Far · West · of · Outremer

Having now read the latest two of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books, I think that I can safely say that he has managed to go straight into meta, all the way through, and out the other side yelling, "WOOOOOOOOO!!!" while brandishing a very large martini.

( We have now reached the point where the books you started with have rewritten themselves to become the books you actually readCollapse )

You know how, sometimes, you will adore 90% of a book, and there's this one thing that makes your brain start plotting ways to fix it? It can be something minor, or something not-quite-major, or even something major-- although, really, it's much harder to love 90% of a book if there's something major that really infuriates you.

Anyway.

I read a review of the latest by Sarah Morgan, who is a British author writing for Mills & Boon (which is Brit-speak for Harlequin, basically)-- since she writes for the "Presents" line, she's working under fairly specific page constraints. I mention this because part of what bugged the reviewer (and me) seemed like it was caused by space constraints-- if she'd had, say, another fifty pages, there would have been time to fix the problem. I've actually read one of her earlier books, and there were some things I really loved-- the fact that the heroine runs away from the hero and spends a year living comfortably and happily and gains about 15 pounds and a boatload of self-confidence, the fact that the heroine (rather than meebling and moping about her appearance and weight) has a moment of "Waaaaaait a minute-- you're not telling me to not buy this dress but to get the horrible sack-like thing over there because you think I'm ugly.... you're doing it because you think I'm sexy-- and is completely correct, because her now-voluptuous figure is pushing all the hero's buttons and he is kind of freaking out, and the fact that once the heroine has figured this out, she goes after the hero's attempt to put her into a nice, neat contained "this is my wife and wives are not supposed to be sex goddesses" box with a very large hammer (and also lingerie). So I was pretty excited about reading the new one, in spite of the very silly title (the sad thing? It's a silly title partly because the editors of M&B/Harlequin are trying so hard to get away from the standard "The Greco-Roman Tycoon's Amnesiac Pregnant Mistress's Regatta Dilemma" or whatever model). "Doukakis' Apprentice"... yeah. It main thing that makes it silly is that "Doukakis" sounds like you're either talking about the politician or the actress, and both sound weird in this context-- and "Apprentice" is just.... weird, and wrong, in the sense that there is no apprenticing to anybody at any point, and I don't think that the word even comes up ANYWHERE IN THE BOOK. Seriously; this is a book that would have been better if they'd gone for the stereotypical standard (which, frankly, at least tells you something about the book, which is important when you have three seconds to scan covers and figure out what interests you).

( Let's get spoilerish...Collapse )

1) ACK HALP I AM GOING TO CHINA IN TWO (!!!!) WEEKS!!!

This is going to be amazingly cool; I know that... but.. um.. China! Two weeks! Somehow, this was easier to handle when it was a month away... two months away... not something where I'm legitimately panicking about everything I have to get done before CHINA. I have my visa (it has the Great Wall on it. I should not find this so amusing), I have my plane ticket, I have to make a list of things I actually need to go out and purchase before the trip.

2) Ok, so, summer class, so far, not a disaster, I think.

Yeah; I honestly can't tell. I mean, there weren't massive numbers of students dropping after the first meeting, so that's good? I'm trying to get them out of the classroom as often as possible so that I don't have to lecture they can really learn about what else is on campus and other interesting places around town ("Here, have a museum!"). But, dang, this abbreviated intense schedule is very intense. And I still don't have an accurate assessment of what the students don't know-- that is, what I can expect them to get and what they haven't ever encountered, because I suspect that I tend to assume they know things that they don't actually know, you know?

3) Anybody know if holy water works against ants?

I was so happy to be in an apartment where we didn't have to worry about a constant stream of ants coming in at the kitchen window.... and now we have a constant stream of ants coming in every other fool place. They've gotten into the wall between the porch and the kitchen, and are thus doing fun things like coming in where there's no baseboard... or where the joining caulk between the counter and backsplash has shrunk... or from a tiny hole where the walls and ceiling meet in the corner.... or from out of an electrical socket... *headdesk*. Heroic Roommate heroically cleaned the kitchen when she realized that they were getting into the cupboard, and we have now placed ant bait up in non-cat-accessible areas (the main reason for not doing that previously was because the ants were coming in at floor level, and putting the ant poison next to the cat food area = not of the good).

4) Two weeks of intense tech-related training has left me very tired, but with lots of good ideas about things to use in class. Here's hoping that they work!

5) See item 1.