you know you ain't bad looking, I like the way you hold your drinks
Stolen directly from moonlight69's desktop:
A is for Accent: Distinctively Northeastern U.S., I'd guess. I have a tendency to drop my Rs, but not always. I pick up bits and pieces of colloquialisms all over the place. Last time I was in Cape Breton, I had a bit of a brogue by the time I left. I say "y'all", but I've said that since before I ever set foot in the South. I avoid the RI accent like the plague, so when I say "god", it's more likely to rhyme with "awed" than "guard". I'm a Massachusetts girl, after all. :)
B is for Booze: Korbel Brut, Mike's Hard Lime, hot sake, other white wines, the occasional (and by that I mean once a year or less) Gin and Tonic. Oh, and the occasional Guinness, which means four or five times a year. That stuff is food, man. I hate being drunk, so there's a finite amount I can drink. I also love a good mead. songdog once made the yummiest, driest mead ever. Mmmm. I mostly stick to Teh Mike's, though, these days.
C is for Childhood Memory: Easy one. It was the summer I was twelve, somewhere around the fifth of August, getting up at dawn and walking around the neighbourhood with my best friend in the world, singing songs about morning. She left for boarding school right after that, but when I remember it, it's the walking and the singing I remember. This is my Patronus memory.
D is for Dreams: I don't have erotic dreams. This pisses me off. I do have kissing dreams, though, and those are erotic in their own, warm, lovely way. I actually dreamt I kissed Alex Krycek. No, really. Hey, it was a long time ago.
E is for Essential Reading Materials: *rolls eyes* Well, duh. It's not like I don't pimp share this info ad nauseum at every opportunity.
F is for Favourite Food: My mother's mashed potatoes. And scrapple (which I have no quasi-vegetarian qualms about because hey, it's byproducts). Sooo good. Also strawberries and chocolate in various states of being. And fish. Any fish, shelled or not. Poseidon or someone invented seafood just for me, I swear.
G is for Gay/Straight/Bi?: Two on Kinsey. It's all a number line, so it is.
H is for Hometown: Wilmington, Massachusetts.
I is for Instrumental/Singing Skills: I can sing, I can play as many guitar chords as, oh, Ringo Starr, and I want to take fiddle/banjo/piano/harp/name your stringed instrument.
J is for Job Title: Staff Nurse. That's what it says on my badge. I'd like it to be Certified Midwife, no badge necessary.
K is for Kids: Four lovelies, and a strange craving for another one. I even have a name picked out. No, I am not on crack.
L is for Living Arrangement: Rental flat in Pawtucket, with i_am_a_hannah and mr_t00by.
M is for Mother's Name: Elva. Isn't that great? Such a cool name.
N is for New Experiences: Travel - I want to see Alaska. In summer, say thankya. The idea of a day that's, well, day, 24/7 is intriguing as hell. Also I'd like to go to Australia, Eastern Europe, Vietnam, and Vancouver (although with Vancouver's temperate climate and rumoured coolness, I might never come back). I'd also like to have the New Experience of being filthy rich. I'd pretty much like to experience everythning (well, everything good, that is). This has been a theme song of mine since I was oh, twelve or so. What she said.
O is for Overnight Hospital/Clinic Stays:Lots of times before I was three years old, which was essential, and then for teh babies, which wasn't. (the hospital, I mean, not the babies. They were quite welcome. :)
P is for Phobia: Flying, although I still do it. Heights in general, really. I'm a little claustrophobic. Don't like clowns much (I swear I'll finish It, despite this, eventually. One day. Yep. No, really.).
Q is for Quote: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." Makes you want to read the rest, doesn't it, now?. *crooks finger*
R is for Religion: Unitarian Universalist.
S is for Siblings: S is for songdog.
T is for Tattoos and Piercings: One tattoo, soon to be two. Piercings, two, one on each ear.
U is for Unique Trait: I'm a terrible liar. I really hate it. Lying, that is.
V is for Virginity: Four biokids? You do the math.
W is for Worst Habit: Procrastination.
X is for X-rays: Sure. Dunno how many.
Y is for Years Lived: Not nearly enough. Ya hear that, gods?
Z is for Zodiac Sign: Gemini. I'm the bloody poster child for Gemini.
Also, I'm rereading The Drawing of the Three. Try to get over the shock, y'all. Anyway, this has never been my favourite DT book even though I love it. I'm really not sure why. Because everyone's not in it, I guess. This reread's different, though. I feel like I'm reading it for the first time, and I keep getting new stuff screaming out at me.
This book belongs to Eddie. Since Eddie's my favourite character (well, tied), you'd think I'd have seen that before. Even so, it's his relationship with Roland, starting from the first time Roland comes forward in Eddie's mind, is the subject here, even with Odetta/Detta and all the other stuff (I'm only halfway through, so I haven't gotten to a lot of that other stuff yet). Roland has a rich, complex relationship with Jake, and it's all over every interaction with them, but here, in this segment of Roland's tale, it's his dynamic with Eddie we see, and through it, we can see Roland, in all his scarred, tortured, single-focussed beauty. I've never considered Roland a favourite character before, but after this walk through his head, and through the man who'll become his son, he's right up there with the rest of them. The glimpses into Roland's psyche are astounding. He hasn't known Eddie for long, but he's coming to love him as much and as quickly as he did with Jake before him. That's Roland's curse, that the ones he uses are ultimately the ones he loves, and the question he asks, over and over, is what kind of man does this make him?
This passage in particular knocked me over:
She hugged him and wept and Eddie held her and rocked her and Roland thought, Eddie will be all right now. His brother is dead but he has someone else to take care of so Eddie will be all right now.
But he felt a pang: a deep reproachful hurt in his heart. He was capable of shooting--with his left hand, anyway--of killing, of going on and on, slamming with brutal relentlessness through miles and years, even dimensions, it seemed, in search of the Tower. He was capable of survival, sometimes even of protection--he had saved the boy Jake from a slow death at the way station, and from sexual consumption by the Oracle at the foot of the mountains--but in the end, he had let Jake die. Nor had this been by accident; he had committed a conscious act of damnation. He watched the two of them, watched Eddie hug her, assure her it was going to be all right. He could not have done that, and now the rue in his heart was joined by stealthy fear.
If you have given up your heart for the Tower, Roland, you have already lost. A heartless creature is a loveless creature, and a loveless creature is a beast. To be a beast is perhaps bearable, although the man who has become one will surely pay hell's own price in the end, but what if you should gain your object? WHat if you should, heartless, actually storm the Dark Tower and win it? If there is naught but darkness in your heart, what could you do except degenerate from beast to monster? To gain one's object as a beast would only be bitterly comic, like giving a magnifying glass to an elephaunt. But to gain one's object as a monster...
To pay hell is one thing. But do you want to own it?
He thought of Allie, and of the girl who had once waited for him at the window, thought of the tears he had shed over Cuthbert's lifeless corpse. Oh, then he had loved. Yes. Then.
I do want to love! he cried, but although Eddie was also crying a little now with the woman in the wheelchair, the gunslinger's eyes remained as dry as the desert he had crossed to reach this sunless sea.
Over a decade since I first began this story, I'm finally coming to love Roland. This is a very cool thing, so it is. It's also why rereading books isn't a waste of time, no matter what mr_tooby and others say.
So, yeah, this book is something else, all right. It's stuff like this that makes Roland's story (and it is Roland's story, singularly, even with all the rich characterisations we're given) so compelling that I want to reread and study and RP characters and have a piece of it in ink on my wrist. IMO, a writer is someone who tells a tale on paper. A good writer is someone whose tale is such that the story and the characters slip inside the readers' subconscious and become a part of it, become real to the reader.
Sai King is a damn good writer.
Oh, and I also bought this from iTunes for ten bucks. It was a big savings from importing it, like fourteen bucks American plus postage, but it was a big pain in the arse to get it from the computer to the iPod, because it was protected, because apparently I'm treated like a criminal when I want to play my own album that I bought legally. *screams, flails, etc.*