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I took a peek at my power bill online yesterday. $165 in installation and startup fees alone. I shudder to think what the bill for the actual use of these services will be. On top of that, I need to have the septic system pumped because it's three years overdue on that score, and I don't want to be swimming in raw sewage. Why my mother neglected such an important aspect of plumbing maintenance, I don't know. She's been married to plumbers for most of her adult life. So there goes another $250-$300 And since the ants have continued to find ingress despite a recent caulking frenzy(they were coming out of the phone jack last night), a call to the Orkin man might be in order. Plus, I have to repay my mother for the utility deposit and the cost of storage bins she bought. I'm hemorrhaging money. I bought a tray of pico de gallo on Saturday and felt positively naughty.
Still, life is steadily settling into a routine. I've begun to write again, and read. Since I've moved here, I've finished two books and started a third.
The Terror, by Dan Simmons: B+ Would've been an A had he not lapsed into an aggravating literary didactism in the closing chapters. I know you had to research Inuit culture, mythology, and folklore, Mr. Simmons, and I appreciate your due diligence in so doing. That doesn't mean I want an infodump that reads like an earnest college junior's term paper shoehorned into otherwise taut, effective prose. I appreciated the story much more when I couldn't see the tweed dinner jacket you were wearing to the fusty anthropology professors' masquerade ball.
Brief lapse into dull, thudding tract territory aside, the book's rich historical detail and unrelentingly claustrophobic atmosphere make for delicious reading. The characters are deeply flawed, fully realized, and hauntingly human. You're told at the outset how the story ends, yet I found myself rooting for the man to thwart authorial predestination. I want a last-second miracle, for the historical fiction to veer into the kinder realm of "fix-it" fiction, but Simmons is a braver man than I. Some of the deaths actually made me angry for their pathetic futility. A good read for a cold winter night.
A Lion Among Men, by Gregory Maguire: C-. Maguire's magic is wearing exceedingly thin. This read as if he'd had an outline for a more complex tale, but couldn't be assed to flesh it out. The hilariously irreverent Mother Yackle was the only reason to plow through the tale of Brr, the spineless, sniveling, utterly unengaging Cowardly Lion, and even she was grossly undermined when the fantastic plunged bitterly and unexpectedly into the absurd. The Tiktok Clock and the further exploration of Ozian politics were a delight, however. Sadly, they weren't enough to overcome Maguire's obvious apathy.
Still, life is steadily settling into a routine. I've begun to write again, and read. Since I've moved here, I've finished two books and started a third.
The Terror, by Dan Simmons: B+ Would've been an A had he not lapsed into an aggravating literary didactism in the closing chapters. I know you had to research Inuit culture, mythology, and folklore, Mr. Simmons, and I appreciate your due diligence in so doing. That doesn't mean I want an infodump that reads like an earnest college junior's term paper shoehorned into otherwise taut, effective prose. I appreciated the story much more when I couldn't see the tweed dinner jacket you were wearing to the fusty anthropology professors' masquerade ball.
Brief lapse into dull, thudding tract territory aside, the book's rich historical detail and unrelentingly claustrophobic atmosphere make for delicious reading. The characters are deeply flawed, fully realized, and hauntingly human. You're told at the outset how the story ends, yet I found myself rooting for the man to thwart authorial predestination. I want a last-second miracle, for the historical fiction to veer into the kinder realm of "fix-it" fiction, but Simmons is a braver man than I. Some of the deaths actually made me angry for their pathetic futility. A good read for a cold winter night.
A Lion Among Men, by Gregory Maguire: C-. Maguire's magic is wearing exceedingly thin. This read as if he'd had an outline for a more complex tale, but couldn't be assed to flesh it out. The hilariously irreverent Mother Yackle was the only reason to plow through the tale of Brr, the spineless, sniveling, utterly unengaging Cowardly Lion, and even she was grossly undermined when the fantastic plunged bitterly and unexpectedly into the absurd. The Tiktok Clock and the further exploration of Ozian politics were a delight, however. Sadly, they weren't enough to overcome Maguire's obvious apathy.
