RandomFandom will be at Syracuse Heroes Expo 2008!
I got in touch with Jeff Watkin’s the founder of Syracuse Heroes Expo, and managed to squeeze myself in.Yay!
Jeff is a great guy, and he’s going all out to make a neat event for people in the upstate and central New York regions (and anyone who wants to travel in). Check out the Syracuse Heroes Expo website to see all he’s got going on.
It’s primarily Comic con, but it’s got all sorts of stuff for fans of anime like a costume contest and anime screenings. They’re showing Ghost Hunt, which gives them high marks in my book!
Of course because I just managed to get in touch with Jeff today (a bit of email and phone tag and a lot of procrastination on my part) that means I only have 2-3 days of prep time. EEK! I’ve already designed on button specifically for the con. We’ll see if I have time to actually make it. I’m debating bringing my 3 inch and 1 inch press along to make custom buttons on the fly for people. Any opinions?
I also have to make my and my co-worker’s Halloween costumes. I’ve convinced three of my co-workers to be Pac-man ghosts with me and my boss to be Pac-man. There will be pictures, oh yes, there will. Besides that I have to make another costume for a Halloween party I’m going to on Friday.
So of course, what did I spend my time doing today? Marking my manga “read” or “not read” in my book database. According to my notes so far I have 130 volumes of manga that are unread. -_- I think there are more too, because I also noticed, again, that it’s missing a lot of my books. When I pack my books up to move I’ll have to do a thorough inventory. According to my database stats I’m still skating just under 2,000 manga. I wonder how much it will go up after an inventory?
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More Books… and other news.
Well, it’s been a while… and I was on such a good roll to with this blogger thing. But now it’s been almost…actually over a month since I blogged.
Bad me.
*sigh*
Oh well, I guess I’ll catch up my nearly non-existant readers up on my life. I feel like I’ve really settled into to my job at the financial institution that-is-not-to-be-named. I call it that because that was a major issue the went through on our hiring back in April and then in our classroom training last month. We are not to say who we work for in any media setting. Not even just that we aren’t supposed to talk to the media as an employee, which is par for the course for ANY place I’ve worked for, but we’re not supposed to say where we work in any case. Examples used in class were if you won a radio or if you met someone new that you’d just met. No saying where you work, you’re just supposed to say “I work at a Local Financial Institution”. They’re a bit paranoid because their old location was 500 yards from the world trade center, many of the long time employees (which in this place, means over a two years) where imported in from the NYC headquarters and were actually there on Sept 11th. I suppose they have a right to be paranoid. It’s a little weird to deal with it on a day to day basis though.
On the book front, once I was finished with all the Kushiel books I had to find something else to occupy my time. I was emailed a couple of suggestions, one being the Anita Blake books by Laurel K. Hamilton. I still haven’t read those, and I’ll tell you why. I had a series of friends get sucked into them one by one. All said the same thing, they lost like a week or two of time where they read each book of hers one after the other, sometimes having to make emergency runs to the open late bookstores like Borders or Barnes and Nobles to get the next one. I called them Book-Crack. You can’t stop with just one. I do intend to read them…eventually. But only when I have all of them, and a weekend to spare to just read am I going to delve into them. ‘Cause I know me, nothin’ else is gonna get done if they are even half as good as everyone says.
So instead I read a book a friend recommended to me a long time ago, a book called “Strands of Starlight” by Gael Baudino. It was ok, but it was too political and preachy for me. The friend of mine who recommended it likes those kinds of things, people who right about high ideals, radical politics, feminisim, etc… personally, I find a lot of the issues in this book were made too black and white. The Church people where Evil, people who didn’t respect women were Evil, only elves were good because the worshiped a female god, and come to think of it, most of the humans, if not evil, where portrayed as simple and easily swayed. *shakes head* it was just too black and white for me.
I also read a great series of mysteries-comedies by Janet Evanovich, One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deady, Four to Score, High Five, and Seven Up. All lent to me by a very nice lady at work. A bunch of the women at work are passing them back and forth and seem really surprised that I can get through them in just a couple of days. I read all of those in the past month, they’re really great. They’re just so engaging that I can’t not blast through them. They’re about a woman name Stephanie Plum, who after she gets laid off as a lingerie buyer for a discount department store becomes a bounty hunter for her cousin Vinny after she finds out that the filing job he’d offered her was taken. There is just something about the way Evanovich writes that is just so funny and suspenseful at the same time… and man, Grandma Mauzer, Lula, Morelli, Bob the dog and Ranger are just such an unbelievable cast of characters and she makes them so REAL. I can’t wait for Hard Eight, it just came out in paperback. there is also a new one in hard cover, To the Nines. Evanovich has gotten into a bad habit in the past couple of books though, leaving a person on a cliff-hanger on the last page. Oh, the main story is all wrapped up and everything… its just some little thing that she leaves as a tease on the last page. VEEEEERY good hook, I know it keeps me wanting more.
The past weekend was relaxing. Spent my time getting Red Butterfly up and going. Also added my links section finally, now if I can only get people to add links to it. *sigh*
Last weekend was crazy. Spent the weekend saving other people. Got my friend Lynn, who started a web design company without knowing how to make webpages, out of the fire by making the band “Savin Grey” a website in a weekend. It’s not up to my usual standards, but not bad for two days work. (not even really, it was friday and sat night). Then Sunday I helped my friend Shelly move. Ugh. Oh well, it was one weekend gone. And seeing as it’s almost 12 now, here is another one gone…
I’ve been working long enough now that I can say again… but I don’t wanna go to work tomorrow. Oh well, it’s not so bad. I’ve had worse, and honestly, the job at the financial-institution-that-is-not-to-be-named just keeps getting better, not worse. Oh well…best be off to bed.
Read MoreKushiel’s Chosen and other Books
Kushiel’s Chosen was good. ^_^ Just like the first one the story was very complex and had so many layers and threads in it. It had everything, conspiracies, kink, pirates… I did occasionally want to boot a few characters in the head for being stupid, but that’s part of what makes these books good. None of the characters are ‘perfect’, they all have their blind spots. I’m about to start the third one, Kushiel’s Avatar. The only thing that bothers me is that besides Cassiel, Naamah and Kushiel I can’t keep the other followers of Eula straight. That made things a little hard in the second book, not ’cause you really needed to know it, but because it kept distracting me. So Cassiel was the Perfect Companion, Naamah was basically the goddess of whores, and Kushiel was the punisher of the heavens…what where the other followers? I know there was Camael, and Azzah…I think there were six, but I have no idea what they did. Except that one of them makes their descendents smell like ripening apples. It’s little touches like that that make me really like these books.
I also like how each book pretty much stands on it’s own. When one ends a complete story has been told. If the author never writes another you’re not going to cry, well..maybe you will, because she writes so well, but you won’t be crying because you have no idea how the ‘story’ ends. At the same time, each book follows the other seems like a logical follow up, never a book just to write a book in that world like some other authors I could mention *cough*Mercedes Lackey*cough*.
And now for Merrow’s recommended reading! *does her imitation of the end of Reading Rainbow*
If you liked Kushiel’s Dart and Kushiel’s Chosen by Jacqueline Carey you might also try:
The Samaria Trilogy, by Sharon Shinn. All three take place in the same world where true angels fly through the skys. With their songs they control the elements on the world, deciding where rain falls and does not fall. Once a year all humans and angels must gather together and sing of their peacfullness to the heavens, otherwise Jovah will destroy the earth. The song is lead by one human and one angel, the Archangel (who can be male or female) and his/her spouse. The spouse of the Archangel is determined by Jovah by a glittering jewel ‘homing device’ that leads one to the other. In the first book the new Archangel-to-be Gabriel finds his destined wife-to-be to be a young slave girl named Rachel who wants nothing to do with angels, court intrigue or being the new angelica and leading the chorale with her amazing voice.
Tigana (or anything else) by Guy Gavriel Kay. In Tigana, when the Sorcerer King Brandin’s son was killed as he tried to take over the city-states that peninsula called the ‘Palm’ he set down a fearful curse. A small band of travelers try to lift the curse and free the Palm from Brandin’s tryanny while keeping it out of the clutches of Brandin’s rival Alberico of Barbadior. This book is rich with characters, displaced princes, wandering musicians, scheming dukes, masters of disguise. The settings and plotlines are varied, it goes from the inner seralgio (harem) of Brandin to battlefields that may or may not be just a waking dream.
All in all… good stuff!
Merrow
Read MoreMy Grandma Plays DDR
Easter was fun.
I have a very cool family I must say. ^_^ My grandmother played DDR with me. She wants to practice so that she can really dance on the pad. I told her they call that ‘tricking’ (I think). So now she wants to practice so she can ‘trick out’ as she put it. Bet if she does practice that she’s able to beat me pretty quickly. -_-
Hehe, but now I can tell people, My Grandmother can play better DDR than you! and mean it. ^_^
*sigh* I’ve got to write. I’ve neglected ALL of my fanfics, even the hentai ones. -_- and since I sold my soul to Mona over the japanese auction, I *have* to write. >_< Currently she’s asking for a black Haru x Tooru story. I can do that. Originally it was an Akiru, or Akito x Tooru story, which I could have done, but it wouldn’t have been pleasant. It most likely would have been non-consensual, and a very bad experience for Tooru. Since Mona considerately wants the poor girl to have some fun too, she changed her mind. Akito is a sadistic brat, what other way could I get him and Tooru together? I idly thought about an AU story, but that just would have been an excuse to tone down his character. It’s a challenge I might take up someday, if I can think of a likely senario. But I don’t do rape… I’ve come damn close in Belated Gift, I admit… but despite all that Shigure has done, and all Tooru has been hurt there are still layers that make it more than just someone brutally hurting another just for the fun of hurting someone. It doesn’t justify wat Shigure has done, or excuse it, but it’s still better than some bastard raping a girl just to crush her spirit. I wouldn’t have enjoyed writing that story.
On a side note, on the topic of Kushiel’s Chosen a great book I’m reading. I knew it! I KNEW it! I’m so proud of myself. I guessed where Melisande was pulling the strings from. As soon as the ‘clue’ was mentioned I knew that was where she had to be. Ha! (I know this last bit makes no sense, but I don’t want to ruin it for anybody)
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