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alsafi's Journal  So in my last post, I spelled out my resolution to write 100 words a day, 5 days a week. I'm happy to report that this has been going pretty well, actually. I've written several hundred words on a story that has not even got a working title yet, which pleases me quite a lot. And I have Tech, which has been helping. A couple of weekends ago, Whisper decided to go through a bunch of her accumulated tech junk and cords and such like, and one of the things she came across was a Palm Tungsten E that she's had for a while and not really been using. She'd gotten a folding keyboard for it, and had tried a few times that I remember to make a go of it, but (as she says) her work is a bit wet for that sort of equipment. Anyway, she asked if I thought I might make use of it. I thought about how I seem to keep my entire life "organized" via tiny scraps of paper, preferentially no larger than lettersize sheets folded in half, and no smaller than folded in quarto. (Except of course at work, where I am terrifyingly neat and organized. I don't know why.) And I thought about my writing, which I have been persistently doing in spiral-bound notebooks. So I said, "What the hell, I'll give it a shot," and have spent the past couple weeks trying to convert myself to paperless-ness. It's actually been working. Whisper charged up the TE, and gave me the disc and paperwork for it, and the keyboard. At first I couldn't make the keyboard work, but with some hunting, some time, and her moral support (and digging up the disc and paperwork for the keyboard, too), I was able to do that this weekend. I loaded onto the TE the word-processing software that came on the install disc, and it's actually pretty good, though I may wind up buying a copy of WordSmith at some later point. The main hurdle was this: I wanted to be able to save things I was working on to an SD card (the only sort of removable storage the TE will take), and move them onto a desktop computer where I could continue to work with them. I also wanted to then be able to move items from a desktop onto the Palm. This proved difficult. The Palm--at least the programs I have for it--will only read .prc and .pdb files. Neither of these can I read or modify with any of our computers. I quickly found a solution to the second problem--making files from the computer readable to the Palm--in a program called EasyPDB. It converts .txt files quickly, simply, and well into .pdb files. We had the tiny 32M memory card that had come with our cybershot camera--much too small for pictures, but effectively doubling the memory available to the TE. So I repurposed it into my memory card. I happened on the solution to moving files from one place to another by chance, at work, where someone brought me a USBkey drive that you could plug an SD card into (like a digicamera memory card) and have it read by a computer. I promptly went out and got me one of those. The last bit--translating a .pdb into a .txt--was the hardest, but I think I've finally got it solved, with a program called ABC Amber Palm Converter. I tried a simple little program called makedoc, but it doesn't seem to work as well, plus I hate having to mess with the command prompt stuff. That's why I own a mac, as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, it's been kind of a headache to get it working like I want, but the end result is something that solves a lot of life's little problems for me. I don't have to carry around a stack of notebooks anymore, or put off writing what I have a spark for because I failed to pick up the right notebook that morning. I don't have to go hunting for the latest version of my menu plan, to-do list, or grocery list; I can keep them all on the TE as well. I can type, which I'm much faster at than writing longhand, even in cursive. And I don't have internet, email, or games on the Palm, which are my main forms of cat vacuuming when I try to write on a computer. All I can really do is write. So I do. I feel very tech-savvy. And I wrote this all on my Palm. Her name is Athena Ergane, after Athena as the patron goddess of craftspeople and artisans. Ergane for short. I'm growing rather fond of her. Current mood:  pleased.
I'm embarking on a new project. Writing. My biggest problem seems to be in sitting down and putting words on paper. Coming up with characters and stories and settings and everything is no problem. Ideas... ideas are comically easy. I could come up with a dozen right here on the spot. If anything, I have too many of them, so my energy is always scattered over the 3-10 that I'm finding most compelling right now. Thus, the project. I'm starting out with an easy goal--for the rest of June, write at least 100 words in my journal at least 5 days a week. Doesn't matter what the subject; it doesn't have to be about my day or anything--it can be worldbuilding for something I'm working on, a list of things I'm worried about, 5 things I enjoyed about today, a list of 100 words that start with the letter q. Doesn't matter. After that, I'm going to start working my way up to 500 words a day, 5 days a week, working on story. Doesn't matter what story. I'm hoping that getting myself into the habit of writing will mean that I'll actually be able to do something about all the ideas and partially put-together things rattling around in my head. Writing it down is the hardest part. (I'm taking this kinda slow, since I've read up to 24, and will probably have finished #25 by the time I'm done writing stuff up. But I don't want to completely infodump.) Book 6 was His Majesty's Dragon, by Naomi Novik. I was re-reading the first 3 books before going on to book 4, since it had been a bit. And now book 5 is out. Good (if unintentional) timing on my part. Suffice it to say, Whisper owns them, we fight over them, I like them all. Patrick O'Brian plus dragons? Sign me up. Book 7 was Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, as an ARC, sent to me from the editor himself. Which is very cool, and predisposed me to like the book, I will admit. That and the premise at least made up for the fact that I haven't much cared for Doctorow's fiction in the past. I don't know why--everything I know about him makes me think he's a fabulous person. But his fiction and I just don't click. But then, I have a similar issue with Elizabeth Bear. (With Doctorow it's more of a "too much shiny. I can't find the plot or the characters for the bling, so I don't care," while all Bear's stuff I've tried reading it's more of a "oh! NO! nonononono... DON'T DO IT! Don't LISTEN to HIM! ...Oh, this is going to end in cathartic tears, and I can't handle that right now.") Anyway. Little Brother is fabulous. Some of it did feel a little overly "awesome," and I'm afraid it may not age terribly well, but the premise was riveting, and the ending... Maybe a bit too hopeful, but that's my cynicism talking. I'm a sucker for books built on the chassis of "a small group of dedicated individuals tries to make the world a better place." Especially when the characters I've come to care about don't die with a heartwrenching constancy (she says, glaring at the small stack of Elizabeth Bear novels on her shelf). Like I said, I'm not sure it will be timeless enough to be a younger and newer echo of 1984 forever, but now and for the next few years? I'd say so. Book 8, and we go back to Naomi Novik--a re-read of Empire of Jade. Seriously, anyone who hasn't read this series and can't think of a good reason why not (e.g., hatred for dragons, hatred for Horatio Hornblower/Aubrey & Maturin and the like, hatred for fantastical anything, hatred for historical anything, hatred for books) really owes it to themselves to pick it up. I don't know what number this one is--I may not have written yet about My Own Kind of Freedom, the Firefly/Serenity fanfic novel by Steven Brust. But apart from that, I haven't been reading much other than recipes, magazines, and blogs lately, and those don't count, at least not under the rules I've set myself. Earlier this week, PNH over at Making Light posted about the new website Tor is working on, so I clicked over to have a look. They were tempting people to sign up by offering free books--at the time, something by Mercedes Lackey and... some guy. Lackey's name made me go all cold like I'd touched something dead and slimey, and so I didn't bother to retain co-author's name or title even in the shortest of my short-term memory. But, the next book they were going to offer up was Jo Walton's Farthing, and I've heard enough good things about it from the usual suspects (people that I know like stuff I also like), that I've been really interested in reading it. For a free copy of Farthing, I thought, I'll give out my name & email. Real ones, even. I got an email this morning letting me know it was up for download, so I did so immediately. And then tore through it at inhuman speed. (Seriously, I read something like 20 chapters at lunch, and have finished it despite also getting actual work accomplished.) Wow. That is really all--I don't want to give anything away, since it's a murder mystery. But I want to read more about Carmichael (and Jack. I want to read some about Jack, damnit), and I want things to work out for the best really bad, even though I have this hollow, sad suspicion that "the best" is something that is waaaay past the point of happening, and "catharsis" is the best I can hope for. Much like I feel about my country, these days. Hmmm... So buying this book. And the sequel, and the other sequel, when it comes out. Current mood:  dizzy. 334 pages on pdf..
Book 2 was Steven Brust's My Own Kind of Freedom, set in the Firefly/Serenity universe and available for free at the link. It was awesome, and I read it in less than 8 hours. Partly that's because it's not very long (160 some pages), and partly it's because Brust's prose style is one I find very easy and quick to read. But mostly it's because it's just that good. If you liked Firefly, you should really download & read it--he has the character voices down cold. Book 3 was the Royall Tyler translation of The Tale of Genji by (the woman who has come down to us as) Murasaki Shikibu. (She's actually called Murasaki because that's the appellation usually given to the main female character of the novel, and Shikibu is from her father's position title in the Imperial administrative bureaucracy--her actual personal name is not recorded, though she was a Fujiwara.) I like it a good bit more than the other translation--Arthur Whaley's--that I read while in Japan. I mired down once I hit the Uji Chapters, since I'm not as fond of Kaoru and Niou as I am of Genji, but after slowly working through them, I got sick last week and read all the rest. Plus another 100 or so pages of Les Mis, putting me only about 550 pages from the end. (That's nearly 2/3 of the way through!) And then I read all of Scott McCloud's Making Comics, which is book 4. I thought it was better than Reinventing Comics, though not quite as strong as Understanding Comics. It's a lot more specialized in its scope, since it's directed mainly at writers and artists, and it's not as groundbreaking, since Understanding came out first. But I'd say those are the only reasons it's not quite as wowing a book as the first one was. Also, I'm longing to be a person who can draw for squat, even more than I already was. Too many ideas. Not enough talent. (x.x) I gave up on the other books I'd picked up at the library, though. Come Be My Light made me cry too much, and Citizen Girl and the three(-in-one) John LeCarre novels all failed the 3+1 test (if it fails to grab me in the first 3-4 chapters, I tend to flip to the last chapter and read it. If by doing that, I can work out all the rest of what's going to happen (and especially if I don't really like the ending anyway), I generally abandon the book unless I have some other compelling reason to keep reading it). So back to the library they went. Well, my predictions were off. I still haven't finished either the Tale of Genji or Les Mis. I went to the library last Friday, and they had a copy of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I started it Friday afternoon and finished it Saturday afternoon, despite a grocery-ing sextathalon* in the middle. I think I'm going to have to buy this book, though. It was that good. In a lot of ways, I felt like it picked up where The Omnivore's Dilemma left off. Pollan's book made me feel like I had to do something about the way we ate--it gave me a reason to change. But Kingsolver's (and also her husband's and daughter's--they wrote it together) gave me more direction, and a feeling of possibility. The book is about the year they spent living mostly off the products of their own farm and garden, and things grown in the county where they were living. It's a fascinating story, intimate and hopeful, and so funny I was reading great chunks of it aloud to Whisper at various points. Especially the bits about turkey sex. And now I'm daydreaming constantly about having a few acres to plant an orchard, raise chickens, and have a great big garden in. Also, there are recipes. Did I mention I think I'm going to end up buying this book? Tonight I came home and, instead of cooking dinner like I should have, finished a story that's been kicking around for a while now. I only added a bit over 500 words to it--the whole thing is less than 1000 (I am using Word's wordcount feature, and not the industry standard here). But it's done, and I think it's not too bad. *Not as much fun as it sounds like it should have been. Current mood: accomplished.
I picked up The Tale of Genji again last night, and am much closer to the end of it than the end of Les Mis, so this may turn into a horserace. Also, my shoulder hurts, though what if anything this has to do with books, I don't know. :p I made cranky noises yesterday about how little writing I got done this year (not to mention the editing), and it's true--I didn't do much, and I'm disappointed in myself because of it. Plus poor Whisper has been waiting for me to look over her stuff for ... years. On the other hand, I did a little, and that's better than nothing. And I bought myself a voice recorder just before my surgery (in the hope I might have something witty to say while I was doped up on Lortab, maybe? I'm not sure what I was thinking there). I find it weird to talk to a machine, but Whisper suggested last night that I could think of it as telling ideas to a mini-her, and that seems to be helping. I'm so frustrated with my job situation right now, I really need to be having some forward motion in some area of my life; every little bit helps. Current mood: sleepy & hurt-y.
It looks like there's not much activity here mostly because I've been just updating my original post when I finished a book and started another/more. But I think this is going to be my final tally, and I don't know how many of them I'm actually going to get around to saying anything about. I'm going to try, during the new year, posting something new when I've finished a book, instead of just updating the master list. Also, I'm relatively certain that I am not going to tear through the remaining 600 or so pages of Les Miserables before January 1, so damn. But yay, since that means it's very likely to be the first book (or at least one of the first books--I'm currently a little stalled) that I finish for 2008, which makes me look like I'm really accomplished & erudite & highbrow &c. :D Books I've finished: 1. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser 2. The High House, James Stoddard* 3. The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio 4. Powder and Patch, Georgette Heyer 5. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara W. Tuchman* 6. The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy 7. If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O, Sharyn McCrumb 8. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett 9. The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan 10. The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell 11. Luck in the Shadows, Lynn Flewelling 12. Stalking Darkness, Lynn Flewelling 13. Traitor's Moon, Lynn Flewelling 14. Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (Dee Goong An), Robert van Gulik* 15. The Chinese Gold Murders, Robert van Gulik* 16. Over Sea, Under Stone, Susan Cooper 17. The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner 18. The Lacquer Screen, Robert van Gulik* 19. Archangel, Sharon Shinn 20. The Chinese Lake Murders, Robert van Gulik* 21. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater or Pearls Before Swine, Kurt Vonnegut 22. A Morbid Taste For Bones, Ellis Peters* 23. One Corpse Too Many, Ellis Peters* 24. What They Don't Teach You in College: A Graduate's Guide to Life on Your Own, James M. Kramon 25. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman 26. Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, J. K. Rowling (why couldn't they leave the title as it was? So need to get the Brit editions...)* 27. The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper* 28. The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien* 29. The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien* 30. The Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien* 31. Stardust: Being a Romance Within the Realms of Faerie, Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess* 32. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J. K. Rowling* 33. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J. K. Rowling* 34. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J. K. Rowling* 35. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J. K. Rowling* 36. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J. K. Rowling* 37. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J. K. Rowling 38. Sunshine, Robin McKinley 39. Greenwitch, Susan Cooper* 40. The Grey King, Susan Cooper 41. The Haunted Monastery, Robert van Gulik 42. The Chinese Gold Murders, Robert van Gulik* 43. The Red Pavilion, Robert van Gulik 44. The Emperor's Pearl, Robert van Gulik* 45. Poets and Murder, Robert van Gulik 46. Necklace and Calabash, Robert van Gulik 47. The Chinese Maze Murders, Robert van Gulik 48. The Phantom of the Temple, Robert van Gulik* 49. Judge Dee at Work, Robert van Gulik 50. The Chinese Nail Murders, Robert van Gulik* 51. The Monkey and the Tiger, Robert van Gulik 52. The Willow Pattern, Robert van Gulik 53. Murder in Canton, Robert van Gulik 54. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde 55. Order of the Stick Volume 0: On the Origin of PCs, Rich Burlew 56. Passager, Jane Yolen 57. Monk's Hood, Ellis Peters* 58. Trader, Charles de Lint 59. Ministry of Space, Warren Ellis, Chris Weston, & Laura Martin 60. Hobberdy Dick, K. M. Briggs* 61. St. Peter's Fair, Ellis Peters 62. The Leper of St. Giles, Ellis Peters* 63. The Virgin in the Ice, Ellis Peters* 64. Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter, Adeline Yen Mah 65. The King of Elfland's Daughter, Lord Dunsany 66. Midnight Days, Neil Gaiman (with various artists whom I should mention, but am too lazy) 67. Rumpole for the Defence, John Mortimer 68. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame* 69. The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson 70. The Book of Ballads, Charles Vess (and various writers... see above) So in the final tally: 70 books (and maybe one or two more that I've forgotten), 29 (and a half, to be fair--The Book of Ballads collects and adds to the 4 book comic series, of which I bought and read 2) of which have been re-reads and 40 and a half of which have been new. Not too shabby, I think, for a year's work. As for the writing/editing... well. Let's just say the less said, the better, and leave it at that. :/ Nothing like needing to write a cover letter (to apply for a posiiton open at Rhodes, which, if I don't get off my ass, may not be open when I get around to it) to suddenly kick my storyteller into high gear. 150+ words last night and quite a lot of research and plot-modelling then and the night before on a Sangha/Wu story that, as yet, has no working title. Also, someday I am going to start putting up more reviews of things I've read over the year. Someday. Seriously. Also also, The Haunted Monastery needs to hurry up and get here. Current mood:  creative.
I wrote 700+ words of story yesterday. Not on "Forget-me-not", but something new--another Terra Moderna/Terra Cognita ...er, fanfic, I guess. See the post title. I thought I might finish it today, but on re-read, I've decided that it sucks rocks, so I'm going to give it a little time, because when I decide--the day after I've written something--that it sucks rocks, either A) it really sucks rocks, or (more often) 2: I need to step away, and a few days later it will not be unreadable anymore, without me doing a thing. I may post it up when it's done, if it's the latter. Current mood:  fair to partly cloudy.
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