imhilien

Well, the weather is up and down - some days it's t-shirt weather (hooray!) and then the next day it's put on those extra layers again. Sigh. How did it get to being December tomorrow? Some Dr Who trickery involved, I'm sure.

*whirring sounds*

TV I've Watched

I've finally caught up watching S3 of 'The Mandalorian' and I really liked it - the last few episodes made me feel happy about Star Wars again. I'm sure I've said I sometimes view the recent movie trilogy as fan fic because of *spoilers* what happened to the original cast. Must watch the new Dr Who special.

What I've Read

I loved the book 'The Fourth Wing' but after reading the sequel 'Iron Flame' I sadly felt the wheels fall off for me after the half way mark. I'm not sure how much I will be looking forward to the next book.

A new genre bookshop has recently opened in my city (hooray) and I went and bought 'All the Seas in the World' by Guy Gavriel Kay. Ah, it's so nice to have a good range of SFF books to look at again, instead of the familiar 'one whole shelf of those few for SFF must be taken up with multiple copies of Wheel of Time because there's no other SFF authors out there, ha ha' attitude that other places have.

Anyway, so this book by GGK is set during Renaissance Europe, but set on a world with two moons and there's magic too. He's written other books set in this alternate Earth, the best being the two Sarantine Mosaic books, set in alternate Eastern Roman Empire. They will break your heart at places though, so be warned.

What I've Seen

I haven't seen any movies for a while but 'Napoleon' is trying to get my attention. I've always had a soft spot for Joaquin Phoenix and I think I would almost be looking out for time-traveling Bill and Ted to nab him mid-battle for their school history assignment (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure).

So yesterday started off straight forward. I went to a monthly meeting of the Handweavers Guild (I used to be the secretary there) where someone gave a talk with photos about going to a weaving camp down at Turangi, next to Lake Taupo. Some beautiful photos of the lake and of the weaving examples shown, some of it really great. Then in the afternoon I had to go to the dentist for a routine clean and check (nothing bad found so that was good). 

Afterwards I went to a cafe to calm down after Dentist fun, where I found out that Auckland and nearby Coromandel region was to go into a level 4 Covid lockdown from midnight for a week, because of community cases found, possibly the dangerous Delta variant. Level 4 is the strictest lockdown where you all stay home and only places like the supermarkets and pharmacy are open. Exercise is permitted as long as you don't go too far from your neighbourhood. So with mask on I headed to some shops to get last minute stuffs.

I also decided to treat myself to some books and went and bought the next two books in the 'Shadow and Bone' trilogy after having seen the first season / book on Netflix. Ben Barnes, gosh, you've turned into Hot Evil guy though I remember you as so dashing and earnest in that Prince Caspian movie some years ago. I didn't have many library books at home but for reasons I couldn't go to a library yesterday.

Today it was revealed it is the Delta variant traced back to New South Wales in Australia, where they're struggling to deal with covid, poor chaps. I think they had 400 new cases in a day just recently. We don't want that here.

The Friday Five


1) What is the best book you've read?

'Beauty' by Robin McKinley. A lovely re-telling of 'Beauty and the Beast and the way the author wrote was great.


2) What is the worst book you've read?

I forget the title, but it was a historical novel about a working class woman who wanted a Nice Thing and was punished for it, because she didn't Know Her Place or something horrible like that. Ugh.


3) What is a favourite book from childhood?

'The Ordinary Princess' by M.M. Kaye. A re-telling of 'Sleeping Beauty' but she is cursed with being ordinary instead and loses the beauty she was born with. This turns out to be a good thing in the long run.


4) What is a favourite book from adulthood?

'Intervention' by Julian May. Rogi is the black sheep of his powerful, Kennedy-esque French-Canadian family because he prefers to own a sci-fi / fantasy bookshop (with cat, of course). Sometimes the unlikely person is the hero. Set in an alternate America where telepaths start being born in the general population after WW2.


5) What is a book you've read a number of times?

'Sleeper's Castle' by Barbara Erskine. It's the perfect winter read. In Middle Ages Wales, a female musician keeps house for her surly father. She starts seeing a strange woman... is she a ghost? In the modern era, a woman is house-sitting for a friend in Wales when she sees a strange woman... is she a ghost? Then the two eras start merging in the ancient house, which has secrets of its own...

A murder-mystery book I recently read and liked was 'The Con Artist' by Fred van Lente.

Comic book artist Mike Manson arrives at San Diego Comic Con to get art commissions, which are his bread and butter. His ex-wife is at the con as well as Danny, the man Mike caught his wife with. But when Danny is found murdered, Mike becomes the prime suspect. He has to solve the crime - at the same time as getting those precious art commissions. Drawings are throughout the book.

It's set in a slightly different universe, because there's mention of a 'Dragonriders of Pern' movie. *snuffles* *looks at dragon collection* However, I  don't think in any universe there would be a Lord of the Rings movie by the title of 'Sauron's Revenge' (1st of 7 movies). *giggles*  That's just being silly. I think.

I like stories set at conventions - there's the 1988 'Bimbos of the the Death Sun' - obnoxious guest author is found dead at a con, all the attendees could be suspects. 'Night of the Living Trekkies' has a zombie apocalypse beginning at a Star Trek con (quite plausibly, too).

Lastly, I have sympathy for this reviewer from the 'Smart Bitches, Trashy Books' website -

"Have you ever felt like a book was fighting with you? I had such a hard time with my innocent-seeming paperback copy of Lady Traveller’s that you would have thought it was one of the feisty books in the Terry Pratchett universe that have to be chained to the shelves. It wouldn’t lie flat. It kept worming its way under couch cushions and blankets. Every time I picked it up I dropped it, and every time I dropped it my bookmark fell out."

The book was rated C - in the end.

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/

Brr, it's definitely winter now. Snow has been marching up the country and you can smell the ice in the air. It was 10 degrees today (50 deg F) and Did Not Like. Heat is fine, cold not so much for me.

I was outside the bookshop near work and smiled when I saw it had a nice geeky window display with Harry Potter and Star Wars books, bless. I saw there were some pencils with slogans on them, so I went in and bought two that said, 'Weird and Proud' and 'Knitters Gonna Knit'. Mwaha.

The new painting I'm working on is a photo of a still life of a bowl of green limes, which I'm enjoying doing. I'm also working on knitting a shawl with a geometric design - I can see it will take me a while, and the instructions look like calculus (which I never took), but I'm determined to get there.