Posts Tagged → Fantasy Literature

Home again home again jiggity jig

I was able to keep some food down yesterday (toast, some soup), but I’m still nowhere near back to “normal,” so I’ve decided to take another sick day. I still feel a bit feverish and just so…exhausted that I don’t think I’d be much use in front of a classroom.

I’m a little guilty about it. I always have felt guilty when I’m sick — any time I take day (or two) off of work, my mid-western brain starts beating itself up. “You’re just being lazy,” is a phrase that was always thrown around the house when I grew up, and now it lives rent-free in my head.

People always say your health comes first, but my mind is at odds with that. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a person wanting to work a lot — if anything, I think I’d rather err on the side of being too hard-working — but that means I’ll feel bad about it whenever I can’t work.

And that’s a stupid way to feel. Like a boxer climbing into the ring alone, punching himself in the face, and then complaining to the referee that the rules of the match aren’t fair.

Sarah and I put a humidifier in our bedroom this winter and, holy cow, all the plants over by the window are absolutely thriving. Apparently they like a little moisture in the air.

Sarah’s taken charge of managing all the plants in the house, and she’s been doing an amazing job with them. Her policy so far has been “The more the merrier!” and it is really working. Nearly every available window has at least one plant nearby. Most windows have more. The biggest problem we’ve had is that a lot of them seem to be outgrowing the pots they’re in, which isn’t really much of an issue when you think about it.

I’ve only noticed these hearty greens because I’ve spent a lot of time in bed over the last 24 hours. Take pleasure in the small things, I suppose.

I didn’t read much yesterday, but I finished A Court of Thorns and Roses this morning and…I’m not quite sure how to feel about it. The book is fine. But that’s about it; there’s nothing really amazing going on.

The characters are a little bland, the prose is a little pedestrian, and there isn’t much happening plot-wise that really turns my crank. I think Sarah J. Maaaaas is steering everything toward a love triangle in the next book, which isn’t exactly ground-breaking.

It’s like a scoop of vanilla ice cream as far as fantasy books go. It’s not even French vanilla; just the plain stuff you get in a gallon-sized tub at the local IGA.

I’m going to give the next book a try — A Court of Mist and Fury — but I’ll have to see if things pick up a bit before committing to the whole series.

I should also keep in mind that I’m sick and I’m probably not going to *love* whatever I read right now.

Oh well.

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!

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.