See's Candies (specifically Nuts & Chews) 


Yo-Yo Ma's New CD - Songs of Joy & Peace 

Alison Krauss singing on the above CD


January's Wiscon Book Club Selection 


Hogue Late Harvest Riesling      


And realizing there's only 1 more day to go until another 4-day weekend
(also, "new guy" is now "ex-guy," so say, bye-bye).

by Catherynne M. Valente

I read this because it was one of the two Tiptree Award winners this year.  I never would have heard of it if I hadn't attended WisCon.  Valente gave a very moving acceptance speech, which more than any rec made me want to read the book.

The back cover says, "welcome to the Arabian Nights for our time - a lush and fatastical epic guaranteed to spirit you away from the very first page....  Secreted away in a garden, a lonely girl spins stories to warm a curious prince:  peculiar feats and unspeakable fates that loop through each other and back again to meet in the tapestry of her voice.  Inked on her eyelids, each twisting, tattooed tale is a piece in the puzzle of the girl's own hidden history.  And waht tales she tells!  Tales of shape-shifting witches and wild horse-women, heron kings and beast princesses, snake gods, dog monks, and living stars--each story more strange and fantastic than the one that came before.  From ill-tempered "mermaid" to fastidious Beast, nothing is ever quite what it seems in these ever-shifting tales--even, and especially, their teller."

This is a pretty good description.  It is lush and fantastical.  The thing is, the Tiptree is given for works that push the boundaries of gender.  I'm not so sure that this book obviously did that. OTOH, I'm kind of weird in this regard.  When I was reading fairy tales, I was always casting myself in the hero role.  I didn't care that the heroes were normally depicted as male.  It's not always true, there's the story of the seven swans/princes, where their sister rescues them for example, but yeah.  Fairytales generally have male heroes rescuing females-in-distress.  This book has a fair amount of women in active roles, but it doesn't jump out at me.  Maybe that's why it was picked? Because the female characters seem so natural?  It's not like you're thinking, "hey, she's a chick, she isn't allowed to do that!"  The people and cultures are so completely foreign, that I don't think you can have a true gender expectation.  I was disappointed because I didn't see anything overt happening gender-wise.  But maybe that's the point.  There is a small section where the prince who is hearing the stories struggles with the idea that he is supposed to be the rescuer/hero, but feels that she is rescuing him from his fate.  But it isn't really elaborated upon.

The stories are entertaining and interesting and the format is unusual.  It's a good read, and doesn't have to be terribly deep (I spent a lot of time tracing the connections between the stories, but you probably don't have to).  I put the book down in the middle, at the transition between "the book of the steppes" and "the book of the sea."  I think it would have been better to read it straight through.  The connections would have been easier to trace/remember.  I highly recommend this for anyone who enjoys fantasy or fairy tales.  There is apparently a second volume available now too.  I'll probably read it eventually, but I'm still working on my list for this year.

Wow! I spend one Saturday reading actual books with paper pages, and my flist explodes with the SGA Kissing squee, LOL.  Lots of tasty morsels over there, yes indeedy.

Since I read two whole books though, I figure I ought to review them.

The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner was on my WisCon reading list.  I hadn't intended to read it first, but I was in Borders with the kids on the 4th, and it was the only thing on my list I could remember well enough to find (although I suspect the majority of my WisCon list cannot be picked up at will at Borders).  It's a YA Fantasy story, with a 15-16 yr-old girl as the central character.  She learns to be a swordsman at her Uncle-the-Mad-Duke's whim, and she learns alot of other stuff too.  Unfortunately, while I did lightly enjoy this read, because it is fun and engaging, I was also annoyed a lot of the time.  It's set in a time when women are property and the rules of society are everything (and nothing simultaneously - as long as you have wealth and/or power).  And the women are all trained from birth to help perpetuate the situation.  So the semi-endless prattle about dresses and parties and catching a man just grated on me.  The cool thing about the story is that the Mad Duke is completely in love with his former swordsman, and since he can't or won't let himself have that relationship, he runs around the city in a perpetual state of debauchery with both men and women.  So our proper young Lady Katherine gets quite an eyeful of beautiful young men in various stages of undress, and actually engages in a bit of voyeurism near the end - so fun for any slashers reading along.

Next up, I picked up Mavis's latest as soon as she finished it.  Sarah Dessen's, the truth about forever.  Another YA, since Mavis is actually in that age group.  It's about a girl's summer between Jr and Sr year.  She'd lost her dad 18 mos before, and is still trying to come to grips with the loss.  Her boyfriend is charming /sarcasm, but she manages to figure it out with the help of a bunch of new friends.  See, she ends up working for a catering company run by an unorganized woman, her two nephews, and two other neighbor girls who may have been related as well.  This wacky group of people are entirely unlike her normal crowd, and they're a little more realistic about surviving life in the real world.  She learns something from them, and she's able to help her mom learn a little of it too.  It's a sweet and hopeful story, with realistic depictions of what teenagers get up to during the summer months, minus the sex. ::g::

Rupert also got a book that day - the one missing from a series he was reading, and gobbled it down.  He was happy to have some holes plugged, but it's not something I'm going to be reading.