On kitten-induced sleep deprivation, pretty smells, and things to read
I had the most unbelievably groggy day, and it's almost entirely due to a kitten, not my work schedule. A CERTAIN KITTEN (not definitively identified, since it was nighttime, my glasses were off, and the kitten in question stayed near my feet...but I'm thinking it was usually or always Jinksy) decided to spend what felt like the entire night hopping up onto my legs with a crinklepuff toy ever hour or so and playing with it for maybe five minutes before wandering off again. It's hard to sleep through ten pounds of kitten frolicking on one's calves.
It kept waking me up just enough to groggily think about shutting the bedroom door, and then he'd be gone again. So I slept badly enough to be actively nodding off at my desk repeatedly all day at the office. At least it wasn't a rough day, and I'm pretty sure I was doing the thing where I was mostly-asleep for only seconds at a time, rather than losing any significant amount of working time. But it kinda sucked. :/
I'm still getting a lot of enjoyment out of seeing so many people's perfume reviews, esp. since the bulk of it is BPAL, and it makes me want to try some of the same scents to compare...but of course, the bulk of my collection is limited edition stuff from over the last few several years, and even my general catalogue stuff is all/mostly on the aged side, so it probably wouldn't smell exactly the same as Lab-fresh imps that some of you are ordering. And unless I actually start wearing what I have, I really need to not start acquiring more. O_O Self, you have something like two hundred scents. That is LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS.
I think it's time to try changing up how I pick what to read, given that for ages now my method has largely been a combination of "buy books and put them on the shelf and don't read them because they don't have to get back to the library, with a few Read Right Now exceptions" and "see what books the library randomly sends me from my hold list because they've been on the list for two years, and then read that if time permits".
New plan: some combination of "go through my holds list and actually prioritize the books that friends have loved dearly (as opposed to enjoyed well enough to rec)" and "read the books I buy". So far, I'm implementing this as follows:
1) Today I went through my library list and unsuspended All Our Pretty Songs, Ancillary Justice, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Blackbirds, and Midnight Riot(/Rivers of London); Dreams of Gods and Monsters is already active, so I'll get it as soon as copies arrive and my number comes up.
2) From looking at the holds list, I think the next books to get unsuspended (and I'm doing this from memory, awkwardly, but also for my own reference) will be...Croak, Divergent, Eleanor & Park, The Girl of Fire and Thorns, Graceling, If I Stay, Incarnate, Life After Life, A Madness of Angels, The Summer Prince, and Three Parts Dead.
Or something.
3) And then there's reading the books I've actually bought. O_O And courtesy of having bought and shelved them, I have a sadly vague notion of what's on the shelf. Self-defeating, I know. >.< An incomplete list includes: the second and third books of Daniel Abraham's current (?) series (his series after The Long Price Quartet, anyway); Fangirl; N.K. Jemisin's The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun; a couple Cat Valente books (not her most recent, but from the last few years); Caitlin Kiernan's The Drowning Girl and Blood Oranges; The Goblin Emperor; a Michelle Sagara West novel, I think; the Veronica Mars novel; and The Raven Boys [see note]...
...plus some non-fiction, including God is Disappointed in You (which sounds much better than the title might lead you to suspect); Hyperbole and a Half; CBLDF Presents Manga: Introduction, Challenges, and Best Practices; and Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew...
...and a handful of anthologies I have solely because Seanan has stories in them: Coins of Chaos, Games Creatures Play (InCryptid story!), Fiction River: Hex in the City (InCryptid story!); Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond; and The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius.
None of this touches on manga or graphic novels.
Note 1: Raven Boys isn't on this list because I already own it, but am waiting until the sequel comes out in paperback this summer so I can buy it and read my own copies of both.
Note 2: Scott Lynch's first two books were looking weirdly OOP or something on Amazon, and the first one has been active on my library list for a couple of months without arriving, so tonight I gave up and just ordered all three from Chapters, since they were in stock. (The Lies Of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, and The Republic Of Thieves.) So let's hope I like them!
Note 3: Several of you are in love with Rosemary Kerstein's Steerswoman books, and I really want to read them, but I'm still figuring out if that means waiting until--as her website says she's working on--they're available digitally in some non-Kindle format. The three books that have been printed seem a bit tricky to get, and it sounds like all the rights have gone back to her and so the fourth book is digital only...? And I'm not giving Kindle money. I'm just not. I know buying [physical books] through Amazon means my money probably winds up in the same pot, but it doesn't go there with a label that says "YES I ENDORSE YOUR BUSINESS MODEL". (I know the other major ebook players aren't much better in terms of their TOS; I checked with Kas earlier, because I couldn't remember how they all compare, but he says that at least while the TOS are all similar and annoying and imply or state that you don't own your damn books, at least the other retailers haven't gone about cheerfully deleting books from people's ereaders.)
Originally posted at http://umadoshi.dreamwidth.org/517480.html. Comment here if you like, or comment there using OpenID. Comments at DW:
It kept waking me up just enough to groggily think about shutting the bedroom door, and then he'd be gone again. So I slept badly enough to be actively nodding off at my desk repeatedly all day at the office. At least it wasn't a rough day, and I'm pretty sure I was doing the thing where I was mostly-asleep for only seconds at a time, rather than losing any significant amount of working time. But it kinda sucked. :/
I'm still getting a lot of enjoyment out of seeing so many people's perfume reviews, esp. since the bulk of it is BPAL, and it makes me want to try some of the same scents to compare...but of course, the bulk of my collection is limited edition stuff from over the last few several years, and even my general catalogue stuff is all/mostly on the aged side, so it probably wouldn't smell exactly the same as Lab-fresh imps that some of you are ordering. And unless I actually start wearing what I have, I really need to not start acquiring more. O_O Self, you have something like two hundred scents. That is LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS.
I think it's time to try changing up how I pick what to read, given that for ages now my method has largely been a combination of "buy books and put them on the shelf and don't read them because they don't have to get back to the library, with a few Read Right Now exceptions" and "see what books the library randomly sends me from my hold list because they've been on the list for two years, and then read that if time permits".
New plan: some combination of "go through my holds list and actually prioritize the books that friends have loved dearly (as opposed to enjoyed well enough to rec)" and "read the books I buy". So far, I'm implementing this as follows:
1) Today I went through my library list and unsuspended All Our Pretty Songs, Ancillary Justice, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Blackbirds, and Midnight Riot(/Rivers of London); Dreams of Gods and Monsters is already active, so I'll get it as soon as copies arrive and my number comes up.
2) From looking at the holds list, I think the next books to get unsuspended (and I'm doing this from memory, awkwardly, but also for my own reference) will be...Croak, Divergent, Eleanor & Park, The Girl of Fire and Thorns, Graceling, If I Stay, Incarnate, Life After Life, A Madness of Angels, The Summer Prince, and Three Parts Dead.
Or something.
3) And then there's reading the books I've actually bought. O_O And courtesy of having bought and shelved them, I have a sadly vague notion of what's on the shelf. Self-defeating, I know. >.< An incomplete list includes: the second and third books of Daniel Abraham's current (?) series (his series after The Long Price Quartet, anyway); Fangirl; N.K. Jemisin's The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun; a couple Cat Valente books (not her most recent, but from the last few years); Caitlin Kiernan's The Drowning Girl and Blood Oranges; The Goblin Emperor; a Michelle Sagara West novel, I think; the Veronica Mars novel; and The Raven Boys [see note]...
...plus some non-fiction, including God is Disappointed in You (which sounds much better than the title might lead you to suspect); Hyperbole and a Half; CBLDF Presents Manga: Introduction, Challenges, and Best Practices; and Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew...
...and a handful of anthologies I have solely because Seanan has stories in them: Coins of Chaos, Games Creatures Play (InCryptid story!), Fiction River: Hex in the City (InCryptid story!); Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond; and The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius.
None of this touches on manga or graphic novels.
Note 1: Raven Boys isn't on this list because I already own it, but am waiting until the sequel comes out in paperback this summer so I can buy it and read my own copies of both.
Note 2: Scott Lynch's first two books were looking weirdly OOP or something on Amazon, and the first one has been active on my library list for a couple of months without arriving, so tonight I gave up and just ordered all three from Chapters, since they were in stock. (The Lies Of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, and The Republic Of Thieves.) So let's hope I like them!
Note 3: Several of you are in love with Rosemary Kerstein's Steerswoman books, and I really want to read them, but I'm still figuring out if that means waiting until--as her website says she's working on--they're available digitally in some non-Kindle format. The three books that have been printed seem a bit tricky to get, and it sounds like all the rights have gone back to her and so the fourth book is digital only...? And I'm not giving Kindle money. I'm just not. I know buying [physical books] through Amazon means my money probably winds up in the same pot, but it doesn't go there with a label that says "YES I ENDORSE YOUR BUSINESS MODEL". (I know the other major ebook players aren't much better in terms of their TOS; I checked with Kas earlier, because I couldn't remember how they all compare, but he says that at least while the TOS are all similar and annoying and imply or state that you don't own your damn books, at least the other retailers haven't gone about cheerfully deleting books from people's ereaders.)
Originally posted at http://umadoshi.dreamwidth.org/517480.html. Comment here if you like, or comment there using OpenID. Comments at DW: