma."