June 29, 2020 at 2:38 am (Books, Conversations, Fan Fiction, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Sundays)
Tags: Amos Burton, COVID Reading, favorites, humor, James Holden, novel, reading lists, science fiction, summer, The Expanse
There is an ease between these two characters that makes Naomi almost superfluous.
There is so much good fan fiction about these two. Honestly.
It’s not self’s main ship, but the Amos/Holden fan fiction is mostly better than the Nolden fan fiction (Also, BTW, Naomi/Drummer fan fiction is pretty good)
pp. 144 – 145:
“So,” Amos said when Holden exited the town meeting that night. “How’d it go?”
“I must have done it right,” Holden replied. “Everyone’s pissed.”
They walked along the dusty street together in companionable silence for a while. Amos finally said, “Weird planet. Walking in open air at night with no moon is breaking my head.”
“I hear you. My brain keeps trying to find Orion and the Big Dipper. What’s weirder is that I keep finding them.”
“That ain’t them,” Amos said.
“Oh, I know. But it’s like my eyes are forcing those patterns on stars that aren’t really lined up the right way to make them.”
The scene continues. It’s such a charming conversation, not forced in any way. Love it.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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June 28, 2020 at 4:04 pm (Explorers, Sundays, Surprises)
Tags: British Museum, COVID Reading, discoveries, essay, history, summer, The New Yorker
- “A young Londoner, George Smith, who had left school at the age of fourteen and was employed as an engraver of bank notes,” was fascinated by artifacts. He spent lunch breaks at the British Museum and “studied the shards for around ten years . . . it was he who found the most famous passage inscribed on them, an account of a great flood wiping out almost all of humanity, with one man’s family surviving. When he read this, we are told, he became so excited that he jumped out of his chair and ran around the room, tearing off his clothes.”
George Smith died of dysentery in Aleppo, where he’d gone to do research, age 36. But not before he discovered the oldest long poem in the world, Gilgamesh.
Everywhere in the world has an ancient flood story. Even Mexico. Even the Philippines. Self thinks this means there must have been an actual climactic event whose effects were felt worldwide.
Stay safe dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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June 28, 2020 at 3:25 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Filipino Writers, Links, Personal Bookshelf, Publishers, Recommended, Sundays, Women Writers)
Tags: British Museum, COVID Reading, English writers, history, Jenny Lewis, Just published, poetry, praise, summer, The New Yorker
Found, in a pile of unread New Yorkers, the issue that lauds Jenny Lewis’s Gilgamesh Retold (available now as an audiobook featuring Jenny reading her own work, on the Carcanet website)
It’s partly about George Smith, “an engraver of banknotes,” who “spent his lunch hours at the British Museum, studying its holdings.” Eventually, Smith was hired to “help analyze the thousands of clay shards that had been shipped … ” from “Nineveh, an important city in ancient Mesopotamia … the reason so many tablets had been found in one place was that they were the remains of a renowned library, that of Ashurbanipal, a king of the neo-Assyrian Empire in the seventh century B.C.” The script was written in cuneiform, a script “no one could read.”
The article, by Joan Acocella, is very long. But worth noting is that it reviews Jenny Lewis’s new collection, Gilgamesh Retold. Self has heard Jenny read, and her voice — Shohreh Aghdashloo level.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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June 28, 2020 at 3:19 am (Books, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, television, Women Writers)
Tags: adaptations, COVID Reading, indulgences, novel, reading lists, Saturday, science fiction, summer, The Expanse
Wow, self is really enjoying this bodice ripper! The writing is so completely immersive! Chapter One was set in a male brothel in Regency London, and ended with the brothel Madam’s own special man being appropriated by the widow MC for … well, dear blog readers can guess.
Chapter Two takes us to the Thames River Police, which is nowhere near as interesting as the brothel. There are two protagonists: one is a member of the Thames River Police (as dear blog reader might have guessed), the other is a man in his fifties whose name is so close to that of the male prostitute that self first thought they were one and the same, until she came to the spot where the the author describes the man as being in his fifties. At which point, self said, Oh.
Anyhoo, blah blah blah goes on between the two.
Self is alternating between Her Protector’s Pleasure and Cibola Burn. In Cibola Burn, SPOILER ALERT! Murtry and Holden meet. Holden waves and smiles, Murtry shoots a man right in front of Holden. TROUBLE, this man MURTRY is TROUBLE WITH A CAPITAL ‘T.’ Self adores Burn Gorman, the actor who plays him in the TV series The Expanse. And of course it goes without saying that she adores Steven Strait.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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June 27, 2020 at 4:39 pm (Books, Explorers, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended)
Tags: COVID Reading, favorites, novel, Saturday, science fiction, summer, The Expanse
If you have not read the books, stop reading right now. SPOILERS.
The pace is picking up.
It always happens in a James S. A. Corey book, at least with the books that followed Leviathan Wakes.
The Rocinante lands on Ilus. Holden and Amos see “hardpan dirt, with small shrublike plants.” There’s even “a cloud of biting insects.” Oh, eeeewww. Mosquitoes? “But a number of them bit, drank their blood, and dropped dead.” YES!
Amos and Jim keep walking.
They arrive at what “looked like a shantytown.”
Humans, Holden realizes with some amusement, have traveled “fifty-thousand light years” to build “houses using ten-thousand year-old technology.” That’s rich.
Holden thinks: “Humans were very strange creatures, but sometimes they were also charming.”
They encounter a crowd of people. In true Holden fashion, Holden drops his bags, smiles, and waves (lol). Amos “smiled too, though he casually rested his hand on the butt of his pistol.”
Here are the intrepid duo, discussing . . . something . . . :
Captain James Holden (Steven Strait) and Amos Burton (Wes Chatham): Two of her favorite characters on the show
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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June 26, 2020 at 9:08 pm (Books, Conversations, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended)
Tags: adaptations, COVID Reading, favorites, Fridays, indulgences, novel, reading lists, science fiction, summer, The Expanse
It’s taken self two weeks to reach page 100 (because so many things). Nevertheless, here she is!
“We’re dropping in twenty minutes,” Murtry said. “It’s a long, fast drop, and some of it’ll be choppy. I’m bringing us down just east of the Belter camp. Smith and Wei are camp leads. Our first priority is reaching and reinforcing the office down there.”
“What about the Barbapiccola?” someone asked.
“Screw the Barbapiccola! What about the Rocinante?”
Casting Brilliance: Burn Gorman as Adolphus Murtry
“Havelock, good to see you. I’m going to need a minute.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So I’m putting you in charge of the ship.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. I’m leaving you in a crap position,” Murtry said.
Screaming Firehawks, the Roci’s coming in hot.
Stay safe.
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June 26, 2020 at 7:58 pm (Family, Filipino Writers, Philippine History, Places, Relatives, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Bacolod, historical fiction, history, novel, The Philippines, work-in-progress, World War II
Further in self’s novel about the World War II occupation of the city of Bacolod in the central Philippines (72k words so far):
Don Geronimo entered Honorato’s room just as his eldest son was about to get dressed. It was eight o’clock.
“The Japanese are here,” he said.
Honorato said nothing.
There was a group of them, some in uniform, some in civilian clothing. They had told Don Geronimo they were there to put the Daku Balay under the protection of the Imperial Japanese Army. “We are forbidden to leave the premises without permission. Go through the kitchen. Moses is waiting for you by the side gate.”
The Daku Balay, Burgos Street, Bacolod City: It was used by the Japanese High Command during World War II. Self’s grandfather sent her uncle to the mountains. Her father, only 12 at the time, stayed home.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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June 26, 2020 at 2:54 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Filipino Writers, Philippine History, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: historical fiction, novel, The Philippines, World War II
So far, 299 pages, set on the island of Negros in the central Philippines, in the opening months of World War II. Self has not looked at it in almost two years. She’s been devoting most of her time to her 16th century novel, Camarote de Marinero:
In mid-April, Honorato was sent to the mountains. He had just turned 18. Don Geronimo worried because he was tall, because he was good-looking, because he was the eldest and bore the hopes of his parents on his slender shoulders. Hide, his father told him. Get as far away from here as you can.
The boy, Honorato, spends the war wandering in the mountains with his Dad’s enkargado, Moses. Moses has a bolo and a 32 Colt. Honorato can’t even shoot. But he learns a lot. (Meanwhile, self, who hasn’t shot a gun in her entire life, has to do internet research on the mechanics of a 32 Colt. So she’s learning just as much as Honorato)
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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June 25, 2020 at 5:40 am (Books, Movies, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, television, Women Writers)
Tags: adaptations, COVID Reading, historical fiction, novel, reading lists, science fiction, summer
This book is so exciting! Self hasn’t read a Regency Romp in ages! That’s because lately she’s been reading The Expanse, and watching the series (in, like, 15-minute increments on Amazon Prime, while watering). Steven Strait is FIIIINEEEE! She might check out his tween prep-school/witch movie The Covenant (4% on the Tomato Meter), a movie she never heard of (it might have appeared while she was deep in her Hunger Games phase), not until she started watching The Expanse series.
Back to Her Protector’s Pleasure. Self hasn’t moved very much further, just three pages in. The book started with the MC preparing to enter a male brothel in Regency England (first she’s heard of such) and now, three pages later, the MC is sitting in the parlor. And there’s a very fine description of the setting, such as “sheer ivory panels” and “jewel-toned reclining cushions.”
Very exciting. Hell, yeah. Go to the max, author Grace Callaway!
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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