Schreiber

I just had a moment when I wondered whether someone had yet created a Benjamin Janvier/Rose Vitrac fanvid to Rihanna's "We Found Love", before I remembered that tragically that series HASN'T been made into a TV show.
(It would have to be some sort of crazy Quebecois/French and American collaboration, with subtitles, multilingual actors, and a whole pile of historical and linguistic consultants, so the mere logistics would probably torpedo it, but dammit.)

Meantime, bells.
(No, I wasn't there for the recording. I was busy driving through Vermont.)

Well. The GOOD news is that my insurance has finally, allegedly, after an unnecessary number of requests for revised paperwork, paid MOST of my hospital bill from Lachine.

The BAD news* is that they didn't pay all of it, which MAY mean that they negotiated them down, or MAY mean that I *still* have to get a bank draft in Canadian dollars and mail it to Montreal, and finding out is going to require what I foresee as an unpleasant time in phonetree land.
(Also, the bastards didn't pay for my lipid test this summer, and so I just had to write a check for that. BCBH, you are making single payer look better and better. At least I have the money.)

But some more GOOD news:

- I have survived annual HR review! With people complaining about my tendency to goof off (oops...), but also with people describing me as "enthusiastic", which is a huge lie but I'm glad I'm being competent and dedicated enough to give that impression.

- The lesbian space necromancers book is actually really good!

(The bad news with that is that I got jack all else done this evening, barring twenty minutes talking to an anthropomorphic owl. oh well, tomorrow's another day, even if I'm going to be spending most of it ringing and disassembling a creche.)

- Secret project! Which is another thing I should have been doing tonight.
But instead, I'm going to actually put my laundry away, and then fall over.

* OK, the actually bad news is that Trump is in the White House, Australia is on fire, and we're down the leg of the Trousers of Time** where these things are true. So this is the SLIGHTLY bad news.
**which are probably more like octopus underpants, but there you go.

Being a review of Robin McKinley's Pegasus, plus about half a review of C.J. Cherryh's Rider at the Gate and Naomi Novik's everything.

( “Preface: )"OK, if you had a Mercedes Lackey-style animal companion thing going on, how would that Really work in practice?”

I am speaking, of course, about C.J. Cherryh’s Rider at the Gate books and Robin McKinley’s Pegasus. ( Read more... )

*** Except for the endings. I think Hero and the Crown is the only thing I've read of hers where she actually sticks the ending.

NOTE: I started this review right after Readercon, and then it mouldered on my desktop for several weeks. Tonight I was feeling restless and angry and useless, and so decided I might as well get THIS done, anyway; except I'd forgotten about half the more cleverly vitriolic things I was gonna say about Pegasus. Oh well, have a review.

1) Immediately before and after Readercon last summer, my reading focused largely on novels involving people trying not to (a) starve to death and/or (b) fuck their relatives.

This summer, it appears that the new theme is: women who discover, in the aftermath of horribly traumatic sexual experiences, that they weren't interested in guys to begin with anyway.*

Both lists feature ass-kicking heroines in some version of dark-age Britain.


1a) re: A Free Man of Color: That one chapter may have set some kind of record for greatest number of unexpected-but-shouldn't-have-been-unexpected revelations per chapter in any book ever.


2) *If* all goes as planned I will be ringing my first quarter peal on August 7! Sovay (and anybody else who might conceivably be interested), it'll be at Old North from about noon to 12:45 or so: feel free to drop by.


3) It is way too fucking hot.

* ETA: Oh, that and people getting supernatural protection that they hadn't asked for, from gods not their own, which none the less ends up saving their rear ends.

Holy f^<#1n' $#!7....

I didn't realize before that the guy for whom I was editing Rorschach was also one half of the twins in Please Don't Eat the Daisies. Which means I grew up laughing at stories about him...

My brain go explode now.