gimme gimme giveaway: WINNER
I pulled Sal's name out of the hat. Her LibraryThing username is Towse, if you'd like to have a look at her library.
Thanks to everyone who signed up.
Next giveaway: a Queen of Swords ARC.
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January 7, 2006
how I can't really relax, and wish I could
I have been in a general putter, sleeping, reading, television, book cataloging. Yesterday the mathematician husband and I went to lunch in a little town about a half hour south of us which I like because of two particular shops where they sell high end arts and crafts. And I mean: high end. Gorgeous one of a kind furniture, art, clothing. Everytime I go to this place I know what it would really mean to be rich. I can't imagine walking into that shop and saying:
I'll take this whole set, please. Oh and the gorgeous adirondack type chair of birds eye maple, with hand tooled and painted leather cushions and the carving and painting on the arms? No, the one there in the corner, four thousand bucks-- but now that you point out the other one, I'll have them both.
The mathematician was hoping that I'd find something I love for oh, a hundred bucks and point it out so he could sneak back there and buy it for my birthday, which is coming up way too fast. Because you know I'm turning FIFTY. How's that for a jolt? It makes no sense to me, how such a thing is possible.
I've got flu symptoms. My hope is that this is all fallout from finishing Queen of Swords and it will go away soon, but definite flu symptoms. Headache, gut ache, swollen glands, and bone pain. It's the bone pain that gives it away. I never really had the flu until I was about 35. I believed I had had the flu, but once the real thing digs in, you realize what the fuss is all about. I remember, from that particular illness, two things: the feeling of ground glass in my bones, and telling the mathematician that I was dying. I said this in a quiet voice in all seriousness, that's how bad it felt.
So you'll understand when I say I hope I'm wrong here. Probably I'll know one way or the other by tomorrow morning.
The good thing, of course, is the repeated jolt of remembering the book is done. I wake up in a oh dog I should be writing panic and then collapse, remembering: done. I think about going to the dvd rental place, am consumed with prophylactic guilt, and then remember: done.
I never have learned how to relax. It's partially my upbringing. Adult children of alcoholics (my mother) often have this thing where they stay away from alcohol (me) but can't keep off the adrenaline (also, in a big way, me). Some of us are indeed addicted to chaos. I don't think I'm that bad, but I do gravitate toward it. The movie Changing Lanes did the best job I've ever seen of getting to the alcohol-adrenaline connection. This was, in my opinion, a really underrated movie -- if nobody else got any nominations out of it, Chap Taylor, who has credit for the story and the screenplay, should have. Certainly Ben Affleck was at the top of his (rather limited) arc. And then there's Samuel L. Jackson. Maybe I'll watch it again.
Tropic of Night - Michael Gruber
I read so many really wonderful reviews of this book, I finally found a copy. And the first couple chapters made it clear that this guy can write. On every level. Strong, very visible characters, disturbing, unusual conflicts, and a story that goes zero to sixty like a really, really expensive car.
And it's interesting. The story is about a woman hiding out in southern Florida. She was once a cultural anthropologist, working with a tribe in Africa for a long period of time on matters of belief systems and magic. There's a long riff on that word -- magic -- which probably delivers more core information about cultural anthro and what it sets out to do than anything I've ever read in a textbook, and does it in an engaging way.
So you've got her on the one hand, Jane calling herself Dolores, and a series of violent murders on the other, ritualized and clearly having something to do with a religion something like, but much older than, Santeria.
On the other hand you've got two detectives, one a first generation Cuban immigrant called Iago Paz (points for the name, of course), who puts himself on the black side of the black-white continuum in the Cuban community. The other is an older, wiser, Bible thumping old time Florida cracker with a real talent for homicide work.
Somewhere along the way, though, I got lost. This novel requires a willingness to delve deep into the workings of western African mysticism, and sometimes I found myself unable to go there. This is my lack, I think, and not the novel's, but it's also sad that we parted ways. Because I liked it.
I've just started Gruber's next novel, which also features Iago (Jimmy) Paz, murder, and a religious/mystical connection. It's my hope I'll be able to hold on for the whole ride.