firecat

ao3 meme, from everywhere:

How many works do you have on AO3?
149 (one is still in an unrevealed exchange)

What’s your total AO3 word count?
432,270
( Read more... )

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/introverts-signs-am-i-introverted_n_3721431.html
"23 signs you're secretly an introvert" by Carolyn Gregoire

Starts out well:

Think you can spot an introvert in a crowd? Think again. Although the stereotypical introvert may be the one at the party who's hanging out alone by the food table fiddling with an iPhone, the "social butterfly" can just as easily have an introverted personality.

Then ignores all that in favor of a list of traits that introverts supposedly have.

Bold = I have it
Strikethrough = I don't have it

You find small talk incredibly cumbersome. Nope. I like small talk. I just have to be in the mood for socializing. Which happens less often than it does for most extroverts, but not never. "We hate small talk because we hate the barrier it creates between people." I don't think small talk creates a barrier between people. It lets people who don't know each other very well talk about a few things that they might have in common, and gives them the opportunity to discover more things in common.
( Read more... )

What are you currently reading?

When Gravity Fails (Marid Audran #1) by George Alec Effinger
I'm really glad I'm listening to the audiobook this time. I'm able to focus on some of Effinger's awesome writing that I missed before because I was gobbling the book to find out what happens next. I am really impressed by how much and what kind of attention is paid to the female/trans characters. Marid has a male gaze "gaze of people who find women attractive," but it's so much less othering than most male protagonists'. I just got through with a beautifully written section where Marid is describing his girlfriend put on her makeup. It doesn't seem like it should be hard to write this way, even for men, but I almost never see it. (Note, some of the language and concepts used to describe trans characters is outmoded and might be offensive.)

On the Edge (The Edge #1) by Ilona Andrews
Urban fantasy/romance. Ilona Andrews is the pen name of a husband and wife writing team. This started out OK but now the protagonist is being hounded and manipulated by two men with romantic designs on her, and she seems completely unable to handle it. I'm really sick of that trope, so I might give up. (If you have read it and can tell me one way or the other whether it gets past this, let me know.)

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

Breaking Waves: An Anthology for Gulf Coast Relief edited by Tiffany Trent and Phyllis Irene Radford
Ocean-themed, mostly SFF short stories and poetry

What did you recently finish reading?

A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King (#3 in the Mary Russell series)
The mystery they had to solve in this novel wasn't all that great, but I love King's writing style, and I really like the character of Mary Russell, and I like how the marriage is progressing. So I will read the next one. And now I'm very curious why wild_irises said "I hate A Letter of Mary with the kind of blazing passion we reserve for books that break the "rules" we've decided to care most about." (I can think of several such rules that were broken, but I don't know which one(s) she meant.)

What books did you acquire this week?

The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan, which won the Tiptree this year

What are you currently reading?

A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King (#3 in the Mary Russell series)

The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner (Riverside #2), audiobook narrated by Ellen Kushner, Barbara Rosenblat, and others

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

What did you recently finish reading?

Lilith's Brood, (aka Xenogenesis), Octavia Butler. I loved this so much even though I was seriously creeped out by it. Alien aliens! Real biology! Ambivalence, adaptation, allies, bonding, captivity, coercion, communication, conflict, consent, enemies, family, freedom, gender, genetics, genocide, healing, hierarchy, identity, knowledge, needing, reproduction, resisting, sex, symbiosis, telepathy, tribe, wanting, war, xenophobia.
These essays are linked from the Wikipedia page; I posted them before but I thought they were worth posting again.
"Dialogic Origins and Alien Identities in Butler’s XENOGENESIS" by Cathy Peppers
Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy: A Biologist’s Response by Joan Slonczewski

August Heat by Andrea Camilleri (Montalbano #10). Audiobook. Montalbano is a Sicilian cop. Almost all the novels are about sex crimes, and I usually figure out the plot before the end, but I like them anyway. The translator and narrator are really good.

What books did you acquire this week?

The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri (Montalbano #11)

What are you currently reading?
Lilith's Brood, Octavia Butler

Where Angels Fear to Tread by Thomas E. Sniegoski
I switched from audiobook to ebook for this series because I wasn't loving the writing style enough to want it read to me. I found the beginning annoying. But I've only read a few pages so far.

The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution by Sean B. Carroll (audiobook)

What did you recently finish reading?
Dangerous Mourning by Anne Perry, #2 in the Inspector William Monk series, set in the mid-19th century. Audiobook well narrated by Davina Porter, one of my favorite narrators. Although it's called the Monk series, this book's main protagonist is Hester Latterly—she does the primary footwork for solving the mystery. I really liked it for its attention to class and women's issues, and for character development. I also think Perry does a good job with dialogue.

Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire, the fourth book in the October Daye series. Liked it a lot. McGuire does a great job of pacing and reveals and drawing out the story arc.

What do you think you’ll read next?
I'm going on a trip without much Internet access, so I downloaded several ebooks:

A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King (#3 in the Mary Russell series)
Larger Than Death by Lynne Murray (#1 in the Josephine Fuller series)
Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
The Vampire Files, Volume Two omnibus by P. N. Elrod (contains books 4–6 in the series: Art in the Blood, Fire in the Blood, and Blood on the Water)
Ventus by Karl Schroeder

What are you currently reading?

P.N. Elrod, Bloodcircle (Vampire Files #3). Urban fantasy/detective-mystery. I find these books kind of interesting and calming, but some people might find them dull. The're set in the 1930s and written sort of in the style of old pulp noir novels, but they're somewhat less gritty and less sexist/racist than many of those. In this one more than the previous two, I think, there's somewhat more telling than showing, at least in the first chunk. I mean there's a lot of time spent on characters telling each other about things that happened in the past, and characters watching other characters, which isn't the usual style for genre fiction these days. The partnership between the main character and the sidekick is unusual. There's very little tension between them, and they're more or less equal partners, although with different strengths. So again that makes less opportunity for high drama than in many genre books. I like that the vampires in this series have some traditional vampiric traits along with the "drinking blood" one.

Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire, the fourth book in the October Daye series.

Lilith's Brood, Octavia Butler. Hey, I just found an article about this trilogy by Joan Slonczewski, who is one of the guests of honor at Wiscon this year: "Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy: A Biologist's Response" in which she says ( vague spoilers )

What did you recently finish reading?

Driving Mr. Dead, Molly Harper. Paranormal romance one-off set in the Half Moon Hollow universe. Harper is a great comic writer, and some parts of the subplot about the heroine's fiancé ring true. There's something off about the characters in this one though. The vampire starts out with a certain personality and then suddenly changes to another personality, and I'm not persuaded as to why. Actually that makes me realize that characterization is just not Harper's strength in general, or perhaps I should say that her characters in general are kind of broad. (The main protagonists sometimes have more depth.)

What are you currently reading?

Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire, the fourth book in the October Daye series

Lilith's Brood, Octavia Butler

Great Detective Stories (contains Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter," Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Crooked Man," and G.K. Chesterton's "The Man in the Passage"), narrated by David Case. David Case is one of my favorite audiobook narrators.

What did you recently finish reading?

Katherine Lampe, The Fits o' the Season. Fifth in the Caitlin Ross/Timber MacDuff series. This book relies on stuff that happens in the third (A Maid in Bedlam) and fourth (The Parting Glass) books in the series. Small-town fantasy/Paranormal romance but with a difference, in that the POV characters are human witches and shamans, not vampires/werewolves/faeries. This one is a set of interrelated shorts from Timber's point of view. Interesting magical and shamanic and violent things happen, but I especially like that it's an exploration of love for the long term, the kind you need to start building after the pedestal you stuck under your loved one crumbles. A lot of urban-fantasy/paranormal-romance books look at this from the point of view of a female protagonist, but this book looks at it from the point of view of a male protagonist.

Charlaine Harris, Grave Secret, the fourth and (so far) last in the Harper Connelly series (paranormal fantasy/mystery). Harris started this series in 2005, after her other series (although the Sookie Stackhouse series has lasted longer). Harper Connelly is a psychic with a single talent, the ability to sense corpses and know what the person died from (but if the person was murdered, she doesn't know who did it). She and her step-brother make a living by helping people using this talent. I think Harper Connelly is Harris's most interesting protagonist. This book has a mystery in it like the others, but it also delves heavily into Connelly's past and family dynamics.

What do you think you’ll read next?

Maybe Nalo Hopkinson's Sister Mine, because the OH got it out of the library.

What books did you acquire this week?

Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (the Kindle edition was on sale for $2 last week, and a friend recommended it to me).

Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones. I don't know anything about this, but the Kindle edition was free last week, so I figured why not.

I just finished a bunch of books at once so it's time for another one of these.

What are you currently reading?

Ebook on my smart phone: Just started Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire, the fourth book in the October Daye series.

Paper books:
Bears Discover Fire, Terry Bisson. I have only read the titular story so far. It broke my heart. In a good way, but still. I don't know if I will be able to read any of the rest.

Lilith's Brood, Octavia Butler. Am only a few pages in. It's a page-turner.

Everyday Language of White Racism, Jane Hill. Anthropology. Jane Hill is white. I thought I had an OK handle on this subject but Hill points out so many things that I wasn't aware of, and collects them into categories that make sense. She also provides a good description of the split between two theories of racism that cause problems in public conversations about racism. Now that I've read this book, I am seeing more racist language in the culture and seeing it in different ways.

What did you recently finish reading?

Audiobook: Mona Lisa Overdrive, William Gibson. I find Gibson's sentence- and paragraph-level writing style very creative and beautiful. His plots and characters are kind of formulaic. (But that's looking at it from OMG 26 years later. I suppose it's kind of like saying Chuck Berry is formulaic.) But I find it hard to concentrate on the plot of his books, at least in audio form. I had the same problem with the previous book in the Sprawl trilogy. This book has some interesting female characters and has characters that come from a variety of classes and ethnic backgrounds. I'm uncomfortable with the appropriation of Vodou loa, although Gibson does seem to have made some effort to research them.

Ebook on my iPad: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold. The book didn't suck me in the way the Vorkosigan books did. It took me weeks to pick my way through it. Come to think of it, that's been my experience of everything Bujold has written except for the Vorkosigan books. Well except for what I actively dislike (Sharing Knife, ick). I think part of my problem with CVA was that I thought all the other characters were far more interesting than Ivan, and I wanted stories about them, not glimpses of them through Ivan's mind. I felt that way about some of the characters in the Miles books too, but I also thought Miles was interesting.

Audiobook: Keeper of the King, P.N. Elrod & Nigel Bennett. Do you want to read an Arthurian legend? Do you want to read a spy novel? Do you want to read a vampire story? Now you don't have to choose!

But the book doesn't wrap up, it pretty much ends in the middle of a plot. I hate that. Also the audiobook is abridged; I didn't notice that until I'd finished it.

Ebook on my smart phone: The Big Meow, Diana Duane. This is the third book in the Cat Wizards series, which is set in the same universe as the Young Wizards series. The first two books are The Book of Night with Moon, and On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service (UK title)/To Visit the Queen (US title). Duane self-published the third book as an e-book, available here: http://www.the-big-meow.com/ (Buying the e-book theoretically gets you a paperback at some point, but the paperback is over a year later than promised and the web site hasn't been updated for a while so I don't know if that's going to happen.)

This got off a pretty slow start but when the cats traveled back to 1946 Hollywood I began liking it better. She digs around in Aztec mythology quite a bit, and I don't know enough about it to have an opinion whether it's borrowing or appropriation. I feel like it has Christianish tropes too, but possibly not more than the Wizard series in general. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

What do you think you’ll read next?

I want to read An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews because she was a guest of honor at FogCon.

What are you currently reading?

Paper books:
I read half of Redshirts by John Scalzi and gave up. I just don't like his fiction-writing style.
I've read the first four chapters of Everyday Language of White Racism, Jane Hill. Anthropology. Upsetting but really interesting and well written. I'll make a post on it later.

Ebook on my iPad: Still picking my way through Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Ebook on my smart phone: The Big Meow, Diana Duane. This is the 3d Cat Wizards book, the one she self-published in installments. Still liking it a lot, but I mostly only read it in cars and doctors' offices so I'm not getting through it very fast (which means not too many doctors' offices. Yay!).

Audiobook: Agents of Light and Darkness (Nightside, #2) by Simon R. Green. This is a humorous horror series that seems like it would mainly appeal to fans of heavy-metal music...not sure I can explain what I mean by that. Well written, well narrated, in a delightfully over the top way. I'm liking this book better than the first novel in the series, Something From the Nightside. My first encounter with the series was a short story, "The Difference a Day Makes," in the anthology Mean Streets. That and "Noah's Orphans" (from the Remy Chandler series by Thomas E. Sniegoski) were the best stories in the anthology. The other stories were by Jim Butcher and Kat Richardson, neither of whom I particularly care for.

What did you recently finish reading?

Audio: "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", a Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Free short story from Audible. (Here is the link; you have to have an Audible account to get it, but I don't think you have to be a member: http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B00AJ2VYRC) Well narrated by Alan Cumming.

Audiobook: Across the Nightingale Floor (Tales of the Otori, #1) by Lian Hearn. Lian Hearn is a pen name of Gillian Rubinstein. Most of her books are YA. This one is semi-historical fantasy set in a land an whole lot like feudal Japan after the introduction of Christianity. I started out thinking it was too full of clichés. I still think it's full of clichés, but also think they are really well done and entertaining clichés, without a lot of stuff that annoys me added on. I bought the next one.

What do you think you’ll read next?

I want to read An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews because she's going to be a guest of honor at FogCon.

THE UP-GOER FIVE TEXT EDITOR
http://splasho.com/upgoer5/
CAN YOU EXPLAIN A HARD IDEA USING ONLY THE TEN HUNDRED MOST USED WORDS? IT'S NOT VERY EASY. TYPE IN THE BOX TO TRY IT OUT.

Shakespeare simplified:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.


Are you, my love, just like a summer's day?
You are more pretty and more calm than that:
High winds do shake the growing things of May,
And summer's time has all too short a date:

Sometimes too hot the fire of sun will burn,
And often does his color grow less bright;
And pretty things become less so, one learns,
when bad things happen or with age's night;

But your not ending summer will not die,
You won't become less pretty than you are,
If Death says you are with him it's a lie,
When in long lasting lines to time you're barred:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and you alive can be.