"you and the barber make a handsome pair"

[jazzfish]

The last two weeks have seen my largest book-acquiring binge since the Tysons Corner Borders closed. Unsurprisingly, we're now entirely out of credit at the two used bookstores in Bellingham.

BOOKS ACQUIRED:

• Two gifts (one Chihuly book for Mrs F, one [REDACTED])
  
• One Stoppard play (Night and Day)
  
• One paperback with Roger Zelazny's name slapped on the cover (Chronomancer by Jane Lindskold, the novelisation of a decent mid-nineties point-and-click adventure game with worldbuilding by Roger)
  
• Two first-two-of-a-trilogy (Martha Wells's Books of the Raksura on repeated plugs by thanate plus a vague recollection that City of Bones was pretty good; and Ken MacLeod's Engines of Light because we had spare credit at one bookstore and his name sounds familiar)
  
• One last-three-of-a-tetrology (the previously mentioned Long Price Quartet, because I seem to have become interested in closed series books again)
  
• One second-of-a-trilogy (eBear's Shattered Pillars)
  
• One third-of-a-trilogy (WJW's Conventions of War, and seriously, Chapters, would it have been so hard to ship the second one at the same time?)

BOOKS STILL REQUIRED:

• Martha Wells, The Siren Depths (dependent of course on liking the first two)
  
• Ken MacLeod, Engine City (ditto)
  
• Hal Duncan, Ink (unless Vellum goes entirely off the rails in the next few hundred pages, but I'm liking it so far)
  
• Daniel Abraham, A Shadow in Summer
  
• WJW, The Sundering (on order from Chapters)
  
• And as always, various not-yet-published / -written, to include the third Eternal Sky book, Aspects: A Novel With Sorcery (ha), and while we're dreaming however many more books it'll take WJW to finish the Metropolitan sequence

---

And a meme! Via firecat.

How this works:

You comment, I give you an age (please tell me how old you are, or risk having to time-travel to find out the answers) and you respond to the meme questions with what applied to you back then, and what's true now.

firecat gave me 19. Eep. That would be December of 1995 and most of 1996.

I lived in:
A dorm room in Newman Hall at Virgina Tech, with James Matthew Roberts. I think that was the summer I took a couple of classes, so I stayed in Newman until July (Matt left in May). I stayed with my parents for a couple of months, and then Apartment Six in Blacksburg, with Mandy, Kym, and, um, I don't remember if Justin was there that semester or if he was off co-oping and had left us with Random Rob the subleaser.

Now I live in a condo in Vancouver, with uilos and two geriatric cats.

I drove:
Nothing at all, except for visits home when I borrowed Dad's dark green pickup.

Now I drive ... nothing at all, except for the occasional Car2Go or rental.

I was in a relationship with:
I'd started dating Shaye B-- right before I left for college; that lasted until a week after Valentine's. (Stupid February.) I got together with Steph D-- sometime in July.

Now I'm in a long-term relationship with uilos, who I met that August.

I feared:
In winter and spring I was scared of losing Shaye, and of getting bad grades. I don't think I was specifically afraid of anything in the fall. Other than being a failure and being alone.

Those last two are pretty much the only things I fear now, but now I'm willing to call them by name.

I worked at:
I was a full-time student at Tech, living off student loans.

Now I'm a tech writer for a medium-sized software company.

I wanted to be:
An engineer, a writer, a graduate, independent, surrounded by friends, loved, recognised.

Now I'd just like to be more confident in myself; everything else follows from that. If I could only get my record clean, I'd be a genius.

Comments

[firecat]

Lots of churn in living places and relationships. I didn't much like that part of being 19.

[jazzfish]

O yes, I am so over the whole "living in three different places in a year" thing. At least I hope I am.