Morning, in #JustOneParagraph

The further into the week it is, the harder getting up at 5 AM feels. You'd think that would be worst on Monday mornings, but oddly enough, it feels toughest on Thursdays. The problem isn't so much the waking-up-at-5 part; I usually respond to my alarm--which is a fairly pleasant wind-chimey thing, nothing raucous--just as it goes off. It's the getting-up-at-5 part, which has to happen in order to accomplish everything I need to do in order to leave the house and get to the office close to on time, allowing for an hour (more or less) on the road there. It's the getting-up-at-5 part when, at this latitude in early August, there's no daylight to speak of for at least another hour. It's the getting-up-at-5 on Thursday morning when Saturday morning is just over the horizon, and when it comes, there will be two straight days of not getting up at 5. Granted, I may still wake up at 5 AM--but it'll happen without the alarm, since there won't be any need to get up at 5--and I'll be able to ignore that it is 5 AM. And when you're up at 5 AM five days a week, not getting out of bed before 7 feels like sheer self-indulgence.

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WW: Eating Up Summer, in #JustOneParagraph

I think that this is where it started, back in June, at City Landing for our first dinner in Boston--I’ve really had a thing for berries this summer, and I trace it right back to this simple but glorious salad.

SALADS

Summer Berry Salad

Strawberries, Dried Blueberries, Candied Pecans, Blue Cheese, Raspberry Vinaigrette 10

Fresh strawberries, surrounded by Haymarket (collaged with Diptic)

Sadly, I didn’t take a photo of it, as I got straight to eating it. I’ve made variations on it several times since I’ve been back home, though--fresh blueberries instead of dried, and no blue cheese or pecans (although I just remembered, as I was writing this, that I actually might have pecans in the pantry, so I’ll throw some in next time if that’s true!). And if I were back in Boston, I’d likely go to Haymarket--the city’s historic outdoor produce market--to pick up all my fresh ingredients, so I know that this salad would cost me a lot less than $10 to make.

I'm combining my Linked-Up Wordless Wednesday and Just One Paragraph posts for this week's WW theme, "Summer Foods."

An InLinkz Link-up

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(Audio)Book Talk: REDSHIRTS, by John Scalzi

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas

John Scalzi (Twitter) (Facebook) (Goodreads)

Audiobook read by Wil Wheaton (Twitter) (Facebook) (Tumblr)

Tor Books (2012), hardcover (ISBN 0765316994 / 9780765316998)

Science fiction/satire, 320 pages

Source:* Purchased audiobook (Audible Frontiers, 2012: ASIN B0088U1CCO)

Reason for reading: Personal

*I received an ARC of Redshirts, signed by the author, at Book Expo America 2012--and I’ll be keeping that, even though I decided to listen to the novel instead of reading it.

Opening lines (Chapter One):

“Ensign Andrew Dahl looked out the window of Earth Dock, the Universal Union’s space station above the planet Earth, and gazed at his next ship.

“He gazed at the Intrepid.

“‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’ said a voice.

“Dahl turned to see a young woman, dressed in a starship ensign’s uniform, also looking out toward the ship.

“‘She is,’ Dahl agreed.

“‘The Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid,’ the young woman said. ‘Built in 2453 at the Mars Dock. Flagship of the Universal Union since 2456. First captain, Genevieve Shan. Lucius Abernathy, captain since 2462.’

“‘Are you the Intrepid’s tour guide?’ Dahl asked, smiling.

“‘Are you a tourist?’ the young woman asked, smiling back.

“‘No,’ Dahl said, and held out his hand. ‘Andrew Dahl. I’ve been assigned to the Intrepid. I’m just waiting on the 1500 shuttle.’

“The young woman took his hand. ‘Maia Duvall,’ she said. ‘Also assigned to the Intrepid. Also waiting on the 1500 shuttle.’”

Book description, from the publisher’s website:Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, with the chance to serve on "Away Missions" alongside the starship’s famous senior officers. 

Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to realize that 1) every Away Mission involves a lethal confrontation with alien forces, 2) the ship’s senior officers always survive these confrontations, and 3) sadly, at least one low-ranking crew member is invariably killed. Unsurprisingly, the savvier crew members belowdecks avoid Away Missions at all costs.

Then Andrew stumbles on information that transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.

Comments: I tend to consume my genre fiction in visual form, as opposed to in writing; basically, that means I enjoy watching science fiction and fantasy in TV and movies, but I don’t read a lot of it (The Sparrow notwithstanding). I swear it’s not literary snobbery--it’s just that the more world-building a story requires, the more I seem to need to *see* it to make sense of it. Although I’ve been reading SF writer John Scalzi’s blog for years, I hadn’t read any of his books. Redshirts was going to be my first; I obtained a galley at BEA 2012. By this spring, it had become another victim of “ARC I Still Hadn’t Read Before the Paperback Edition” Syndrome. But there was an audio edition--which reinforced the Star Trek reference of the title by having Wil Wheaton as its narrator--and that seemed like the perfect way to liberate Redshirts from TBR Purgatory. (But I’m keeping the galley, since I got it autographed.)

I understood the premise of Redshirts going in, and expected that it would both reference and tweak conventions of TV and movie science fiction in general and of Star Trek in particular, and Scalzi didn’t disappoint on either of those counts. I don’t think I expected it to have such a sense of humor about the whole thing, though--humor that came across as both snarky and affectionate because it knew its subject so well--and was pleasantly surprised by that. For the most part, I felt that the novel struck a nice balance between the predictable, which I didn’t begrudge because I understood where it came from, and some engaging narrative twists, which I appreciated for the surprise. Although there were times when the whole thing did flirt with overly meta self-awareness, I was consistently entertained.

Although it originated with the red-uniformed security personnel of Star Trek, “redshirts” has become a generic term for the extras and bit players who seem to be elevated to prominence in a story just in time to be killed off in highly dramatic fashion. Familiarity with this concept, and others that comprise a working vocabulary of science-fiction storytelling devices and tropes, is really all that’s necessary to grasp the world-building of Redshirts, but a solid foundation in pop-culture literacy (double-majoring in Comic-Con) and some grasp of the workings of the entertainment-industry machinery will definitely enhance one’s appreciation of what Scalzi does with all of these elements. They did for me, anyway. I’d say that this book hit so many of my personal nerd-girl sweet spots that it wasn’t even funny--except that it actually was funny on top of everything else. For this particular non-reader of science fiction, it’s hard to imagine what could make for a better read. Redshirts isn’t one of those works of science fiction which explores deep philosophical questions--it’s not really “about” all that much other than itself, but it doesn’t have to be. And in audiobook form, it doesn’t really need more than a narrator who seems to be enjoying the ride as much as the reader does, and Wil Wheaton delivers that.

Rating: Book and audio, 3.75 of 5

Other reviews, via the Book Blogs Search Engine

Discussion of Redshirts’ usage of numerous genre conventions, with numerous examples (read: spoilers), at TV Tropes

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Countdown: D-Minus-20 to Moving Day! #JustOneParagraph

I still feel like it was a good idea, but it didn't really go as I'd hoped--there was only a very small turnout for my Book Purge Giveaway this weekend, and I have to admit that I was a little disappointed by some no-shows. But with that said, I really do appreciate the few people who did come by and take some books away! Getting to where I live does require deliberate effort--it's really not "on the way" to anywhere for most people I know--so maybe I should have offered more than just free books? In any case, the remaining purge candidates have been donated to charity, and now I need to start packing up the keepers for their long journey to the garage next door, where they will await the arrival of the new bookcases we ordered on Saturday. Tall Paul spent a good chunk of his weekend getting that space in shape, as you can see from this before-and-after collage. The utilities should be turned on today, and once we have power and water, we can start setting up inside the house.

"

Just One Paragraph, August 2013

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Sunday Salon: Book Purge Day Edition

Time: The first weekend of August, 2013–starting the draft of this post on Saturday evening, intending to finish and publish on Sunday morning


Place: My side of the bed, with the iPad

Eating and drinking: I have my bedside (nearly always at my side, wherever, to be honest) glass of water, and that's it till breakfast, which will probably be Kashi cereal with fruit and a biscuit. Unless that's not what I feel like eating by the time I get down to the kitchen...

Reading: Beth Kephart generously sent me an advance copy of Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, which officially releases this Tuesday. I'm about halfway through it, and it's the next best thing to sitting in on one of her Creative Nonfiction classes at Penn. I'll have more to say about it when I'm done, but I'll say this now: if you ever consider writing your own memoir, read this before you do. And I'm about to resume reviewing for Shelf Awareness; I'm expecting my October “review consideration” package from them any day now, as well as the September selection for She Reads.

Watching: It's pretty much summer-doldrums time for TV, so last night we started watching the first season of “new” Doctor Who on Netflix. We came to this show with the Eleventh Doctor's first season and then backtracked through the entire Tenth series, and we've been watching the monthly Doctors Revisited specials that BBC is running during the show's 50th-anniversary year to get better acquainted with “classic" Who. Now it's time for us to be completists and get to know the Ninth Doctor.

Listening: I just switched to the two-credits-per-month plan with Audible, and one of the first books I bought with it was Curtis Sittenfeld's latest, Sisterland, on the recommendation of Candace from Beth Fish Reads. It's very absorbing.

Blogging: I missed my first day of daily "Just One Paragraph” posting yesterday, and I'm tweaking the premise slightly anyway; the “paragraph” post goes up on days when I don't have a book discussion or other content scheduled. I'm trying to focus on the daily posting and almost-daily writing. I made it for almost two weeks, and I'm jumping right back in!

Enjoying: The wait is over. The house next door is ours.

Anticipating: Three weeks from today, I'll be waking up in the bedroom on the other side of this wall. And three weeks after that–more or less–I'll be unpacking my books into the three new bookcases we just ordered to line one entire wall of the dining room.

Pondering/Planning: We have movers coming to cart the big bulky stuff over to the new place, but we're planning to bring a lot of the smaller stuff over ourselves, bit by bit and day by day. There are lots of logistics to consider regarding what to take and when, so we minimize the number of days we're effectively living in two places.

Promoting: Are you a book lover within a reasonable driving distance of Simi Valley, California? Do you have some time on your hands today? Come by my house and help yourself to some of the books I'm not moving! Details are here. Message me on Facebook or email me at 3.rsblog AT Gmail dot com for the address and directions!

So, what's up with you this weekend?

 

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Control, in #JustOneParagraph

Now that we're through the process of buying the house, Tall Paul and I were talking about stress yesterday--his has dropped noticeably, while mine seems to be increasing. What makes the difference for him is that we've now entered the phase where he feels more in control over things; buying the house involved waiting for other people to make decisions and take actions, but actually moving into it is about practicalities, logistics, and DIY. What makes the difference for me is that the closer we get, the more I feel the inverse relationship between time and the length of the to-do list; the more my time is claimed by things, the more I worry about getting any of it done, and the less I feel in control of anything. Years ago, I recognized that this was another inverse relationship: the less control, the more worry (and its tagalong cousin, stress). I'm less stressed when I'm either accepting an essential lack of control over the Big Things--perhaps I am being granted, sometimes, "the serenity to accept the things I cannot change"--or confident that I'm dealing with such a Small Thing that I have almost full control over it. My job title is "Controller," and there are times I don't wear it very well at all.

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Making the Move, in #JustOneParagraph

After a couple of weeks of cryptic remarks and references buried in blog posts, I was able to spill the story yesterday. (If we're Facebook friends, you may have read the short version already. This is the just-slightly-longer one.) Tall Paul and I started down the road to home ownership back in the spring. It's been a bumpy one, and we've been keeping our progress--and the frustrating lack of it, sometimes--quiet. But we'd just gone into a sale contract when we left for our family trip to New England in mid-June, and on the last day of July, we closed on the house next door to the one we've been renting since the fall of 2008. As my husband (accurately) put it in his own Facebook update,

"At 11:16 this morning, Florinda and I officially became homeowners! Well, we own a tiny part, it'll be 30 years before we own the rest."

We worked things out so we'll have most of August to move, but we've got plenty to do between now and then (including purging a bunch of books!), and we hope it'll be our last move for a very long time.

 



 

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