Maru's Mun Journal

How long are they allowed to be alive and none-writing until they are ex-writers??

I loved that bloke's novel years ago and now spontaneously looked up what else he's written since then.

Zilch!!!

Definitely not the way to go, Mr. O'Neill!!

My second review is up at Speak Its Name: - the much-mentioned lesbian crusaders, which, despite the bizarreness of the premise (which the author totally made work), I liked a lot better than the first  book I reviewed, which I more or less ripped another one...

Now I need more medieval books containing Teh Gay!

Last night, I grabbed something that seemed nice and emotional (to suit the mood of my lurgy, which usually makes me want to watch stupid movies and read sentimental novels) from my TBR stack that I'd made a start on and then abandoned for things that appealed to me more in my normal state of mind, just for some light reading before sleep.

This.

And then I couldn't stop. I just couldn't stop. That wasn't mainly a m/m romance, it was a mystery! A ghost story! A great gripping yarn with a dark secret from the past and a local witch a bit reminiscent of Granny Weatherwax and some very nicely done Edwardian banter, and I just wanted to know how it all hung together and why it all had apparently gone so terribly awry, and then suddenly it was 5 am, and the book was finished.

Whoah.-

As ganked from erastes. I'll try and be chronological.

( Cut for length )

"I'll wait with the books until the show is finished," I said, and several people agreed with me in various threads.

Now the show is done (OMG where do I start the squeeing and flailing?) for the season, and I'll be starting to read the books on July 1st 2011.

So, I made a comm named thronathon* for everybody who wants to go on this journey with me,  to discuss and squee and flail and speculate and generally share as we go along. Anybody who's reading SoIaF now after the show is done is welcome, but the default for discussion is 'knows the show, hasn't read the books yet but is doing so as we speak'.

Spoilers will abound, but speculations that have been disproven by the later books will be welcome because we talk as we go along. People who have read the books, or are re-reading them, are welcome to snicker along as we slowly lose more and more of a set of illusions and innocence we didn't even think we still had. People who read the books without having seen the show are welcome as well, but must brace for spoilers -- the default comm member will know what the ninth and tenth episode ended with, and think about foreshadowing etc. along those lines.

We'll all read at our own pace**, so I guess we'll just make posts for chapters and then chime in as we reach that point.

Who'll be with me?


* Kudos to _inbetween for coming up with the name!

** I, for example, have two times twenty minutes set aside on every workday when I NEED to read because I'll be sitting in the train to and from work, and having seen the same scenery pass by for almost eleven years now, I need a book to stave off the fatal boredom around the Miserable Village where I work.

Just now, a UPS guy bearing a heavier-than-expected package toppled over my threshold and almost fell into my entrance area. It was an unusually large package from Amazon, and it contained a doorstopper, which you can see on this picture (while the cats are making short work of the leftover milk from my bran flakes, as usual).

Yep, I caved and bought the books after all. They were only 20 Euros, in a box with Ned Stark on the one side, Daenerys on the other. I thought that was worth it.

Seth Godin about what libraries are for, where they come from, and how they stay important in the digital age.

Money quote:

"The librarian isn't a clerk who happens to work at a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user."

This year, my Little Lady (who loves 'Harry Potter', has read all the books and seen all the movies, so is no stranger to magic and scary/serious things) gets the first dose of PTerry and GNeil for Christmas

Just ordered 'The Graveyard Book' and 'Wee Free Men' (both in German, though) to be delivered to my parents' so I can gift-wrap them myself and deliver them by hand on Christmas eve...

So looking forwards to what she'll say!

My copy of 'Paragenesis' arrived yesterday! Now I have the book with my short story in on paper, to touch and carry around! Here it's lying face-down on one of the little outside tables of my favourite Italian café, where I was enjoying one of the last few nice days of the year while reading up on what everybody else wrote for it.



Today, my order from Evans arrived as well! I had to get Falk the Metropolitan to take some pics of me wearing it at once, as I can't possibly wait with posting about it on my tumblr until the Nazgul is back from the Fake Plastic Trees. Today she was in Muscat, haggling over the price of daggers...



Autumn arrived as well, so here you see my cats, cuddled up in my wonderful dark purple fleece blanket, being comfy and cosy. I have been mean to them by buying a little bottle of catnip scent oil with which I made them go doolally earlier. Anything can be turned into instant catnippy kitty lovedoll now!

Also, a discful of recent Bollywood music as MP3 arrived as well. I was at the Indian shop this afternoon, getting more chai spices, and when I took out my earphones to ask the bloke behind the counter about some Bollywood movies, I realised that my life contained entirely too much Medieval Scottish Heavy Metal Bagpipe Folk Rock, and not enough Bollywood, so I hastened to remedy that!

What did not arrive was episode 4.10 of 'Mad Men' on surfthechannel.com. They didn't even make an entry for it. I am worried...

The two serious appointments/things to go to this month (apart from my vacation, of course!) all had to happen on the same day.

Today.

First, I went to a course about an email marketing tool for my slavery, with three of my co-slaves. That was tedious but kind of important, and took seven hours.

Then, I met the Nazgul to go to her library where there was an event with the illustrator Shaun Tan, whose exhibition we'd seen when the Little Lady was there. Poor bloke came all the way from Australia and was sitting jet-lagged in the front row and then first got treated to an half-hour introductory lesson of which he didn't understand a single friggin' word. I found that really rude of the organisers.

And then, during his talk, when he had this picture from 'The Arrival' up in his presentation,



my cell phone went off with a horrible ringtone of alarms and howling panic, because my mum had a question. Normally, my cell phone never rings, but she was very insistent tonight. Everybody totally jumped out of their skins, as if those people-sucking giants were actually attacking.

I was very sorry, and said so at the little book-signing afterwards. He drew me the white shark-tadpole critter into my own copy of the book, which I bought especially to get it signed. Now, despite having been such a nuisance, I have my own shark-tadpole critter, which is very cute. Will scan or take picture later, but now I'm just too tired to do anything at all except poke everything once and then go to bed. This is the shark-tadpole critter; you will agree it is very cute in a surrealistic way?