(no subject)

I have just sent four BiblioBuffet articles to cover my time way. They still need to be edited (which is why they went in so early) but it's good to see them gone. I want to finish two and possibly three more before I actually leave, because when I get back we'll be into Conflux and Jewish New Year, but the important thing was covering my absence.

Speaking of BiblioBuffet, my latest interview has just gone up): Rowena Cory Daniells, James Maxey and Juliet McKenna being interesting about fantasy.

I have lots of messages today and don't want to do them! I want to curl up in a corner and sleep some more. My wish to hibernate never actually coincides with my capacity to do so.

If I find what I lost yesterday, I'll post again today. If I find anything interesting, I'll post again today. Otherwise, just send chocolate after me if I get lost in the morass of messages. Dark chocolate, please. With coffee.

(no subject)

I keep treading on my own feet, metaphorically. I read things differently to other people, it seems and remember different elements. Or maybe my mind is like a sieve. Either way, when people discuss books, I don't seem to recall the elements they're referring to, while quite different scenes and moments stick in my mind with strange clarity. This happens often and doesn't worry me much.

What worries me is when people occasionally assume from this that I either don't read at all or that I don't think about what I read. It seems that more and more people are blogging every book they read and placing their views of those books firmly on record and that some of these people are judging my reading by their own blogging habits.

My views change even from one moment to the next and all I can do is occasional essays on a few of the books I read, just from one simple angle. My brain is not big enough to encompass carving a single interpretation of any book into stone and letting it stand as a monument to thought, forever, and my essays are even smaller.

I'm not sure that I have a single firm and indelible opinion of books that were originally carved into stone, to be honest, much less those on transient parchment or flimsy paper. Right now I'm reading William Gibson. Thirty pages ago I was thinking of Scott Westerfeld's riff on similar themes, and also Connie Willis' (wherever I go this year, Connie Willis' books follow me - it's quite worrying, really - yesterday it was To Say Nothing of the Dog, and today it is Bellwether - if any of you know her, would you mind suggesting to her that she housetrain her books a bit more so that they stop following complete strangers, that would be a great help, thank you). Right now I'm thinking of how we bring male and female characters together in fiction and how our view of whichever is the more important is often expressed more clearly by encounters with people who demonstrate the potential for sexual tension (how a character handles that potential says so much about the character, in so very few words). In thirty pages time I will be contemplating something entirely different.

What I really want to do today is write my own novel. My characters are still getting up to mischief without me. Today is a high pain day, however, and so I'm rearranging everything so that I get the most lifestuff done with the least hurt. Messages will happen tomorrow (and anyone who wants to meet for a cuppa in Woden only has to say).

I haven't had this much pain in a fair while, so I'm not worried by it. It's rather magic to be able to look back and think "All days were like this, not so long ago. All I have to do is wait and do all my exercise and take all my medicine and then I won't get these days again. They're fading." It will be even more magic when they're gone from my life completely. This may, however, take a while. In the meantime, I have painkillers on my shopping list for tomorrow (since I'm almost out) and I am working my way steadily through the chocolate that wise friends gave me for my birthday. Every single one of my birthday presents is demonstrating that all my friends are wise, in different ways.

My cup of coffee is sadly empty, so it's time to return to Gibson. One day I need to learn how other people read books, so that I can understand them from more normal directions. Today is not that day. (Also, if I put books on a leash, will they at least behave with public decorum when they follow me around?)