Catching up
I'm back!
Actually, I've been back for several days now, but I've alternated between being extremely lazy and extremely busy, so no post until today.
Our trip to Carmel was just about perfect. The weather was gorgeous -- the one time it rained was overnight, and everything was fine again by morning. The view from our hotel room was even more awesome than last year. We once again set up a couple of scopes on the balcony, and in addition to otters and dolphins we had multiple sightings of humpback whales breaching and lunge feeding and generally goofing around. We hiked; we shopped; we ate at many excellent restaurants. Mom and I abandoned The Boy for half a day to have a spa day. It was great. There will be pictures eventually.
I'm woefully behind on Wednesday Reading posts, mostly because I've been busy on Wednesdays. Today is relatively quiet, though, so I have time to mention that I finished reading Declaration fo the Rights of Magicians and A Radical Act of Free Magic by H.G. Parry, which I mostly enjoyed, but with a number of reservations. It's one of those alternate histories where pretty much all the big historical events from our time (French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, the slave revolution in Haiti) also happen, with the same people involved, but there's also magic. I thought it was well-written and well-plotted, and managed to work up a fair amount of suspense about events where I already knew the outcome. But I side-eye the portrayal of Robespierre as a totally well-intentioned guy who only did bad things because a vampire made him. (I suspect the portrayal of Pitt the Younger was overly hagiographic also, but at least he never presided over a reign of terror, so I'm more inclined to be tolerant.)
What bugged me about the first book was that in a story where the fight for abolition of slavery was a major driving force in the plot, all but one of the POV characters were white European dudes. The only exception, a slave woman named Fina, had almost nothing to do until near the end. This got a lot better in the second book, where she became a much more major player in the story, but I really wanted the other characters in the West Indies chapters to get more development. And Toussaint Louverture deserved to be a major POV character, dammit.
The books did make me interested in seeking out a good biography of William Wilberforce. Does anyone know of one?
In other news, I'm scheduled for my COVID booster next Friday. Hopefully it won't knock me out for the whole weekend. This entry was originally posted at https://marinarusalka.dreamwidth.org/670606.html. You may comment there using OpenID.
Actually, I've been back for several days now, but I've alternated between being extremely lazy and extremely busy, so no post until today.
Our trip to Carmel was just about perfect. The weather was gorgeous -- the one time it rained was overnight, and everything was fine again by morning. The view from our hotel room was even more awesome than last year. We once again set up a couple of scopes on the balcony, and in addition to otters and dolphins we had multiple sightings of humpback whales breaching and lunge feeding and generally goofing around. We hiked; we shopped; we ate at many excellent restaurants. Mom and I abandoned The Boy for half a day to have a spa day. It was great. There will be pictures eventually.
I'm woefully behind on Wednesday Reading posts, mostly because I've been busy on Wednesdays. Today is relatively quiet, though, so I have time to mention that I finished reading Declaration fo the Rights of Magicians and A Radical Act of Free Magic by H.G. Parry, which I mostly enjoyed, but with a number of reservations. It's one of those alternate histories where pretty much all the big historical events from our time (French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, the slave revolution in Haiti) also happen, with the same people involved, but there's also magic. I thought it was well-written and well-plotted, and managed to work up a fair amount of suspense about events where I already knew the outcome. But I side-eye the portrayal of Robespierre as a totally well-intentioned guy who only did bad things because a vampire made him. (I suspect the portrayal of Pitt the Younger was overly hagiographic also, but at least he never presided over a reign of terror, so I'm more inclined to be tolerant.)
What bugged me about the first book was that in a story where the fight for abolition of slavery was a major driving force in the plot, all but one of the POV characters were white European dudes. The only exception, a slave woman named Fina, had almost nothing to do until near the end. This got a lot better in the second book, where she became a much more major player in the story, but I really wanted the other characters in the West Indies chapters to get more development. And Toussaint Louverture deserved to be a major POV character, dammit.
The books did make me interested in seeking out a good biography of William Wilberforce. Does anyone know of one?
In other news, I'm scheduled for my COVID booster next Friday. Hopefully it won't knock me out for the whole weekend. This entry was originally posted at https://marinarusalka.dreamwidth.org/670606.html. You may comment there using OpenID.