Litlove tagged me for a weird meme, rather appropriately, and I will get to that soon. In the meantime, my two new books arrived today, a whole day early, so I have to get started on them right away.
S.M. Stirling’s books are about a post-apocalyptic world, where all technology has been rendered inoperable by some [...]
Archive for November, 2007
Crisis Averted; Or, Thank You Amazon and USPS
Posted in Books on November 27, 2007 | 8 Comments »
Annual Mountain Bike Ride
Posted in cycling on November 24, 2007 | 1 Comment »
I just received an e-mail from Amazon informing me that I can expect to see the next two Stirling books in my mailbox on November 28th. That’s four days away, and now I feel like having a temper tantrum. I won’t, though. Four days! What if something happens to Juniper or Mike in those four [...]
Crisis!
Posted in Books on November 23, 2007 | 5 Comments »
I finished S. M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire today and now I am in full crisis mode. My local bookstores within walking distance did not have the second or the third books in the trilogy (which, I discovered, is now technically a tetralogy). This was very bad news. Fortunately, there is a Borders about 15 [...]
Snob Trouble
Posted in Books on November 20, 2007 | 7 Comments »
After years of indoctrination in graduate school, I can be a real snob when it comes to literature. However, after years of indoctrination in graduate school, I can also be a real anti-snob when it comes to literature. It’s my own brand of schizophrenia. On the one hand, I extol the virtues of aesthetics, literariness, [...]
Industrial Fantasy
Posted in Books on November 19, 2007 | 3 Comments »
Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island (1874) is one of those strange Victorian fantasies, where all of the secrets of the universe are waiting to be explained away by positive 19th century rationalism and every problem can be solved by a heroic engineer. In many ways the story can be a bit maddening for a 21st century [...]
Brrrr!
Posted in cycling on November 17, 2007 | 3 Comments »
It really isn’t all that cold out, but the first cold weather rides of the season are always hard. I know in February, I’ll think back on my rides the past couple of days with warm, fond memories. Especially warm ones.
So just how cold? It was about 43 or so yesterday when I left and [...]
Semi-Finalist
Posted in Uncategorized on November 13, 2007 | 13 Comments »
I made it past the first step in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards: I’m a semi-finalist! Now it gets evaluated by Publisher’s Weekly and Amazon’s “Top Reviewers,” whoever they may be, before advancing to the next round. That round, which starts on January 15, allows anyone to read excerpts and the reviews and then review [...]
Saving the World With My English Degree
Posted in Uncategorized on November 12, 2007 | 4 Comments »
So, yeah, I’m probably really late on the bandwagon here, but I just discovered another really great time sucker online and I thought it was pretty cool. There is a site called Free Rice where you can take a vocabulary quiz. For every word that you get right, the organization donates 10 grains of rice [...]
Walking with a Ghost
Posted in dogs, hiking on November 7, 2007 | 4 Comments »
Every morning Muttboy and I take a walk in a big park about ten minutes away from our house. There is one spot near the end of our walk where the trail turns to the right and drops down a little hill before running into the boat launching area. Every day after I make the [...]
More Whining
Posted in Books, cycling, teaching, writing on November 5, 2007 | 12 Comments »
My writing is gasping. My teaching is imploding. My cycling is flatting. My reading is lacking in adventure. Essentially, nothing has gone at all well for the last three months.
Deep breath. I took everyone’s advice and did what I knew needed to be done. I gave up, perhaps temporarily, on book #2 and started book [...]
