You may all recall I have been expressing masochistic thoughts recently; namely, a desire to read Twilight just to see what it's like, but not wishing to spend any money to do so, not even the reservation fee at the local library. Incidentally, the fee has gone up to $1.10 now. It was only $1 when I read Eragon (and I couldn't get my dollar back either).

As it turns out, Magdalena, a fellow SCAdian, is starting her Master's in English Literature, and her thesis is examining vampires in popular culture. This means, she has large numbers of vampire novels and movies in her library. Including all four Twilight books.

So I borrowed them. Despite all the warnings, including Magdalena's ("they're so emo!").

It's... bad.

So bad, in fact, I'm not even sure I'll be able to finish Twilight, and a book has to be really, really bad for me not to finish it.

I really need to stop doing these things to myself.

My latest order from Oxbow turned up on Friday, so the books got added to the pile of new books waiting to be catalogued. This made the pile too large so it all came crashing down. So, I decided the pile needed to be catalogued so I can put them on the shelves.* At first, I was just going to catalogue until the pile got to manageable levels, but instead I decided to keep going until all the new books were catalogued and shelved.

So far, I have catalogued 918 books. Methinks I may need to cull soon. And I can't remember where I was up to on the case I was cataloguing. Damn.



* New books are being "temporarily" stored in a case where all the permanent books have been catalogued, so new books get catalogued "immediately" so I don't get confused between catalogued and uncatalogued.

Back again!

I've been meaning to post this since making my last post about the cats doing Dirty Things. However, my health has been bad since then with headcolds and migraines... and then there was all the time I spent watching bootleg copies of series 5 and 6 of Spooks and the TV series of The Dresden Files. And there was also several other books read. And cooking. And pruning of overly eager plants.

Anyway. Here are various thoughts on future developments in The Dresden Files (the books).

( This will mean squat to people who haven't read the books, so it's getting cut. And if you haven't read all the books, including Small Favor, there be spoilers under the cut. So don't whine if you read anyway. )

So there we are. There's probably more random thoughts whirling around in my head, but it's getting late, and I need to take out the garbage bin.

I post this on behalf of jane_stockton.

You know you have too many books when...

You possess one hard to find book about medieval/Tudor embroidery, and a dodgy photocopy of another.

The one you don't have comes up for sale on e*Bay for a quite reasonable Buy it Now price.

You forget you don't have an actual copy of the book.

You only realise your mistake after the book has been sold.

Fortunately, Jane told me about the book being up for sale, and I was the one that bought it. It's currently winging its way here via first class mail.

Dear Amazon US,

Look, I know I'm turning into a SCA clothes horse. I know I have purchased many books about medieval textiles and craft from you in the past. PLEASE STOP SENDING ME RECOMMENDATIONS EMAILS! Honestly, I don't need your help in finding yet more books about medieval textiles to buy. My wishlist is already so long with textiles books it's embarrassing. All you are doing is making me depressed because I can't buy them all, and really, you don't want to make me depressed.

Sincerely, Dreamwind.

Dear Amazon UK,

I jump on to compare prices for the September Book Binge with Amazon US, and what do I find? You have clogged my personal welcome page with images of Sean Bean!

This is so unfair. I don't have time to fangirl at present. I still have seven weeks to go before the end of semester! Couldn't you have waited until then?!

Sincerely, Dreamwind

Dear US-Based booksellers advertising in the Amazon.com marketplace,

You should remember that Amazon can be seen by people from all over the world, not just people in the US and Canada. This means that I, sitting here in Australia, get very excited when I see you have a book available for half the Amazon price, only to dash my hopes when I seen you don't have international shipping.

For Gods' sake, people, even if you posted it through the regular mail, that would be something. But please, please PLEASE consider us poor, benighted sods who live outside the US before you advertise on Amazon marketplace and don't have international shipping.

Still, I suppose this means I'm not going to spend any more money. I've just added about 8 more items to my wish list, and that's not even counting the other wish list at Amazon UK.

Sincerely, Dreamwind.

I have just catalogued my 400th book.

It was Gwyn Jones: A History of the Vikings.

Only 3.5 more shelves on that bookshelf... then the 6 shelf one in the study... then all the gaming books... then 4 shelf bookshelf in the lounge room which has 2 shelves stacked 2 deep.

I confidently expect to reach around 2,000 by the time I'm done.

Well, last night I did not dream of icky, slithery, slimy things; I was worried I might because I'd just seen Dead Man's Chest. And I did not continue the really weird dream of the international secret conspiracy and the parachuting ferrets; I'm actually disappointed in a way, because it would be nice to find out what the international conspiracy was, how they did the mind control, and also to spend more time with jmeadows' ferrets. And also it would be good to clear fosteronfilm and eugie of murder, even if they were only guilty in my spaced-out dream.

Nope, instead I had the lovely dream where I inherit the endless house crammed with books. I first had this dream many years ago after visiting a second-hand bookshop with lots of little odd rooms and stairways, all crammed with books. In my dream, I inherit this house, and discover it has no definite roof - just more and more stairs and rooms, filled with books. It's rather like L-Space, but without the perils contained therein.

The house had several improvments last night - a better map, and regularly spaced dispensers giving out perfect tea, coffee and cranberry juice, as well as a variety of tasty foods (including no fat Potato Gems). Tilly was there too, and so were Blitzkrieg and Suki, my other two cats.

So, caffeine, food, cats, and an endless supply of books. What more could a gal want?

And everyone on my f-list who is a writer had several published novels. And eugie, perhaps to apologise for making you a criminal, The Soul of a Badger won the Newberry Medal when it was published. It said so on the cover (which had a wonderful illustration).

I went shopping this afternoon. Tilly needed food, and I also needed to get a new cat carrier. I also wound up buying Tilly a new rat (it's black, so I'm hoping she will leave my opaque pantyhose alone) and a walking harness. I managed to get the walking harness on her after a lot of struggle; if I successfully walk her, I will post pictures. She was most diligent in spraying her litter all over the laundry when I took it off. She is also taking her food out of her bowl, out of the laundry, and then depositing it under the dining room table.

She seems to like the rat, though.

I called into the Sheridan factory outlet to look at towels, because mine are getting shabby - well, they are 4 years old. They have a 25% off sale at present! New towels! So I bought them. Also bought some new tea light candle holders and tea light candles for the bathroom - vanilla scented and green tea scented. There are few more delicious smells than vanilla.

And now we get to the stupid part.

I'm heading to Melbourne next week, so I was looking for something to read on the trip down. And lo, I found that Eoin Colfer has a new book out called Half Moon Investigations. For all you poor benighted souls out there who don't know Eoin Colfer, he is an Irish writer of children's books. He's best known for his books about Artemis Fowl, a 12-year old genius and criminal mastermind, who started his criminal career by holding a fairy police officer for a ton of gold in ransom. And he beat the fairies, too. The Artemis Fowl books, for sheer inventiveness and great fun, Artemis Fowl stomps all over Harry Potter.

Yes, you read that correctly. ARTEMIS FOWL IS BETTER THAN HARRY POTTER.

So I bought the book, thinking it would be perfect for reading while waiting for the plane and then on the plane.

But stupid me, I had to take a peek at the first page.


My name is Moon. Fletcher Moon. And I'm a private detective. In my twelve years on this spinning ball we call Earth, I've seen a lot of things normal people never see. I've seen lunch boxes stripped of everything except fruit. I've seen counterfeit homework networks that operated in five counties, and I've seen truckloads of candy taken from babies.

I thought I'd seen it all. I'd paid so many visits to the gutter looking for lost Love Hearts that I thought nothing could shock me. After all, when you've come face to face with the dark side of the school yard, life doesn't hold many surprises.

Or so I believed. I was wrong. Very wrong.


With an opening like that, how could I NOT keep reading?

So the Ovid commentary for Tuesday is still not finished. Another late night for me....

Do you like the nifty userpic? This is a tiny, tiny selection from my Fiction bookcase, which I built myself. It goes from floor to ceiling (2.2m high) and takes up nearly half the wall (1.2m wide). I've started having to stack the fiction 2 rows deep because I have many many books. I haven't built the non fiction bookcase yet, which is twice as wide and takes up most of the wall. Or it will do when I actually finish the damn thing. The non fiction collection is expanding at a geometric rate, and has taken over two rows in the Fiction bookcase, and is moving on to a third. I gotta get that bookcase built soon...

But this userpic is going to be my official Book Talk icon. Because of the 50bookchallenge there will be book reviews appearing from now on. In my reviews of fiction, I'll be applying my personal categorisation method for books, so I'd best explain this to you.

Great Books
These are the ones that leave you gasping when you have finished. Characters you care almost painfully about, a plot that makes the book unable to be put down, a setting so realistic you could live there and a use of language so skilled you almost forget you are reading. And something beyond this... a theme, a level of emotion, an underlying meaning that impacts your psyche like a meteor colliding with Earth. Great Books can literally change lives. Invariably, these are the ones described as "classics." There are very, very few books that I would class as Great.

Good Books
Hugely enjoyable, but not quite of the standard of a Great Book. Maybe the plot isn't quite perfect, maybe the language is a bit simplistic; mostly it doesn't have the emotional impact. It doesn't mean it's not worth reading. Most books I read fall into this category, because life's too short to read crap.

Fair to middling, but there's something not quite right
The length of this category title gives a clue to what usually puts a book in this category. While books in this category can be enjoyable, I often get the feeling that an author hasn't had a clear idea of what he wants to do with the story or the characters when I read books that fall into this category. The plot waffles and goes off on tangents or has to fall back on deus ex machina* to move along, or the characters react to events in ways that are, well, out of character. Usually the setting is not particularly well defined, and the actual writing style can be overly simplistic. I'm left with the feeling that the author really needed to do more work to make a better story.

Also, sometimes a book winds up in this category because I just have a personally bad reaction to it, but I acknowledge that it is a decent book.

Bad Books
Ridiculous plots, unbelievable characters, a setting constructed from cardboard, extremely poor use of language. You tend to find very few published books in this category, because the features of a Bad Book tend to garner rejection slips. But sadly, Bad Books turn up an awful lot in writer's groups.

Really Sodding Awful, Should Never Have Been Published
All the features of a Bad Book, but so truly appalling you really wonder how the Hell this made it to print. Because for some reason, a surprising number of books get published that I feel belong in this category. Many are classed as Literature, but we won't go there. Oh, sod it. Yes we will. Here is my opinion of Literature.


Now, this is all highly subjective. My idea of a Great Book might be someone else's Fair to Middling book, while a book that I only class as Fair might be someone else's Good. The biggest disagreement I have found is which books belong in the Great category and which belong in the Really Sodding Awful category.

There is also room for variation within a category, and between categories - some Good Books aren't as enjoyable as other Good Books, and I consider some Good Books more entertaining than certain Great Books.


* Deus ex machina - lit. "the God out of the machine." In ancient Athenian/Greek theatre, there was a crane above the stage that could lower characters, usually Gods, to the stage, or could be used to make characters appear to fly. It's become synonymous with a device that's obviously been inserted to move the plot along, or provide an explanation. You know the sort of thing - characters "just happen" to meet someone who can explain how to use the mysterious device, or who "just happen" to have some vital equipment, or some use skill they've never demonstrated before to great effect. You see deus ex machina a lot in bad fantasy. The playwright Euripides was notorious for having gods descend to the stage in his plays to provide crucial explanations, or spirit characters from danger. Just about every play of his that survives has a deus ex machina at the climax.

And they aren't limited to Fair to Middling books. Sometimes they pop up in Good Books, and even, the Gods forbid, Great Books.