Custom Knits: Unleash Your Inner Designer with Top-Down and Improvisational Techniques  by Wendy Bernard (of knitandtonic.net) [GoodReads] is a lovely book.  I bought it because most written sweater patterns aren’t designed for someone as small as I am, which means I need to learn how to customize them.  I don’t want to spend all that time knitting a sweater, only to have it come out as something baggy and blechy that I’d never want to wear.  Also, most written patterns describe starting at the bottom and knitting up… which means you’ve knitted most of the sweater before you can try it on!  Knitting from the top-down allows you to try-as-you-go.

The book is clearly aimed at the modern (20s-30s, female) knitter.  The patterns are edgy, not boring baggy sweaters (whew!), but they’re items that real people might wear, and she includes suggestions for other ways to customize each pattern to “make it your own”.  They all call for finer weight yarn, so more knitting but less-bulky sweaters.  It has lots and lots of pictures… most of which involve scantily clad women and/or men.  (Only the women are wearing sweaters.  One picture seriously has a scantily clad pool boy in the background.  I don’t know why.)  The theme seems to be SoCal and beaches, since many of them are wearing swimsuits under their sweaters.

I wish there were more explanation of how each pattern works and how to calculate the numbers for your own body size, shape, and weight of yarn.  She gives instructions for a wider range of sizes than most patterns do; I think in most cases the extra small is too small even for me (this never happens, so I’m excited), and she goes up to 3x-large.  But the instructions are all for the particular gauge she specifies, so if you want to branch out by changing to a completely different yarn, you have to do the math, and figure out how to do the math, all on your own (or with another book).  I love her narrative voice, and wish she spent more time describing how she decides what changes to make to a sweater, and how to make those changes.

My favorite part is the two-page instructions on how to make your own dress-maker’s dummy using two rolls of duct tape, an old t-shirt, and a hanger.  (And cotton batting and your best friend.)  I’ve been wanting my own dummy for a long time, but the highly customizable ones are ridiculously expensive, and the lightly customizable ones will never be my shape.  This is something I could actually do.  (I just need to wait until purpleleopard finishes moving and has an afternoon to spend duct-taping me…)

I’ll let you know when I’ve knitted anything from the book …

There’s this theory that if you do a little of something every day, eventually you’ll have accomplished a whole lot of it.  For example, BIC—Butt In Chair—stands for sitting your butt in the chair every day, regardless of whether you “feel like it”, and just writing.  The corollary is, if you do a little every day you’ll get in the habit of doing a little (or possibly more) every day, and so it’ll be less of a struggle to do every day.  Twenty-one days to create a habit, or whatever that number is supposed to be.

But then there’s also this theory, which is mine, that there aren’t enough hours in the day, and there isn’t enough energy in my body, to do a little of all of the things I want to do every day.  Writing, house-keeping, paying attention to my people, WORKING for money, gardening, brushing my teeth (ok, I manage this one every day pretty well), sleeping (if I could only do without…), knitting, listening to interesting & educational podcasts.  Etc.  Oh yeah, and READING.  I do a whole lot of that already.

So instead, I tend to binge on those things.  I’ll spend a weekend vegging because I’ve been pushing too hard for too long.  I’ll spend another weekend away Doing Something.  I’ll spend the next weekend catching up on housework* and maybe knitting and watching TV.  I’ll spend another weekend on a knitting or sewing project.  Another weekend caring for my garden.  In most cases I’m not devoting the whole weekend to that activity, but rather a significant portion of my energy.  Same goes for weekday evenings.  This past week, I spent a lot of evenings between work and paying attention to my significant other.  Other weeks I manage to write in the evenings.  Other weeks I manage to at least compose a few blog posts.

I feel guilty when I haven’t written several days in a week.  I feel guilty when Ben’s hat is sitting half-made for several months.  It was his Christmas present.  With any luck it’ll be finished by next Christmas.  I have a sweater I want to start making some day**.  I have tomatoes that need my attention, and kefir & yogurt to make at least weekly, and …

But maybe it’s not so bad to accomplish things in fits and starts.  I do make progress on those things.  I keep them all going, one way or another.  Not always “on time”***.  The thing is, it’s not that I’m slacking off.  OK, I’m not consistently productive on any one thing.  But that’s not my style.  Maybe it’s time for me to accept my style as the one that works for me, and stop trying to be the person who does the same things every day, or even every week.

And by the way, I’ve read 27 books so far this year.  So I’m clearly not slacking off on my reading. 

——

* Apparently it’s been four weeks since I last did laundry.  :-/  That’s long even for me.

** I have to buy yarn first.

*** See: laundry, hat.

Being exhausted, achy, and miserable yesterday, I spent nearly all day lying in bed, reading (and finishing) NORTH & SOUTH by Elizabeth Gaskell.

I just couldn’t convince myself to get out of bed for longer than a meal.  Part of that was because I was miserable and achy, and part of that was because I’d totally fallen into the mid-19th century England that Gaskell described.  Fancy clothing, proper manners, class distinctions, people dying right and left.  Cotton mills, and strikes, and a passionate, scowly man who, despite being part of the upper-crust of his city, wasn’t quite a gentleman—not by London standards.  I was sucked into it, I had trouble imagining what in my real world could possibly be more important or more interesting than Margaret moving to a strange new town, than Thornton and his mill, or—I’ll be honest—whether Margaret & Thornton could manage to both like each other at the same time.

I felt lazy.  I felt like I was stealing time from the things I need to do–chores, keeping up with people, contributing to feeding my significant other and myself, watering my poor plants—and from the things I want to do—continuing projects I don’t have time for during the week, working on that story I’m in love with writing, writing blog posts because I like telling the world what it’s like to be me.  Etc.

But I LOVE to read.  I get absorbed into other worlds, other people’s lives.  I love it so much that I’ve taken up writing my own stories, because they don’t exist for me to read yet and I want to know what happens.  I love watching movies and TV, but I love books in this whole other way.  It’s immersive, not just visual and aural, but a truly engaging book will give me a whole-body experience.  I feel emotions and believe opinions that aren’t my own, because the characters feel and believe those things.  When I read for an hour at a time, it’s a nice pastime.  But reading a book all day—that feels like living the story.

That has its risks, too, of course.  When a story becomes more important than real life, is something out of balance*?  Is it escapism?  Or is it just truly enjoying an activity that isn’t bad for my health?

I don’t know.  But aside from the guilt, I liked spending all day reading.  And I felt less exhausted, achy, and miserable.  So it must be OK, right?

——

* Don’t they write creepy stories about books taking over a person’s life, a character sucking out the reader’s soul and living in her body?  Hmm…

I’m not a published author. I have no works in (or out of) print. But I hope to, some day. And this decision now will affect what can and will happen to my books (and my rights over them) when I am published.

Here’s how I understand the Google Book Settlement.‡

First, Google decided to borrow lots of books from libraries and digitize them, without asking the copyright holders for permission, and then made them searchable online. To go with that, Google would display ads to the people searching those books–effectively making money by presenting works they don’t own, without giving any money to the copyright holders (or asking for permission).

Then, some copyright holders and the Authors’ Guild got mad at Google and said, “hey, you’re a big bully!”* So Google said, “Oh, you’re right, I’m so sorry. Here, let’s settle this out of court. I’ll give you lots of money, and you let me keep doing what I’ve been doing. And you let me know if there are any books you don’t want me to digitize.**”

The Authors’ Guild’s eyes glazed over at the sight of the piles and piles of money, and they said, “Sure, ok!”

Then lots of other authors, who realized suddenly that the Authors’ Guild wasn’t actually representing them personally, took notice and said, “Wait a second. You want me to tell you that you aren’t allowed to digitize my works that I own? But I own them!” And then people started wondering, “Wait, what about copyright holders that we can’t find? Aren’t we just stealing their works?” And people in other countries said, “Uh, our works aren’t covered by U.S. copyright, so you’re not allowed to take our books without checking our laws.”

Then Google came back and said, “But this is the future, people! Can’t you see the future? A world where everyone can find exactly the bit of works they want, and they can check in advance whether they want to buy a book, from the comfort of their own livingrooms! (In their underwear!) Authors will make more money, because we’ll be selling more books! You can’t stop the progress of technology!” They also said, “This helps disabled people who can’t read have another way to access your work! This is all about the disabled people***! You’re hurting the disabled people!”

A lot of people (including me thought about this and said, “Ooh, the future is shiny. I likes it. I want the future!” And they also said, “I want to help the disabled people! Of course I do!”

But then they shook their heads and said, “Wait a minute. Why do we need to agree to this crazy thing just to help the future appear? Why do we need to give away people’s ownership of their own works in order to help people access those works? Why can’t we do this in a sensible way that benefits everyone? Let’s have an opt-in system!”

Lots of people joined the settlement with objections, lots of others opted out of the settlement with objections. Lots of people had no idea what to do, so they did nothing. And there were probably some people who liked the settlement just fine, and accepted it.

Finally, it went before the court, who, taking over a year to do so, had to decide whether this settlement was “fair, adequate, and reasonable.” It (by which I mean he, Judge Chin, my hero) concluded “that it is not.” See here for his full opinion: http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/cases/show.php?db=special&id=115. Judge Chin gives a remarkably open-minded response–in other words, he explains exactly why this isn’t fair or adequate or reasonable.  Yay!†  Score one for the rights of the little people!

Also, here’s SFWA’s announcement: http://www.sfwa.org/2011/03/judge-rejects-google-book-settlement/

—

‡ Does the internet need another person describing the issue and talking about it in public? Of course not. But I’m happy about the recent court decision, and so I’m going to talk about it.

* All dialogue^ and actions described herein are invented by me, and probably bear little resemblance to the actual events. Particularly the bit about glazing, in the next paragraph.

^ And, uh. Chrome’s spell-checker is telling me that “dialogue” isn’t spelled that way. Really? It prefers dialog. Dialog is only a valid spelling (in my Not So Humble opinion) for dialog boxes, those things that pop up and ask questions. If actual people are talking to actual other people, then it’s a dialogue. With a “u” and an “e”. *sigh* What is this world coming to?

** This is known as having to opt-out of the settlement. It puts the burden of administration onto the authors and publishers, instead of putting it onto Google who would be benefiting from the settlement.

*** I’m just certain there’s a more PC term I should be using here, but I’m failing to think of it. If you can suggest a better way to phrase this, please let me know. I don’t want to detract from my otherwise funny story by offending anyone.

† Ok, seriously?  Chrome thinks “yay” isn’t a word, either.  Nor “ok”.  This, right here, is why I usually disable spell checkers.  And grammar checkers.

Once again, I’ve been remiss about posting what I’ve read lately, so here’s a start.  In no particular order…

Uglies, Pretties, and Specials, a trilogy by Scott Westerfield.  I devoured these.  Well, I devoured each one individually, though I gave myself at least a week between each one and insisted that I read something else.  You know, to let myself savor them for longer.    They are YA, a dystopic future earth where everyone undergoes surgery on their 16th birthday to become Pretty–that is, to be surgically reformed to be a more attractive and more resilient version of themselves–and then they party and have fun for years.  At some age later in life (not specified), all people undergo another surgery to become “Middle Pretty”, which means they are made to be wiser looking, distinctively older, and at that point they get jobs.  When they are older still, they have a third surgery to become “Old Pretty”, or “Crumbly”.  The main character is Tally, who in the first book is still “ugly” and wants nothing more than to become pretty.  But when her friend runs away from The City to avoid the surgery, secret government officials force Tally to follow her, or else she’ll never become pretty.  And what happens when she realizes she doesn’t want to betray the run-aways?  You should read these.  They’re fun, and I love the questions they ask.  (Incidentally, there is another book in the series that I haven’t read yet, called Extras, which seems to have a different MC.)

—-

Soulless, by Gail Carriger.  What happens if you take horror, romance, steampunk, Jane Austen’s manners, Oscar Wilde’s satire, threw in urban fantasy, and set it in Victorian London?  You’d get a fun story about a woman (who doesn’t have a soul) who inadvertently kills a vampire in the first chapter, causes trouble for a werewolf in the second chapter, and gets mixed up with a scientist in some later chapter.  In short, you’d get Soulless, which I thought was great fun, easy to read (once I got used to the semi-Victorian language), and promises an exciting sequel.  (Changeless, which is already out, and Blameless will be coming in September.)

—-

Ok, there are still a whole bunch more.  I’m sure I’ll remember to post about them soon…

Ok, so I really liked keeping track of the books I was reading last year.  I didn’t read much for the first couple of months of this year, and then even when I did I didn’t get around to mentioning them.  So, here they are.

Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman (suricattus), Book One of the Vineart War.  I ordered a copy from Amazon as soon as it came out, because I’ve liked her books before and this one sounded different-and-interesting.  And then before it arrived, I went to World Fantasy Con and got a free copy in my book bag.  Which I then had to keep, so I could get her to sign it, because I didn’t have my copy yet. *facepalm*  I started reading it immediately, and enjoyed it immensely, but then got distracted (as I do) and didn’t finish it until this year.  And now I’m sad that I did, because the next book isn’t out yet, and I want to know what happens next.

The awesome premise is that magic comes from wine.  Or from grapes, but isn’t usable until it’s made into wine and then the wine is turned into magical wine.  The Vinearts are the men who have this ability, basically they’re vintners with extra magic.  (Can’t tell me there isn’t already magic in turning fruit into the strange thing that wine is.)  The main character, Jerzy, is a new apprentice, and in this book we follow him learning how the magics work, as Weird Dangerous Things start happening in the world, affecting him and his master.

The main thing is that I just wanted to follow Jerzy and find out what happens next.  He’s an adorable character.  I read a review somewhere (of course I forget which one now) that complained that nothing happens in this book, and while I can see where they got that opinion, I don’t quite agree.  Things build in this book, and they’re just starting to come apart at the end.  This is clearly the first part of a multi-book story arc, not a series of standalone novels, and while I wouldn’t have minded a little more resolution at the end of this one, it stopped at a good breathing point.

Quatrain by Sharon Shinn.  Ok, you may have noticed that I read all of her books, and generally like them all.  Yep, it’s true, and this is no exception.  This one is four novellas (hence the title), each one set in one of her worlds.

The one set in the world of Archangel was wonderful and satisfying, with a middle-aged main character who has already messed up her life and learned better, long before the story starts.  It takes place just a year or two before Archangel, and while the main characters aren’t mentioned in Archangel (that I recall), another character is key in that one.

Then I skipped to the last story, which is set in the world of the Thirteen Houses, because I remember that series well.  This story takes place before the first book (Mystic and Rider), but doesn’t quite cover the chapter that I think is missing from the beginning of that book.  :-/  Still, it was fun and interesting, showing Senneth before the whole group get together.

Summers at Castle Auburn and Heart of Gold were both standalone novels, and I read them years ago and never re-read them.  So, I vaguely rememeber that Summers was about a girl and is fantastical, while Gold is about a world with gold-skinned people and blue-skinned people who have serious issues with each other, set in a city where the two races both live and must interact, and is sci fi.  And that’s about all I remember.  (If I’d been keeping track of what I read back then, maybe I would’ve written more here to jog my memory.  Alas.)  Still, my mom convinced me that I should read the two stories set in those worlds, even though I didn’t remember the original books well enough.

She was right.  The stories totally stand on their own, explain just as much of the world as they need to to be very readable.  I’m reasonably certain that if I remembered any character names I would get references to the characters from the original novels, but the main characters in these stories are new to these stories.  The story set in the world of Heart of Gold was wonderful and powerful, about a man in a difficult society who has grown up to be strong and well-mannered despite his childhood, who meets a woman who completely changes his idea of how people are or should be.  Or can be.  I didn’t want it to end, but I was satisfied by the ending.

The story set in the world of Summers at Castle Auburn is about a teen-aged girl who goes through an experience that ought to mature her, yet somehow doesn’t.  At the end she is just as self-centered and flighty as at the beginning, and she comes out on top through no fault of her own.  Now, it’s not her fault that she can’t save herself, but … it just wasn’t as gripping of a story because the character does things that aren’t the right things, over and over.  She doesn’t learn anything, and at the end I felt like she wasn’t deserving of what she got.  :-/

So the stories I liked best were about grown-ups dealing with grown-up issues.  The one about the girl dealing with girlish issues just didn’t do anything for me.  And the one about Senneth… it wasn’t a bad story, but it wasn’t as gripping as the others.  (No characters fell in love in that one, so maybe that’s the issue.  Also, it’s about a main character we already know, whereas the others are all about new characters.  Maybe *that’s* the issue.  I’m not sure.)

Finally, I read a manuscript by one of the people in my writing group.  It’s the second in a series, and the first has been published recently.  Since I can’t tell you about the new one (except that it was great fun , I’ll tell you a bit about the first.  Frost Moon by Anthony Francis is about Dakota Frost, the best magical tattoo artist in the southeast.  She’s tall and imposing, with a mohawk and long leather vest, sleeveless to show off the tattoos all over her body, which she can set in motion and even detach from her body.  Dakota is both edgy and normal–her childhood and early adulthood aren’t that different from any real person’s life.  It’s set in Atlanta, a city I don’t know at all, but where Anthony lived for many years, and he’s written it as a period piece set in 2006.  Every detail is as accurate for that city in that year (and month, even) as he could make it.  Except, of course, that magical tattoos, were-creatures and vampires didn’t really exist in Atlanta in 2006.  (Or did they…? :p )  There is a serial killer who’s been killing magical people, and Dakota gets pulled into the investigation.  It’s Urban Fantasy, along the lines of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, but Dakota starts out less experienced in death and mayhem than Anita, but she feels more worldly and down-to-earth.

Ok, this has gone on forever, and I’m going to make sure it’s behind a cut (or two or three).  But hey, I’m caught up now.    (I have started several other books since then, but haven’t finished any of them yet.  Because I’m like that.)

The Shadow Queen is the latest of Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels series. Sometime in the past year I wrote about her last book, whose title I’ve completely forgotten.

This one was gripping as ever, though I deliberately started it during the morning on vacation so I wouldn’t have to stay up all night to finish it. And I managed to sleep all night (twice) before finishing it this morning. *proud of self*

This time we were focusing on new characters, descendants of those in The Invisible Ring, but we still spent quite a bit of time with the main characters from the original trilogy. It was an interesting balance, and it made sense, but it felt like Bishop was having to work at finding the main conflict. There was an interpersonal struggle which seemed guaranteed to work out, a small mystery to resolve, and a subplot that could’ve easily been taken out with no loss to the storyline. There was a story, and I wanted to see how it would turn out, but no major bad guy. Not a problem, but interesting to notice.

I wouldn’t bother recommending it to anyone who hasn’t read the trilogy, but if you have you’ll probably enjoy it.

(This is the one I read just before the end of the year.

I’ve totaled up all of the books that I’ve posted about here this year, and assuming I don’t finish any more books in the next four days (no guarantees! Yep, I did after all.), this is my summary for the year:

Novellas: 4 (possibly more, because some of the short stories I read were quite long, but I haven’t counted those.)

Started and abandoned: 1 (Elantris.  There are lots of other books I started and haven’t finished, but I do expect to finish them some day.  I’ll post about them then.)

Comics: 2 (or 3, depending on how you count — and I’m only counting full-length books, not the flimsies.)

Books: 45 46

So, that’s nearly a book a week, not counting all of the other books I haven’t yet finished.  Whew.

—

My New Year’s Resolution: Not to acquire any books or stories of any kind for all of 2010.

I’m giving myself a moratorium on getting books.  I bought or have been given/lent so many books this year (and last year, and the year before that…), and I’m afraid I’ll never get through them all, if I keep getting new books at the rate I do.  So, 2010 is my year to catch up.  My goal is to keep posting these “recently read” posts as often as I remember, and to get through a large number of the books I already have.  This includes a number of books that aren’t as easy as my usual sci fi/fantasy fare, like The Three Musketeer, and a ton of books that I’ve started and never finished.  I may decide to restart some of those

Here’s a long list, without much commentary, of the other books I’ve read this year, but never managed to write up a post about.

1. I re-read Gabriel’s Ghost (which I first read a couple of years ago, and had since forgotten the whole plot of) and then read its sequel, Shades of Dark. Bought the third one, Hope’s Folly, which I will read when I get a round tuit.  They are all by Linnea Sinclair, who writes entertaining Sci-Fi Romance novels.

2. George R. R. Martin wrote a comic book set in the same world as A Song of Ice and Fire, but a long time ago, called Hedge Knight, parts 1 and 2.  No recollection of who the artist was or anything, but it was a fun story.

3. The comic of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, which was really well done.

4. I read The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines (jimchines).  I’d read his Goblin books and enjoyed them so much that I was really looking forward to this book.  But honestly, this one didn’t captivate me as much as the Goblin books.  I liked that the main characters are kick-ass princesses rescuing the kidnapped prince, but … they weren’t as expectation-bending as I would’ve liked.  He has since released the second one, The Mermaid’s Madness, and the third book, Red Hood’s Revenge, should be coming out early next year.  I will still buy them and read them, because I like him as an author and I hope he will take the series into new and surprising directions, but not yet.

5. Victory Conditions – the last Ky Vatta novel by Elizabeth Moon.  Since it had been over a year, maybe even two, since I read the 5th Ky Vatta novel, and I didn’t bother re-reading any of the previous ones, it took me a while to figure out what state the relationships were in.  I remembered most of the plot, but who knew what about whom, and who was interested in whom… that took a bit longer.  Still, it was fun, and I love the fact that Moon writes military sci-fi with a fabulous female main character, who isn’t just a guy with tits.

6. The Rowan by Anne McCaffrey.  This was the first “grown up” sci fi book I ever read, when I was 10.  I’ve read it several times, but hadn’t read it in about a decade.  Since I’ve been working so hard on Craft in the past several years, I read it this time with my Writer Goggles on. I noticed that she doesn’t often tell us the story through the Rowan’s PoV, but rather from the characters around her. And that she often uses a 3rd Omniscient narrator, who talks about the overarching history or sequence of events leading to what she’s describing. And she switches PoV characters (3rd omniscient -> some character -> 3rd omniscient -> some other character), without switching scenes. This style doesn’t usually work for me, and yet it all flows smoothly, and I’m never left wondering “who’s thinking this?” or “wait, that was Afra‘s thought??” or anything. How does she do that? Clearly, I have more to learn.

6a. I also re-read Damia and Damia’s Children, sequels to The Rowan.  Damia is a wonderful story, but McCaffrey changed her narrative style.  Despite the title, it’s more Afra’s story than Damia’s.  It starts with Afra’s childhood and how he arrived at Callisto to work with the Rowan, and so it fills in the ten-year gap in The Rowan, as well as filling in some of the story around the Rowan through the rest of that story.  And then it skips ahead to after The Rowan ends to when The Rowan’s third child, Damia, is a toddler, and follow her life–but again, largely from Afra’s PoV.  There isn’t nearly the same amount of jumping around of perspectives, and more is shown rather than told.  It is narrated more like the usual third person limited that we’ve become used to in fantasy, rather than the pleasing third person omniscient from The Rowan.  Damia’s Children shifts style yet again, now following a few of Damia’s children (she has eight!) for short periods of time, never really returning to any of them.  Damia herself seems much more stable, and less interesting, than she was in her own novel.  And now the third person omniscient tone is gone completely, and all is focused on the plot rather than the characters.  I meant to continue on with Lyon’s Pride and The Tower and the Hive, the fourth and fifth books in the trilogy, but … well, I lost interest.  I think with most of McCaffrey’s series, I find that the first two books are the best, and they degenerate from there.

7. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. OMG!  This one is a YA story about a kid called Bod, short for Nobody Owens, who is raised by the ghosts in a Graveyard.  It’s a bit dark, but mostly it’s fun and wacky.  Each chapter is pretty much a standalone story about Bod, but strung together in chronological order there is a larger story arc, which is satisfyingly completed by the end.  I highly recommend that everyone go find a copy and read it.

8. The memoir of a woman who went to Le Cordon Bleu, called The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School, by Kathleen Flinn.  It was recommended to me by a coworker, who shares a lot of the same interest in books as me.  I don’t usually read memoirs, but this one was entertaining, takes place in Paris, and is about cooking–which I’m not very good at, but have been working on gaining skill at.

9. A short little book called The 10% Solution, which is about how to revise any written thing.  I got it because it sounded kinda interesting and was available in kindle format, and I’d just gotten Lord Goring.  And I knew I wasn’t likely to want to pass it along to anyone.

10. In Ashes Lie by Marie Brennan (swan-tower)!  She’s such a good writer, and she’s writing high fantasy set in London.  She manages to use just enough old-fashioned English to provide the flavor of the time, without becoming unreadable.  And you can tell how much research she did to get her historical facts accurate.  She just happens to throw immortal Faeries into the story.  The first one, Midnight Never Come, is set in Elizabethan London.  This one is set in the London of King Charles I, the first European King to be beheaded.  It covers his reign through the Great Fire, with the Great Fire being the unifying theme.

11. Also, Deeds of Men, the novella that fits between Midnight Never Come and In Ashes Lie.  You can find it here: http://www.swantower.com/marie/stories/onyx/dom.html.  Also very good, flipping between two time periods, which creates an interesting level of mystery.  Brennan seems to enjoy playing with time in her stories, and she is good at it.

12. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams.  Yes, I don’t usually count picture books.  But I got it free to read on Lord Goring (no pictures, sadly), and then I read it.  And I really enjoyed it.  I hadn’t read the story in ages and ages. It’s such a sweet story, and doesn’t end nearly as sadly as I’d remembered.  Somehow my memory stops at the point when the rabbit gets thrown away because the boy was sick, and I was so upset by the notion of a stuffed animal being thrown away.  But in the end he becomes a real rabbit, and even gets to see the boy again.

13. Worms Eat My Garbage (second edition) by Mary Appelhof.  It’s a short little book about how to keep a worm bin, so worms can eat all of your kitchen scraps and turn them into compost, which are good for the garden.  I’ve been wanting to do this for about a year now.  I keep saying that once I’m more moved-in I’ll set one up.  I even have the bins for it, but one of them still has stuff in it.  :-/  And now Ben has gone and gotten a compost bin (which hasn’t arrived yet) for all of our kitchen scraps, as though he’s trying to avoid my worms.  So rude.  So, I’ll set one up next year sometime.  Once the bin is unpacked and emptied.

14. Angelica, by Sharon Shinn.  This is the fourth book in the Archangel series, and I’ve read it before.  But I lent it to a coworker, and when she gave it back and we were talking about it I realized how much of the story I had forgotten.  So, I read it again.  It’s a nice story, but it’s another one where the action never really gets fast-paced and the conflict never gets heated.  The two main characters are both very level-headed, even-keeled people, so there’s not a lot of room for fiery interpersonal conflict.  And then the climax of the plot didn’t really involve the main characters doing much, which seems a bit odd.  But the relationships and growth of the characters were interesting, so I didn’t stop reading.

15. And somehow I never wrote about reading Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles, Mutants and Microbes, a compendium which includes: Falling Free, a very cool story set 200 years before Miles’ time about genetically created people called Quaddies who have four arms instead of two arms and two legs, making them ideal for functioning in zero-g environments; “Labyrinth” (also included in some other volume that I read); and Diplomatic Immunity, which is the last Miles story to date (teardrop), and has him being a diplomat resolving a political dispute with the descendants of the original Quaddies, who now have colonized their own solar system.  They were all wonderful, and I love how gracefully LMB handles complicated subjects like mutants.

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Ok, that’s all I could find evidence of.  I may have read some other books, but I can’t find them now.  I read a lot of short stories and magazines and blogs this year, but they’re too specific to list.

Rutabaga!

I really liked Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson*.  It’s a YA book published by Scholastic, so it’s printed in a big font, and the cover looks like it’s aimed at kids.  And it’s fun.  The premise is that the known world is actually ruled by Evil Librarians, who deliberately control all of the information that we have access to in order to keep us docile and under their thumb.  They’re trying to take over the whole world, and have so far succeeded in taking over the seven continents that we know about.  There are actually three more.  The main character is named Alcatraz, and some of the people he meets are named Bastille, Sing Sing, Quentin, and Leavenworth.  Are they all named after famous prisons?  No!  The famous prisons are all named after them!

Beyond the premise, I really enjoyed the writing style.  It’s narrated by the main character, Alcatraz, who is 13 during this book, and is filled with meta-description, about how to write a book and leaving cliff-hangers and things.  One of my favorite meta-sections, at the beginning of chapter 11:

You probably assume you know what is going to happen next: me, tied to an altar, about to get sacrificed.  Unfortunately, you’re wrong.  The story hasn’t gotten to that part yet.

This revelation may annoy you.  It may even frustrate you.  If it does, then I’ve achieved my purpose.  However, before you throw this book against the wall, you should understand something about storytelling.

Some people assume that authors write books because we have vivid imaginations and wan to share our vision.  Other people assume that authors write because we are bursting with stories, and therefore must scribble those stories down in moments of creative propondidty.

Both groups of people are completely wrong.  Authors write books for one, and only one, reason: because we like to torture people.

All in all, a very entertaining book.

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I enjoyed Gateway, the new book by Sharon Shinn.  It’s also YA, I think, but aimed at a slightly older age group.  The main character, Daiyu, is a high school-aged Chinese girl who was adopted as a baby by white Americans, who are now living in St. Louis.  I must say, St. Louis is one of those cities that I’ve never been anywhere near, so I kinda believe that it doesn’t really exist.  So, it works really well for me for the start of a fantasy novel.    One day, walking under the St. Louis arch transports her to another world.  The other world oddly mimics hers–e.g. the city is laid out very similarly to St. Louis–and in other ways is completely different.  In this other world, the dominant population are all Han, who look just like Chinese in our world.  There are white and black people, who are poor minorities with crummy jobs.  She is immediately brought into this conspiracy, in which she is the only one who can infiltrate the upper class in order to reach a very important person.  It actually does make sense (despite my confusing description), and provides a fun story.  The book isn’t as exciting or fast-paced as I’ve gotten used to fantasy adventures being.  But it was a nice story and I wanted to know how Daiyu would manage.  I kept wondering how Shinn could possibly end the story in a satisfying way, which may have been what drove me to finish.  I wasn’t disappointed by the ending.

Shinn, a white woman living in St. Louis, is looking at race in this story.  It’s not the point of the story, but neither is it just tacked on like an after-thought.  Daiyu being Chinese is a critical aspect of the plot.  But I didn’t read any moral or Statement about race within the story.

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* My mom and I picked up Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians at the booksigning for TGS.  We figured we might as well support the local independent bookstore Bay Book Co.^ who was kindly hosting the signing by buying a couple of books.  My reaction to Sanderson’s first book, Elantris, was less than meh and I never finished it.  I thought he did TGS very well, though, so it was worth giving him another try.  crazyfaerie tells me that Mistborn is worth reading, so I’ll probably get around to it.

^ Which also sells wooden pipes and tobacco.  Random, but cool.