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Jun. 11th, 2006 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ann_leckieWow, lots of lightning last night. Some of it quite close and, well, odd-sounding. One actually sizzled and crackled while it lit, and then, a split second after, came thunder--loud! It was very close. I've never heard anything quite like it. Maybe because I've never been that close before...
Opera tonight! Last year my mom got season tickets, and had various people go with her. I didn't have much choice of shows, since I was going to be in Seattle. In any event, I get to do two this year--last week was Jane Eyre (in two acts! With an interlude. It succeeded about as well as you'd expect, for condensing the plot into an hour and a half. The music was good, I'll say that, and the second half was better, especially when the mad wife was onstage. They should have used her more in the first act...) and this week is The Barber of Seville. And picnic supper--for way more than I'd ever pay for food you can get boxed suppers to eat under a tent on the lawn, but my mom thinks it's fun, which it is, and can afford it, so hey. Then there's usually a talk just before, and the one for Rigoletto last year (and Jane Eyre this year) was excellent, so that's on the schedule too.
I'm definitely looking forward to it. St. Lous Opera Theater rocks, honestly.
Bury the Dead needs some more attention before I send it out, but I'm going to let it age a bit. I hit a snag in drafting Welcome the Stranger, closed up the computer and then of course my mind started presenting ways to proceed. No time to work on it today--I spent the morning keeping the kids quiet so Mr. Cameron could sleep in (he worked a party last night) and then driving around to hardware stores looking for the exact connectors that he needs for the dryer. I think tomorrow morning I'm going to command the kids to play in the yard for a few hours and not interrupt me except in case of an alien invasion, on penalty of Not Being Able to Go to the Pool. Or maybe losing computer time--the news says it's not going much above 70 tomorrow. Hmm. Either one is effective.
Currently I'm reading Misfortune, which I'm enjoying. (I tried to get the Spencer and the Tiedeman from the library, but they didn't have the specific titles that were on the Tiptree shortlist. I'd always meant to read Mark Tiedeman, since I'd seen him on a couple of panels and thought he had interesting things to say, so I got Compass Reach instead, and picked Wen Spencer's Tinker more or less at random, and I may or may not comment on them later.) Anyway. Misfortune. After I requested it, I read a couple of negative reviews online, so I wasn't really eager to start, but halfway through I've decided that the review I remember most clearly just didn't get the book. At all. Was, I suspect, hostile to the book well before s/he'd finished it. I recall the review mocking the MC's plan to get to the shore of a particular lake, and apparently just lay down and die. Yeah, it sounds silly when you put it that way. But yanno, lying down in a lake is a pretty effective suicide plan. I'm not sure why this reader was so hostile to the book, except to guess that they'd expected something much different and were extremely disappointed. I'd link if I could remember where I read it, or where I got there from.
In any event, another part of the review stuck with me--the complaint that the MC, having (this is no spoiler) discovered that she is in fact male (though she's been raised as a girl) and then being forced to take on a masculine identity, wants to be female, wishes her body were female, much prefers to wear feminine clothes. The reviewer complained that this was ridiculous--in that period anyone in their right mind would prefer to be male! It seemed an oddly broad brush when I first read that review, and it grates more and more as I think about it, especially after the comment during a panel (pusing the envelope?) at Wiscon about how female to male transsexuals seemed more or less acceptable, but somehow male to female was considered weird--after all, what man in his right mind would want to be a woman?
I'm sure the reader was a perfectly intelligent and good-hearted person, but it's clear that they came at the book from an angle not conducive to really enjoying it. For my part, as I said I haven't finished it but I'm enjoying it and recommend it.
Opera tonight! Last year my mom got season tickets, and had various people go with her. I didn't have much choice of shows, since I was going to be in Seattle. In any event, I get to do two this year--last week was Jane Eyre (in two acts! With an interlude. It succeeded about as well as you'd expect, for condensing the plot into an hour and a half. The music was good, I'll say that, and the second half was better, especially when the mad wife was onstage. They should have used her more in the first act...) and this week is The Barber of Seville. And picnic supper--for way more than I'd ever pay for food you can get boxed suppers to eat under a tent on the lawn, but my mom thinks it's fun, which it is, and can afford it, so hey. Then there's usually a talk just before, and the one for Rigoletto last year (and Jane Eyre this year) was excellent, so that's on the schedule too.
I'm definitely looking forward to it. St. Lous Opera Theater rocks, honestly.
Bury the Dead needs some more attention before I send it out, but I'm going to let it age a bit. I hit a snag in drafting Welcome the Stranger, closed up the computer and then of course my mind started presenting ways to proceed. No time to work on it today--I spent the morning keeping the kids quiet so Mr. Cameron could sleep in (he worked a party last night) and then driving around to hardware stores looking for the exact connectors that he needs for the dryer. I think tomorrow morning I'm going to command the kids to play in the yard for a few hours and not interrupt me except in case of an alien invasion, on penalty of Not Being Able to Go to the Pool. Or maybe losing computer time--the news says it's not going much above 70 tomorrow. Hmm. Either one is effective.
Currently I'm reading Misfortune, which I'm enjoying. (I tried to get the Spencer and the Tiedeman from the library, but they didn't have the specific titles that were on the Tiptree shortlist. I'd always meant to read Mark Tiedeman, since I'd seen him on a couple of panels and thought he had interesting things to say, so I got Compass Reach instead, and picked Wen Spencer's Tinker more or less at random, and I may or may not comment on them later.) Anyway. Misfortune. After I requested it, I read a couple of negative reviews online, so I wasn't really eager to start, but halfway through I've decided that the review I remember most clearly just didn't get the book. At all. Was, I suspect, hostile to the book well before s/he'd finished it. I recall the review mocking the MC's plan to get to the shore of a particular lake, and apparently just lay down and die. Yeah, it sounds silly when you put it that way. But yanno, lying down in a lake is a pretty effective suicide plan. I'm not sure why this reader was so hostile to the book, except to guess that they'd expected something much different and were extremely disappointed. I'd link if I could remember where I read it, or where I got there from.
In any event, another part of the review stuck with me--the complaint that the MC, having (this is no spoiler) discovered that she is in fact male (though she's been raised as a girl) and then being forced to take on a masculine identity, wants to be female, wishes her body were female, much prefers to wear feminine clothes. The reviewer complained that this was ridiculous--in that period anyone in their right mind would prefer to be male! It seemed an oddly broad brush when I first read that review, and it grates more and more as I think about it, especially after the comment during a panel (pusing the envelope?) at Wiscon about how female to male transsexuals seemed more or less acceptable, but somehow male to female was considered weird--after all, what man in his right mind would want to be a woman?
I'm sure the reader was a perfectly intelligent and good-hearted person, but it's clear that they came at the book from an angle not conducive to really enjoying it. For my part, as I said I haven't finished it but I'm enjoying it and recommend it.