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Feeling yucky
Jan. 21st, 2004 04:27 pmI had a whole bunch of stuff I had planned to get done today, in preparation for my return to school tomorrow. Instead, I woke up this morning feeling pretty much useless and horrible, so I've accomplished pretty much nothing. I wish I could learn to limit my procrastination - you know, procrastinate a little bit every once in a while, instead of putting stuff off until the last minute nearly every time, so that if some obstacle occurs, it disrupts all my plans. Grr.
I did finish reading Threshold today, by Caitlin R. Kiernan. I'd read Silk some years ago and was really impressed by it. It was one of the few horror novels I've read that actually scared me enough to keep me awake at night (usually I just get an occasional delicious chill, which, along with my general infatuation with dark things and morbid creations, is the main reason I read horror). The only other writer I can think of who's really managed to scare me like that was Shirley Jackson. Anyway, Threshold wasn't quite as impressive as Silk, though it was pretty interesting, and I enjoyed her prose, which has a kind of stream-of-consciousness flow to it that makes me feel as though I'm dreaming the book rather than reading it. Either that, or I'm reading it directly out of my subconscious. I was interested to find out that she's a paleontologist, and her expertise shows in Threshold, though it didn't really come through in Silk, I don't think.
I recently finished The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman, book two of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy. I really enjoyed the first book - the sort of Victorian feeling of the alternate Oxford, and the idea of every person having their own personal sidekick called a 'daemon' were really interesting and kind of fun, and Lyra made for a lively heroine with a lot of spunk. Unfortunately, the second book doesn't seem to have the same thrill to it that the first one did, and I'm disappointed by the amount of Christian mythology he seems to be drawing on for the book. This doesn't necessarily make it a bad book; it's just something that I tend to find somewhat offputting. I'm not exactly sure why, though I suppose it has something to do with growing up with an different faith in a largely Christian society.
I found an online bibliography (www.fantasticfiction.co.uk) that I used as a reference for updating my book database. It took me a little over a week to go through it, but I ended up with 978 entries when I finished. There's a lot of books that still aren't in it, mostly because I don't remember the titles. But I'm still really pleased with it, and am prepared to make good use of it from now on. Actually, it's thanks to the database that I picked up Kiernan's books, since I had forgotten about Silk until I started working on the database. Sometimes I read books at particularly intense periods of my life and they have an impact on me but I don't remember them very well anyway. My siblings find it very annoying, because they'll be talking about a book we've all read and I won't have anything much to say because I can't remember what they're talking about.
I did finish reading Threshold today, by Caitlin R. Kiernan. I'd read Silk some years ago and was really impressed by it. It was one of the few horror novels I've read that actually scared me enough to keep me awake at night (usually I just get an occasional delicious chill, which, along with my general infatuation with dark things and morbid creations, is the main reason I read horror). The only other writer I can think of who's really managed to scare me like that was Shirley Jackson. Anyway, Threshold wasn't quite as impressive as Silk, though it was pretty interesting, and I enjoyed her prose, which has a kind of stream-of-consciousness flow to it that makes me feel as though I'm dreaming the book rather than reading it. Either that, or I'm reading it directly out of my subconscious. I was interested to find out that she's a paleontologist, and her expertise shows in Threshold, though it didn't really come through in Silk, I don't think.
I recently finished The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman, book two of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy. I really enjoyed the first book - the sort of Victorian feeling of the alternate Oxford, and the idea of every person having their own personal sidekick called a 'daemon' were really interesting and kind of fun, and Lyra made for a lively heroine with a lot of spunk. Unfortunately, the second book doesn't seem to have the same thrill to it that the first one did, and I'm disappointed by the amount of Christian mythology he seems to be drawing on for the book. This doesn't necessarily make it a bad book; it's just something that I tend to find somewhat offputting. I'm not exactly sure why, though I suppose it has something to do with growing up with an different faith in a largely Christian society.
I found an online bibliography (www.fantasticfiction.co.uk) that I used as a reference for updating my book database. It took me a little over a week to go through it, but I ended up with 978 entries when I finished. There's a lot of books that still aren't in it, mostly because I don't remember the titles. But I'm still really pleased with it, and am prepared to make good use of it from now on. Actually, it's thanks to the database that I picked up Kiernan's books, since I had forgotten about Silk until I started working on the database. Sometimes I read books at particularly intense periods of my life and they have an impact on me but I don't remember them very well anyway. My siblings find it very annoying, because they'll be talking about a book we've all read and I won't have anything much to say because I can't remember what they're talking about.
