gimme shelter
Sep. 22nd, 2008 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishA new holiday, and a hearty bite me to "family comes first." The comments, as always, are the best part. Q: How many children of a dysfunctional family does it take to change a light bulb? A: Your BROTHER would know. Happy autumn.
Faire on Satyrday turned out to be rather enjoyable. Saw![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pictsy doing her angelically aerial thing, caught a handful of other shows, had underwhelming food (fried ice cream: not so great, actually), and bought absolutely nothing else. Still and all, I'd go again, for the chance to wear garb and see random people and be amused. Had dinner afterwards in Silver Spring, at a tiny Italian place called Da Marco. It is my second favorite restaurant ever only because they don't have either cajun alfredo or that amazing gorgonzola walnut chicken that Zeppoli's does. (Poking around online indicates that their red sauces are somewhat lacking. I'm supremely partial to white and rosé sauces, so this is not a big deal for me.)
My brilliant plan to spend Sunday reading comic books got derailed by the arrival of Susan Palwick's _Shelter_. Palwick is the author of "Gestella," easily the most frightening story I've ever read. _Shelter_. . . is equally horrific in places. It reminds me a little of the movie _The Machinist_ (starring two-thirds of Christian Bale): you can watch the main character react in the worst possible way to various bad situations, which leads to extremely bad consequences, which leads to more bad reactions. . . all while continuing to have complete sympathy for the character.
I've been meaning to pick this up since Jo Walton raved about it, um, a year or more ago. "This is a novel about memory and identity and awareness and forgiveness and what it means to be a person." Yes, to all of that, and with characters that are infinitely more human and more sympathetic than Gene Wolfe's, who is the only other writer I can think of offhand that writes about all these things.
So, Sunday was a big day for curling up on the couch with a brick of a novel, instead of a fat stack of comics. I'm about three-quarters of the way through it, and genuinely irritated that I have to be at work instead of reading. Stupid work.
Faire on Satyrday turned out to be rather enjoyable. Saw
pictsy doing her angelically aerial thing, caught a handful of other shows, had underwhelming food (fried ice cream: not so great, actually), and bought absolutely nothing else. Still and all, I'd go again, for the chance to wear garb and see random people and be amused. Had dinner afterwards in Silver Spring, at a tiny Italian place called Da Marco. It is my second favorite restaurant ever only because they don't have either cajun alfredo or that amazing gorgonzola walnut chicken that Zeppoli's does. (Poking around online indicates that their red sauces are somewhat lacking. I'm supremely partial to white and rosé sauces, so this is not a big deal for me.)My brilliant plan to spend Sunday reading comic books got derailed by the arrival of Susan Palwick's _Shelter_. Palwick is the author of "Gestella," easily the most frightening story I've ever read. _Shelter_. . . is equally horrific in places. It reminds me a little of the movie _The Machinist_ (starring two-thirds of Christian Bale): you can watch the main character react in the worst possible way to various bad situations, which leads to extremely bad consequences, which leads to more bad reactions. . . all while continuing to have complete sympathy for the character.
I've been meaning to pick this up since Jo Walton raved about it, um, a year or more ago. "This is a novel about memory and identity and awareness and forgiveness and what it means to be a person." Yes, to all of that, and with characters that are infinitely more human and more sympathetic than Gene Wolfe's, who is the only other writer I can think of offhand that writes about all these things.
So, Sunday was a big day for curling up on the couch with a brick of a novel, instead of a fat stack of comics. I'm about three-quarters of the way through it, and genuinely irritated that I have to be at work instead of reading. Stupid work.