Ah, that wacky bank holiday weather.
Here it goes again. Good Friday is cued by a sky like soup, intermittent howling gales that scream through the airbrick in my kitchen and are giving me chilly ankles as the gusts force their way through gaps in the walls of my conservatory and then through the french windows as well to emit a chilly breeze by my desk. Miscellaneous bits of grit and rubble keep blowing off the roofspace and clattering down on the conservatory roof. And on top of that, it's just absolutely poured down.
I'm going out to meet up with some friends for a meal in about half an hour or so. I'm currently debating whether to take an umbrella or not. If I take it, I can keep the precipitation from the skies at bay. But I also run the risk of getting blown away. So at the moment I'm leaning towards wetness and keeping my feet on the ground.
The second week of my vacation time is coming to an end, alas, and as usual it's going by much too quickly. I haven't done half of the sorting and tidying that I was planning on. I have, however, had a splendid but rainy four days in Paris (Louvre, Montmartre, Museu D'Orsay, and assorted other sightseeing-y things), watched a DVDs (including the newly arrived season two of Primeval), and read a fair few books.
I completed my Dorothy L Sayers re-read about a month ago, and since then I seem to be on something of a science-fiction kick. I'm working my way through the novels of Sylvia Engdahl, a writer I remember with fondness from childhood. She had three novels in the young adult section of our town library, and for two or three years they were amongst the books that I used to check out at intervals for re-reading. That particular library burned down when I was fifteen, and I'd not happened upon any of her work since, until quite recently when I discovered that all her old young adult novels had been re-released under various imprints over the past few years, and also that she'd recently written her first new book since the 70's, an adult novel called Stewards of the Flame.
So I ordered that one, and am currently hunting up some of the old ones that I read. I've already got and re-read my favourite one, The Far Side of Evil, which had stayed with me vividly over the years. It's very obviously a product of the 60's/70's, in that it's set on a pre-spaceflight world that's having its own version of a Cold War, where the main protagonists are two young agents of a galactic organisation, from more mature worlds, sworn to non interference as this world threatens to destroy itself but caught up in it anyway for their own very different reasons as a result of interacting with its people. The edition I have is the exact same one I read in the library as a child; Engdahl has apparently revised the text in the newer edition to modify some of her predictions with the benefit of hindsight, and I'm tempted to get hold of that one too in order to compare it.
I've also now read Stewards of the Flame. It was self-published, and unfortunately it does show occasional evidence of that - not in the quality of the story told, which is quite as up to standard as the earlier books, one of which was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal, but in occasional proofreading errors. I guess that's a side-effect of the author being their own editor, but then again, errors seem to creep through everywhere, so I may be being overly picky. The story itself I found interesting, and it definitely harked back to the same territory as her earlier books, parapsychology and politics and science-fiction edges to almost-recognisable worlds. I think I still prefer The Far Side of Evil, and probably always will - it was one of the cornerstone books that first got me interested in science-fiction at all - but there's apparently going to be a sequel to Stewards, so I shall look forward to seeing that when it appears.
Alas, it looks like I'm going to have to go and patronise Forbidden Planet in order to get any more of her back catalogue without paying out obscene amounts of money in postage, which rather goes against the grain. It's my considered opinion that Planet sold out many, many years ago, and I don't really care to patronise their toy-selling/comic neglecting ways any more often than I absolutely have to. So much so, in fact, that earlier this week was the first time I'd been in their current store since they relocated to it several years back. And now it looks like I'm probably going to have to return to it within the week. Bah.
The reason for the first visit was a scouting trip. I've finally pulled out the Lois McMaster Bujold novels that had been gathering dust unread on my shelves for several years and started reading them. And now, of course, I need to get the rest of the Vorkosigan novels asap so that I can continue reading them in the right order. As they're a mishmash of released in the UK, US release only, and omnibus volumes, this is proving something of a challenge.
(No, not striking/boycotting today. Me and my permanent account are sitting here, still appreciative of having a home on the internet that doesn't need spambusting on a daily basis, and - while I do wish that LJ could learn to communicate with the user base more effectively, and that it didn't take a week of back-pedalling quite so often - the petulant shopping list style agendas that I've seen for the 'strike' include far too many things that I don't agree with, and far too few that I do have sympathy for.)
And now I'm off to brave the bank holiday weather in search of this evening's hoped-for yummy chocolate orange pudding. Diet? What diet?
I'm going out to meet up with some friends for a meal in about half an hour or so. I'm currently debating whether to take an umbrella or not. If I take it, I can keep the precipitation from the skies at bay. But I also run the risk of getting blown away. So at the moment I'm leaning towards wetness and keeping my feet on the ground.
The second week of my vacation time is coming to an end, alas, and as usual it's going by much too quickly. I haven't done half of the sorting and tidying that I was planning on. I have, however, had a splendid but rainy four days in Paris (Louvre, Montmartre, Museu D'Orsay, and assorted other sightseeing-y things), watched a DVDs (including the newly arrived season two of Primeval), and read a fair few books.
I completed my Dorothy L Sayers re-read about a month ago, and since then I seem to be on something of a science-fiction kick. I'm working my way through the novels of Sylvia Engdahl, a writer I remember with fondness from childhood. She had three novels in the young adult section of our town library, and for two or three years they were amongst the books that I used to check out at intervals for re-reading. That particular library burned down when I was fifteen, and I'd not happened upon any of her work since, until quite recently when I discovered that all her old young adult novels had been re-released under various imprints over the past few years, and also that she'd recently written her first new book since the 70's, an adult novel called Stewards of the Flame.
So I ordered that one, and am currently hunting up some of the old ones that I read. I've already got and re-read my favourite one, The Far Side of Evil, which had stayed with me vividly over the years. It's very obviously a product of the 60's/70's, in that it's set on a pre-spaceflight world that's having its own version of a Cold War, where the main protagonists are two young agents of a galactic organisation, from more mature worlds, sworn to non interference as this world threatens to destroy itself but caught up in it anyway for their own very different reasons as a result of interacting with its people. The edition I have is the exact same one I read in the library as a child; Engdahl has apparently revised the text in the newer edition to modify some of her predictions with the benefit of hindsight, and I'm tempted to get hold of that one too in order to compare it.
I've also now read Stewards of the Flame. It was self-published, and unfortunately it does show occasional evidence of that - not in the quality of the story told, which is quite as up to standard as the earlier books, one of which was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal, but in occasional proofreading errors. I guess that's a side-effect of the author being their own editor, but then again, errors seem to creep through everywhere, so I may be being overly picky. The story itself I found interesting, and it definitely harked back to the same territory as her earlier books, parapsychology and politics and science-fiction edges to almost-recognisable worlds. I think I still prefer The Far Side of Evil, and probably always will - it was one of the cornerstone books that first got me interested in science-fiction at all - but there's apparently going to be a sequel to Stewards, so I shall look forward to seeing that when it appears.
Alas, it looks like I'm going to have to go and patronise Forbidden Planet in order to get any more of her back catalogue without paying out obscene amounts of money in postage, which rather goes against the grain. It's my considered opinion that Planet sold out many, many years ago, and I don't really care to patronise their toy-selling/comic neglecting ways any more often than I absolutely have to. So much so, in fact, that earlier this week was the first time I'd been in their current store since they relocated to it several years back. And now it looks like I'm probably going to have to return to it within the week. Bah.
The reason for the first visit was a scouting trip. I've finally pulled out the Lois McMaster Bujold novels that had been gathering dust unread on my shelves for several years and started reading them. And now, of course, I need to get the rest of the Vorkosigan novels asap so that I can continue reading them in the right order. As they're a mishmash of released in the UK, US release only, and omnibus volumes, this is proving something of a challenge.
(No, not striking/boycotting today. Me and my permanent account are sitting here, still appreciative of having a home on the internet that doesn't need spambusting on a daily basis, and - while I do wish that LJ could learn to communicate with the user base more effectively, and that it didn't take a week of back-pedalling quite so often - the petulant shopping list style agendas that I've seen for the 'strike' include far too many things that I don't agree with, and far too few that I do have sympathy for.)
And now I'm off to brave the bank holiday weather in search of this evening's hoped-for yummy chocolate orange pudding. Diet? What diet?