The important thing about me

After reading The Important Book, by Margaret Wise Brown, Garrett’s 1st grade class wrote about what makes them special.  I think some of the kids’ stories provide wonderful insights into how they feel about themselves:

The important thing about me is I am a good sport.
I am nice.
I am fun to play with.
But the important thing about me is I am a good sport.

The important thing about me is that people like me.
I am good at swimming.
I am very nice.
I am kind.
But the important thing about me is that people like me.

This one is from a boy who is outwardly very quiet.  I thought this was special and touching:

The important thing about me is that I am myself in my own special way.
I am a good kid.
I am an only child.
I am a good cook.
But the important thing about me is that I am myself in my own special way.

 

Sharing Knife Volume 3 Passage, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold can’t write a bad book.  Her thoughts are interesting, her phrasing is beautiful, her worlds are wonderfully constructed.  But, but, but – I just can’t get into the Sharing Knife series.  I only care mildly, not deeply, about what happens to the characters.  I can put these books down and go to sleep without a second thought.  In contrast, her Vorkosigan and Chalion books had my eyeballs glued to the page.  Why are those books so different?  The pace is faster, the humor stronger, and there are lots of surprises – Bujold has such a great way of turning a story on its head.  In Passage, the characters are on a river journey, and the book is just like that – meandering.  The characters seem rather cliched.  Too romance-genre for me.

But I have to say, I infinitely prefer it that Bujold is trying out new ideas and new writing styles as she continues her writing career.  I love about her that she doesn’t play it safe.

And of course – I’ll be pre-ordering the next and final book of this series when it comes time! 

The Silent Speaker by Rex Stout

Any book about Nero Wolfe – what great stuff!  The Silent Speaker has a story line that I don’t quite follow – a man dies, two institutes are pitted against each other, I can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys – or maybe they are all bad guys.  But one doesn’t read a Nero Wolfe mystery for the plot – it’s the ambience, the characters, the quirks, the lingo. 

 This particular book I would only mildly recommend, but the Nero Wolfe series as a whole is a must-read! 

 Also well worth checking out is the Nero Wolfe series on A&E, starring Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin.  It’s rare – and so satisfying – to see a TV show that does justice to the book it is derived from.  Timothy Hutton is perfect as Archie Goodwin, and the rest of the cast is just as good.

Crystal Dragon by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

As always, I love the way Lee and Miller use words.  Unfortunately, the story itself was not much to my interest.  The first 2/3 of Crystal Dragon has our heroes searching for a mysterious set of equations.  The authors exquisitely and painstakingly build up a world – how it operates, what are the physics behind it, how people behave, what it looks like.  I don’t care.  My thought was, yeah, okay, they steal some equations, next page please.  I am much more interested in the people – their thoughts and their relationships – not the science behind the world where they live.  I want the science to be the backdrop, not the focus of the story.  I thought the book was extremely well-crafted, but I couldn’t find the heart in it.

Crystal Soldier by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Crystal Soldier is the third in my list of books I am indulging in before getting back to technical reading.  I’m having such a great time!  Crystal Soldier is a prequel to the Liaden Universe series.  The authors, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, are very clever – it’s interesting to see how they fleshed out the brief details mentioned in their Liaden books and turned them into real characters with a real story.  I enjoy their writing style.  One of the techniques I particularly like is that they will describe a situation but leave out some crucial details, which forces the reader’s mind to try to fill in the blanks and guess what is really going on.  Sometimes they fill in the details later, sometimes they don’t.  It makes for very fun, engaging reading.

 Crystal Soldier reads like a car chase scene from a movie.  The action is fast, the dialogue is fun, the bonding of the characters is satisfying.  It is nothing but a car chase, however; there is no story arc to it.  I am hopeful that all this action is leading us to a real story in the next book of the duology:  Crystal Dragon.  Crystal Dragon is my fourth and – alas – the last book in my reading recess before getting back into study mode.  I can’t wait! 

Mystic and Rider by Sharon Shinn

Too much magic in this book for me.  Life seems pretty easy when you can just ring your enemies with a wall of fire and make yourself invisible.  Magic is not nearly as exciting as working your way towards some goal, inch by inch, never knowing if you will get there, making incremental, infinitesimal progress, sometimes making mistakes and having to back track, and through it all you KEEP GOING!  That is what life is all about.  That is true magic.  Not Hey Presto Poof! 

The Safe-Keeper’s Secret by Sharon Shinn

Oh, bliss!  I became exhausted always worrying about work and studying to improve my skills.  I decided I was going to take some time and feed my brain things to make it happy.  I decadently ordered 4 books from Amazon (4 for 3 plus Super Saver Shipping = $21).  Two were Sharon Shinn books and two were Lee & Miller.  Unlike sometimes with Super Saver Shipping, they arrived immediately.  I spent a delightful evening immersing myself in Shinn’s Safe-Keeper.

As always, Shinn starts with an interesting premise.  In a bucolic world, there are three trades of people with special, sometimes magical, talents.  The Safe-Keepers keep secrets.  What happens if someone tells a dark secret?  Is the role of the Safe-Keeper just to listen and provide relief to the teller by letting them not bear their secret alone?  If someone is being hurt, should the Safe-Keeper intervene?  How can she take action without revealing the secret?  The Truth-Tellers tell truth, even -especially – if people don’t want to hear it.  The Truth-Tellers don’t know everything, but sometimes the truth is magically revealed to them.  The Truth-Tellers aren’t too popular, because truth can be uncomfortable.  The Dream-Makers can sometimes channel magic to make people’s dreams come true.  Everyone cherishes the dream-makers.   A Dream-Maker’s own life is tragic and hard to bear, but they gain some comfort by watching other people made happy through their magic.  The story is that on the night that the Safe-Keeper gives birth to a child of unknown paternity, a mysterious rider comes to her door and leaves her with another baby and a secret.  What happens to the babies and their secrets?  Read the book to find out.

I read that the Safe-Keeper series is written for teenagers.  I suppose that is so.  The book is not long – I read it in three hours.  The tone of the book is fairly calm.  The emotional conflicts aren’t too conflicted.  I did cry during one sad part of the book. 

What role would I play if I existed in the book?  Definitely a Truth-Teller – uncomfortable and unsubtle.  I’m not a quiet, listening, sympathizing Safe-Keeper.  I’m definitely not a tragic but joy-giving Dream-Maker. 

 Sharon Shinn – Thank you for a very enjoyable evening and some interesting ideas to muse over!

In praise of Cardinal Camera

I wanted to buy a small digital camera.  How hard could it be?  I went on the Internet and reasearched cameras.  I read about megapixels, auto stabilization, batteries, focus, zoom, ISO simulation, etc.  Holy cow.  There are so many options, and so many cameras out there!  What to buy?  I couldn’t decide.  I decided to visit a store and look at the cameras in person.  We stopped at Microcenter.  Yeah, they have cameras, but not much information about them on display.  And, I’m sorry if I wrong you Microcenter, but I think any of these big box stores would just as happily sell me a junky camera as a good camera.  How am I to know?  George suggested going to Cardinal Camera, in Lansdale.   Okay, I’ll try it.  We drove up to Lansdale.  I walked in the store.  Someone immediately came over to help me.  I told him what I wanted, he showed me a couple of models, either of these will be fine for you, okay I’ll take that one, you need a SD card also 1GB will give you X pictures and 2 GB will give you Y pictures, okay 1GB, here it is, pay, deal done,  thanks, bye.  That was easy.

I don’t know for sure, but this was what I believe were the benefits of buying from a specialty camera store:

• They are not going to sell any cameras that are junk.  All their cameras are decent ones.
• They didn’t try to push me into buying more camera than I need.
• The price seemed reasonable.

The camera is a Fuji something.  It’s features are:

• 8.1 MP
• A large, easy to see LCD screen
• Informative feedback from the menu system.  Straightforward controls.
• Compact size
• Movie mode – I didn’t think I would care about this, but it’s kind of fun.  I recorded Garrett showing me the features on the Lego ships that he invented.

So far, after one day, I am happy with my purchase.

Sisyphus

Found this quote on “Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose” blog for Jan. 9 about Hillary Clinton running for president:

We don’t know what to do with a woman like that. We keep telling her what her place is, and the bitch just won’t listen! It makes a lot of people nervous. It makes me unutterably grateful. I hope like hell she gets the nomination, regardless of whether she wins. Sure, if she loses, they’ll say it proves you shouldn’t send a woman to do a man’s job; that’ll smart. But they’ll say that if she wins, too, every single time she makes a human mistake. They’ll say it, one way or another, every step of the way. What I admire so much about her is that she never, ever believes it. The power of that, of her simply staying in the goddamned game, is tremendous. And it’s something this culture needs to see a hell of a lot more of from smart, talented women.

Also read the Wikipedia article about Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus:

Camus undertakes to answer what he considers to be the only question of philosophy that matters: Does the realization of the meaninglessness and absurdity of life require suicide?

It seems a little drastic, doesn’t it?

Thus, Camus arrives at three consequences from the full acceptance of the absurd: revolt, freedom, and passion.

My job is absurd.  Revolt!  Freedom!  Passion!

You just go on

Harra was silent for long enough for Lem to pass around the stone jug one last time, in the dim moonlight and shadows.  Then she said, “You go on.  You just go on.  There’s nothing more to it, and there’s no trick to make it easier.  You just go on.”

“What do you find on the other side?  When you go on?”

She shrugged.  “Your life again.  What else?”

“Is that a promise?”

She picked up a pebble, fingered it, and tossed it into the water.  The moon-lines bloomed and danced.  “It’s an inevitability.  No trick.  No choice.  You just go on.”

Memory, Lois McMaster Bujold