blotts|plant me in the right soil; watch me flourish.

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones (reread). Just as good the zillionth time through as the first. Now I want to go reread The Dark Lord of Derkholm.

Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer. I kept thinking of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, but this is in many ways a more elegant book. I don’t think it’s ever going to take a place as a “sci fi classic,” but its near-future setting and its close emotional engagement with being “rolled back” - having your age reversed - was interesting and at times poignant.

Reserved for the Cat by Mercedes Lackey. Okay, I love Mercedes Lackey’s “Elemental Masters” series because they’re perfect: they’re kind of cheesy romances, but they’re more interesting than most romances that are billed as such. Never mind that they’re - well - not very good. Something can be both not very good and perfect at the same time.

Rose Daughter by Robyn McKinley. I’m a sucker for a “Beauty and the Beast” story, and this was a very unusual take. I have to admit that at the end, with the curse and so on, it started feeling like she was trying to write a Diana Wynne Jones book and not quite pulling off that mix of befuddling coincidence and sudden clarity… but oh well. It was still very enjoyable.

I’m missing two books here, which I returned to the library before I wrote about them. That’s going to drive me nuts! I’m not including them in my tally though: I obviously didn’t pay that much attention if I don’t remember what they were.

1. “The Fresh Prince of Gotham”

2. “Chemical Party”

I’ve been planning on making something of a sport of eating cheaply.

On the one hand this does some interesting things. I’m planning on drinking LifeWater as “dessert” (I crave sweet things most horribly) because I have two “try free LifeWater” coupons lying around. I don’t think I would ever drink LifeWater otherwise, as it is basically Vitamin Water and therefore incredibly bad for you, but there you go: dessert.

On the other hand it also leads to some adventures. Right now I have in my place:

Almost 2 pounds of stewing beef (the cheapest non-gizzard, non-tilapia, non-canned meat I could find at the store)
2 yellow squashes
Plums and peaches
2 onions
1 lb. carrots (the above 4 items were all $.99 a pound, which is not quite as cheap as bananas, but one does get tired of bananas)
oatmeal
spaghetti
Arborio rice (in the “free” cabinet of my floor)
23 packages of Top Ramen
1 can tuna
soup base
garlic flavored olive oil
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 big boy of beer that is more expensive than any 3 items on the above list combined, because I am a snob.

I think the plan is to try and cut the beef up really thin and use it as stir-fry beef. I might go and get a bottle of the cheapest red wine possible to cook it in (although I guess I’ll have to drink the rest of the cheap red wine, which is a definite negative). Also, I can freeze beef stew (if that’s what I make) but I can’t freeze a stir-fry, and I have a hard time imagining how I’m going to eat 2 pounds of stewing beef at once - but then, it’s so hot that I can’t bear the thought of eating a stew… h’m.

On the other hand, I bought the beef knowing that this would be a problem - my attitude has been “let’s just see what we can buy that’s really really cheap, and go with the flow.” I’m trying to get the courage up to try liver, because it’s so incredibly cheap and I suspect that it isn’t that bad if you get over the fact that it’s liver.

In case you were wondering, continuing the theme of “Madeline Loves Helmut Lang” (didn’t know this was a theme? Man, have you been out of touch) I love this jacket more than is strictly reasonable. It combines pretty much everything I’ve been enjoying - structural detail without uncomfortableness, motorcycle jackets, unusual collars, the capability of switching between swingy and tight, and most of all a sweet dirty white color - into one awesome piece of clothing.

Now if only $300 grew on trees, and I could be sure that I’d fit a medium. The sleeves would likely be too short, if nothing else.

Post-Captain, HMS Surprise, The Mauritius Command, Desolation Island, The Fortune of War, The Surgeon’s Mate, and The Ionian Mission, all by Patrick O’Brien. I do dearly love this series, although not quite so well as the Hornblower novels, and I think that Desolation Island, The Fortune of War and The Surgeon’s Mate are my favorites so far - they form a trilogy and are almost inseparable from each other. I am very grateful that Diana Villiers ends up being a much more sympathetic, and interesting, character than she was at first: Sophie begins to grate on me.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See. This is a “book-club book” - the kind that is marketed to women in their middle age, but not really appealing to literary critics - but I nonetheless enjoyed it very much. I had no idea that there was a secret women’s language in China; however, this is apparently historically true, and I’m going to see some examples of it when I visit Salem soon. Historical fiction that teaches you something, especially something of feminist interest, is always worth reading.

The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco. I had tried reading this book many times before, but I only managed to get through it this time - and for some reason, it suddenly gripped me and wouldn’t let me down. It certainly is now one of my favorite books, which is not at all the reaction I had the many times I picked it up over the years - I suppose it goes to show that sometimes you can read something at just the right time, and it will work out perfectly.

An unmemorable romance novel and thriller. I want to record that I read these, but I can’t remember their names or even story lines: one was to do with the Templars, and it was much better than anything Dan Brown’s written, but it was still ultimately forgettable. C’est la vie.

The Unknown Ajax, by Georgette Heyer. I had never read this one all the way through, and like all Georgette Heyer novels, it satisfied in the way that only a meticulously researched historical novel can. It’s a pity that her books are always shelved with romance and given such stereotypical covers: I think that many more people would enjoy this, and her other books, if they weren’t marketed as capital-R-Romance.

Blood Kin, by Ceridwen Dovey. I picked this book up at random off a “new fiction” shelf at the Cambridge library, and I was extremely pleasantly surprised. The closest personal servants of a president in an unnamed country reflect on their ties to high power, physical and emotional, as a coup takes place. With very few exceptions, the prose is amazing; highly recommended, though it isn’t what I would call a deep novel.

Yesterday I went to Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage for the first time - lots of people on CitySearch were pissy about how “touristy” it is, or how loud and crowded it is, but just judging based on the quality of burger I got, holy Jeez I’m coming back. There aren’t many places that will genuinely give you your burger rare, or even mooing, but they sure did - and it was fantastic. The onion rings and frappes were good too, although I like my frappes (shakes - I wonder why it’s different on the West v. East coasts?) thicker than they serve them.

So here I am: Cambridge.

I met my neighbor today and he kept expressing how excited he was to be here. I am too, but I’m suppressing it, I think. I keep looking outside my window and seeing the cars rush past - so different from anywhere I’ve lived before! - and hearing the noise from the pub across the street, hearing the people, hearing the other folks in my building.

It’s all still very strange to me, and I almost feel like I’m floating, like I don’t really belong here. It’s a life that I have often fantasized about and never lived - a life in a metropolis. I have thought so much about it that I can’t quite assimilate the fact that I am actually here. I have never lived in a room higher than the second floor before; I have never lived in a city of more than a couple million; I have certainly never lived in a place where buildings went up instead of out.

Some of the things that I’ve enjoyed thus far: the Stata center, all angles and lines, however impractical; the liquor store up the way that miraculously carries a good selection of Rogue beers; the amazing repurposed-elementary-school that is the main Cambridge library; Christine’s Homemade Ice Cream; the fact that the Tootsie Roll factory is literally right behind my building and that it smells like chocolatey goodness every time you walk past…

All right, as of today - August 1 - it is officially pre-season again. Or at least pre-pre season: no longer am I allowed to relax and do whatever I feel like; rather, I need to think about my nutritional intake and activity levels.

What this means right now - and I’m posting it in public in hopes that my Dear Blog Readers will help keep me honest when they see me - is:

• A return to keeping a food diary. With my iPhone, it should be easier than ever to keep a record of what I eat. I don’t need to cut calories, or go on a low fat/high protein training diet, yet - but I do need to get back in the habit of logging all my food and thinking about what I’m eating. If you see me eat something and not log it on my iPhone, please ask me why!
• More focus on stretching. Especially while I’m on the boat, I need to make sure that I stretch myself out as fully as I can.
• Choosing the more strenuous path. I need to take the stairs instead of the elevator, walk instead of take the bus, and make multiple trips to and from places instead of one big one.
• Push-ups, sit-ups, and other exercise. I am thinking about taking the 100 push-up challenge in the next 6 weeks, because it is something I can do to help me keep in anaerobic shape and because I can do it on the boat. Especially while I’m on the boat, I need to always be on the look out for ways I can exercise: swimming, hiking, even just dinghying in to shore and going off on foot in search of a grocery store.

September 1 ushers in the real pre-season, when I start being a gym monkey again and start back on my poomsae. Wish me luck preparing for that…

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, Lieutenant Hornblower, Hornblower and the Hotspur, Hornblower During the Crisis, Hornblower and the Atropos, Beat to Quarters, A Ship of the Line, Flying Colours, Commodore Hornblower, Lord Hornblower, and Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies by C.S. Forester. The early books have great Bildungsroman bits, and the later ones are just as fun as some of my favorites like Captain Blood. Most heartily recommended - though I think the early books are my favorites.

Master and Commander, by Patrick O’Brian. Aubrey couldn’t be more different from Hornblower, and this book is much more detailed and technical, yet I like it every bit as much. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the books in the series.

Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis (reread). Still my favorite Lewis book, and well worth reading.

Dangerous, by a pseudonym of Jayne Ann Krentz. I found this book vaguely boring, largely because the romance became a question of “will he admit he loves me, being that we’re married and humping like bunnies” - not my style of romance novel - really quickly. Nonetheless, I liked the heroine a lot.

The Friday Night Knitting Club, by Kate Jacobs. Enjoyable; not great writing, nor really something intended for a gal my age, but still a good book. I’d recommend it to people older than me.

The Secret Hour, by Luanne Rice. A summer beach read, not too much to say about that.

I just updated my fic recs, including new fics in BSG2003, BtVS/Angel, Firefly, Harry Potter, Supernatural, the West Wing, the X-files, and Crossovers.

Cross-posting to my LJ.