anti hero

i've been sick lately (hubby and i have been passing the same cold back and forth. ain't that nice of us?), so not much cooking has been happening. and thanks to cough syrup with side effects, not much reading has been going on either.

I did read the 2nd Elric book, my Michael Moorcock. enjoyed it muchly, but not as much as the first one. everything was new, and weird, and magical to me in the first book, so there weren't too many surprises here. that said, i can't tell you how much i appreciate a "hero" whose attitude is "i've got nothing better to do, and what's the worst that could happen, death?" sometimes a suicidal hero is better than a hero who is too dumb to be afraid. alright, i've read the Elric saga up to and including the short story "Stormbringer". what's next in that universe?

speaking of heroes who are too dumb to be afraid, i read Heinlien's Glory Road. very fun, very silly. the timing is right for this to be another authors reaction/satire of Tolkien's epic hero-ing and quest-ing around. Oscar, recently medically discharged from Vietnam, is trying to figure out what to do with his lifer - preferabbly something having to do with nude beaches. nearly forced to answer a newspaper ad looking for a "Hero", he meets Star, a beautiful, multi-universe traveller, who takes him on the quest of a lifetime, if they survive. adventure, injury, and bad guys follow, and in the end, Oscar gets the girl, and learns she's royalty, to boot. it is truly an adorable story. Mr. Heinlien is my favorite sexist (yet not. . .) man in the world.

gotta read Stross twice

half way through Stross's Accelerando, and i've put it down. it's an excellent book, but the library had Stross's Halting State, and i just couldn't resist grabbing it off the "new releases" shelves.

the book is written in 2nd person singular (you did this, you did that. . . ), which mixed with a plot about gaming, gives the impression of a first person shooter experience. this is good. taking place in Scotland, most of our main characters blend english with scotish phonetic slang. this isn't so good. a glossary of scottish slang would be nice. plenty of insane plot twists, that in hind sight, make perfect sense, and i'm sure there is some crazy fun violence to be had before the book is done. but i'm so busy figuring out what the slang and the 75-cent cyberpunk words mean that i'm not enjoying myself as much as i'd like. feels a little like my first time reading Accelerando. oh, i get it. read it twice.

i'm also the proud owner of Martin's A Game of Thrones, the first book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, and Robert Heinlien's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. One day i will own every Heinlien book out there! (and probably every Martin book as well, but that's a pretty realistic goal).

might be offline for a while, i have a big family wedding this weekend. Did you ever see "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"? yeah, it's like that.