Madeline the Edifying (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zdashamber) wrote2007-05-28 08:48 pm
zdashamber) wrote2007-05-28 08:48 pm
Entry tags:
Damn you Jim Butcher I need a shower!
So, had a garage sale this weekend. Big bonus of it: Friday I went through every nook and drawer and corner of the yard to find stuff I could get rid of. It's like patting down your jacket before leaving a place, comfortable to know that you've located everything. And! In a drawer in the pool room, there was a pile of old mail with an unopened package in it. An unopened package addressed to me! An unopened package that contained the Dresden Files book I'd bought last year, which I'd sadly written off long ago after apparently forgetting I'd tossed it into a drawer on the way out somewhere!
Small bonus of the garage sale: I got to see a live black widow spider in its natural habitat for the first time. After I'd dragged the old animal cage it lived in out of the buried gazebo on the blackberry wildness side of the back yard. Without suffering any harm! It was all glossy and scary and engendered much bemused slightly on edge swearing of the Shit! Dude! variety. It fled as I slid the bottom tray out of the cage to sweep it once I'd gotten it in the relatively beaten-down-weed clear space in the center of the back yard. I shifted the cage around to make sure it left and ran into the weeds, and then bounced the cage another few yards away to continue sweeping it.
So, I'd read that I should probably start with the fourth book in the series (Summer Knight) because the first few were less well-written, and while I'm uneasy upsetting the natural order like that, I went ahead since after all this shiny new book was like floor pie... You don't pass that kind of thing up. I'm glad I did, as this is the book where Harry explains to Murphy a huge dose of the schlmiel... And I can't stand it when characters endanger people (particularly people they say they care about) by not explaining shit about shit to them. I'd've probably liked Harry anyway, since you're no doubt aware that I'm drawn to spit-your-teeth-in-the-face never-say-die defiance, but better to not have too much to explain away.
As for the title of this post, I took to reading the book, and then continued reading the book, and came in and laid on the bed reading the book... Sympathizing very much with Harry's strung-out need to eat something and wash himself and get a haircut... Being all, "No! His only food!" when he had to give his half-candy bar to the raccoon familiar (Dude he so did not have so much food!)... Thinking that as long as he was being all friendly emotional helper-guy to Murphy he should raid her fridge and borrow her shampoo for a bit... Wondering if the sub sandwich was really his only meal the entire book so far... And then right after he spills his guts to Murphy and the mind-fog comes after him and the chapter changes to them running through the store I'm like, "Hey! I'm on to you, Jim Butcher, with your ending of every single chapter on a cliffhanger so I can't go get some dinner! Frigging Dan Brown writer except without insanely stupid plots and with characters who don't blow goats...!"
So I broke free to come post some stuff and stuff. Like I say, I haven't finished the book, but I like it so far, and will no doubt pick up more. I'm betting the rest of Summer Knight is going to be real obvious, but that doesn't bother me, since I like the characters and the humor, and the writing is fine. (It's the Summer Lady! I bet! Of course you don't listen to Bob about the women! Heh.)
Edit: Oh right, the one other thing I was meaning to mention: I wish he hadn't named the guy Ronald Reuel. Breaks me out of the narrative every time and I get John Ronald Reuel rattling around in my head, and then I spend some time thinking about whether Butcher's properly using the associations he's summoning up, did the guy fight in a previous horrible war frex being one of the few who lived? Is he a stuffy faintly racist old don? Is he the kind of guy who writes a language before writing a book? And I don't think he's properly got the answers down.
I dunno, maybe this kind of thing slides off other people, but I have four names, and everyone in my dad's generation had four names, and I keep an ear peeled for others in that pattern. To me, it's as clear as just flat-out calling him Tolkien.
Small bonus of the garage sale: I got to see a live black widow spider in its natural habitat for the first time. After I'd dragged the old animal cage it lived in out of the buried gazebo on the blackberry wildness side of the back yard. Without suffering any harm! It was all glossy and scary and engendered much bemused slightly on edge swearing of the Shit! Dude! variety. It fled as I slid the bottom tray out of the cage to sweep it once I'd gotten it in the relatively beaten-down-weed clear space in the center of the back yard. I shifted the cage around to make sure it left and ran into the weeds, and then bounced the cage another few yards away to continue sweeping it.
So, I'd read that I should probably start with the fourth book in the series (Summer Knight) because the first few were less well-written, and while I'm uneasy upsetting the natural order like that, I went ahead since after all this shiny new book was like floor pie... You don't pass that kind of thing up. I'm glad I did, as this is the book where Harry explains to Murphy a huge dose of the schlmiel... And I can't stand it when characters endanger people (particularly people they say they care about) by not explaining shit about shit to them. I'd've probably liked Harry anyway, since you're no doubt aware that I'm drawn to spit-your-teeth-in-the-face never-say-die defiance, but better to not have too much to explain away.
As for the title of this post, I took to reading the book, and then continued reading the book, and came in and laid on the bed reading the book... Sympathizing very much with Harry's strung-out need to eat something and wash himself and get a haircut... Being all, "No! His only food!" when he had to give his half-candy bar to the raccoon familiar (Dude he so did not have so much food!)... Thinking that as long as he was being all friendly emotional helper-guy to Murphy he should raid her fridge and borrow her shampoo for a bit... Wondering if the sub sandwich was really his only meal the entire book so far... And then right after he spills his guts to Murphy and the mind-fog comes after him and the chapter changes to them running through the store I'm like, "Hey! I'm on to you, Jim Butcher, with your ending of every single chapter on a cliffhanger so I can't go get some dinner! Frigging Dan Brown writer except without insanely stupid plots and with characters who don't blow goats...!"
So I broke free to come post some stuff and stuff. Like I say, I haven't finished the book, but I like it so far, and will no doubt pick up more. I'm betting the rest of Summer Knight is going to be real obvious, but that doesn't bother me, since I like the characters and the humor, and the writing is fine. (It's the Summer Lady! I bet! Of course you don't listen to Bob about the women! Heh.)
Edit: Oh right, the one other thing I was meaning to mention: I wish he hadn't named the guy Ronald Reuel. Breaks me out of the narrative every time and I get John Ronald Reuel rattling around in my head, and then I spend some time thinking about whether Butcher's properly using the associations he's summoning up, did the guy fight in a previous horrible war frex being one of the few who lived? Is he a stuffy faintly racist old don? Is he the kind of guy who writes a language before writing a book? And I don't think he's properly got the answers down.
I dunno, maybe this kind of thing slides off other people, but I have four names, and everyone in my dad's generation had four names, and I keep an ear peeled for others in that pattern. To me, it's as clear as just flat-out calling him Tolkien.