miscellanea

[jazzfish]

In addition to accomplishing a handful of things off my List, yesterday was a day for two major achievements.

First, I updated my computer-building credentials by successfully replacing the memory and hard drive in the work laptop. This involved popping the keyboard out and replacing it without breaking any of its flimsy plastic clips or losing any of the keys (except Home, but who uses that anyway?). My small hammer with several different screwdrivers built into the handle is now officially my go-to computer disassembly tool.

... excuse me, a little brown sparrow just landed on my open window, cheeped at me a few times, and flew away.

Where was I? Right. Secondly, and more importantly, I convinced/shanghaied/bullied uilos into going to the doctor for the persistent crud she's had since before Origins. Likely this only worked because she'd given it to me as of Satyrday morning, and by yesterday I was in pretty miserable shape. But we now have a regimen each of amoxycillin and an irritation at the need to submit claims to the insurance company. Just like home. (BC has a waiting period so we're safe from the dangers of socialized medicine for another couple of months.) The amoxy seems to be doing its job; I'm much more functional today.

Yesterday I also reread the first two ABC books[1] in reverse order, since B is technically a prequel to A, while C is a direct sequel to A that builds on backstory from B. I'm not sure whether I recommend this reading order or not. Probably not; it feels better to let the backstory fill in the gaps in the 'main' story. (In other non-news, if you believe in reading Magician's Nephew before LWW I have nothing to say to you.) Also, reading in pub order means you don't get "how Muire met Kasimir" twice in a row (it's the start of A, and also the last thing that happens in B).

Onward, with reinstalling a bunch of software for work. Yay fun.

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[1] Also known as Elizabeth Bear's Edda of Burdens series: All The Windwracked Stars, By The Mountain Bound, The Seas Thy Mistress. A, B, Sea. What? Stop looking at me like that.

Comments

[shadowsong]

yeah, i always think of my shelving rules as simple until i try to explain them. alphabetical order by author, then by (series) title, then by series chronology unless the author's fucking with you in which case pub order. multi-author collections are shelved at the end, single author collections are shelved at the end of the series (if they're in one) or in title order (if they're in none or multiple).

and nonfiction goes on the other bookcase, of course.

luckily my spouse doesn't really care about shelving order. he drew the line at me exiling "his" books to the nonfiction bookshelf, and occasionally mutters about how my book culling takes a higher percentage of his books than mine, but that's about it.


random book recommendations: you should read the liaden universe books, the book of the ler, and the godstalk series, if you haven't already.

[jazzfish]

Oh, well, obviously nonfic gets its own separate section! (Divided into subsections and alpha-by-author in each.)

Have you a method for graphic novels? Currently they're "by title" which irritates me in its nonconformity with everything else, but I'm not coming up with a better way.

I've heard several people recommend Liaden. They're in the Stack. Ler and Godstalk I'm unfamiliar with, though...

[shadowsong]

Godstalk is the start of the Kencyr series by PC Hodgell. Written in 1982.
Book of the Ler is an omnibus of the Ler series by MA Foster. Written in 1975.

Graphic novels are in with nonfiction, because they're too damn tall and often are multiple-author-series. The main criteria for the non-fiction shelf is belonging to a category of books that are reliably not available in mass-market format. Occasionally I consider moving all the omnibi over, but then I remember the annoyance of my dad's study which shelved mass market and other in different places, and i leave them where they are.

[shadowsong]

Both of those series are, like the Liaden series, primarily about not-quite-humans and how they interact with humans.

And graphic novels are by series (or title, for non-series books), by publication date.