reading, and my test results
Last week I read Lisa Goldstein's Summer King, Winter Fool and Noriko Ogiwara's Dragon Sword and Wind Child. I attempted to read Microcosm by Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse, supposedly a "portrait" of the Polish city Wrocław, and started Echoes in Time by Andre Norton and Sherwood Smith.
Both the books I finished were nice little amusements. They have stories in them that ought to seem biggish, involving the whims of gods and kings and queens, but because they were both sort of stylized and removed from actual life, they seemed small to me. Like pretty toys. I liked them both, though I got a little impatient partway through and wished they would drop the royalist crap. I mean I felt like they were wasting themselves on trivial gods-and-royals stories when all that beauty and passion could have been spoent on something I personally care about because doesn't the world revolve around my tastes and if not why not? But they were fun anyway. Goldstein's book is in a completely new world informed by late Eurpoean nedieval times, and Ogiwara's book is in a magic world not many steps removed from Japan.
Microcosm is unreadable. It's written like one of those breathless magazine survey articles of the sixties, jumbled up and oh god why don't they use any of the actual place names! What the hell! Some of the places names they translate into English and I don't mean those odd Anglicized place names, I mean stuff like "Giant Mountains" and "Snowy Head" and "Cats Hills." Also, "The River." Skipping ahead, I see that they eventually deign to use the names of at least cities and states but they've lost me already.
I was going to say that this was obviously a product of the postwar period because even though the book spans prehistory to modern times the first chapter is about World War Two and of course that would have made sense up to about 1989 because until Solidarnosc Americans thought history stopped in Eastern Europe in about 1950. But the book was first printed in 2002, so I don't understand why the book starts out like this. I recall nopeing out of another Polish history book by Davies too. Unfortunately Polish histories aren't very thick on the ground at my library. What there is--is almost exclusively this guy, and/or books about concentration camps. Which are necessary to tell Polish history but not sufficient. Maybe I'll try it again sometime when my disappointment has had a chance to settle down.
I don't have much to say about the Norton/Smith yet, since I just started it.
I stalled out on the giant fantasy trilogy my brother-in-law lent me. I feel like I should keep trying because he was so enthusiastic about it. Also I haven't started the Kameron Hurley. But probably next is The Mystic Marriage by our own Heather Rose Jones, and anything that looks fun in the library, and another attempt at Eastern European history. I think I remember seeing some other city histories on the shelf.
On another front: I have gotten most of my medical test results back but not the A1c, which is the one I am most interested in because last time it dropped a bit. Most of it was unremarkable: the lipids worsened an amount that I think is not significant, since they are still in the category of "a wee bit elevated." That category that some people argue isn't pathological at all, but I take a statin anyway because the statins are associated with better lifespans and health in people like me whether or not their lipid levels change. Which makes me think we don't really know what statins do for people and we might be completely wrong.
Other than that, two oddball results which I think are probably artifacts. The first one is that the percent neutrophils is low, below the normal line. However, the absolute value of the neutrophils and also all the other white cell counts is normal normal normal. Some of the other white cell counts are slightly higher within the normal range and the neutrophils are slightly lower within the normal range, but none of them are even close to the edges of their ranges. So that one's just dumb. The other one is that now I have a slightly elevated B12 result. It's just over the edge. So I sent the doctor a question: should I stop taking the B12 supplements, lower the dose, or ignore the result? I tried to find if there is any consequence of having high B12 levels, but I found no discussion of it--only discussion of causes. I don't believe there's any need to inquire along those lines since I have been taking this supplement for a couple-few years now, and there's no special reason to think there's any other reason for the B12 levels to be elevated. I'm inclined to think that the reason that nobody talks about high B12 consequence is that there isn't any that anybody knows, which of course doesn't mean there isn't any.
The doctor had ordered a test for an inflammation marker because she wanted to nail down the concewpt that I'm not running a batch of quiet infections (because I kept getting skin infections there for a while). Of course it came out normal normal normal. Then, coincidentally, a series of confusions conspired to keep me from getting my anti-inflammatory medicine for over a week. I don't think the results would have shown on the test, but dang, am I ever inflamed. I'm a bit better now, but I had three or so days of excruiciaton and impaired mobility. The moral of the story is: exercise is necessary but not sufficient. Drugs are necessary but not sufficient. Also, considering the location of the excruciation and impairment, I do not get to stop taking meloxicam after I recover from surgery. The meloxicam is functioning with respect to muscles, not my knee joints.
On still another front: I'm hungry and I think I am going to boil some cracked grains in milk. Yes, I get to do that. Because, that's why.
Both the books I finished were nice little amusements. They have stories in them that ought to seem biggish, involving the whims of gods and kings and queens, but because they were both sort of stylized and removed from actual life, they seemed small to me. Like pretty toys. I liked them both, though I got a little impatient partway through and wished they would drop the royalist crap. I mean I felt like they were wasting themselves on trivial gods-and-royals stories when all that beauty and passion could have been spoent on something I personally care about because doesn't the world revolve around my tastes and if not why not? But they were fun anyway. Goldstein's book is in a completely new world informed by late Eurpoean nedieval times, and Ogiwara's book is in a magic world not many steps removed from Japan.
Microcosm is unreadable. It's written like one of those breathless magazine survey articles of the sixties, jumbled up and oh god why don't they use any of the actual place names! What the hell! Some of the places names they translate into English and I don't mean those odd Anglicized place names, I mean stuff like "Giant Mountains" and "Snowy Head" and "Cats Hills." Also, "The River." Skipping ahead, I see that they eventually deign to use the names of at least cities and states but they've lost me already.
I was going to say that this was obviously a product of the postwar period because even though the book spans prehistory to modern times the first chapter is about World War Two and of course that would have made sense up to about 1989 because until Solidarnosc Americans thought history stopped in Eastern Europe in about 1950. But the book was first printed in 2002, so I don't understand why the book starts out like this. I recall nopeing out of another Polish history book by Davies too. Unfortunately Polish histories aren't very thick on the ground at my library. What there is--is almost exclusively this guy, and/or books about concentration camps. Which are necessary to tell Polish history but not sufficient. Maybe I'll try it again sometime when my disappointment has had a chance to settle down.
I don't have much to say about the Norton/Smith yet, since I just started it.
I stalled out on the giant fantasy trilogy my brother-in-law lent me. I feel like I should keep trying because he was so enthusiastic about it. Also I haven't started the Kameron Hurley. But probably next is The Mystic Marriage by our own Heather Rose Jones, and anything that looks fun in the library, and another attempt at Eastern European history. I think I remember seeing some other city histories on the shelf.
On another front: I have gotten most of my medical test results back but not the A1c, which is the one I am most interested in because last time it dropped a bit. Most of it was unremarkable: the lipids worsened an amount that I think is not significant, since they are still in the category of "a wee bit elevated." That category that some people argue isn't pathological at all, but I take a statin anyway because the statins are associated with better lifespans and health in people like me whether or not their lipid levels change. Which makes me think we don't really know what statins do for people and we might be completely wrong.
Other than that, two oddball results which I think are probably artifacts. The first one is that the percent neutrophils is low, below the normal line. However, the absolute value of the neutrophils and also all the other white cell counts is normal normal normal. Some of the other white cell counts are slightly higher within the normal range and the neutrophils are slightly lower within the normal range, but none of them are even close to the edges of their ranges. So that one's just dumb. The other one is that now I have a slightly elevated B12 result. It's just over the edge. So I sent the doctor a question: should I stop taking the B12 supplements, lower the dose, or ignore the result? I tried to find if there is any consequence of having high B12 levels, but I found no discussion of it--only discussion of causes. I don't believe there's any need to inquire along those lines since I have been taking this supplement for a couple-few years now, and there's no special reason to think there's any other reason for the B12 levels to be elevated. I'm inclined to think that the reason that nobody talks about high B12 consequence is that there isn't any that anybody knows, which of course doesn't mean there isn't any.
The doctor had ordered a test for an inflammation marker because she wanted to nail down the concewpt that I'm not running a batch of quiet infections (because I kept getting skin infections there for a while). Of course it came out normal normal normal. Then, coincidentally, a series of confusions conspired to keep me from getting my anti-inflammatory medicine for over a week. I don't think the results would have shown on the test, but dang, am I ever inflamed. I'm a bit better now, but I had three or so days of excruiciaton and impaired mobility. The moral of the story is: exercise is necessary but not sufficient. Drugs are necessary but not sufficient. Also, considering the location of the excruciation and impairment, I do not get to stop taking meloxicam after I recover from surgery. The meloxicam is functioning with respect to muscles, not my knee joints.
On still another front: I'm hungry and I think I am going to boil some cracked grains in milk. Yes, I get to do that. Because, that's why.