(no subject)
http://books.guardian.co.uk/interviews/story/0,,2266270,00.html
Really good interview with Terry Pratchett about his Alzheimer's. Stolen from Neil Gaiman's journal. It's hard not to be impressed with Pratchett's reaction to all this, and I enjoyed some of his comments on writing Discworld, too. I especially liked the mention that "realistic" human attitudes in fantasy are funny - because no one really expects fantasy characters to act realistically.
It's a good point, and I think one that underlies a lot of my favorite recent series. The Vlad books, Robin Hobb's Farseer and Tawny Man series, and a Song of Ice and Fire are stronger in this regard. I think a similar tendency influenced how the monsters in my Ravenloft one-shot went.
I have been up to not too terribly much the last few days. Today I will hammer out the last bits of the thesis draft and submit it to my PI. My parents' flight to New Mexico was cancelled, so they are driving. My dad took this well, my mother not so much.
It is strange now to reflect on my last trip to New Mexico, too. That was freshman year of high school. No livejournal then, so my exact, precise thoughts (or what I believed them to be; the two are not always the same) are lost. I was on a pretty big vampire kick and brought along one of the Vampire: the Masquerade short story collections. I actually didn't like it very much. I had a hard time figuring out the changes they'd made to the "usual" vampire stories and most of the characters just weren't .. vampire-y enough. These were just people with a few powers and a lot of funny terminology! It took me a while to figure out how that could be interesting, too. I also remember going through some Magic: the Gathering short story books, which I enjoyed notably more at the time. I think that I also read an Anne Rice book - Vittorio the Vampire, not Interview with the Vampire or any of those. Vittorio was a stand-alone and a good deal better than most of the others - at least, as I remember it.
As the reading choices might suggest, I was wearing black all the time then. Yes, black jacket in the desert. Black coat pulled up like a hood to avoid - sunburn! Some of my dad's coworkers were randomly in the southwest as well and thought I was crazy. I also spent a lot of the trip whining for red contact lenses.
All in all, I probably remember it more fondly now than I enjoyed it at the time. The food was top-notch, though. Southwestern food, all the Indian and Mexican dishes, is pretty amazing. Maybe that's part of the reason I started making my own salsa - it's hard to go back to canned stuff after the fresh Southwestern ones. Oh! I also remember the bookstores being fantastic. There were a lot of used bookstores around (though I may be mixing trips at this point) because - I guess there's not as much to do in New Mexico besides read? But, with that logic, Nebraska and Iowa should be swarming with bookstores.
I hope my parents have a good trip, in any case.
Really good interview with Terry Pratchett about his Alzheimer's. Stolen from Neil Gaiman's journal. It's hard not to be impressed with Pratchett's reaction to all this, and I enjoyed some of his comments on writing Discworld, too. I especially liked the mention that "realistic" human attitudes in fantasy are funny - because no one really expects fantasy characters to act realistically.
It's a good point, and I think one that underlies a lot of my favorite recent series. The Vlad books, Robin Hobb's Farseer and Tawny Man series, and a Song of Ice and Fire are stronger in this regard. I think a similar tendency influenced how the monsters in my Ravenloft one-shot went.
I have been up to not too terribly much the last few days. Today I will hammer out the last bits of the thesis draft and submit it to my PI. My parents' flight to New Mexico was cancelled, so they are driving. My dad took this well, my mother not so much.
It is strange now to reflect on my last trip to New Mexico, too. That was freshman year of high school. No livejournal then, so my exact, precise thoughts (or what I believed them to be; the two are not always the same) are lost. I was on a pretty big vampire kick and brought along one of the Vampire: the Masquerade short story collections. I actually didn't like it very much. I had a hard time figuring out the changes they'd made to the "usual" vampire stories and most of the characters just weren't .. vampire-y enough. These were just people with a few powers and a lot of funny terminology! It took me a while to figure out how that could be interesting, too. I also remember going through some Magic: the Gathering short story books, which I enjoyed notably more at the time. I think that I also read an Anne Rice book - Vittorio the Vampire, not Interview with the Vampire or any of those. Vittorio was a stand-alone and a good deal better than most of the others - at least, as I remember it.
As the reading choices might suggest, I was wearing black all the time then. Yes, black jacket in the desert. Black coat pulled up like a hood to avoid - sunburn! Some of my dad's coworkers were randomly in the southwest as well and thought I was crazy. I also spent a lot of the trip whining for red contact lenses.
All in all, I probably remember it more fondly now than I enjoyed it at the time. The food was top-notch, though. Southwestern food, all the Indian and Mexican dishes, is pretty amazing. Maybe that's part of the reason I started making my own salsa - it's hard to go back to canned stuff after the fresh Southwestern ones. Oh! I also remember the bookstores being fantastic. There were a lot of used bookstores around (though I may be mixing trips at this point) because - I guess there's not as much to do in New Mexico besides read? But, with that logic, Nebraska and Iowa should be swarming with bookstores.
I hope my parents have a good trip, in any case.