And the work I'm supposed to be doing.

[leahbobet]

November 26, 2008 Progress Notes:

"Sugar"

Words today: 600.
Words total: 2950.
Reason for stopping: It's 12:30 and I should be bedwards.

Books in progress: Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep; Robert Graves, The Long Week-end.
The glamour: Dayjobbery and more dayjobbery and a trip to Canadian Tire after work to get some pots for my little plants at work. I should have been at a tenants' association meeting too, but I just wasn't up to it.

---

I admit to picking up my Graves book out of both excitement for having it (true fact: I unwrapped it from the Amazon box in the middle of a very fancy Yorkville men's clothing store while waiting for my dad to finish getting his coat fitted, during the great Family Coat-Buying Extravaganza of Saturday [because both my parents needed coats too, so we made a day with brunch out of it], because I could not wait until I got home) and a certain fatigue with the Vinge. A Fire Upon the Deep is a cool book full of fabulous concepts and good writing, but it's about one group of people going to rescue another. Very slowly. I have reached a bit of an "are we there yet?" point with it.

We are not there yet. I'm putting it down for a bit until I stop being tempted to skip ahead to There.

Luckily, the Robert Graves book is both perfectly what I needed in terms of research (read: already giving me ideas) and, while treating the subject matter appropriately, occasionally wittily hilarious. I will be keeping my eye out for other sources, but. I think this one is going to get leaned on hard.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Mmm, Robert Graves...

He's one of those writers who produce a few brightly-blazing classics ("Graves? Oh, yes - poetry, of course, and Goodbye To All That, I, Claudius and The White Goddess...") which tend to obscure quite how much else he's written. I was reading my way through him at one point, but I don't know The Long Week-end. The Lit & Phil does, though; I shall check it out later today. Thanks for the nudge...

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I think I may pick up Goodbye To All That after this one, for some further context.

The Long Week-end is sort of a...social history of the period between WWI and WWII? Which is where I'm setting the next book I want to write, so I picked this and another up to start brushing up on my history. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I love the Graves, too. And the one of the lovely things about this field is that I have utter confidence that the ideas I got from it, the ideas papersky got from it, and the ideas you're now getting will overlap not at all, so we can all go, "Ooh, neat story, I never would have thought of that when I was reading Graves for my stories!"

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Oh. Was she using that for Farthing and co.?

And yes; I expect this is like the Toronto Stories continuum, where we figured out exactly how the city we all allegedly live in is actually many different cities.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ayep. Among other things, obviously.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I should buy her chocolate and pick her brain for resources.

[wordswoman.livejournal.com]

I had the same complaint about A Fire Upon the Deep, one of those rare books that manages to be wildly creative and frustratingly slow at the same time. Glad I read it, but doubt I'll ever read it again.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it doesn't seem like a reread to me so far. Although I am enjoying it, am not sorry I am reading it, and will finish it.