Summer Reading With Old Friends

As summer reaches its apex I look at my list of "Summer Reads" and find I have started a few, but not finished a one.  Choosing instead to pick an old favorite off the nightstand and re-read the "good" parts.  I didn't used to do this much, but as I get older I find I'm not so interested in making new "friends", but prefer quality time with old pals.   Perhaps this is how classics came into being. 

And so I've been perusing my shelves, reacquainting myself with friends.  Valen, Verall, Vetch, Vlad (V named characters make very nice friends) Constantine, Terrant, Galen, & Deomon Sadi (some nice characters aren't always "good" guys).  Characters are the heart of a novel for me.  If the characters are not the main focus than the story will never hold me.  Characters a also the main reason I drop a book like bad leftovers.  When an author betrays a character's personality for plot...Bad.  When a character is killed for no reason...Bad.  Then characters read like cardboard standees...bad.

   Take Harry Potter.  A number of people I know have been plugging into the Harry Potter final mania of late so why not me.  I really did enjoy the first three books.  In fact I remember reading the first one when most people had no idea who Harry Potter was (the joys of being a librarian) and thinking this was a character set with potential.  I adored book three the most.  The crazy "uncle" Sirius who I hoped would become Harry's family and offer him a new and exciting view of the wizarding world.  And Harry, in turn, would help his "uncle" clear his name and perhaps come to think of the wizarding world with less cynicism and more child like wonderment....then Book 4 happened.  Poison in the heart for me.  But I kept hoping something good would happen....Nope. Characters dropping by the wayside  like flies and for no good reason,  predictability, and then there was all the hiding in a tent and whining while the interesting plot went on "off screen" and we never got to read it!  I came to dislike Harry a lot and wished he wasn't the focus of the story.

  Perhaps this, and I'll admit a few other literary disappointments in the last few years, are to blame for my lack of wanting something new to read.  I wait eagerly for the novels my few favorite authors throw like bones to readers ever year or two. Quality over quantity.  I have also come to terms with the fact that, while I was an English major and a librarian, I prefer flights of fancy.  Oh, I'll peruse the "fiction" sections now and again or even the Mystery area, but in the end I want magic, dragons, rough and ready heroes that are not knights in shining armor (see Romance for those), but know their way around a sword. And most of all I want my adventurers not to be whiny.

*****
If you really want to know what I'm reading...

Black Jewels Trilogy
Exile's Honor
Breath and Bone
Last Herald Mage
King of Attolia
Reader and Raylinx

In The Bleak Mid-summer

It is now post mid-summer's eve and the season has descended into that time I think of as a preview of Hell. It has turned hot. As in 90+ with it burning the clouds from the sky. My flowers started wilting and so did I.

For example, I went to a family reunion on Saturday - outside. Had a gosh offal head ache the whole time, but got through it. When I got home I downed a tall glass of ice water (and yes I was constantly drinking @ the reunion...but not in THAT way (I wish), wiped myself with a cold wet cloth and sat by and air conditioner. Within minutes I had no head ache and was bright and perky.

As you can see I do not do the heat thing. However, I have been sewing to my little hearts content. I've made a colonial outfit to wear next weekend to the lace demos. I've set up a couple new lace things. crocheted a bag. And, thanks to Rick's furious cleaning, I now have boxes to store fabric in.

I've also been writing on my Briarwood story...that's a tentative title. #2 it Briar Root. Anyway, lots going on and my time is spent doing other things so we'll see when the next post happens.

Find More Eggs

Here is the Easter Egg Hunt of 2011

Happy Easter

 

Early Morning Play

I was awoken one early morning this week by a Provo city utility worker letting me know that I would be without water for most of the day.  There was a water main break up the road that needed fixing.  This breakage included the system that sends water to the fire-hydrant in my front yard. So for 2 hours they drained it.

I think I would be deficit as a mother if I didn't take my water loving girl outside and let her play.  Yes, it was a cold morning, but that's what coats are for.  She was quite wary of the hydrant pitting water and the 2 guys standing near it so we played in the river that flowed down 1000 East.  Fun times and wild morning hair.

Do What You Can

When life hands you rotting tomatoes, might as well start a food fight.  My family has had a plethora of rotten tomatoes of late and I'm getting sick to death of food fights.  I would love a peaceful period.

I have found myself doing a lot of spiritual thinking of late.  In fact, just yesterday My husband told me that his sister said it was okay to do her work when she dies (which may be in the next few months) and I had an amazing discussion with my friend Stacy about angels.  My mother believes in guardian angels and often I think it would be wonderful to meet mine.  

Would he be a soft child like being or mysterious and dark just because I like that style and would think he's cool? 

 

 

Then again maybe not. 

On Angels - Czeslaw Milosz
All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe in you,
messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.

Short is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.

They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for the humans invented themselves as well.

The voice -- no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?),
girdled with the lightening.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

day draw near
another one
do what you can.

Prophetic April Fool

Often in plays the fool speakes much of the wisdom and prooves him/herself phofetic.  Today that would be me.  I thought of a grand April Fool's joke.  I cleaned the kitchen completely (a job my DH often does - I do the bathroom) And sent him an email saying that we had a flood in the house.  Well, when he went to fill the tub for Boo's bath he found we had no hot water.  When we looked in the basement there was a 3 foot wide wet zone from the water heater to the drain pipe *sigh*

It was only supposed to be a joke.  Next year I'll give fools Day a miss.  He hope that it's an easy fix...we'll know when Dad comes up from the basement.  At least all my dishes are clean and I got in most of my laundry.  I however, am a skodey mess.  *sigh*  Calgone take me away.