Things Happened

I have tried and failed three times to give blood this month. It has not been thrilling. But thanks to a lot of spinach-- I am learning to like very, very simple salads as well as how to boil eggs-- I pulled it off today. Triple platelets, no complications, drank three pints of calcium-bearing liquid and ate a big handful of string cheeses. Didn't stop me from getting tingly in the last half-hour, but you know, that's platelets.

Plus I got a replacement water bottle; the lid on mine is slightly broken. Not enough to matter as a bottle, but tougher to carry around.

Gave blood yesterday. I had a new person-- they've been hiring, and I considered applying but I do not really want to be a patient-contact person. I was unthrilled with the newness, minor miscommunications, neither of us knowing the other, and then things went mildly poorly and they only got a single platelet and jumbo plasma.

The tech moved my snacks and said I could just ask her to put more within reach. That is not how it works.

Anyway, between being a crankypants then and managing to think, "I should eat something soon," and not eating anything for about eight hours today, plus a blog post that hit all the pissing-off/self-loathing buttons... crankypants. All the crankypants.

Spring break ends this weekend. Back to school Monday.

I read two books in February. And so much fic.

Lisa Kleypas, Brown-Eyed Girl. Angela tells me the book contains surprisingly few errors in photography, meaning there's one screwed-up brand name and one misunderstanding of camera modes and who uses them. It's a decent book, though every time the titular eyes came up, I sighed because I have never met a redhead with brown eyes. I'm sure you're out there.

Tanya Huff, The Future Falls. Yay banter, yay snark, yay Charlie and music... and like the others in the series, I have no damned clue what actually happened at the end. At all. Plus I really, honestly thought that Charlie was 100% lesbian. I guess part of what I missed in the second book's climax included dragon kissing.
And I kind of want to compare the Gales to the Prices in Seanan McGuire's books.

On to blood!

Number of times I have been stabbed to extract my crimson life-fluid: 5.

Okay, so. Today was also the wellness screening for the school district; I am willing to wake up slightly early and skip breakfast if it gets me a fifteen-dollar gift card at Scheel's (to be augmented by a twenty-five-dollar gift card for being a building winner in the district's bullshit Biggest Loser challenge, and I have opinions about that, oh yes I do.) Unfortunately, dehydration leads to zero stabbable veins. So the poor tech tried to get blood for the various tests, wiggled things around a bit, had to back off and go for the other forearm rather than an elbow vein. Number three, fingerstick to pass the blood donation tests. Number four, other elbow vein, also completely absent. Number five, first elbow, different vein, ended up misbehaving just enough that when things went mildly wrong, the tech dropped me from a triple platelet to a double. I am sad about this. I had a streak!

There was also a camera crew there doing a local news story about the youngest Solon student to donate a gallon of blood. They have a blood-donation cord for graduation, which is spectacular, and this particular student started donating platelets and so accumulated the gallon quickly. Good job, Solon student. You are excellent.

It's been a while. Too long of a while, maybe, because I think I've lost some books in here. My beautiful data! Yet I haven't done anything with that data except make drafts of spreadsheets.

The perfect is the enemy of the good and the posted. I'm late for work. Here.


SURPRISE OCTOBER

SK Dunstall, Linesman. I was ready for a ton of Showing Them All. I got way more politics than I was up for-- there was a time I followed political plots more easily, but it is not this time. But even with that, I enjoyed the book quite a lot. It’s the beginning of a series, though, and the time scale is fairly compressed, days rather than weeks, so not every question is answered.

Sabrina Jeffries, If the Duke Falls.
DUKE: *assumes*
LADY: Don’t assume. Ass, you, me. Mostly you.
DUKE: *assumes*
LADY: Oh my god you suck.
DUKE: *makes decisions for everyone based on assumptions*
LADY: I cannot believe we are having sex.
DUKE: *assumes*
LADY: THE END.
I don’t think this is the first Jeffries that I’d rather was written by Milan. But I think everything would be better by Milan. This, though... I could see what she was doing, and the ways it didn’t work.

Carrie Vaughn, Kitty Saves the World. Argh argh argh, this is a time when I know just enough more than the characters to think they are completely missing something. You’ll know it when you see it. Also, what the hell, deus ex machine, what the hell.

Sarah Monette, The Bone Key. A reread because I’d lent it to the boy (now former boy, him having moved) and started reading it at his place. Still very readable. Still very dark in places.

Mary Balogh, Only a Promise. I don’t remember anything of this. But it’s been weeks.

Mercedes Lackey, Closer to the Heart. Valdemar. Heralds. Mags. Kirball.

Kirsty Logan, The Gracekeepers. Gorgeous setting! Lovely ideas! A circus that relies entirely on the goodwill of people that baseline resent it for its debauchery, and the circus people openly and blatantly plan to subvert everything and piss them off, plus extra genderbending!
Except... yeah, no. If you’re a traveling show and failing, you don’t add controversy. That’s for art. You add controversy when you’re safe, when it’s not an issue of you being attacked or starving to death.
The entire book had little things like that. Yes, a subversive circus with people who never have pronouns, that’s awesome. But the worldbuilding didn’t support it. Yes, a series of birdcages meant to act as a burial ground in the water. But people die everywhere and people didn’t quite act right around it.

Hannah Moskowitz, A History of Glitter and Blood. Tell me you wouldn’t pick that up based on the title alone.
Yeah, thought so. It’s a weird, weird book. I mean, it’s about faeries (maybe fairies, I don’t remember) and a city and teenagers and glitter, and the book begins with fairies (or faeries) being eaten. That’s just a thing that happens. And it ends up being layered, with an author but not a clear one, then a clear one, and a general sense of people being in over their heads on several different levels.
But it’s also about the only four-and-change fairies left in a city, and I could only barely make that make sense. Everything worked except the relative scales of protags and settings.
So look at that title, look at the first page, figure out if it’s something you’ll like, because faeries being eaten and metanarrative and weirdly personal revolutions and several different and interesting ways of reproducing.

NOVEMBER

Connie Willis, Inside Job. Dammit, Mencken, why did you have to suck so much at the things that you weren’t awesome at? I wish you were someone I could admire without reservation.

Unfinished book: nope. I really shouldn’t spite-read things by people who are actively annoying (and misinforming) people I know.

Mary Balogh, Only a Kiss. I remember more of this one than Only a Promise. I’m happy to see that there’s another one coming up. None of this set have been very tense, possibly because I have high standards for emotional distress, possibly because the revelation of various terrible things in backstory becomes pat after a while.

WHAT THE HELL DECEMBER

Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy. This was disappointing in the same way that Let’s Pretend This Never Happened was: I want more than a collection of slightly-related essays. I wanted this to be centered on mental illness, on Lawson’s ways of coping with it, on the community of people she’s discovered and augmented and built, and it’s not that. But if you like her blog, you’ll like this.

Aliette de Bodard, The House of Shattered Wings. Besides a few anachronistic words, my only problem with this book was that it never felt Parisian, only postapocalyptic.

Unfinished Nora Roberts: turns out I dislike the super-rich in her books, but what really throws me in the older ones is the amount of smoking.

Sharon Shinn, Jeweled Flame. Exactly what I expected, that being people who are basically decent experiencing plot. Mostly, I like the cosmology, the blessings, the way Welch works. Plus the throwaway bits about homosexuality-- not worth noticing, we care so little!-- bisexuality-- okay too!-- and asexuality-- totally a thing that happens!

Gave blood today. Walked there through sleet and ice pellets-- my face was pretty well stung by the time I got there, about twenty minutes late, but it's better to lose my footing on foot than in a car. Then triple platelets, yay! I've said before that giving platelets is a good way to spend a blizzard, with the heated chair, the blankets, the calcium-bearing treats, and such. No eagles on the river, though; I guess the ice drove them out of the open even though the cold brings them to the dam and bridges.

my shift key is not working but i have managed to give blood after something like two months' break due to not enough blood and the cough that would not die. triple platelets, read some sh work while i did it. everyone missed me. i also saved the day by remembering the ipad passcode when the blood folks didn't.

and i got purple bandages to match my shirt. go everyone.

I might have forgotten one. I can't tell.

Julia London, The Perfect Homecoming. About what I expected it to be, which was not great but not terrible. Too much, “I am totally not autistic! I just suck at people!” which I will buy because the character really, really doesn’t see the rules she’s been raised by. I will buy it but roll my eyes at it.

Cherie Priest, I Am Princess X. This just kept moving. No time to rest for anyone. It was kind of exhausting to read, but enjoyable.

Douglas Rees, Vampire High. A reread because it turns out that is about the level of realbook I want, plus I reorganized my shelves and found it. Not spectacular, but I didn’t expect it to be, and it’s satisfying.

Ilona Andrews, Magic Shifts. Angela is going back to read the first book and compare. Since I read it in chunks, and while other things were going on, I ended up with a weirdly dissociated experience of the book. I kept forgetting that I’d read it, or that I had finished it, or that the things in the book actually happened in the book rather than being yet more fanfic. What that boils down to is that it feels like an almost perfunctory book, like it has to happen to escalate things to a later book.
I would have loved more neighbor shenanigans and Mahon being Mahon and failing, honestly.

Daniel Jose Older, Shadowshaper. If I say this book is all surface, it sounds like more of a complaint than it is, and I do not want to do that. This book is very clear about what it is doing and why; it comes out and says so rather than backgrounding it. A little jarring for me, but I’m also used to the background being background I’m completely familiar with, see also white privilege, and thus smoother going down.
Anyway! The book is all surface in a way that makes me understand layers and subtext.

Wow I did not read much that wasn't Avengers fic.

Frank Warren, The World of Postsecret. Exactly what you’d expect.

Anne Perry, The Cater Street Hangman, Callender Square. I’ve had Perry recommended to me a couple times, and a historical spousal detective team is right up my alley.
These were published in 1979 and 1980.
So... not so much.
They’re a bit didactic, with quite a lot of monologuing about how very different things were Back Then-- did you know poor people existed then? Well, our heroine pretty much did not. The first two were kind of a slog, not least because the style of the time seems to have been to discover who did it, then end the book immediately.
I’m reading one from 2013, and we’ll see if I’m willing to backtrack. Signs point to no, so far.

Nora Roberts, The Liar. The numbers are too big, the town too cute, the characters too unaware that they are in a book. Even if they don’t expect the surprise twist ending, Roberts should know that her readers do.

Anne Perry, Midnight at Marble Arch. Yup, done with Perry. I need denouement! And less heavy-handedness!

Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost. I have been disappointed in Allen’s books because I liked Garden Spells so much, and this one gets back to the strange people with strange powers. I’m glad-- I like her writing and it relies on the world being right.

Andi Teran, Ana of California. Too wedded to its origins as Anne of Green Gables, and also waffly on the subject of what is unforgiveable and what is not. A character who is supposed to be sympathetic hates another because he got drunk and outed her to his friends... and she spreads a rumor that the Latina from Los Angeles, apparently the only Latina in the school, is in a gang and has connections. Because that’s completely harmless. Even if the titular Ana weren’t an orphan entirely due to gang violence.
Basically, either go for the full Anne treatment and make it cute and sweet, or do the opposite and actually engage with the setting and such. In between, no.

1) Gave blood. Triple platelets. Notable mostly because the phlebotomist doing the stick knew it was iffy, so he kept an eye on it and pulled it before we got too far in. Moved over to another machine, had a completely uneventful donation. Plus, with the rewards program I'm going to get a set of pans.

2) Books. Very short here.


Jennifer Crusie, Welcome to Temptation. Rereads continue. Nom.

Diana Wynne Jones, Unexpected Magic. I have heard before that if you read a lot of Jones you see that there is a looooot of dysfunction in her adults. Hooboy yes. When I mentioned this at Alpha, people said, “That is the point of Diana Wynne Jones,” but... look, I get to come to my conclusions in my own time.

Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory. My biggest problem with this book is that the great first line is a lie. Why wouldn’t we like what she has to tell us? We bought this book. It’s what happened, and there’s nothing groundbreaking or culture-shattering about the events. And, I guess, a little silliness in places, but I’m willing to classify this one as, “A lot of fun and I like it, but craftwise not one of her best,” vs some that are, “Wow, this is probably brilliant, and I am never going to read it or anything in its series again.”

Jennifer Crusie, Faking It. Reread, and this time I actually understood the crowded explanation of everything.

Mark Kurlansky, Salt. Decent book for occasional reading while the boy cooked. Didn’t get as in-depth as I’d like, and the organization wasn’t the way I’d expect it, but in chunks, perfectly good.

Wow, did I really not read much else? Well, all the Avengers fic in the world. I have a problem.

3) So much Avengers fic. Someone posted a link somewhere and then I was devouring everything good. Some iffy. Not much bad, because I am working from a well-curated list.

4) Oh, also, Alpha. That happened. Ask for more details. Good as usual.

Did I mention that they changed the blood donation timing? Because now I can go fortnightly. This is useful for me gaining points (likely to spend on a set of pots and pans rather than anything particularly chainsaw-shaped) and also for getting me out of the house in the summer.

So I went! A trio of students observed through the process; I am an excellent teaching specimen because I know the drill, I know what wrong things feel like, and as long as I'm warm, most things don't go wrong. Plus, and this is an important plus, they changed the thermostat settings after years of begging from the staff.

I was actually warm without the blankets. Possibly... I might have gotten uncomfortably warm, given time.

Anyway, two hours later, I'd done a triple platelet, drunk a pint of milk, eaten a double handful of string cheese, and had a coffee hot chocolate, then I took my overheated self to a science booster club meeting.

And now books.

Rachel Hartman, Seraphina. A reread. Still good, still interesting. I am in favor of saints.

Shadow Scale. The reason for the reread. And this one... okay, I am not the biggest fan of books that are mostly about traveling, but this wasn’t entirely. Plus it had a really good resolution to the love triangle, which was already a nonstandard love triangle.

Melinda Salisbury, The Sin-Eater’s Daughter. You know how you were at fourteen, or how others were? How it was to be in the one true youthgroup or the atheist driven to the word because of that youthgroup? How clear and easy and obvious the truth was?
Yeah, that’s this book. I kept wanting to grab the main characters and make them see reason, or at least a reasonable theory of mind. Blech.

Jennifer Crusie, Eileen Dreyer, Anne Stuart, The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes. Reread. Because I went into the story expecting ridiculous lightness and already knowing that everyone’s obsessed with Europe, I was not displeased. I do kind of want to see how many pages of the book were devoted to a single libido spell. Might have been a sixth.

Juliet Marillier, Shadowfell, Raven’s Flight, The Caller. I’m putting these all together because that’s how I read them. While I roll my eyes at Marillier’s fascination with the British Isles and dialect, and huff a fair amount at her need to have an evil woman behind the seemingly evil king-- he gets to be evil because he married poorly and is easily led, but she’s just a woman who likes blood and power and orders toddlers whipped, I mean seriously-- it’s a good trilogy.

Joe Abercrombie, Half a King. Yup, it’s a guy book. I’m not sure if it Bechdels, but I’d be surprised-- I suppose I could check easily enough, since there are only two or three scenes... wait, it totally does, because at some point the merchant captain must give her slave an order or something. So there are scenes where more than one woman is present.
I generally saw the twists coming, and I liked that the entire plot was driven out of fear of a woman-- not for, but of. Doing womanly things, but doing them much more competently than anyone else. I'm thinking of picking up the sequel.

Ilona Andrews, Burn for Me. Now I really, really want more urban fantasy, but I reread everything recently enough that I don’t want to go through it all again. A reread, and like the Crusie et al, my low expectations in terms of the romantic lead’s actual romantic leadiness rather than hello Mr Stalker meant I was pleasantly surprised when he wasn’t completely rapey all the time.

Ysabeau Wilce, Flora Segunda, Flora’s Dare, Flora’s Fury. I knew I’d be dissatisfied with the third, as these are rereads. I expected to be more okay with it than I was. I have an extreme Thing for erasing one's memory of a person, particularly an important person. You know what would have been more interesting? Keep the memories, lose the love. Otherwise she got ripped off.

Marie Brennan, Warrior. Reread again. Angela and I agree that Eclipse is the most badass and we would like more of him.

Gemma Files, A Book of Tongues. I am not sure why this one does not hit me as ‘guy book’ the way the Abercrombie does. Maybe it’s that women are, for the most part, absent rather than ineffectual. Maybe ‘guy book’ means ‘straight guy book’. Probably the latter. Uncomfortable to read because people doing really terrible things for good reasons within systems that are probably really, really broken. And the library doesn’t have the third one.

Carrie Vaughn, Dreams of the Golden Age. I am SO GLAD this did not end the way After the Golden Age did. Could have used more family stuff, but that’s not the point.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls. Reread. This was the first of the Chalion books I read, and it left me kind of meh, mostly because I didn’t understand Ista’s backstory I think. Or the gods. Now it leaves me with a feeling of rightness.

Lisa M Bradley, The Haunted Girl. Book by a friend! And a good one. The first part is poetry, both speculative and not, and the second is short stories, all science fiction and fantasy. The last story is amazing.

Marie Brennan, Witch. Huh. This is a month of rereads. I remember really disliking parts of this, but knowing they were coming, I could see the groundwork I missed before, like an entire damned subplot. Plus, Eclipse. Most badass, would read again.

Randy Henderson, Finn Fancy Necromancy. You know, I expected this to be funnier and twistier. Instead, it seemed to rely on eighties humor, which at this point isn’t new, and generally being urban fantasy with a first-person narrator. I pinged the evil characters immediately, albeit not all of them. Plus erasing memories along with love. See above re bullshit.

Lois McMaster Bujold, The Hallowed Hunt. Of the Chalion books, this is the one that doesn’t fit. It’s not Chalion or Ibra, the gods are there but not the plot, there’s all this mess about kingship and that just doesn’t... it doesn’t work for me. It’s a reread, and all I remembered was that there was a guy and a leopard and barely anything having to do with gods.

Eleanor Arnason, Big Mama Stories. Interesting. Not always for me, but interesting.

Elizabeth Hoyt, Dearest Rogue. I think we have two more sequels coming. This one... eh. Had good stuff in it, but the villain was pointlessly evil, the disability plot wasn’t followed through as much as I wanted, and the whole wasn’t satisfying.

Evan Roskos, Dr Bird’s Advice for Sad Pets. Too much Whitman, not enough catharsis.

Diverse Energies, ed Buckell and Monti. Wow, the future is hella bleak. And that makes me sad, that a bunch of fiction specifically aimed at including people who aren’t included is also so depressing. “Solitude” is an outlier in the anthology, being both a very clear reprint and not really about today’s POC, but hey, I love “Solitude” and I understood it more this time around. Also not a lot of Africa in there, but you know, the perfect is the enemy of the good here.

Tamora Pierce, First Test, Page, Squire, Lady Knight. Rereads, the first I’ve done. Surprisingly brief, though it’s not like I should be surprised. And very... comforting, I guess? I can see what she’s doing in places, and it’s school books and there are good people. Then it’s books about sex and consent and agency, and then competence in ways that I can be competent.
I am not touched by any goddess. I am not chosen by a sinister Chamber, though I would kind of like to try that just to... I don’t know, see. But I can run things. And I can have ambitions slash delusions of running things as well as Kel. And it’s not like I thought Alanna was impossible-- I mean, that’s the whole point of Kel, that she’s possible when Alanna isn’t, but I read Alanna before I had quite internalized that I would never be bilingual, a child star, or an Olympian.
So... points to Tamora Pierce for accomplishing everything she tried to accomplish there in ways that make me feel insightful for noticing.
The first two I read in paper, with the right covers, and the second two in a four-pack ebook from the library that was poorly and inconsistently formatted, but which did include “Bone’s Day Out”. I remember hearing about that story at Alpha. It is a good story.