my weekend in short

[harborshore]

1. nightswimming. cool, dark lake. mosquitoes. peace of mind.


2. playing impossible-to-keep-track-of card games.


3. no one remembered their keys.


4. i painted a door. nearly stung by inch-long wasps; nearly got heatstroke.


5. no ticks. minor miracle. innumerable mosquitoes, five moths, two daddy-long-legs, at least twenty horseflies, a mayfly, no snakes.


6. warm buses, cooler cars. forgot my hat at home.


7. the most riveting book i read was part one only. DAMMIT.


8. connie willis is amazing.


9. being capable is addictive. apparently i know how to deal with sprained ankles.


10. no really, the heat.


11. still can't write. thesis progressing slowly, however.

Comments

[kyasuriin.livejournal.com]

ooh which book? I am intrigued!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Selma Lagerlöf, Gösta Berling's saga--it actually definitely exists in English translation. *grins* I was like, "BUT HOW WILL IT END?" so now I have to go to the library or something.

[halflinen.livejournal.com]

Hey you. Glad to hear you're doing okay. Although I think you're selling your no-tick miracle a little short. That is a CRAZY MIRACLE OF AWESOMENESS. What if you got one and had to pull it out with its little head buried in your shoulder or whatever? Ewwwwwwwww.

Heat is the worst. Who picked this lame hot planet, anyway? Want to move to Mars with me, like a rational person?

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

&YOU; I'm going to reply to your email later, thank you, dearling.

Ticks are SO GROSS. The one good thing about the heat (apart from SUN and warm wonderful evenings--okay so some things are good) is that the ticks hate it.

Ooooh, but Mars is intriguing. Perhaps! They found water there, right?

[desfinado.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a lovely weekend! Yay being capable!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

It was pretty fantastic. Apart from the key issues--those sucked. But the rest, oh, how lovely.

[athenejen]

OMG G & H, seriously, I am still kind of mad about that but mostly I just want the second part to come out now now now now YESTERDAY. *vibrates with want*

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Waitwait, I don't think we're talking about the same book. I read Selma Lagerlöf and found grandma's copy was PART ONE of Gösta Berling's saga, SIGH, I need a library, and I read Doomsday Book, which was fantastic and I now want to read everything she's ever written.

[athenejen]

Okay, that's hilarious! Connie Willis's most recent book, Blackout is part one of two, except it doesn't make that clear at all in the front matter (there's one point in I think the acknowledgments that in retrospect indicates it, but not clearly enough!) and so you get to the end and are literally stranded in the middle of the story with the characters. So I would highly recommend waiting to read it until after part two, All Clear, comes out in the fall. I guess I just assumed those points went together! Oops.

Everything Connie Willis has ever written (that I've read, anyway -- I haven't yet read her stuff with Cynthia Felice, and I'm not sure I've read all the short stories) is fantastic. Doomsday Book is probably still my favorite, but it's a close thing. They all have incredibly different atmospheres, though: Passage is probably the closest to Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog is another Oxford Time Travel novel (so is Blackout) but is pure madcap farce, Bellwether is quirky and stylized and endearing, and Remake is basically cyberpunk with Pat Cadigan sorts of themes (it could perhaps be considered the weakest of her novels, but I enjoyed it anyway). I envy you for getting to read them all for the first time!

I may have to check out Selma Lagerlöf -- intriguing!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

OH GOD, I would have died. Doomsday Book nearly killed me with how tense it got, I cannot imagine how I would have felt if it hadn't ended at the end of the book . SO GOOD. I've also read To Say Nothing of the Dog, that was last week, and I loved it lots.

She really is fantastic--I love that she can make her stories so different, it's great for the reader.

Selma Lagerlöf is wonderful--she was one of our best writers ever, basically. I can't answer for how good the translations are, but I think they would be okay, or I'd hope they'd be, given that she was the first woman who won the Nobel Prize of Literature, perhaps the standard is decent? Idk. But Gösta Berling and the Löwensköld (probably spelled different in English) are all great. As are her short stories. And her autobiographies.

[extemporally.livejournal.com]

Go you! YAY SUMMER \o/

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Summer is the BEST.

[x_dark_siren_x]

I am still jealous of your weekends. ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I feel pretty lucky. ♥

[nightlilac.livejournal.com]

I have Connie Willis to thank for discovering Jerome K. Jerome and Dorothy L. Sayers (through her novel To Say Nothing Of The Dog). She IS amazing, and I need to get some more of her books right now!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Yes! There are recs above if you should want guidance; I know I need help choosing. I should also read Jerome K. Jerome, my dad tried to make me do that and I never did. And I already know and adore Sayers, but now I'm even more determined to replace my copy of Have His Carcase, which I lost.