266 thoughts on “Little Comments 8/30

  1. David Steffen of Diabolical Plots posts his MidAmeriCon II report, and says that he is planning to do another Hugo Long List Anthology this year.

    This makes me very happy. I’d be exceptionally pleased if this becomes an ongoing series that lasts for years.

  2. Jayn, I read Battlefield Earth, too. In my defense, I was on vacation and didn’t have any other books with me….

  3. I’ve never felt guilty about what I read as a teen. For what it’s worth, I read a lot of Stephen King, Poe, and Clive Barker, and occasionally read a bit of Dostoevsky, Pushkin, and various Brontes (we had a lot of Russian lit at home and I glommed onto the sisters on my own). I also perused my dad’s mortuary school textbooks. I’ve never really bought into the notion of guilty pleasures. I either like a book or I don’t and it doesn’t matter what others think.

    As for this new Wright series…there are many things I could say, but for now I’ll just say that it’s troubling that he hopes his new “YA” series will be like Alexander and Cooper’s series, which are both solidly Middle Grade. It makes me wonder if he knows that they aren’t YA. And, if he doesn’t, how aware of YA is he? Okay, I’ll say one other thing: That cover is hideous!

  4. You know, I bet that chair would look lovely reupholstered in old unsold face cloths….

  5. Wait… Wright is going for a series of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 books? 1 followed by 39 zeroes?

    I am so confused.

    Also, I’m not embarrassed about anything I read as a kid. Nancy Drews, Hardy Boys, Agatha Christies, Readers Digest Condensed Books, Narnia Books (and, no, I did not grok that Aslan = Jesus. I was 8 and had no conception of Jesus except for the cute guy played by Jeffrey Hunter in a movie. I’m actually kind of proud of myself for not getting it and not letting it ruin my enjoyment of the books because it probably would’ve if I’d known I was being preached to), Bobbsey Twins, Little Women, Cherry Ames Student Nurse, Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp… And a whole lot of Dickens because my mom liked Dickens and it was in the house.

  6. Can we do that with the shoggoth? I mean, we can recycle the pizza boxes in the greens/paper with food on bin, but ain’t nobody takes shoggoths.

    In some places, you can call for a truck to pick up large items (like sofas and mattresses). Maybe we could do that with the shoggoth, assuming we can get it out to the curb and keep it there…will it eat pizza boxes if we bundle them together?

  7. @Kyra: Today’s read — Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones

    Fantasy novel riffing on the tales of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer in the modern world. I enjoyed reading this book, but … the central relationship seems pretty skeevy to me, honestly. And I frankly don’t understand what happened at the end. Or why certain things happened throughout. I have a broad sense of what was going on and why, but the individual moment-to-moment events left me puzzled.

    I think this book was maybe too subtle for me.

    Fire and Hemlock is one of my favorites of DWJ. After “The Homeward Bounders” and “The Spellcoats”.

    I agree looking back on it, the central relationship is more than a little off (though not as much so as the other major relationship), and that strongly defines the ending.

    It is a difficult, subtle story, partially because much of it is one massive mindscrew. There are actually some resources for it, these are really good explanations for the ending, and much of the book.
    Part 1: http://rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com/254549.html
    Part 2: http://rushthatspeaks.dreamwidth.org/401546.html

    Actually, there’s a lot of discussion of that book. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

    Alternatively, for something that mines similar mythology themes, and yet is very different and more straightforward, there’s Rosemary and Rot. I liked that one quite a bit.

  8. lurkertype: the Retrieval Artist series finished in 2015, and thus would be sadly ineligible

    Ah, not so! The Anniversary Day subseries finished last year, but KKR’s got at least a couple more Retrieval Artist novels in the works.

  9. Cally: You know, I bet that chair would look lovely reupholstered in old unsold face cloths….

    *snort*

  10. P J Evans: In some places, you can call for a truck to pick up large items (like sofas and mattresses). Maybe we could do that with the shoggoth, assuming we can get it out to the curb and keep it there

    Yeah, but who’s going to pay the exorbitant Hazardous Item Disposal fee? I’m sure that a shoggoth costs more than a 40-inch CRT television — and that ain’t cheap.

  11. Wait a minute! If the shoggoth is reading Perry Rodan–and it looks like it is, see that whole pile of books behind it?–then I say the shoggoth is one of us and we don’t recycle it. If it’s a bit slimy surely it can live in the bathtub, right?

    Don’t worry about that table leg; I have some carpenter’s glue and a couple of C-clamps; it will be good as new in 24 hours. Here, help me turn the table so the clamps are in the corner and mostly in shadow.

    Say, wasn’t there a rug in here at one point?

  12. … Narnia Books (and, no, I did not grok that Aslan = Jesus. I was 8 and had no conception of Jesus except for the cute guy played by Jeffrey Hunter in a movie. I’m actually kind of proud of myself for not getting it and not letting it ruin my enjoyment of the books because it probably would’ve if I’d known I was being preached to), …

    this this! About Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Wind in the Door, Arm of the Starfish series! Loved those stories as a child .. imagine my surprise in finding out that I was apparently being preached to the whole time! IT was the devil and the three witches were angels (ironic that), etc etc. Didn’t see it then for sure, and try hard not to let it ruin it for me now.

    to be fair to Ms. L’Engle … her version of Christianity, if I HAD to pick one, is probably closest to what I would pick. She was equally reviled by her own side as much as she was by the secular side …

  13. As for the shoggoth, maybe we could call Innsmouth Shoggoth Rescue. Perhaps they could help?

  14. And, as promised, I finally managed to gather enough spoons to upload the Park770 photos.

    (Sorry the quality’s not the best, my camera got lost (or nicked) somewhere during my plane trip, and I was using my Surface Pro, which gives variable results depending on lighting and how steady I could hold it. There was a huge amount of backlighting through the windows at Flying Saucer, which didn’t help.)

  15. Gulity reads… well, I do not really feel guilty for reading Remo Williams, The Executioner, Nick Carter and a bunch of after the apocalypse books. I had fun with those even if I wouldn’t now.

    I feel more guilty about reading David Eddings and continuing, knowing how bad the books were. Because I didn’t really like them, even while reading them.

  16. The shoggoth is reading Perry Rhodan? Darn it! I was going to suggest composting it. I suppose it’s into the bath with it, then.

    If the Narnia and Wrinkle in Time stories don’t read preachy to kids who don’t already know enough about Christianity to recognize the elements, does the subsequent “ruining” by learning of the Christian elements lie with the writer, or the reader?

  17. Also, I apologize for not remembering the names of everyone in the photos I linked in the above album. If you would like your name added or removed, let me know.

  18. If I had to identify a set of books that were my teenage popcorn-reading (I decline to identify anything as a “guilty pleasure” on philosophical grounds) I think it would have to the entire genre of novelized biographies of historical figures (primarily European up through the pre-modern period) by authors such as Jean Plaidy and Norah Lofts. On the spines of those books rests my big-picture understanding of the timeline of pre-modern European history, such as it is.

  19. Msb: The original novel is a standalone, and the rest go in three-book arcs, but the whole series is one very large story. Did you intend to say that books 2-4, 5-7, etc are chunks? Several subsequent comments correct this (the grouping is actually 1-3, 4-6, etc.) — and IMO the separation between 1 and 2-3 is only slightly larger than the separation between 4 and 5-6.

    Guilty pleasures: I half-liked the early L. Neil Smith books. There may be a reason I didn’t have much social life before my late 20’s….

    So who’s going to connect the solar panels on the roof to the mains power? I’m not going to touch electrical wiring with all that water on the floor (and the shoggoth splashing around in it).

  20. JJ:

    “And, as promised, I finally managed to gather enough spoons to upload the Park770 photos.”

    Link does not work for me.

  21. @Doctor Science, I’m guessing it’s Roses and Rot by Kat Howard. Or Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire.

    I’m pretty sure I read Battlefield Earth too. Also, Louis L’Amour, far too many Edgar Rice Burroughs books, Bobbsey Twins, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Donna Summers and pretty much anything else I could get my hands on. I don’t regret any of it. Just the Angelique books. Those I am faintly embarrassed by for some reason.

    @JJ, the link doesn’t work for me either.

  22. Doctor Science: It’s Kat Howard’s “Roses and Rot,” I think–Rose Embolism may have been conflating the title with Seanan Mcguire’s “Rosemary and Rue.” (I know I did!)

  23. Hampus Eckerman: Link does not work for me.

    I’ve checked my settings at both a profile level and an album level, and they should be visible. Can anyone else see the photos?

  24. So who’s going to connect the solar panels on the roof to the mains power?

    [blank] I thought the main breaker box was on the wall outside. [/blank]
    Did the shoggoth eat it?

  25. JJ, I’m getting a 404 error on that. The part after /photos/ goes 144868032@N05/albums/72157673107806646 – could the @ be messing it up?

  26. JJ on August 30, 2016 at 9:22 pm said:
    Hampus Eckerman: Link does not work for me.

    I’ve checked my settings at both a profile level and an album level, and they should be visible. Can anyone else see the photos?

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/144868032@N05/

    jjfile770 hasn’t made any photos public yet.

  27. When I’m logged in, I can see them. When I log out, I can’t.

    I’ve tried everything I can find to ensure that the photos are public. Are there any Flickr pros here who can help? I seriously do not have the spoons for this right now.

  28. @JJ Link worked for me. Your pictures are fabulous!! Wish I’d made the meetups.

    How great that you got Ann Leckie sitting at her bench. I went to her KK and she’s interesting and delightful, just like her books!

    @ Cassy B
    Guilty reading — I once read an entire paper bag full (probably, I dunno, between 30 and 50 books) of the “Remo Williams” series.

    I used to make fun of my brother for reading such dreck and he forced me to read one. They were so much fun!! I loved the humor and ended up reading quite a few of them. Taught me a lesson about judging other people’s reading tastes.

    My teenage guilty pleasures were all of ERB’s books: Tarzan books, John Carter, and the Venus guy. I doubt I would like them now, but my 11-year old self loved them.

  29. @JJ:

    Okay, here’s the naked link to the album.

    Lovely, and thanks. Who knew that the Wretched Hive of Scum and Villany[tm] had such a Kansas City contingent? And Ann Leckie, migod! I’m sorry I missed her appearances at her park.

    Much thanks to Hampus for his beguiling supply of Swedish sweets, which finally got me to break my ‘No sweets, unless of course someone imports some Rowntree Fruit Pastilles for me’ rule. Hampus and I hiked to Kansas one evening, in part to work that off.

    Hampus, I’m going to have to bring something/somethings to Helsinki in gratitude for your lovely Swedish brandy and all those sweets. Perhaps some of my homemade plum wine? (No akvavit, sorry.) I could try to preserve some of this crop’s chili peppers from my garden, but border authorities tend to frown on import from around the world of anything even remotely resembling fresh fruit and vegetables.

  30. Just when I’m thinking I’m not embarrassed by any of my childhood reading (SFF or otherwise), @StephenfromOttawa mentions John Norman’s “Gor” books. Oh lordy, that probably qualifies as a youthful indiscretion. Me and a couple of guys I knew were stupidly into those books. ::blush::

    I read a lot of other things mentioned upthread, which perhaps counteracts my reading of the Counter-Earth series. 😛 I don’t feel guilty for the non-Gor books I read as a young’un, though; some hold up great and some don’t – that’s all. (Actually, I’m not super-guilty-feeling about the Gor books, either, TBH. I was young. 😉 )

    @Lis Carey: Did you read McCaffrey’s Stitch in Snow? 😉 I did.

    @Steve Wright & @John M. Cowan: I keep seeing Perry Rhodan books in German showing up on Audible.com, but it sounds like I should skip them. (In fairness, I don’t know German anyway.)

    @BigelowT: I, also, didn’t grok Aslan = Jesus when I first the Narnia books. (shrug) I rarely admit that in public, since the way people talk about it, I feel like I must’ve been a freaking idiot to not get it. (I have no idea how old I was when I read the series, BTW.)

    @Series Talk: If it still has new books/stories coming out, I’ll probably nominate Jordan Castillo Price’s PsyCop series (note: plenty of explicit M/M sex, so, not for everyone). I love this series. Other series – no earthly clue what I might could nominate. One of my other favorite series (Pratt’s “Marla Mason” series) just ended, I believe (I’m a bit behind, gak, so I could be wrong).

  31. @JJ: A new Scalzi novella you say??? ::clicking over:: Thanks for the info! This sounds cool, and hey, FREE, so yeah, pre-ordered. 🙂

    Also thanks for linking to Steffen’s MAC II report, and that’s great to hear about the anthology! Great report, and wow, he has quite the infectious grin. (I look more like a serial kill in photos, so I’m a bit jealous.)

    And finally, many thanks for the photos! 😀 It’s nice to see the Meredith Dragon clearly. Also, Erin’s costume is wicked cool. And of course, it’s cool to see more pix of Filers having fun, Leckie in her park (sporting an amusing shirt), etc.

  32. BigelowT wrote:

    Also, I’m not embarrassed about anything I read as a kid. Nancy Drews, Hardy Boys, Agatha Christies, Readers Digest Condensed Books, Narnia Books (and, no, I did not grok that Aslan = Jesus. I was 8 and had no conception of Jesus except for the cute guy played by Jeffrey Hunter in a movie. I’m actually kind of proud of myself for not getting it and not letting it ruin my enjoyment of the books because it probably would’ve if I’d known I was being preached to), Bobbsey Twins, Little Women, Cherry Ames Student Nurse, Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp… And a whole lot of Dickens because my mom liked Dickens and it was in the house.

    My parents had the healthy attitude that they cared a great deal more that we kids read, than concern over controlling what we read (within reason, I guess). In my experience, kids will survive variously preachy fiction without in general being particularly swayed, and probably without being annoyed unless it’s laid down too thick. Personally, I got all the way to the last volume of Chronicles of Narnia, around age 9 or so, before it suddenly landed on me like an overused simile that the entire Narnia series was a weird sort of Christian apologetics. (I was a bit naive.) By the time I hit L’Engle, I was no longer surprised. (‘Right. Seems pretty CofE.’ And ‘struth, it was. But not the unsubtle stump-speech-giving type, but rather the slightly-moralistic-friend type.)

  33. @Dr. Science:

    That’s because my stuuuupid iiiiidiotic furshlugginer autocorrect on my phone somehow turned “Roses” into “Rosemary”.

    It should be: Roses and Rot

    I swear, I should just wait until I get home and have access to a REAL computer to post anything.

  34. @Cheryl

    My youthful errors mostly center around reading all the Angelique books. No, I have no defense.

    I loved the Angelique books, too, as a teen. I still have a soft spot for them, in spite of occasional bits of rapeyness. But then, unlike American bodice-rippers style romances of the same era, Geoffrey never raped Angelique.

    Other teen reading: I read Sweet Valley High in German translation, Karl May, Perry Rhodan and Ghost Hunter John Sinclair, since those were the most accessible SFF works, provided one could bypass the disapproval of teachers and parents to read them, Michael Ende, Enid Blyton, a lot of German MG/YA series that chronicled the lives of girls from early childhood up to marriage and motherhood (the author of two of those endless series, Magda Trott, also wrote an early, feminist-tinged SF novel which I’ve been trying to find for ages). Once I started reading in English, I read a lot of Anne McCaffrey, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Isaac Asimov. Some 1980s epic fantasy, too, Raymond E. Feist, Jenny Wurts and the like. Plus, Jean M. Auel (too much sex, not enough cavemen) and V.C. Andrews, whom I loved a lot at the time.

  35. Love the photos, JJ! Esp. that Chad and whoever using the Park properly. Did anyone besides us and Ann Leckie have parks?

  36. I read a nurse novel once.

    The summer before starting college, I spent a month in a small trailer up on the Mogollon Rim. Family friends had built a new cabin just down the road, and the unfinished half-logs needed to be varnished. Three coats of polyurethane, and sanded with steel wool between coats. I was given the job, to make some pre-college money. Took a while.

    I’d brought about a half-dozen books of my own with me, and there was a small shelf in the trailer with a selection of other assorted books. No tv or radio, so any off-hours were spent reading. Went thru my books, then read the more interesting-looking random books. Then the less interesting-looking books. Then almost all the books that had words in them. Then I read all the labels on boxes and cans in the trailer’s cupboards.

    And, finally, I read the last book. The nurse novel.

    It must have been either a traumatic experience or eminently forgettable, because the ONLY thing I recall about it was that it was a nurse novel. Fortunately the next day was when my ride back to civilization showed up.

    (By that time, I was also close to out of foodstuffs and subsisting mainly on Canned Beans And Whatever’s Left. The mice I heard scurrying under the trailer were starting to tempt me.)

  37. By the time the judge let us out of jail, where he’d tossed us till the end of the Republican National Convention, I’d pretty much memorized that copy of People Magazine. Cruel but not unusual punishment.

  38. Rick Moen:


    Hampus, I’m going to have to bring something/somethings to Helsinki in gratitude for your lovely Swedish brandy and all those sweets. Perhaps some of my homemade plum wine? (No akvavit, sorry.) I could try to preserve some of this crop’s chili peppers from my garden, but border authorities tend to frown on import from around the world of anything even remotely resembling fresh fruit and vegetables.”

    Chili is right up my alley otherwise. ^^

  39. BigelowT on August 30, 2016 at 8:00 pm said:

    Wait… Wright is going for a series of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 books? 1 followed by 39 zeroes?

    It’ll probably feel like that.

    @Kendall: I think Perry Rhodan has its moments, but they’re all (all the ones I’ve seen, anyway) at the start of the series. My opinion is, it started going downhill after about episode 8. (It’s now somewhere around episode 2900, I think.)

  40. lurkertype: Did anyone besides us and Ann Leckie have parks?

    Yes, apart from File770’s and Ann Leckie’s, New Zealand in 2020 (with the help of Boston in 2020) probably had the most notable one, with a Christmas tree, a Hobbit door, an inflatable rubber duck and an inflatable Santa Darth. Several of the other con bids for various years also sponsored parks and/or benches.

  41. @ Chip
    You’re right – I was wrong. Numbers don’t work too good for me. Glad to find so many other Foreigner fans.

    @ those mentioning Trump & US politics
    All USian Filers are registered to vote, no?

  42. Comments, cliches, commentary, controversy
    Chatter, chit-chat, chit-chat, chit-chat,
    Conversation, contradiction, criticism

    On Wright’s tendency to supererogatory anachronous polysyllaby, I read and loved The Worm Ouroborous at a young age, and the overwrought prose didn’t put me off. Not sure today how I got past the opening chapter, but once the wrastling starts it is good stuff…

    I got some distance into the Covenant books before deciding that Donaldson understood less of the vocab than I did.

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