More book reviewing

Today we're going to talk about Poul Anderson. Who is Poul Anderson you non-scifi geeks might be asking? Well, only the author of the best YA novel ever, The High Crusade. The premise is that a world-conquering alien race lands a scouting ship outside a medieval English town, interrupting the local lord's preparations to set off for the Holy Land. Lucky for him, the aliens are a little cocky, and soon the English have captured the ship and decided it would give them a nice advantage against the infidels. Through a series of miscalculations on the part of their alien captive, massive bluffing on the part of the English, and just plain accident, they end up conquering the entire alien empire. Amidst all this silliness, it actually gets a large amount of history right, particularly the interplay between the Norman nobility, their clergyman, the English-speaking peasantry, and the (half) Welsh knight no one quite trusts. In other words, it's pretty damn brilliant for its genre.

Sadly, Poul Anderson is quite an inconsistent writer, and you never know what you're going to get when you pick up one of his books. The most recent gamble I tried was People of the Wind, which sadly lacks both good characters and good prose. This example is pulled from the first pages:

Ranchland rolled beneath him. Here around Gray, the mainly Ythrian settlements northward merged with the mainly human south; both ecologies blent with Avalon's own, and the country became a checkerboard. Man's grainfields, ripening as summer waned, lay tawny amidst huge green pastures where Ythrians grazed their maukh and mayaw. Strands of timberwood, oak or pine, windnest or hammerbranch, encroached on nearly treeless reaches of berylline native susin where you might still glimpse an occaissional barysauroid. The rush of his passage blew away fretfulness.

I'm still half-heartedly trying to read it, but in many places (especially a later list of alien plant species) I am forcibly reminded of this comic:

Biscuits

As a prize for all you who voted, or, since I can't enforce that at all, just because I feel like it, I decided to divulge the best biscuit recipe in the world. It's one of three recipes for biscuits I have from my great granma, Mama Christine, none of them too healthy since she was used to feeding farmers. Even better, it doesn't require rolling out and cutting dough — too much work no matter how good the biscuits.

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 T baking powder
1.5 t salt
4 T vegetable shortening
2/3 cup cream
1 cup buttermilk
flour for shaping

Preheat oven to 425° and grease a round cake pan. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, then work in the shortening with your fingers until there are no large lumps. This is what will form the nice layers in the biscuits.

Add the cream and the buttermilk, stirring until it looks like cottage cheese. In other words, a lumpy liquidy mess. Here's what a double batch looks like at this point:

Put about a cup of flour in another bowl. Drop a spoonful of dough into the bowl and cover it in flour. Pick up the dough ball and toss it gently from hand to hand to remove the excess flour, then plop it into the greased pan. Repeat until the dough's gone and you've dusted your whole kitchen with flour.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops are golden, and enjoy with a nice soup or breakfast.

Yes, they do kinda rise all on top of one another in the cake pan, so don't fuss about spacing them out nicely or anything. I think they would ooze too flat on a sheet pan. Yes, they're so good because of all the shortening, but you know, it could be worse — the recipe actually calls for pouring melted butter on top of them once they come out of the oven. Unnecessary.

Painting

I think my dog would talk like this

I've been catching up on my Escape Pod a lot lately. Time was, I would regularly exhaust Savage Lovecast, Escape Pod, Pod Castle, and as many audiobooks as I could get my hands on, but lately I just listen when I run, which isn't often enough. With the house painting has finally come some extra listening time. The best out of the recent bunch was by far How I Mounted Goldie, Saved my Partner Lori, and Sniffed Out The People's Justice. If you've ever wondered what a talking dog would sound like, you'll find the answer there. It rivaled Conversations With and About my Electric Toothbrush in all-time enjoyability.

And yes, if you like sci-fi, I highly recommend Escape Pod.

I am tired

The other Laura, being much more motivated to get things going than anyone else, decided we should finally go on the backpacking trip we've been talking about all summer. We started at 9,000' and went up to the continental divide at about 12,000', then over a few valleys towards Rawlins Pass and back down. So glad we didn't go the other direction, because the last climb would've been so much steeper and more painful.

View Larger Map

Unfortunately, Matt couldn't come, but it still turned out to be fun, and we've already got another trip in the works. Higgs did come, along with his little pack with his food. He always seemed confused when it started to get late and we weren't heading home, though.

Boulder is weird

I got this flyer in with the pizza coupons and such on my doorknob today. With a name like Rolfing, it's gotta be good, right? I don't even know why they need to throw in the spacetime jazz to convince me.

I feel lazy

Have you ever found yourself thinking, "I wish I could write a wonderful, creative novel, and I could do it if only there was some computer software to tell me what to write." Shockingly, there is a market for such a thing. You just pick a title and select a type of story line, and the software will suggest character names and tell you just how many pages to spend on each step of the narrative.

I feel like I might have read some of the books produced by this method.

I don't know what to say

Steampunk Star Wars. That's all there is to say.

I not so briefly summarize

A lot's been going on lately, which is a good thing. First of all, it's really fucking hot. No, I mean I can feel myself radiating heat after I come back from a run and have been reduced to waking up early just to run. I can honestly say I never thought I'd be one of those people. Really.

Shakespeare started a while back, but so far all I've seen is Love's Labour's Lost, which was a new one for me. Incredibly brief summary: Four men in Navarre have sworn off women to pursue their studies and establish an Academy at the court. The problem is that the king has forgotten that the Princess of France and her three ladies are en route to ask for a war funds. The four men fall in love, but the four ladies fail to take them seriously. Everything is ruined by the announcement that the Princess's father has died.

The production was set in Kennebunkport before America's entry to WWI. This worked well with the French envoy of ladies requesting a war loan and was cleverly used in a couple of important moments. For instance, when the four men discover they've all broken their oaths and decide to jointly pursue the ladies in earnest, they rip off their old school matching college football sweaters. But as to the play itself, I don't think it's held up so well as the other comedies. Harold Bloom claims it as one of his favorites, but it's so full of contemporary jokes and allusions that you're left lost too often. It doesn't help that one of the comic characters, Don Armado, requires an overblown Spanish accent, rendering his jokes even more difficult to follow. This production also gave the scholar Holofernes a little bit of a lisp, further exacerbating the problem. So not my favorite play.

On the writing front, I was told by my workshop last week that the story I gave them was a novel, which is actually how it started out. So not all bad, although I really wasn't looking to be working on a novel now. I've got another couple of days to put together my next piece for them, which most definitely is not a novel, although the world it's in could certainly support one. I do find myself creating quite a number of worlds that sit astride the scifi/fantasy border to varying degrees, and this one very much so does that with post-apocalyptic magic fun.

I hate viral marketing

So these random faceless people have been turning up in photos around England lately, and thus making it onto Fark.

To which I say, it would be damn awesome if this was how someone's responding the surveillance cameras everywhere. About time that there was some sort of outrage at the crazy erosion of privacy and liberties over there. They keep going on about how cameras have lowered crime, when it's only been shown to push crime out of sight. But that only means you need more of them, right? Also crazy: they don't have the right to use force to defend their property. That's what the police are for. As a result, half of all British burglaries now take place while the victim is at home.

But, of course, turns out it's a creepy viral marketing campaign instead. For Lotus. How weird is that?

On to the next thing....

Today I went ahead and put a deposit on the Red Lion. I think despite the quirks of the place it'll be quite fun, wonderful in nice weather, and will certainly have the best food. Some further pictures:

Appetizers would be out here in nice weather (imagine I wasn't too lazy to get the tent strap out of the frame).

This would be where dinner and dancing and an outdoor bar will be. I think it's all rather charmingly Colorado.

I meet other writers

I went and signed up for a writing workshop, knowing that I both need some hard deadlines for producing something I'm okay with others reading and the feedback of other writers. Chris and Matt and others are dying to read my work, but it's not the same as getting honest feedback from another writer. I should be encouraged that the worst I've received from editors is try again later rather than outright rejection, but I still am really doubtful of everything I produce. Eventually it just sucks the motivation for that piece dry so that I have far too many almost finished things.

The people in the class look to be an interesting assortment. There's the engineer who, when asked what he wanted to get out of the class, proceeded to read a list of very specific syntax questions. Then the geek who runs a wiki, and the former musical theater major who perpetually smiles. And many memoir or fictionalized memoir writers. Should get a very well rounded set of opinions out of them.

I've been thinking about what I want the class to read, so I know what to work on. Oddly enough, I am really tempted to have another go at a novella I've barely touched since last fall, rather than anything else nearer completion. Probably because I often find myself thinking of it as my only serious piece so far (which makes it that much harder to make myself work on). I've found myself thinking about it more frequently the last few weeks, so I'll give it a shot and see how much more I can do this week.

I'm done looking

So, after many tastings, one shockingly horrible, the venue choice has been narrowed down to two contestants. The first, the Chautauqua Dining Hall, is an amazing historic location in the middle of a park backing up into the mountains, with views of the flatirons.

It's food is probably okay, parking will be very problematic, and it's at least a few thousand over budget.

The second, the Red Lion Restaurant, has really spectacular food in a rather oddly laid out place nestled just up Boulder Canyon. While a little strange — and I mean beyond being very German — it comes in just under budget.

Any opinions?

I hate Bridezillas

So, I guess I haven't mentioned it here yet, but Matt and I have been engaged a few weeks now. The wedding madness had started even before, as we started deciding when and where and such. Thus there were wedding magazines, and Matt rolling his eyes as I girled out about the whole thing. This weekend, though, my mom's flying out so we can start the venue search, and I can feel that the real madness is only beginning. Really I just wish that I could throw a big fun party with all my friends where I happen to get married rather than a wedding. Is there some rule against that?

And, as to the title, just days after picking out the ring WE went and ran a wedding marathon made up of mostly Bridezillas. It annoys me just to know that this show is on television, that these people are being rewarded with attention for their bad behavior. And the grooms are such enablers. You never catch them saying, "Hey, isn't the important part that we're married at the end of the day?" This is what comes of the "your wedding day should be a perfect and magical experience no matter what it costs" culture. No, it's just a party where you get married.

I hike some more

For her birthday this weekend the other Laura wanted to go tackle another fourteener, Quandary Peak, which is a popular first fourteener in the summer because of the nice trail ascent all the way to the top (map). Right now, however, it's still snow covered enough that two of our group lugged their skis up and made it all the way back to the trailhead on them. I wasn't nearly so badass — just happy to have lugged myself to the top.

We knew that Quandary had a number of false summits, but still got fooled. In fact, we were considering turning around since we'd passed our planned turn around time still unsure of how far the summit was. We only really realized that we would make it a few hundred feet from the top, when yet more mountain failed to appear. The way down was much more fun, and we did slide down some.

Afterwards, we went back to Laura's for burgers and whatnot with everyone, only a few hours later than planned. Despite thinking I wasn't really that hungry at first, I managed to eat two burgers (probably a third of my average yearly intake) in addition to salad, dessert, alcohol, etc. All in all a good day.

Unfortunately, coming home to a stuffy, no-AC house after a long day was apparently too much for Higgs. He started overheating and had to be showered with cold water and fed ice chips until he cooled down. I think it's time for another haircut.

I go hiking

I'm finally starting to put up Yellowstone photos. Unfortunately, the volume of pictures is a little daunting, especially since we're getting ready to go out of town again this weekend. I wanted to do a nice summary post of the whole trip, but since I've been slow, I'm only going to tackle the backpacking trip just now. As the capstone to the week, Chris and I spent three days doing the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone, a stretch of the Yellowstone River along the northern edge of the park, ending in Gardiner, Montana (map).

I've got lots of pictures of elk and bison and pronghorn from the first day, but none that are really worth much. You can't really get close enough to the elk up there, so they all just look like way too many dots on the hillsides. Nobody at this altitude had any calves yet, either. We did get a bison running after us when we got stuck trying to go around a herd grazing a very narrow strip along Hellroaring Creek. I did not get a picture of that, but Chris did as I hissed at her to please not worry the animals that obviously are not used to people. An interesting contrast to the bison who let their calves play a dozen feet away from tourists at Old Faithful.

Most of our trail on that first day looked like it was maintained more by ungulates than by people. Only near the trailhead were any bootprints in evidence, and where trailmarkers were knocked over, we wandered onto a few animal trails that didn't look any different than ours. So it wasn't exactly surprising to find a herd anxious to pass by our campsite just after breakfast. This group did have calves, probably very recent. They took quite a while to move past, and then left a male to supervise us as we broke camp, until the whole herd was out of sight.

When we got to our second campsite, we discovered this very scruffy looking goat. The grass was quite nice, and shockingly ungrazed, so he hung around as we set up camp and chit chatted. Then he came back for more lazy grazing in the morning.

We were also surprised by a beaver, foraging in the bushes along the beach by our cooking area. He seemed to be living in a hole under a nearby tree rather than in a dam just yet. Later, in Gardiner, I picked up Decade of the Wolf, a very interesting book on their reintroduction to the park, which claims they're seeing an increase in beaver populations on the Yellowstone as a result. The idea is that elk no longer forage in narrow stretches with limited visibility, leaving willow and cottonwood to grow in those places where they once would've been eaten as shoots. Our campsite would certainly have qualified as elk-unsafe, with just a narrow shelf of grass surrounded by river and hills.

We saw lots of picked-clean carcasses along the trail, which we'd been warned about. Turns out that almost all the elk in the park winter in this valley, and, of course, the weak ones eventually die, drawing all the bears waking up hungry. As long as they're feeding on a carcass, a bear will stay nearby defending his food. In some places the bones were thick on the ground, all clean luckily, but obviously only recently so. We didn't see any meat left at all, in fact, until we got within sight of Gardiner, when we passed a couple like this:

Luckily we only saw a few bear tracks, and the only in-person appearances were along the road, like these two cubs wrestling:

And of course, the dozens of parked tourists photographing them. More photos of my own should be up eventually. Amongst them some actual shots of people, in addition to marmots, elk, and more geysers than you can shake a stick at. We also saw osprey, bald eagles, herons, and tons of other interesting birds (plus not so interesting Canadian Geese picking nesting sites), but I gave up on trying to catch them in time. Can you tell I'm no wildlife photographer?

I jabber some more

I've been reading Card's The Worthing Saga, which includes some of his earliest fiction (apparently much-revised). The first half or so is made up of The Worthing Chronicle, which is a set of stories from all over the history of a planet told within a frame tale — he was studying medieval literature as he realized that the whole thing needed to tied together better. What's interesting is how engaging the frame tale structure is even though you have no real idea why it's being told at all, much less to our child narrator, or where the whole thing is going at all. Then, quite suddenly, you see that it has all been about what memories are so important that they are preserved for generations, about the necessity of conflict, both in life and in any story worth telling. It was a nice surprise theme.

Higgs: Best Day Ever

Higgs was kinda freaked out by the pre-race scene — over 700 dogs turned out, but it was the flyball demonstrations that really agitated him enough that we had to take him out of sight of all the mayhem a couple of times — but as soon as everyone started queuing up with their dogs he was all about following their lead. And, most surprising of all, he actually followed my instructions for where to go without being distracted by the herd on all sides. All in all, I think he had a really great time, while for me it was much more interesting than a normal workout. Maybe next year they won't put flyball right in the center of everything.

I watch a deadline approach

This year I decided to run in the Canine Classic, a local charity race you do with your dog (insert gratuitous plug for fundraising page here). This required training on two fronts: I needed to jog, which is normally not my preferred aerobic activity, and Higgs needed to learn not to freak running with other dogs. I just realized it's this weekend, and am kinda worried about the latter. First of all, since he usually runs with Matt, if Matt's around when we run he starts to whine that he's not with the right running buddy. Second, he's a very social dog, and could possibly get way overloaded with all the people and other dogs. Or he could have a really great time. As insurance, I think we're going to have to kind of pre-tire him out at a dog park, and then decide on site whether he gets to run or just watch.

I feel sorry for Dune lovers

Reading The Butlerian Jihad is like living through a war: years afterwards you unexpectedly find yourself having flashbacks to particularly painful parts. Thus, the other night, I couldn't stop thinking about the "character" Erasmus. I use quotation marks because no one in the book was given more than a cursory characterization, if that. Each has one aspect that is simply trotted out over and over again, which gets really old when that aspect is bitchiness, say. With Erasmus, it's a complete lack of empathy. Despite the fact that he is supposed to be a very intelligent and engaging machine in a world where machines have learned to rule humans quite smoothly, he can't grasp that a woman might be mad if he neuters her so that she won't be distracted from him by children. Or that humans might be disturbed by the knowledge that he enjoys vivisections. And the actual humans were worse. I found myself wishing for a Cliffs Notes version, so that I could get the backstory without actually hearing any of the characters open their mouths. Of course, the Butlerian Jihad doesn't actually happen in The Butlerian Jihad, and no matter how much I want to know what happens, I can't bring myself to read any more.

I can sympathize

I don't know if any of my readers (i.e., Drew and Amy and the lurking Matt) read the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, but I'm going to assume you do because you should. So long as you don't mind that no one's guaranteed a happy ending — if you, in fact, rather relish the novelty of knowing that any character can be killed off at any time, and probably will be before the end — then it's really quite an enjoyable series. Unfortunately, the interval between novels has jumped from two years to five, and he's already had to increase the planned number of novels to seven. To force himself to finish the latest, he apparently decided not to attend any conferences until the manuscript was done, which meant skipping last year's worldcon. On my side, I've wasted a significant amount of time doubting the planned ending of a measly little 3,000 word story, tweaking what I've got to fit the new plan of the day, only to finally realize I need to just finish it. It's not a damn seven novel series or anything.

I go skiing

Because I'm cheap, this year was the first since moving to Colorado that I didn't buy a season lift ticket to Eldora, the little local ski area that's actually somehow big enough for a whole season of skiing. Today Matt happened to get ahold of a spare ski pass, so I bundled myself up, dug out some embarrassingly dusty skis, and headed up. The snow was wonderful, but I was immediately reminded of just what happens the first time up in a season, when you suddenly discover all those muscles that don't get used at the gym. It was a short day, both because those ski-stabilizing muscles were quickly tired in the thick powder, and because it was still snowing. Eldora unfortunately faces northeast and usually gets rapidly colder, foggier, and less fun as morning ends. Maybe I shouldn't be so cheap.

I am in love with Susanna Clarke's writing

I just started reading The Ladies of Grace Adieu, a collection of short stories in the same universe as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which was absolutely wonderful, and, only one story in, I'm already in love with the collection. So far, my favorite part is the way the narrator apparently takes for granted that ladies could never be interested in magic, only in famous magicians (the same way that a lady might safely take an interest in daring young mountain climbers, but never in mountain climbing), continuing to naively report events that fly directly in the face of that assumption. It sets up a wonderful humorous tension.

I am hating Delta

I knew there was a good reason why I usually avoid Delta, but Denver to Pittsburgh is not exactly a high traffic route and I'm really cheap, so I bought the ticket through Atlanta. Unfortunately my cheapness meant I had a three hour layover, but they have great Southern food in the Atlanta airport — no joke, terminal A is where it's at. Anyways, I'm kinda confused when I arrive, because they show two flights to Pittsburgh at the same time, slightly odd, and mine is delayed. No worries because mine is in terminal A. Good lunch, then maybe a drink, some reading, should be a breeze. Well, no drink, since with DST it's still technically Sunday morning in Atlanta, but no big loss. I start to head off to my gate for the short wait for boarding, only there's no one there, and it says the next flight is to Austin. Double check the boards, and yes, my flight number is supposed to be there. The confusing thing is that both Pittsburgh flights are shared by Delta and Northwest, but they are shown with the same Northwest flight number. Well, apparently a delay with their plane getting in forced them to use another, which according to the Delta agent "forces them" to create a new flight number, thus the two listed flights. As in, keeping a reasonable on time record requires them to create a new flight that will magically get marked as leaving on time no matter the real delay. So, their plan was for everyone to go to the gate for their flight number in terminal A, then have a rather annoyed agent try to explain that they were secretly supposed to be on this other flight in terminal E.

Not a big deal since I had enough time, just a "what the hell is going on with these people?" moment. Flash forward to Pittsburgh baggage claim. Me and about twenty other people are waiting waiting waiting for our bags to come out. Everyone else on our flight has gotten theirs, but somehow there's still dozens of bags coming out, none of them claimed. Not to worry, we are reassured, because they just had too few luggage carts for the number of bags today and had to drive the empties back to the plane for another load. Fifteen minutes later, a dozen more bags come out, only one of them belonging to any of us. They had a whole three hours to get my bag on the right plane and somehow still didn't make it.

Gummy

Both of our animals are expensive now, although kitty still much more so.

Higgs has always had a snaggle tooth in front that was almost impossible to get totally clean around and should have probably been pulled as soon as it came in. Apparently it was a much bigger problem than it looked. Now Mr. Gums is not very happy, except for the sudden switch to wet food.

I jabber about narrators

I think I have found the most endearing narrator in all English literature — and somehow he was created by Dean Koontz. I know, it's crazy, but I am seriously impressed by the narration in Odd Thomas. I really don't particularly like Dean Koontz novels, even though I've tried many both before and since discovering the Odd Thomas novels. Maybe it's Odd's often self-deprecating sense of humor, even when in dire peril.

Don't get me wrong, there are weak spots, particularly in the sequels. The plot in the most recent was incredibly reliant on quantum jargon hand waving of the most blatant variety, which terribly annoys me. And all the stories have depended a little too much on everyone having a single defining crazy fact in their history that acts as a shortcut to characterization. But the narration is so enjoyable, and Odd Thomas so damn likable, that you forget those problems.