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Apr. 23rd, 2008 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbThe climbing hurt has settled into my shoulders and back today. Many joys.
Tomorrow I get to go again. And Friday is a scheduled gym day. And Sunday I should haul my arse over to karate.
I keep saying that, and not doing it. I really need to put my money where my mouth is and just do it. Because, you know. It would be cool to have my black belt by the time I'm twenty-five.
*contemplates future of pain*
#
Tiny bit more of last essay done. I hate it with a fiery hate, but I've located some JSTOR articles that may make it suck less.
#
I wrote a tiny bit yesterday. I may yet have a crisis of conscience about this book. It's hard, trying to write characters who stay real and true to themselves as complex and contradictory and human.
And I'm pretty sure the pacing's screwed up. But, you know. I'm not even halfway through a first draft yet. A little over 16K, or about 18K MS word count. I figure that's about a fifth of a book. So much more still to do.
#
Books 2008: 49.
49. Elizabeth Moon, Victory Conditions.
Fifth and final book in the "Vatta's War" series. Not a thinky book, and not particularly nuanced, but enjoyable space opera, nonetheless.
...I've noticed a growing tendency to dissatisfaction with perfectly acceptable books. I mean, I enjoy them as entertainment, I even like them, they just... don't excite me.
Not the way The Mirador did, or Dust or A Companion to Wolves did, or Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman books, or Stross's science fiction and Laundry books, or Alma Alexander's work.
I appear to have a better chance of being excited by fantasy than science fiction. Am I just not reading the right science fiction, or are there really so few science fiction novels with a)better than decent prose, b)complex, believeable characters, c)shiny ideas, d)complex stories and e)some sense of hope?
I liked Ragamuffin. Now that was good stuff. And The Outback Stars was pretty cool, even if it did have too much boyfriend. But what else (apart from Dust), in the last while?
*consults archives*
Kristine Smith's Endgame last November. Jack McDevitt. Justina Robson's Living Next Door to the God of Love, this time last year. I recall reading Alastair Reynold's Century Rain at some point and liking it quite well. But that's quite a long while ago.
Wilson's Spin did very little for me, and Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky did not excite me.
Oh, well. It's not as though I don't have enough other things to read.
Tomorrow I get to go again. And Friday is a scheduled gym day. And Sunday I should haul my arse over to karate.
I keep saying that, and not doing it. I really need to put my money where my mouth is and just do it. Because, you know. It would be cool to have my black belt by the time I'm twenty-five.
*contemplates future of pain*
#
Tiny bit more of last essay done. I hate it with a fiery hate, but I've located some JSTOR articles that may make it suck less.
#
I wrote a tiny bit yesterday. I may yet have a crisis of conscience about this book. It's hard, trying to write characters who stay real and true to themselves as complex and contradictory and human.
And I'm pretty sure the pacing's screwed up. But, you know. I'm not even halfway through a first draft yet. A little over 16K, or about 18K MS word count. I figure that's about a fifth of a book. So much more still to do.
#
Books 2008: 49.
49. Elizabeth Moon, Victory Conditions.
Fifth and final book in the "Vatta's War" series. Not a thinky book, and not particularly nuanced, but enjoyable space opera, nonetheless.
...I've noticed a growing tendency to dissatisfaction with perfectly acceptable books. I mean, I enjoy them as entertainment, I even like them, they just... don't excite me.
Not the way The Mirador did, or Dust or A Companion to Wolves did, or Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman books, or Stross's science fiction and Laundry books, or Alma Alexander's work.
I appear to have a better chance of being excited by fantasy than science fiction. Am I just not reading the right science fiction, or are there really so few science fiction novels with a)better than decent prose, b)complex, believeable characters, c)shiny ideas, d)complex stories and e)some sense of hope?
I liked Ragamuffin. Now that was good stuff. And The Outback Stars was pretty cool, even if it did have too much boyfriend. But what else (apart from Dust), in the last while?
*consults archives*
Kristine Smith's Endgame last November. Jack McDevitt. Justina Robson's Living Next Door to the God of Love, this time last year. I recall reading Alastair Reynold's Century Rain at some point and liking it quite well. But that's quite a long while ago.
Wilson's Spin did very little for me, and Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky did not excite me.
Oh, well. It's not as though I don't have enough other things to read.
