World Enough and Time

I took commodorified up on her offer of reading a story over the phone, and she read me a Vinyl Cafe story I'd never read before, in which Dave sets out to move an electrical outlet in the kitchen. It was delightfully funny and I am most grateful to commodorified for the laugh.

I love being read to. Good readers are worth their weight in gold. It's not like an audiobook - yes, I like them too, but that's a different kind of media. Having a person actually reading in person (even if on the phone a few miles away) is different, and better.

Today: I started cataloging my books. Yesterday I sorted them by author and subject, and put them onto the shelves. Today... well, writing down all the titles and authors into a spreadsheet on my tablet was harder than it sounds. I did two and half shelves - maybe 100 books - and decided to call it a day.

Made shepherd's pie for supper, in the slow cooker, with sweet potatoes. It turned out lovely.

Sheila, Ian and I watched an episode of Luther, which I didn't much like. I don't like stories about serial killers, and it was all rather dark and intense.

Audiobook du jour: "The Talisman Ring" by Georgetter Heyer.

Day 44 of yoga.

Day 127 of Duolingo. I've been doing Duolingo a lot longer than that, but I took a break for a couple of weeks back about 140 days ago.

World of Warcraft: Pet battles and archaeology, bringing Azurdil the Blood Elf Paladin to level 86.

"I truly don't mean this in any kind of an arrogant way, but I feel very liberated at the moment. And whatever the reviewers feel about The Casual Vacancy, it is what I wanted it to be, and you can't say fairer than that as a writer." - J.K. Rowling

Remember how excited I was to find a series of urban fantasy that I loved, the Ilona Andrews series about Kate Daniels?

Having read all the Kate Daniels novels there are (so far), I looked at a few other novels of that type, wasn't impressed, and moved on to other books.

Today I found another one, and read it all. Grave Witch by Kalayna Price. There's a quote on the cover by Patricia Briggs - not really a good thing for me, because I find Patricia Briggs kind of boring - luckily I didn't notice that before I started reading. And Patricia Briggs says the book is "intriguing and original". Intriguing, absolutely. Original? Well, I thought it was remarkably like the Kate Daniels series. Both books are set in the American south-east in a near-future where magic is overt and the world has made accommodation with it. The protagonist of each book is a magic-wielding female private eye who lives alone in a shabby apartment with a funny-looking dog. In both cases, she becomes romantically involved with a powerful and sexy man whom she sees as a danger to her. In both cases, she's more powerful than we thought she was - or than she thought she was. In both cases, her father is powerful (in different ways) and her identity and her heritage are entwined and important to the story.

Understand, I'm not complaining. I love the book because it's similar to another series I loved. And really, what I love isn't the setting, the plot, or the situation; if you'd have told me what the story was about, I'd probably have decided not to read it. I'm glad I didn't know beforehand, because this is one of the few novels I've encountered with Fae characters that I've really enjoyed. (Shakespeare doesn't count; anyway, that was a play.)

And there are aspects of this book that really did strike me as original: the characterization of Death, for example.

Now I'm eager to read the next novel about Alex Craft, Grave Dance.

20-Minute Retreats by Rachel Harris. I liked the way this book is set up. Lots of good quotes. Every chapter is about a trait - Faith, Forgiveness, Intuition - and each chapter contains exercises... no, 'exercises' isn't a good word for it - contains meditations on fostering that trait. And each chapter has questions pointing out why a person would need to retreat. For instance:

1. You can hardly remember the last time you had a moment to yourself.
   
2. You feel an unquenchable inner yearning.
   
3. You don't laugh as much as you used to.

These things relate to lives of stress and distraction, and in every chapter my answer to the questions was 'no'. Okay, given the examples above, I do feel an unquenchable inner yearning - but it isn't a desire for spiritual peace, which I think I have, it's a desire to learn and experience life, and I wouldn't want to lose that. Curiosity and a sense of wonder: the most valuable things in my life.

I laugh a lot. Living alone, and currently having no job, I get as much time to myself as I want. I don't feel consumed by guilt or anger, I'm not plagued by anxiety. Which is not to say I don't have my worries; 'unemployed', remember? But on the whole, I began to feel like an impostor just opening the book.

At one point Harris pointed out that saying we can't find twenty minutes in a day to relax, retreat, and meditate, is simply wrong - we probably spend twenty minutes a day watching ads on television. To which I could only think, hoo, boy, this book is so not addressed to me. I don't spent two minutes a day watching ads on TV. Never have, never will, don't want to.

So, okay, accepting that this book wasn't written for me, it was still a good read. Some of the exercises in deep breathing, visualization, chakra work and creativity are things I may well do. Some of the quotes ( were terrific. For example... )

My plan: to reread A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. For three reasons:

1. Because it's fun, and meaty, and well worth a reread
   
2. Because there is soon to be a TV miniseries made of it
   
3. Because one of my Dunnett mailing lists is starting a discussion of it

So this morning I read ( the Prologue... )