Haunted Mirror

To be contrary, since this is the only meme I've seen many times without wanting to get up and do it, even once,
I hereby tag:
topayz4
dawtheminstrel
jeffsoesbe
jeanhuets
ckastens

Let me briefly mention that this ought to be a quick meme--closest book to you and all that (though in my case, which book is the closest? Today it was easier than most days). But actually, I had to save a jar-lid full of diotomaceous earth (sp. non-confirmed) which is a non-poisonous bug-killer of the crushed seashell variety to keep it from being blown over my bed even MORE by the lovely spring breeze.

But Plus for the lovely spring breeze!
 

These are the sort of things you create and try not to think about what profound throughts you could have been thinking if you'd resisted the urge...
Guess the tributes!       [not really. spare yourself the "What If?" agonies of wasted time.]

Rainbows on bubbles and great winged horses
Snowdays with Tumnus and werewolf keen noses
Gamboling kitsune, sly leprechauns
My favorite illusions, once seen and they're gone

Kings born in exile with old broken sabres
Changelings and deep wells and candles and prayers
Angry steep mountains with snow to hunt dwarves
Mad wives in attics and those fey secret drawers

Time full of wrinkles, impossible heroes
Wrestling with Grendel and magical bureaus
Avatars running from demigod des'ny
My fav'rite illusions are running away with me.

Alphabets forming from thornbush and briars
Phookas that prefer to ride on two tires
Redheads, tea, dragons, elves, shoes, steel, owls, rain
Here let me tell you my favorites again...


Hint: I cheated.

So, this instead of finishing another major edit on Beastly. I will scoping out new guinea pigs predictably later than I like and sooner than is good for you.

Mumma: You can borrow those boots, take them to your room. All my jeans are too
                tight on the bottom to go over them, and when they're inside--
Me:         --they rub.
Mumma:                     No. Too sexy for words.

I know my family is pretty chummy, but sometimes I wonder how in the world anyone could connect me with her unaided.
Not that I don't have my mouthy moments. Those times I'm just pretending to be a Crowe, though.
I do have her boots.
The zipper's busted on one, so while I was going to try, there will be no overpowering the masses with my footwear.


Loreena McKennitt...I really wasn't fond of The Visit because Lady of Shallott sounded monotonous, and the Tom Wait's style Greensleeves was far from my style, not to mention to the eerie tone being so accentuated. She really grew on me, though. Part of Aolon's soundtrack, definitely. Wish she'd gotten involved earlier in the process, too. Enya is fun, but she lacks the texture to be perfect for a spiritually charged (or so attempted) story.


I'm reading Queen's Play, after discovering my library had it after all! Just not marked as Vol. 2, or something to set me off the track. Somehow it's just awesome to hang with Lymond now I know his whole backstory. Or somewhat of it. I'm still a bit chary--I wouldn't marry him, which I can't say about many leading men in literature with such feeling--but he's got it bad when it comes to glamor.


Ah, the wailing of pipes... I have Outlander to prepare for Diana Gabaldon as Conestoga's Guest of Honor. I did not do this for Laurell K. Hamilton. ^_^

The great question in life of today is--if a book's bad, do you go on reading it?

I've got Maximum Ride here. I have it for a friend's recommendation (though that was a bit of a warning, actually) and a study. At least I thought a study.

Turns out, the Avatars books by Tui T. Sutherland are actually thought provoking in the way I need to put perspective on my lame little supers book. And this...well it's got that way of writing, which is crutch-ridden, overspoken so I can't enjoy a sentence of it. Not a one. Especially since the 14 year old girl sounds like what in a random pass I'd figure was a 17 year old boy.
Sexist? I still will claim there's a difference.
Even a precocious tomboy girl with a lot of stress on and violence to deal with I'm not sure would sound like so bit-off sentence male.

The problem is not that it couldn't work. But because J Patterson is a guy, it makes me suspect he doesn't have the chops to imitate how a girl talks.
I think this is a problem unique to me, but I'm just not that impressed.


I think I'm going to use my time reading something I like better. Or watching the Fullmetal Alchemist mini-series volume this same friend loaned me. Because while I'm agonizing about how to read all the stuff I'd rather not that she's excited about, I don't have any reservations about borrowing some of the anime.
I know I'm going to come off as picky to her. Which I am.
I don't put up with stuff I don't like.
I do like lots of things, though! I mean, is it a crime to avoid that sort of lazy writing you dislike most?

Mini-review for posterity
All-American Girl (Meg Cabot): kudos for a red-head goth girl heroine who blushes as easily and immaterially as we all do--I *heart* voice--though there's no significant difference in underpinning plot from her other books.

I thought my last post was going to be long, but was too tired, so I won't say Epic in a title again for a long time *shamed*, but to warn you: it is my half-birthday.
 This is my tertiary indulgence. (Primary: to be seen below--Secondary: watching Howl's Moving Castle again.)

First of all, the Book Hoard. Sometimes I do feel rather dragonish about them, but really, riches make me feel generous. I give away books all the time. As soon as I finished Moonheart and Wizard's Hall I sent them to other people. Though I really would totally have kept Wizard's Hall for myself. I think it borders on a fluffy love, my feelings about that book. But you aren't here to hear about that!

Not that you're here for this either, but too bad--the last 2 month's book acquisitions...
    To further soothe the agony of so many choices (I really want to read Name of the Wind, but it's So. Big. Deep Secret ought to be fun to read, but it's not engaging me yet, Castle Cant is too low on my priority list, and Wicked Lovely has me scared for my wussy mind. Nightingale Floor is going to be bloody.) I've meanwhile cut out my first quilt block for my next quilt. Honestly, it will probably help me get back into reading, not otherwise.

But today is my half-birthday (21 and a HALF) so I'm costumed. Less extravagantly than last year (PyRates!) but more focusedly as Gen of the Thief.

( Pixie as Thief )

~18713 words~

Whooosh. I'd forgotten, not how Two Towers ended, but how much of a cliff-hanger it was! The emotional investment of the Tower of the Moon sequences is just really strong; I love how Sam just unfolds in that fourth volume. The way he mimicks Gollum is just a beauty to behold. Grim Sam=priceless.

I was much struck with how taking The Ring was "against his nature"...he thinks he's made a dreadful mistake, but that's when we have the inkling that while not quite so fey and fell as Frodo (take that alliteration and stick it in your hat), he's a fair stout Hero himself.* The foreshadowing of that talk they have before they come out of Ithilien (Tolkien, like good storytellers everywhere, knew the value of letting up occasionally), of the story they're in is so hobbit-like, yet very much suited to the high task, just as Pippin and Merry's banter is suited to the extremes of their natures. Can wear armor about the Shire without being ridiculous because they have a high sense of humor about it, you can tell. Back to Sam and Frodo's talk (I dearly love a digession or two), in the movie I don't remember it coming so early, so I was surprised it WAS a foreshadow.

And back to the beginning in a merry round of mummery,

I was surprised, the first time, how the Two Towers movie did not end on the slamming of the doors. To me, it seems a perfect ending to a Volume Two of Three. Then again, it had to tie things up. But the pacing there was pretty much the only thing that threw me into "Wait; the book was different!" mode. {Besides the Legolas stairs surfer/Oliphaunt slayer thing. But we won't talk about that.}

{I was thoroughly shocked to find the counting game between Gimli and Legolas in The Book, on that note. Pleasantly surprised, actually, to think the humor was to be credited to Tolkien.}

Tolkien r/labu-r/labu...

*Funny, how he thinks he's ruining everything—Heroes do tend to ruin things, if only for the antagonist, but realistically...that's a little simplistic. Sam is only ruining himself, though the whole mess with Gollum does come about. The fact is, the breaking of Gollum's trust is what ends up getting them rid of the One Ring after all. The trouble he causes in that way (taking the ring, and before that in his unsubtle suspicion) all serves the purpose. Ruining himself, in that wearing the Ring, for that time, means Havens for him after all, when I think...Sam should have been buried and become part of the soil of the Shire.

But prices must be paid. If the Gollum made everything right in the end, and if Frodo was always a little too elven for his own good, Sam is a price—for the Shire, and Frodo, and Sam himself.