Posts Tagged → A Court of Thorns and Roses

Fruit is just a dream

Welp. My day yesterday went from me wondering, “Why do I feel so exhausted?” straight into my having to leave my first class to go throw up in the teacher’s bathroom.

Turns out I have the flu. Huzzah!

I managed to find another teacher to cover class for me and headed straight home to vomit in my own bathroom.

Then I took a bunch of Pepto and slept and slept.

I’m staying home from work today to rest, rehydrate, and eat toast with butter. If my stomach can handle it, I might upgrade the toast to fruit. At this point, though, fruit is just a dream.

I’ll see if I can finish up A Court of Thorns and Roses (10% to go!), but I don’t know how much I’m going to feel like reading. Today’s more of a “Watch Wes Anderson films while I writhe around in bed” sort of day.

Every hose has its corn

A Court of Thorns and Roses is almost finished. I suspect that the “Rose” is the main character, Feyre, and the “Thorns” are the boundaries she’s had to put up that prevent her from forming long-term relationships until being whisked away to a magical world allows her find the courage to open up and experience true love, which, so far, seems to consist of people doing tonsil inspections and ripping off each other’s underwear.

Perhaps I’m wrong, though.

(There is a literal court and there are some literal thorns and literal roses in the book, so maybe the title is referring to them instead of being metaphorical.)

I’m also soooooo close to finishing Twelve Months that I stayed in bed this morning just a little longer so I could listen to more of it. The plot lacks the urgency of previous books in The Dresden Files. Whereas the Hero, Harry, used to pretty consistently work against a ticking clock, a lot of chapters in this book start with transitions like, “Three weeks later I was at the gym again when X happened,” or, “My next date with the succubus wasn’t until February…”

It gives the book not quite a cozy vibe, but something like it. Plus, I think it is doing a fantastic job of representing trauma. It’s not easy to capture a such a laborious recovery process in a book that still holds your attention, but it all goes with the slower-paced plot.

It’s February now and I am tired of this weather. It’s not even bad where we are — the southeastern U.S. is apparently getting hit by some hefty winter storms while we’re just sort of vaguely chilly.

Sarah and I went to Costco today and discovered that the world needs another plague. Either that or a better system than crowding people into aisles to wrestle with big boxes and huge shopping carts and telling them, “Have at it!”

There are only a handful of times that we are able to get to Costco during off-peak hours, but it makes a huge difference. If you go, say, early Tuesday morning, it’s easier to get around and you can get out of there a lot faster.

It’s one of the up-sides of summer vacation when you’re a teacher — the ability to go to stores whenever you want. (The down-side, in case you were wondering, is the slow, inescapable descent into madness.)

Jolene, our cat, just got spooked by the sound of my PC turning on, tried to run, bumped into my cup of tea, and then fell off the desk. Poor blind kitty!

Are there volleyballs in Spicetown

Yesterday was a long one and my social battery, if there is such a thing, is completely drained.

We had some car trouble, which is always a pain. I hate cars to begin with and wish I didn’t need to own one, so having to go to a mechanic seems to me to be like getting kicked while you’re already down.

After we got the car fixed, Sarah and I went to a professional volleyball game with some friends of ours who have season tickets to the Omaha Supernovas. The game was swanky and lasted long into the fifth set, which is essentially volleyball’s version of overtime. We didn’t get home and in bed until well after 10 PM (gasp!) and, let me tell you, we are feeling it today.

I’ve decided to spend most of the day reading, napping and watching PBS documentaries on YouTube.

I’m almost finished with Twelve Months by Jim Butcher. It’s good to be back in a world of characters that I’ve known for so long, and the audio version is tremendous. It’s hard to believe, but the last book in the Dresden Files series, Battle Ground, came out in 2020, about five years ago.

Wacky!

At that rate, the series should finish up sometime around … 2050?

Twelve Months seems to be mostly about characters getting over the events of previous books and Jim Butcher getting things set for next books. Twelve Months is introducing a lot of new concepts and characters who will likely come into importance sometime in the … seven remaining books?

I think there are seven left, at any rate. Four more “regular” books and then three books in a Big Apocalyptic Trilogy that will be the end of the series.

I’m also plugging away at A Court of Thrones and Roses, which has only grown on me only a little since I’ve started it. There just isn’t anything … special about it so far. None of the characters really jump out at me, the setting and tropes are all common fare, and there isn’t anywhere near as much romance (“spice“) as I was expecting.

I haven’t ever been a tremendous reader of romances, but going into a book expecting some romance only to find hardly any at all has been a let down. I mean. It’s a story about a human girl brought into the realm of a High Lord of the Fae. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume they’d be taking a carriage to Spicetown, if you catch my drift.

But all the horses are still in the stable!

Side quests & butchering wizards

One benefit of having trouble sleeping is that I’ve got a lot more time for audio books. They help me drift off, and when I’m spending a few hours doing, well, not much, having a book to put on is helpful.

A few years ago, Sarah turned me on to Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, the most recent entry of which (Twelve Months) came out about a week ago. The series, which follows a “wizard for hire” named Harry Dresden in and around the city of Chicago, started out as a cross between fantasy and hard-boiled detective fiction. Now, though, it’s a lot more involved. (Jim Butcher is leaving the “detective” part behind in favor of more fantasy and action. In the last book, Dresden fought a god.)

We listened to the audio book versions of the series (narrated by John Marsters of Buffy fame; delightful) as we’ve travelled around — mostly in tents at campgrounds west of the Great Plains. Since then, it’s become a bit of a comfort series that we put on when we’re going to bed or whatever. Or, as has been the case recently, when we’re in bed but can’t sleep.

While I haven’t made much progress with A Court of Thorns and Roses, I’ve gotten through a lot more Twelve Months. It’s a fantastic book so far, but a lot more … listless than previous entries.

It’s to be expected, I suppose, since the last book in the series, Battlegrounds, was fairly climactic and left the main character with some trauma he’s had to work through. However, the plot seems driven by “this is what happened over the course of a year” rather than “Harry has a problem to solve.”

My side quest at work today is going to be to go back and finish the header drawing for yesterday’s post. It’s important to have side quests to focus on throughout your day.

I create all the “art” on this website by doodling on my Kindle Scribe, which is a fantastic e-reader with a quirkly stylus that is sow low-tech it is wonderful.

Because I left my Kindle on my desk at school yesterday, I wasn’t able to get the art done before posting last night. #scatterbrain

Feeling Fancy & Not Hooked

“A Court of Thorns and Roses” is coming along nicely. We had a three-day weekend, so I was able to read a bit more than usual, although a lot of time was taken up by Diablo IV. (One more character to go and I’ll have each class running Torment IV!)

I’m hoping that “Thorns and Roses” has some surprises in store, because I’m honestly reading through it thinking to myself, “Yeah, yeah, I get it. Move the plot along,” which is what I find myself saying more and more when I read modern fantasy. It’s not bad by any stretch, but I don’t think it’s hooked me yet.

I’ve been missing Korea a lot recently. I used to be an expat, living in South Korea and other parts of Asia between 2008 and 2020. The pandemic kind of forced my wife and I to move back stateside, but I secretly (or maybe not-so-) wish we were living somewhere, anywhere other than the United States.

(To all those red-hat freaks who like to yell, “If you don’t like it here, then get out,” I would love to. You should get out too, if only to see that other countries are doing it way better than we are.)

There are oodles of practical reasons why living outside this country sounds appealing. Other countries have better infrastructure, better healthcare, better cost of living, better environment, nicer people, better public transportation, better education, and aren’t being run by rapist grifters who are perpetually apologised for by nearly every U.S. new source. (Seriously, at what point do news stations say, “Maybe it isn’t okay for us to report this brain-addled octogenarian’s plan to invade Greenland as if it’s anything other than the ramblings of a troll and a moron?”)

What’s got me feeling “homesick” for a foreign country today isn’t anything so grandiose. I just happened to find a brand of hand soap that’s scent reminds me of a hotel I used to stay at in Seoul.

Scent is a powerful reminder, and when I washed my hands this morning in lavender and bergamot, whoosh, I was brought right back to the J.W. Marriott above the Express Bus Terminal in Seoul. I didn’t stay there a lot, but any time I wanted to feel fancy in Korea, that was where I stayed.

And now the scent of their hotel soap makes me feel fancy.

Sigh. What a world.