Whatta Fiasco

What a gorgeous book. I can see why it won so many prizes. And so appropriately titled. But with that title and with an operatic soprano at the center of things, I found this book most notable for its silences, communications made without words and communications refused. An international group of hostages and their captors struggle through days that stretch to weeks, finding answers to their lives knowing it cannot last. The opera must end no matter how much we wish for it to go on and on. As a reader, I too became complicit, hoping beyond all hope and foreshadowing. Bel canto operas seldom have happy ending.

Ahem. And just where did I get the impression that this was a three book series? Not to say that it wasn’t good, but I want more. I am impatient. Oh, and if you’re interested, I strongly suggest reading the books in order.

I know I’ve said this before, but I still find it a little odd to be reading popular science books where most of the information was discovered since I left college. Just odd. And if you haven’t figured out yet that genes aren’t the whole story, this is an excellent book for getting caught up. The bit explaining how spots and stripes are created is particularly good.

And if you like Sean Carroll’s writing, you can catch more of him online at the group physics blog, Cosmic Variance.

What do you do when you’re just beginning to heal a sprained knee? Go to fencing practice on Monday night. Of course! But you only do a little bit of fencing. Which turns into a little bit more. And just a few more touches. Naturally. And then you spend the next day limping around, wishing your leg would fall off so you’d have an excuse to use crutches.

So I got a little smarter and didn’t even go to the salle on Wednesday. I’ve only been spending enough time on my feet to make sure that the knee doesn’t stiffen up, and it’s getting better. Last night I did my regular gym night, but dialed way down in intensity. I still have a little soreness today but I’m walking almost normally. I had been planning on going to Des Moines for their Fall Festival tournament this weekend, but that’s not going to happen. But Memphis will.

I called this afternoon and got a hotel reservation. I got my reservation but I’m not terribly confident about it. When I called two days ago, they claimed the tournament hotel was sold out on the night of the seventh, right in the middle of the tournament. This time I got no such warning. Did the person taking my reservation even check if there was a room available? I’m also still up in the air as to whether I’m riding to Memphis with a van load of club mates, or if I’m driving down on my own. Nerves. I seem to have nerves already.

In better news, I finally did my first rewiring job on one of my epees. It’s something I’ve been meaning to learn how to do for years, but every time I came up with a weapon needing a new wire, hubby always ended up jumping in to do the job. This time I kept hold of the weapon and did it myself. The glue job is embarrassingly messy, but the weapon works. I’ve even fenced with it. Hot diggety.

Smart but light, gimmicky and hilarious. Literal bookworms. A performance of Richard III conducted in the manner of Rocky Horror Picture Show. A dastardly villain kidnaps Jane Eyre from the pages of her original manuscript. There’s even a passing threat made against Barchester Towers. Literate popcorn with just enough salt. And there are more. Oy.

As a part of trying to figure out what’s going on with my hives, my doctor decided to run a full blood assay. (Oh, happy phlebotomist, please fetch me seven vials.) As a part of that effort, he checked my cholesterol levels, something I’d been sort of, kind of intending to get done one of these days eventually. Except there’s always that nagging worry that they’ll find something just enough off that they’ll want to start you on that You’re Going to Have to Take It For the Rest of Your Life regimen. Well, my test results came back with a hand written note: Excellent lipids! Yes, with an exclamation point. And underlining too. As if he was somewhat surprised. Just wait until he gets a peek at my resting heart rate.

I have a crush on this book. That’s what I thought to myself about half way through, and finishing didn’t change that. It’s not the best book I’ve ever read, nor my favorite, but oh! What a story. What an uncompromising, in your face story it is with its equally unquenchable protagonist/narrator, Mae. Ready or not, she’ll grab you by the scruff of your neck and drag you through her story if need be. Sometimes it hurts, but the story only cares about being true to itself.

I think I have a date to reread this one in about five years or so, but I’ve got more Geoff Ryman to read and enjoy before then.

Thanks to multiple pimpings by John Scalzi, I recognized this one on the new books shelf in my local library. I’m quite happy I did. It has some of the uneveness I tend to associate with first novels, but what it does well, it does quite well indeed. Aztec gods versus the Loa? What fun.

This whole Hives Part II thing has been seriously getting to me. I’ve been depressed/itchy/sore and generally staying in to avoid scaring the horses and children. I went to see the allergist on Thursday morning. It was an entertaining and informative lecture about antihistamines, urticaria, the science of diagnosis, and a dollop of hope.And a prescription for yet one more antihistamine and instructions to continue the other two as well. There wasn’t much in the way of new data for me, but I left the office feeling better.

And then I woke up Friday morning with swollen lips and eyelids as well as evil, red weals all over. I frittered around for a while, hoping the swelling would go down quickly once I was up and about, but no such. So much for the first day on the new meds. I called in sick and spent most of the weekend either sleeping, napping, or resting. But on Sunday afternoon I was feeling well enough to go out and even got to spend some time with the godkids.

I’m still getting some itching and hives, but it’s mild enough that I’m no longer worried about waiting for an entire week for a follow-up appointment. That, and it seems that the sedating effect that’s supposed to wear off while I sleep instead chooses to hit me in the early afternoon instead. By applying coffee and delaying any non-emergency code work, I was mostly through the worst of it by three. I’ll just need to adjust my work day habits so that I’m doing my creative work earlier in the day. I can deal with that. And tonight I’ll be back at fencing practice, with a return to my gym schedule later this week. I can’t wait.

In the past few years I’ve found myself making a point of reading the nominees for the Hugo for best novel. Unsurprisingly, there were only two in the list I hadn’t read yet. A Feast for Crows is waiting for the paperback edition. Ostensibly it’s so that I can have a matching set of paperback editions, but the real reason is that by then I’m hoping to justify taking the time to reread the first three in the set. (Oops. Time to start working on that reading schedule. The paperback is due to be released on September 26.)

And that left Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, a book I’d been happy noises about ever since it came out. I’ve known the name Robert Charles Wilson for years now as that guy whose books I always found when I went searching for the latest Robert Anton Wilson fiction offering, which meant poor RCW was associated with disappointment in my mind. That’s no longer an issue.

I found parts of the book a little clumsy. There were far too many repetitions of the phenomenon for which the book is named. And then that was paired with a confusing/insufficiently explained change in that phenomenon. Spending fifty or more pages wondering whether or not the stars and the moon are still visible is extremely annoying when the answer to this question is a key reminder of what’s going on and where you are in the story. Maybe I just didn’t read closely enough?

I also found myself stopping at one point to reflect on just how bad a particular sentence was, or rather, why it was bad. It was a sort of first person omniscient thing that both distances the narrator from the emotional content of the description (that, I can deal with) and also takes the reader’s hand and walks them through the implicit meaning. And then I caught myself realizing that this was a sentence I would never find in an Elizabeth Bear novel because she just doesn’t hold a reader’s hand that way. Then I (metaphorically) thumped myself on the head and got back to reading the damned fine story.

Because it is a good story, and I’m glad it won the Hugo. (Although if it had been up to me, Ken MacLeod’s Learning the World might have edged it out by a nose.) What I really liked is that he managed to make the idea of faith (and the lack thereof) so central to the story in a way that never made me uncomfortable. (Compare and contrast with at least some works by Robert J. Sawyer.) If you have any other favorite Robert Charles Wilson books to recommend, I’d be happy to put them on my reading list.