Reports

I finished the sixth Harry Potter book. I also finished Into the Green (Charles de Lint), Storm Front (Jim Butcher), and Bad Magic (Stephen Zielinski)--not all yesterday, but recently. Also I'm working on Sunshine (Robin McKinley), which is wonderful and which I may recommend to Bev because it reminds me of a book of hers she read until the covers fell off (and had loaned me one summer previous to the falling-off). My book report proceeds as follows:

Harry Potter I read in six and a half hours (about a hundred pages an hour) right after I got it Monday evening. I thought the ending was in some respects a little too similar to the ending of the previous one, and the story didn't feel as big as I hoped, for some reason. One minor thing: Inferi? They're zombies. Why did she not just call them zombies? And as for events at the end (which Beth has also commented on in a roundabout way) I think it makes sense in order to have Harry become heroic and adult and all that for the end of the series, so in a story way it's good. No comment on how it impacts the reader. I was also intrigued by the revealing-my-true-nature bit by one of the characters (at least, I think it was). Also, M, I did catch that typographical error but it only irritated me for a page or two. Still, the book was good and engaging and fun. I am lending it to a coworker because, she says, the library wait list is ridiculously long. I expect to get it back within a few days.

Into the Green was the first de Lint book I've read. It's not fast reading, but only because the style makes me slow down to take it in. I liked the half-fairy tale tone. I wouldn't necessarily go out and buy all the rest of his books, but not because I don't like them; they're just not quite my style. I'd happily read another.

Storm Front was a book I picked up with Jen when we went book-shopping several weeks ago. As she said, it's a first novel and it shows. It had some fun concepts and ideas, but I thought it could have used another draft or at least some serious editing--for one thing, I skipped right over the details of everybody's build, hair, and eye color; for another, the plot felt a little...rickety. I won't be reading the next in the series.

Bad Magic was wonderful. The ending was a little abrupt and the denouement perplexed me, but the pacing was good and the characters were good and the world concept was great.

I took yesterday off and spent it at home writing (not much, I'm afraid--274 words--but I think having all this good and lyrical prose in my head from reading is going to help; and I also spent some time contemplating a Three-Day in about six weeks. I have a partial outline) and quilting and knitting and cleaning. It was lovely. Last weekend I went to a quilt show with (a different) Jen up in Toledo, and though the things she liked tended to be different from the things I liked we both agreed there are a lot of techniques we ought to try. I admired the close quilting, but as I was thinking yesterday while fussing with TST, quilting is the part of making a quilt I like least, and I like puffy blankets. By the by, TST is lousy, at least color-wise. Also I've got to quit using the material I used for block backgrounds in the inner border. I'll do better next time. I also thought about my quilt line-up--specifically, whether it would be better to ask if Aunt Kris and Uncle Bob would be interested in the CitW design, and if so as a bed or a couch quilt. If I do that this year, next year would be for cousins. Only I could really use a big-enough blanket for my own bed. Why do I have this drive to only make things for other people? It's silly.

And that's the state of me, not quite organized and more ambitious than active, but this is not unusual. Today I have reading and transcription to do and I'm back in the flow of work, but that's okay. Tonight I--oh, another report: Crystal Caste makes nice dice. (Hematite. For Eric. If I'd been shopping for myself I would have been interested in the blue jasper or the jade or the quartz.) And they're going to replace the two defective ones they sent me (what are the chances of getting two defective dice out of seven?) so they're honest, too. Tonight I go to Joann to get cord for a bag for said dice and see if all this prose in my head will suffuse anything into the prose in my fingers.