stuff i read and stuff i ate
What I just finished reading:
not exactly "just", but fire watch, a collection of short stories by connie willis, which i enjoyed mostly because i just really like her writing. the worlds seem very small in these stories, which i think is because they're short stories and there just isn't room for a lot of world-building and plotting and things happening, but they all have the weight of a bigger world behind them. i wasn't thrilled with the last one - a guy and a girl meet cute in the silliest way possible (she falls out of a tree and lands on him) (she's in the tree in the first place to get a piece of paper unstuck from a branch) and even tho he doesn't even know her name they have a shortshort conversation in which they don't actually manage to communicate successfully and yet both walk away from that madly in love with each other - i mean, really? seriously? how stupid. but all the other stories i enjoyed.
also i read severed, written by scott snyder and scott tuft and drawn by attila futaki, which is a creeptastic graphic novel about a kid who runs away from home to find his dad who abandoned him at birth, and the girl he meets along the way, and the creepy dude who befriends him for nefarious purposes. it's genuinely horrorish, altho it's supposed to be set in 1916 but looks and feels more like the early 30s. i'm not sure if the writers and artist just didn't do all their homework, or if it's a stylistic choice. in any case, it kept kind of throwing me out of the story. (scott snyder writes american vampire, which is less explicitly horror and spans several decades - i think they're up to the 50s by now - and seems reasonably historically accurate, i mean given that the comic's about, you know, vampires.)
also also i read the last of us tie-in trade paperback - it was a miniseries - written by neil druckman and faith erin hicks and also drawn by faith, which i bought for the simple reason that i really, really like her work and want to support her. i've never played - and don't plan to play - the video game, but the miniseries is backstory and you don't have to have any familiarity with the game. it's post-apocalyptific, which is right in my wheelhouse, and i liked it.
What I am reading now:
i haven't quite finished cry to heaven, because i don't have an hour's worth of it left and i read during my lunch break and i get an hour for lunch. also i'm still stuck halfway through bad houses, and i started relish which is written and drawn by lucy knisley and is a kind of graphic novel memoir about food. i really like it so far. the art's very cute and it's about lucy's childhood and relationship with food (good food, too) and really, there's no bad there.
What I'm going to read next:
i should really be reading up on stuff for my bigbang, but i haven't acquired anything yet. and i can't talk about it in specifics anyway because bigbang is like fight club.
in other news! last night i went out to a brazilian steakhouse with the parental unit and oh my god i ate so much i cannot even tell you. it's the kind of place where they keep bringing around meat on giant skewers - steak and steak and steak and ribs and sausage and chicken wrapped in bacon and chicken legs and leg of lamb and lamb chops and pork crusted with parmesan cheese and there's a huge salad bar (which was more of a salad and cold side dishes bar) and they bring you hot sides with your meat (polenta fries, mashed potatoes, caramelized bananas which were SO GOOD OMG) and then we had dessert (papaya cream, yummy) which we had to split because did i mention there's an endless parade of meat? i didn't even think i'd eaten that much but apparently i did. you just get a slice of each cut - or two little chops or, like, nugget-sized bites of chicken with bacon - but there were a lot of slices. and then we tried to drive down to the waterfront - the restaurant was in boston proper - to see the fireworks, which we could really only see between the buildings, and they didn't last long but i felt reasonably satisfied anyway. and then i stayed up until like three because i had to digest.
but seriously, if you ever come visit me and have some bucks to spend on dinner (because it ain't cheap) and want to stuff your face with a mobile buffet of meat, i know where we should go. oh, and the cheese rolls were DELISH.
the t ran until two, i think, and it was free all night, but my parents drove me home anyway.
today my cousin had an open house in her new house, so i went to that and also stuffed my face. (it's a trend.) the house is adorable. it's like eighty years old and all the bedrooms are tiny and the kitchen desperately needs to be replaced (practically no counter or cabinet space) but it's got all this fabulous wood trim and a built-in china cabinet in the dining room and high square windows with tiny square panes of glass and it's vaguely craftsman-y and painted yellow and blue outside and just a really cute house. and i think my cousin likes it. i got to see the family unit and other cousins and my aunt and stepaunt, and the food was good and there was a lot of it and now i'm just waiting to be hungry enough to make some black-eyed peas, which you eat on new year's day for luck during the coming year, as is the tradition of my childhood.
not exactly "just", but fire watch, a collection of short stories by connie willis, which i enjoyed mostly because i just really like her writing. the worlds seem very small in these stories, which i think is because they're short stories and there just isn't room for a lot of world-building and plotting and things happening, but they all have the weight of a bigger world behind them. i wasn't thrilled with the last one - a guy and a girl meet cute in the silliest way possible (she falls out of a tree and lands on him) (she's in the tree in the first place to get a piece of paper unstuck from a branch) and even tho he doesn't even know her name they have a shortshort conversation in which they don't actually manage to communicate successfully and yet both walk away from that madly in love with each other - i mean, really? seriously? how stupid. but all the other stories i enjoyed.
also i read severed, written by scott snyder and scott tuft and drawn by attila futaki, which is a creeptastic graphic novel about a kid who runs away from home to find his dad who abandoned him at birth, and the girl he meets along the way, and the creepy dude who befriends him for nefarious purposes. it's genuinely horrorish, altho it's supposed to be set in 1916 but looks and feels more like the early 30s. i'm not sure if the writers and artist just didn't do all their homework, or if it's a stylistic choice. in any case, it kept kind of throwing me out of the story. (scott snyder writes american vampire, which is less explicitly horror and spans several decades - i think they're up to the 50s by now - and seems reasonably historically accurate, i mean given that the comic's about, you know, vampires.)
also also i read the last of us tie-in trade paperback - it was a miniseries - written by neil druckman and faith erin hicks and also drawn by faith, which i bought for the simple reason that i really, really like her work and want to support her. i've never played - and don't plan to play - the video game, but the miniseries is backstory and you don't have to have any familiarity with the game. it's post-apocalyptific, which is right in my wheelhouse, and i liked it.
What I am reading now:
i haven't quite finished cry to heaven, because i don't have an hour's worth of it left and i read during my lunch break and i get an hour for lunch. also i'm still stuck halfway through bad houses, and i started relish which is written and drawn by lucy knisley and is a kind of graphic novel memoir about food. i really like it so far. the art's very cute and it's about lucy's childhood and relationship with food (good food, too) and really, there's no bad there.
What I'm going to read next:
i should really be reading up on stuff for my bigbang, but i haven't acquired anything yet. and i can't talk about it in specifics anyway because bigbang is like fight club.
in other news! last night i went out to a brazilian steakhouse with the parental unit and oh my god i ate so much i cannot even tell you. it's the kind of place where they keep bringing around meat on giant skewers - steak and steak and steak and ribs and sausage and chicken wrapped in bacon and chicken legs and leg of lamb and lamb chops and pork crusted with parmesan cheese and there's a huge salad bar (which was more of a salad and cold side dishes bar) and they bring you hot sides with your meat (polenta fries, mashed potatoes, caramelized bananas which were SO GOOD OMG) and then we had dessert (papaya cream, yummy) which we had to split because did i mention there's an endless parade of meat? i didn't even think i'd eaten that much but apparently i did. you just get a slice of each cut - or two little chops or, like, nugget-sized bites of chicken with bacon - but there were a lot of slices. and then we tried to drive down to the waterfront - the restaurant was in boston proper - to see the fireworks, which we could really only see between the buildings, and they didn't last long but i felt reasonably satisfied anyway. and then i stayed up until like three because i had to digest.
but seriously, if you ever come visit me and have some bucks to spend on dinner (because it ain't cheap) and want to stuff your face with a mobile buffet of meat, i know where we should go. oh, and the cheese rolls were DELISH.
the t ran until two, i think, and it was free all night, but my parents drove me home anyway.
today my cousin had an open house in her new house, so i went to that and also stuffed my face. (it's a trend.) the house is adorable. it's like eighty years old and all the bedrooms are tiny and the kitchen desperately needs to be replaced (practically no counter or cabinet space) but it's got all this fabulous wood trim and a built-in china cabinet in the dining room and high square windows with tiny square panes of glass and it's vaguely craftsman-y and painted yellow and blue outside and just a really cute house. and i think my cousin likes it. i got to see the family unit and other cousins and my aunt and stepaunt, and the food was good and there was a lot of it and now i'm just waiting to be hungry enough to make some black-eyed peas, which you eat on new year's day for luck during the coming year, as is the tradition of my childhood.