Inclined to fangirl.

x-posted from dianawynnejones 

Diana is quick to mention her Travel Jinx and her Writing-stuff-that-then-happens-to-her Jinx, but one thing she can't, in all politeness, mention is her Book Cover CURSE.
Seriously, How can someone so awesome have accumulated so many uncannily bad covers?

There are the American ones that look like they were painted on index cards, sloppily, and then blown up to dustjactet size, the British ones with text an inch and a half high, but hardly any picture, that copy of Hexwood which was a recycled image from another book... It's quite a list of grievances.

Happily, there are some new covers out in Angle-land that are downright spiffy! I spotted them in the LibraryThing cover galleries and was delighted with them.



Wonderful! I love all the details from the books that the artist has managed to incorporate into the cover art - that's what I love to see in a cover, an illustration by someone who's actually read the book!

Whee!
Back to livejournal but only for a meme.
My new love is Twitter, I'm sorry to say. It works so well for me since I have short thoughts but lots of them. I contemplate expanding my twitter posts on lj at the end of the day...but never get around to it. Thus my twitterage displaces and satisfies my need to blog.

ljmckay was playing Shag, Marry, Cliff and I had to play too.
My biggest problem was finding images to illustrate my fiction guys. THERE ARE NO GOOD PICTURES OF THESE PEOPLE. Oy.


Here's what she gave me:
Horatio, Miles, and that dragonrider guy from those books you were reading before spring break...
or James, Neil, and John Simm if you want to go RL.

( Cut for 6 images and meemery )

Reading the list of ALA awardees other than Neil Gaiman and love this little bit:

Coretta Scott King Book Award recognizing an African American author and illustrator of outstanding books for children and young adults. “We Are the Ship: The Story of the Negro League Baseball,” .....

Three King Author Honor Books ere selected: “The Blacker the Berry” by Joyce Carol Thomas, illustrated by Floyd Cooper and published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers....

 I totally read that as King Arthur Honor Books and was impossibly excited that there was a yearly award for best Arthurian children's lit.

Well, there still should be.


Full list here: http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2009/january2009/ymawrap.cfm

Includes video of the trials of trying to get in contact with authors and illustrators, Neil and Terry Pratchett's reactions to their awards. Fun stuff.

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Why I need to send a fan letter through time to H.G. Wells:

IT is part of the excessive egotism of the human
animal that the bare idea of its extinction seems
incredible to it. "A world without us ! " it says,
as a heady young Cephalapsis might have said it
in the old Silurian sea. But since the Cephalapsis
and the Coccosteus many a fine animal has increased
and multiplied upon the earth, lorded it over land
or sea without a rival, and passed at last into the
night.


Nya! So cuuute.

Also? He predicted GIANT SUPER-INTELIGENT SQUID! AND OCTOPODS.

But ugh! six foot trilobites! uuuuuuugh! (trilobites CREAP me out)

THEY'RE LIKE GIANT MANY-LEGGED COCKROACHES!!!!! *shudder*


The beginning of War of the Worlds? Also quite pretty:

NO one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.


*goes back to doing -actual- assignment.*

Was checking out hot new topics on Craftster as a break from Article II of  David Walker's Appeal (I'm taking African American lit pre-1930s) - and I spotted this awesome needle felting project based on The Mitten by Jan Brett.


More info and pics- http://www.littlesisterhandmade.com/2009/01/the-mitten/

Makes me think needlefelting should be next on my learn-to-do list! :D

Yuletide is up and there is Diana Wynne Jones fic!
Dalemark, and Fire&Hemlock, and Chrestomanci hooray!
I've only looked at fandoms A-E tonight, self restraint and time restraints  being what they are.

The Last Free Soul of Dalemark is mind-searingly good. It's one of those fics using clips of created!history interspaced with narritive prose. Sort of like to coda to The Spellcoats but so much more and better and about Hobin and Alk and Mitt and Navis. Like DWJ i think I'll need to go back and read and re-read to get everything from this. Glee!!

The End is Where We Start From? Also v. good. It features the funeral of Amil the Great and Moril and Mitt's conversation thereafter. Because of course this is how it would go. There are so many moment s of history ficcers could write about in Dalemark-verse! I didn't even know I wanted to read this fic until I read it and now I think it's been incorperated into personal cannon. Especially the bit about Navis.

Truly, He Hadn't is Fire and Hemlock fic. Selected bits of book-events from Tom's POV. Fraught and hopeful but determined to do right by Polly.

I've just realized, through someone else's lovely articulate words, that one of my most favorite tropes or theme or what-have-you is meeting your heroes myths.
To Frodo...the matters even of the Second Age
are already matters of legend, receding into a mythic past; through
the figure of Elrond, who has experienced the War of Wrath and the
Last Alliance personally, these happenings suddenly gain an immediacy
and relevance to the plot of The Lord of the Rings they did not
have before. Myth, while losing nothing of its remote and timeless
quality, is suddenly put into close contact with the present and shown
to be real. This "myth-realization" (Basney 13) is one of the patterns
repeated most often in The Lord of the Rings.


Myth-realization, yo. it's AWESOME!!!

I'm thinking of Hexwood and Crown of Dalemark here especially.
But duuuuude, examples of this in the lit I read, they're everywhere.
Arthurian lit uses it alot (Susan Cooper, I'm looking at YOU) and so does Robin Mckinley in Hero and the Crown/ The Blue Sword.
And Sandman, hell loads of things Neil wrote fall into this...

Heh. so does Doctor Who.

Ah! Self discovery!

My roommate. She is scaring me. She brews coffee through a t-shirt sleeve because she is lacking in filters but needs her fix. The coffee maker is making all sorts of odd noises that I do not think are normal.
Really hoping dorm does not burn down nor coffeepot explode.

In other news Tolkien class has ceased to be second favorite (behind Old English) and has morphed into Nightmare Class. The writing intensive designation has manifest it self as a blight forever on my mind. A preliminary bibliography (Twelve non-internet sources, TWELVE!!!!)  is due tomorrow and I am still uncertain as to my topic's focus. I can blame this in part on myself and in part on the rest of the wold for not giving me peer reviewed sources that think like I do ( Or even anti- what I think!!) I'm noticing all this Tolkien has me thinking in archaic diction lots more. All the sentence fragments are the fault of the masses of appositives in Old English. The diction, it's catching!!!

Before midterms all my classes seems so much more laid back, after midterms it hasn't stopped being week after week of intensive study. Such a downer. Tomorrow prelim Tolkien research and four chapters of Two Towers but no logic...Idroppedtheclass,alright!?!I'msuchafailure...
Tuesday: Japanese test, The Dream of the Rood translation <3!!, and another four page nonfiction essay of writers'-blocky doom. I think this one will be about my adoption of vintage hairstyling.

From Cory Doctrow's Little Brother

I snagged this review/summary from LibraryThing - - - Our main character is a 17 year-old accused of being a terrorist after the the San Francisco Bay bridge is bombed. This event transforms the city into a world where the Department of Homeland Security is watching the movements of every citizen and normal, everyday people are arrested, imprisoned and interrogated for no cause. Although the San Francisco described in this story is fiction, it is frightening in a very real way. Every event that transpires does so in a way that is entirely believable, not only due to the competence of the author, but because of how close we are as a society to allowing such a reality, where all of our movements are surveilled, to exist. If you can only read one book this year, make it Little Brother. You may just find yourself looking at the world around you in a slightly different ligh

Back in my cell, a hundred little speeches occurred to me. The French call this "esprit d'escalier" -- the spirit of the staircase, the snappy rebuttals that come to you after you leave the room and slink down the stairs. In my mind, I stood and delivered, telling her that I was a citizen who loved my freedom, which made me the patriot and made her the traitor. In my mind, I shamed her for turning my country into an armed camp. In my mind, I was eloquent and brilliant and reduced her to tears.

So brilliant that there's a word for this concept. Pity it's in that devilish gaulic language.

I'm only 77 pages it but Little brother is a brisk and stinging reminder against complacency. Like a really good Documentary about the environment, except with characters and geekiness in.

Had an absolutely fantastic Friday even though I'm a dumbass and ordered both my rings far too big. Impulse buying when all you have is tailor's tape to measure with? Not smart. I squished them in doors and between tables 'n' stuff and now they stay on albeit in a slightly non-traditional shape.

We will have the costume dance in the 'Howdy' Room (Y Hallo thar official Aggie greeting!) b/c as had been the case all summer thus far, the Old Ranch is being renovated with shiny new paint (they scraped off the old murals!!!!) making it unavailable for us to dance in.

Went to Katie Evan's piano recital this evening with six of the kids had a lovely time there - saw Miggle(and Elise I think). On the way back we sang musical songs and bohemian rhapsody at the top of our lungs - even when we were walking past the students playing cricket on the quad.
 The  Roommate Game we came back to was terribly amusing. One guy guessed his roommate's 'celebrity crush' was Clive Owen and that randomly turned out to be the name his roomie had written down. Apparently he's more of a favorite celebrity person than a crush but he talks about Mr. Owen alot. They were so stoked that they'd had such a like minded moment. I have so many celebrity crushes I'd pity any poor roommate who had to name them all or guess which one of them is foremost in my favor on any one day. Answer for the moment? er....Either Neil or James, depends on how adorable Neil is being and whether It's close to Sunday, i.e. Top Gear day.

Read The Hobbit tonight for Bilbo Baggins's birthday (yes even thought it's actually in September) Aparently the stupids at the cookie cake place were quite bewildered by Bilbo's name. ah humanity, you're so lame.

The three five-year-Alphas blew out the birthday candles and, after cake had been served, Luke
began to read (starting from breakfast at Beorn's house), wearing the distinctive Bilbo Baggins hat.
In the beginning while the grads were reading all was well and loud but when the younger children got to read they mumbled so lowly I couldn't even hear if they were putting any expression in to it.

Chase was the star reader of the evening. Some ironic providence landed him the spider fighting section which he managed to not only read loudly but read with heavy innuendo. Everyone was in stitches. This was one of my favorite Bilbo Baggins nights. Except of course for the nights in which we begin or end the book they're always that extra bit special - that'll have to be next year I think. This reading began in 2006 which means it'll be a four year reading which is rather lame considering in my first year (2001) we began the book, finished it 2003 (my senior year) and finished it again in 2005, (my alpha year) in a session which Kenneth both began and ended.
Good times yo.

Kenneth articulated something I was thinking all night. " Bah! I want to read and show them how it's done." Shouting 'louder!' at the students only makes them louder for a sentence before they decrescendo back to their original volume. Wusses.

I think I taught myself how to french braid tonight. Go me!
I am engaged to do at least two girls' hair for the costume dance - One Rosie the Riveter and one crazy fashion victim.

Both promise to be quite fun!

Tomorrow I plan on beginning a LOTR marathon beginning around eight. I think I'll go recruit some watchers right now..
---

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/cult/a109770/who-gap-year-is-marvellous-claims-boss.html

Oh that's so cheating!!!!

Julie says four one hour specials, one of which is Christmas 2008, one is Easter, and one is Christmas 2009!
No fair counting the 2009 Christmas episode as one of the three/four! Foul I cry! Foul!
I was expecting a Christmas 2008 special, three eps throughout the year and ANOTHER episode at Christmas.
Boooo.
----

Do they make chairs with a back and one armrest? I think I'd like one.

Was looking at Hellboy II on Rotten Tomatoes because Neil was talking about it (after a four day blog silence) and saw that Danny Elfman is the composer!! Why have I seen no squee over this? Elfman is so awesome : D

Ze movie comes out tomorrow but I doubt the GPGC will be going to the theater but I might be able to catch it on my next day off. WANT TO SEE.

I need to find and reread the Lord Darcy novels - I read them in high school and though them very superior and entertaining. I bet I'd like them even more now that I have more pop cultural awareness.

HaHA! I remembered to look up the ten little indians poem. I keep wondering about it when I have no internet around but here it is as included Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None:

Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine.
Nine little Indian boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little Indian boys traveling in Devon; One said he'd stay there and then there were seven.
Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
Six little Indian boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
Five little Indian boys going in for law; One got into Chancery and then there were four.
Four little Indian boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three little Indian boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two Little Indian boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one.
One little Indian boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.

 From The Golden Bough:
German peasants throw a knife or a hat at a whirlwind because the is a witch or a wizard in it.
Howl's Moving Castle, the 'Wind to advance an honest mind'? Anyone?
Yeah it so totally is. 
Diana mentions The Golden Bough too much in Fire and Hemlock for this to not be exciting.

Last night eclipse_raewas an absolute darling and took me to Books A Million where my preordered copy of House of Many Ways was waiting for me. 

I never thought I'd say this  of DWJ but It wasn't complicated enough.

So I was thinking about top gear. And the Top Gear calendar. And wanting lots of pictures of James May. But then I heard about this highly desirable but utterly unobtainable TG calendar.

Curious what a normal TG calendar looks like, I got me hence to amazon.co.uk where I found some brilliant products yet to be released.

"The Big Book of Top Gear" - Blah Blah phenomenon....Blah..."The Big Book of Top Gear", which will be an annual publication, combines in one irresistible package all the elements of show that make it so popular: an unashamed petrol-head need for speed; a bit of Boy's Own adventure; and, special features based around each presenter plus essential automotive stats and details for the hardcore motoring nuts and much much more. Equally delightful for teenagers and their great-grandparents, "The Big Book of Top Gear" will be the must-have Christmas present for 2008.

"The Chalenges Sticker Activity Book"
The boys have been faced with some pretty interesting, often bizarre and always very funny challenges. Based around their adventures, the activities in this book include wordsearches, quizzes, crosswords, sticker activities, and more.


"Cool Wall Poster Book"
We all know it doesn't really matter how fast a car is or where it's made; what matters is whether it's cool or not. And there's only one judge, and it's not Richard Hammond. He's too short to reach the real cool wall. So here's your own wall where you can be judge, jury and Jeremy. Use the poster and the 45 removable stickers to create your very own 'Cool Wall'.



WANT.

Especially the Cool Wall Poster Book.

This is my third time to try to say this - I keep forgetting what I was doing and closing down all my windows.
I 'm watching an episode of Midsomer Murders - "They Seek Him Here" which is their Scarlet Pimpernel one, and I am so not interested/bored by it.
Not my kind of mystery show.
I'm not even sure is there are any continuing characters from episode to episode and that's far too...vague for me.

On the other hand, Neil mentioned Jonathan Creek today on his blog. Win!!
I love how me and Neil have watched the same things. Admittedly, because I take mentions of shows he likes as imperial commands to start downloading.

The instant The Graveyard Book is out as a Neil-read mp3 it shall be mine. I love hearing him read, he's so very good at it!

This is me, blogging from Reebok, watching my mom try on shoes.

Not one of my parish's libraries carries a copy of Lirael. They're not just all checked out - there aren't any copies to be checked out.
It's shameful. So I submitted this little request form and now apparently the library will be getting themselves a copy.
They'd better >:(
I'll be checking.

There are NASCAR-themed Harlequin Romances.
I want to go to K-mart, buy some, and send them to Top Gear since the boys so kindly provide their address. (something something something wood lane something something something)
Package would include post it note* and SSAE with pre-written reply of 'Yes'.


* Text to read: I was appalled and horrified. You?



-----
Spend alot of today on worryingly slow library-internet. Websites of love include </a></b></a>amused_library, and the already linked to Judge a Book
There was a Romance book where the heroine had three arms on the cover.
I want to send in some DWJ covers because they're all .... spectacularly awful.
Some Terry Pratchett ones are almost as bad. Moving Pictures? I'm thinking of YOU.
----

 EDIT: Hm. I've just realised how weird my brain works. If these books were RPF and published on the internet I'd totally be OK with this.
It's the internet.

They'd just be out there, not needing to be read....or       the horror: purchased with actual money)
But in print?
An idea on which my horror never sets.

Hey cool, there's a add-to-library feature in Google books!
I just sort of grabbed the isbn's from LibraryThing and added them in.
Very very cool.

I think I've earned another geek points badge, I've read an actual physical Doctor Who novel at last. It's The Year of Intelligent Tigers by Kate Orman and it was more than usually hard to get hold of. I think it may be a touch rare because it doesn't appear in any of the torrents of Doctor Who e-books I've looked at. Eight Fitz and Anji are having a nice holiday on a colony world and there are these native animals that are amazingly like tigers. Just guess what else is interesting about them.

Plot happens.

Eight happens to be freakishly good at the violin and other stringed instruments including that cyber thing Bill Bailey plays. I thought that was a cool personal interests crossover moment.

I was pleasantly surprised tat I had no head-desky moments.

Ironic, that the novels have less bad crack in them than the actual TV series.

I read so much fic that I'm used to it there. But Doctor Who novels are weird it I think about it too long. Just being what they are is weird. I dunno, it's a strangely long a format for doctor who so it's doesn't sit right, plus there's the whole media-crossover barrier. I still find it a bit freaky for visual things to have written equivalents.

Eh.

 

Reread The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones and Black Maria also by DWJ but that I'd never read before. How did this happen? I do not know either.

I've just finished revising my Arthurian Lit Paper; it's called:

Intentional Intertextuality:

Deep References to Arthurian Legend in Diana Wynne Jones’s Hexwood. I like my big titles.

Alas, I've printed so many revisions on the essay that I ran out of paper and could only print the first four pages of my final final draft tonight. That's something to do early tomorrow this morning!

I burned Dr. Chabot a parting gift, a DVD of Lancelot and QI eps and a .pdf of Hexwood because I sincerely hope that after he reads my essay he will feel compelled to read the book.

Have I mentioned how much I love that book?

I was trying to get to sleep but just keep thinking of Arthurian things.

I really want to ask someone (preferably William Russel himself ; ) ) what was up with the decision to not put anything of a developing Gwen/Lance relationship into The Adventures Of Sir Lancelot and If he intended for Lance to invade Gwen's personal space more and more as the series drew to a close. Because he does.

I also have childish things in head like this:

Lancelot and Guinevere sittin' in a tree / K - I - S - S - I - N - G /

First comes love, then comes adultery, then comes The Dolorous Death and Departing Out of this World of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere.

 

*cough* The last line may need some work?

 

Today in Japanese we had hilarious mock dates-with-intent-to-marry so we could use our new grammatical construction of doing things for  other people. I accidentally asked someone if they would kill  yakitori (grilled chickens) for me. I meant gokiburi (roaches).  They sound noting alike! How does one's brain confuse such things? I think perhaps I should have asked sensei for a vocab refresher. I also indicated that I was willing to iron if I could watch tv while ironing. Except, that's actually what I meant to say.

Also I'm planning a visit to the local Barnes and Noble,  because totally unanticipated by me, there's a new Dresden Files book out, Small Favors.

I bought 75 issues of cricket magazine from a Seattle good will off ebay last night. I anticipate their arrival with glee. Treasured childhood reading, cricket.