funkylaura's Journal
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Thursday, May 31, 2007
Advice received so far was sufficient to mitigate the crisis. Thanks so much for stepping into the breach, dear friend.
But this experience raises an ongoing issue for me - I've not received any good recommendations recently, so have been quite pot-luck/3-for-the-price-of-2 led in my choice of reading material.
What are your recent/all time top reads? What haven't I read that I'm going to really enjoy? I'm not a genre-nazi, although I do have a strong preference for novels and short-stories over, say, biographies, but am open to all offers...!
For the record, my recent highlights have been Jonathan Strange, Never Let Me Go, A Fine Balance and 253.
Wasn't totally bowled over by Half of a Yellow Sun but it was a good read, similarly I quite enjoyed Tenderness of Wolves and Shantaram despite the protagonist/narrator being quite challenging in both instances. About to start on Suite Francais. All time favourites...hmm...much tricker...
Current mood:  curious Current music: Doors, LA Woman
Got loads to catch up on here...the last couple of weeks have been absolutely mental, so will try to post a full update sometime soon. But in the meantime I have a problem that I'm desperately hoping you can help with...:
It's Paul's birthday on 10th June. Amongst other things on his wish list is "a really good SF book".
Now, here's the rub...on the whole, P agrees with about 60% of my book recommendations, and over the past 7 years has worked through most of my SF collection.
He's currently (finally!) reading Gibson, having pulled out a few times previously; loved Jeff Noon's early stuff (although was less keen on the later music/remixed themed books and didn't really get Falling Out of Cars...but then, not sure anyone really did!); enjoyed Neil Stephenson's Confusion but couldn't be bothered with the next 2 and won't pick up Cryptonomicron (was 50/50 on his other books); loathes 'old fashioned' robot stuff like Asimov (the fool!); loves Iain M Banks thinks the later ones unnecessarily over-complicated (i agree); loves Harry Potter & Narnia; loved Jonathan Strange; won't read Tolkien despite loving the films; was disturbed by Michael Marhsall Smith (also enjoyed 'Never Let Me Go' by Ishiguro which we both though a tad derivative but excellent); can't be bothered with anything written in any form of dialect/phonetics; doesn't really enjoy short stories, prefers novels; probably doesn't like space opera (although I haven't really tried him on it as its not really my cup of tea...Reality Dysfunction anyone?; doesn't really do graphic novels (still doesn't understand why I need to own the whole Sandman series in both monthly issue and graphic novel formats!); ummm...there's probably more, but that's about it in a nutshell.
I went to Borders yesterday (lousy place for SF&F but the nearest bookshop I could get to), ended up buying a load of stuff for myself (jpod - the new douglas coupland and the newish Gaimon book, amongst others) and both bill bryson's history of everything and a book on happiness that I know P quite fancied reading...but drew a total blank on any SF stuff.
Ideas I've had so far (this is a very short list...)
1. The Difference Engine. Pros: I really enjoyed it and lost my (signed..sob!) copy when I lent it to some git who never returned it. Cons: I vaguely remember it being very dialect-y
2. The Mordant's Need series (Mirror of Her Dream and A Man Rides Through). Pros - P really enjoyed the Wounded Land series. Cons - I can't remember (more lost books) but aren't they a bit girly? I know, they're not SF, but F would do at a pinch!
OK, this was meant to be a brief plea for help. Am going to open this up to the floor now...I'm really hoping that some of you ex-WARPED/Font-y type people out there have some free time to help out today. Keen to get the Amazon order in by today if possible as I'm in Manchester for most of next week so won't be able to sort anything out then...
Thanks for bearing with me to the end!
L xx
Current mood:  hopeful Current music: Building noise from next door - very 'Industrial'!
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
....the next baby is *so* having a soft toy/comforter which actually fits into a normal size bag...
Caught myself getting quite broody on the way into work this morning, which was a bit of a shock to the system. If I'm totally honest about it, I wasn't remotely broody when I was first pregnant with Ari...it was more like 'this is what we're going to do now' (and I was absolutely certain I wanted children it was just babies I was never that sure about) - it wasn't until about halfway through the pregnancy that I started getting at all broody. But lots of friends have been having babies recently and this time around I'm finding them strangely appealing. All very odd, especially since I am totally loving Ari's newfound walking/talking/running around independence. Maybe its because he is now a proper little boy, obsessed with cars and telephones (!) and the baby stage feels like such a long time ago. He woke me up this morning to show me his blue car "mummy, boo car, mummy, boo car!" and ask me to cuddle his stuffed rabbit "cilla cuddle mummy".
( cilla cuddle mummy )
All very confusing. Things I don't miss about the baby stage:
1. Breast feeding
2. Sleepless nights
3. Breast feeding during sleepless nights
4. Trying to get clothes or vests (or nappies) onto or off a small, wiggling, crying, screaming, clearly breakable little being
5. Not being able to figure out why they are crying
6. Black poo (until you've been there, you can have no idea...)
7. 3 hour feeding cycles
8. Expressing
9. Sterilisers and bottles
10. Muslins and baby sick
Things I miss:
1. New baby milk smell
2. New baby cuddles
3. Mad hormonal love rushes
4. Feeling hugely needed
5. First smiles
6. Head banging (must get it from his mum!)
So on balance the 2 year old bit definitely wins. And yet, and yet....hmm....
By the way, I tried to get the rabbit text into a link (and yes I RTFAQ and everything) but just couldnt get the cut-text stuff to work - the first bit reads lj-cut text = "cilla cuddle mummy" but obviously inside <> and the end bit is definitely accurate. God my html skilz are rusty!! Any ideas? Cheers!
Current mood:  pensive Current music: Radio 4 Womens Hour on Listen Again
Monday, May 14, 2007
...especially when it's chucking it down outside in an "its grey and wet and windy and cold and there's no hope of summer....ever...mwahahahahaha...." way outside.
Not helped by having a really crappy unmotivated day at work. No particular reason why, but my 'to do' list was way too long before I even got started this morning, then lots more things landed in my inbox, combined with a bit of firefighting around lunchtime and whoosh! suddenly the day has disappeared and I've achieved almost nothing.
Things achieved today:
1. Bunking off phone call with Calatrice <http://calatrice.livejournal.com/> which was lovely...but how do you embed links in these things? Obviously far too technical for my limited ability this afternoon!
2. Added a load of functionality matrices to a Broadband development spec and sent it off for comment
3. Moved all of today's jobs in Outlook to tomorrow :-(
Oh well, it's 5.25pm and even though I very rarely finish before 7, tonight I'm upping sticks and running out of the door in about 6 minutes time. Definitely time to call it quits for the day!
B*gger...have just realised that I have to wash up the coffee maker (electric coffee maker, totally illegal as far as our Facilities team are concerned but they're not going to dob me in...I hope) and my lunch bowl (porride oats, now totally rock solid and going to take a good few minutes to shift!).
I know this is only my second post but I am aware that this is pretty poor. Must try harder next time, if only to amuse myself....
Current mood:  grumpy
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Hmm. Not too sure why I decided to do this, except for suddenly realising that lots of old (for which read 'haven't spoken to for a very long time') friends from my manchester university/WARPED days were on here and then thinking how I quite liked the idea of somewhere to vaguely blog or rant from time to time and then (and to be honest, this is the crux of it) realising that it represented an utterly fantastic way of wasting the hour or two I had set aside this afternoon to revise for my exams.
Phew, long sentence. Must remember to punctuate and breathe.
Apart from failing to revise, its been a fantastic weekend. Pigged out on Indian with Paul on Friday night (not wildly diet friendly but I avoided the real pitfalls!), had a really chilled day on Saturday (even better, got the house to myself for a couple of hours in the morning so had a very long bath with a nice cup of chai and the papers), cuddled on the sofa watching old Star Trek re-runs all afternoon whilst Ari slept and then took Ari to my parents for the night, so we got an evening and night off - hurrah! Went to the Scissor Sisters gig at Wembley last night, which was utterly discotastic and a great excuse to wear my fab neon pink and black stripey tights, big clompy boots, a belt of a mini and tons and tons of glitter and sparkley hair things....amazing! Lily Allen was the warm up and really pretty good, and the S-Sisters totally rocked! Super-fab :-)
Shame the exam is coming up so soon, actually, as I'm not remotely ready for it. On the other hand, it will then be over and there'll be a full 6 months before the next one. Roll on getting my Tuesday nights back again - I really really hate not seeing Ari from Tuesday morning until Wednesday morning, and its such a hassle getting into Moorgate for the end of the day on the days when I'm not working there in the morning. And paying attention from 6-9pm to a totally irrelevant (sorry, but the theory isn't remotely like the practise) marketing course just in order to get an utterly pointless postgrad dimploma which seemed like a good CV move 2 years ago when I first started, after a full day at work, is more than a tad challenging.
Heigh ho. None of this is helped by having taken 18 months out in the middle of the 4 modules in order to breed. Having Ari has totally devastated my short term attention span (not that it was ever great to start with) and with 18 months of not paying attention to all this marketing theory stuff I've also forgotten everything I learnt in the first place. Not that it seems to make much difference...
Right, time to go and sort out some sort of food things before Paul keels over...he's been asking me to come and eat dinner for the last 20 minutes!
May write again soon...or I may never manage this again. Hmm. Nice to have somewhere to unload a bit.
Current mood: contemplative Current music: The scanner hums slightly
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