(no subject)

[brigdh]

A meme from silverflight8! She gave me 'S':

Something I hate: Spiders. Which is probably the answer for most people who get 's' in this game, so I'm not being very original, but c'mon. All those legs. All those eyes. And they wear their skeleton on the outside. How is that not creepy?

Something I love: Spaghetti. If I had to choose only one food to eat for the rest of my life (though that would be a tragedy to me)(I mean, it would be a tragedy to anyone, but I'm particularly addicted to trying new things), it would be spaghetti. It can be fancy, it can be easy, it's comfort food, it's filling, it's delicious; I just love it so much.

Somewhere I've been: Syria. I spent a few months working in the countryside east of Aleppo in the summer of 2008. That's... all I have to say about that at the moment, really.

Somewhere I'd like to go: Spain! Especially southern Spain, Andalusia. I'd love to see the Alhambra and Cádiz and Córdoba. Plus, Spanish food. Yum.

Someone I know: My mom, for one! She's named Sally. My best friend when I was in high school was named Shannon. There's a lot of S names around.

A film I like: Silence of the Lambs. It's just so horrifying and compelling. Oddly, I have not gotten into Hannibal fandom at all.

A book I like: OH MY GOD HOW DO I CHOOSE ONE? To prevent myself from waffling forever over which book to choose, I walked over to my nearest bookcase and just picked the first one I saw that started with a s: The System of the World by Neal Stephenson (hey, S for the author too!). It's actually the last of a trilogy, which I just loved. Stephenson seems to be one of those authors that people either love or hate; he has a tendency to go on long tangents that are barely related to the plot. I adore him, but I understand why he doesn't work for everyone. This trilogy is set (mostly) in Europe in the later 1600s and early 1700s. It deals with, among other things, the invention of calculus and the earliest stock markets, Isaac Newton's repressed homosexuality and obsession with alchemy, plague and fire in London, various wars, horrifying treatments of syphilis pre-modern medicine, horrifying treatments of kidney stones pre-modern medicine, counterfeiting and its prevention and the development of modern coinage, and the founding of Harvard. It's a great series. I really should reread these books; it's been too long since I did.

If you'd like to do the meme, comment and I'll give you a letter!

Comments

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I like memes, please k thanks.

Neal Stephenson is a really interesting author. I like him.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

He is great. I haven't read his latest one yet though, I should do that too.

For you: K!

[apgeeksout.livejournal.com]

I love spaghetti exactly that much, too. It really is the best of foods!

I've never read any Stevenson (unless maybe a short story in an anthology at some point), though he is on the list of people I want to get around to one of these days. What would you say is a good starter novel?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Stephenson is one of those authors who seems to switch genre with every book, so it probably depends on what your particular area of interests is.

The Baroque Cycle (which The System of the World is part of) is my favorite, and I'd recommend it to people who like historical fiction.

Snow Crash is probably his most famous book. It's cyberpunk, and told in present tense (which puts some people off). It's very meta and lots of fun; the main character is literally named "Hiro Protagonist".

The Diamond Age is steampunk, though in a very different way than steampunk is usually done (it's set in the future among a culture that, to an almost religious degree, is obsessed with pretending to be Victorian and holding to those sorts of values). It deals a lot with classism and, to a less extent, sexism.

Cryptonomicon is about WWII and codes and hacking and sunken treasures. It's probably his funniest book, if I remember correctly.

Anathem is more hard sci-fi; it deals with parallel universes, but gets really deep into physics and quantum mechanics and Plato's philosophy.

He has a few other books, but those are the ones of his I've read.

[hamsterwoman]

We visited Andalusia a couple of years ago, and it was very neat! (Though, if you have an option to go some time other than in the summer, do that! God it was so ridiculously hot...) I thought Alhambra would feel overhyped, but, nope -- it really is that amazing, and we enjoyed every minute we spent there despite the heat and the giant scary bees. Cordoba... I probably would've been able to appreciate a lot more if it had not been 43C outside, but even so there were some neat things. And I didn't like Seville nearly as much as Granada, but there was definitely no shortage of neat things to see. We also really loved our Granada hotel -- it was like a work of art itself! And we definitely would not have had Valencia on our list if not for B's conference there, but it was a nice city, too.

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

I am so sold on The System of the World. You had me at "invention of calculus" I think.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

It's great! I recommend it to everyone.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm so jealous! That sounds wonderful. I generally don't mind heat too much, but 43 really is up there. I'll have to keep that in mind if I ever do have the opportunity to visit.

[weirdquark]

I read Cryptonomicon a while back and found myself skimming all of the bits that weren't involved in WWII cryptography for the first two-thirds of the book or so before the non-cryptography parts engaged my attention enough for me to actually read them.

I'm not sure if this is a statement about me being a nerd about math and codes or if it's just that Stephenson found the math and code parts more interesting too. ::g::

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, I enjoyed those parts too, and I am not at all into math or codes. He definitely managed to communicate how cool he found those topics.

[hamsterwoman]

I've gotten completely unused to heat living in San Francisco, which is always in a band of 55-85F, summer or winter, and my kids have never known anything else, but man, those temperatures... At least it's a pretty dry heat.

If you're interested, I've got photos up on LJ from that trip and would be happy to link you, though it's not like we did anything off the beaten track, just the standard touristy stuff, plus some random things that caught our attention :P

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

There are so many places I want to visit (Greece is one major one!) that I absolutely refuse to visit during summer. I can barely take Canadian summers >.

[hamsterwoman]

I have the same problem with Greece! I've been wanting to go there for years, but my husband (who's been) says it will be awful in the summer, and after Spain, I'm inclined to believe him. :P

BTW, by an odd coincidence I spent a chunk of last night reading through the book posts on your journal (I forget how I got there... friendsfriends, maybe?) and consequently, do you mind if I friend you? We have a couple of fandoms in common, e.g. Kushiel (though Imriel's trilogy is my favorite), and you've read a lot of other things I'm interested in, like Temeraire.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I went to Andalusia a couple years ago. Going to Sapin is a lot easier when you live in Europe, though. Andalusia is great! But definitely do not go in summer, unless you're ready to live on "Spanish time" ("l'heure espagnole", it's a French expression characterising the whole 'nap away the afternoon because too hot to do anything/have dinner at 22h/etc' thing). For some reason what I remember most is how many orange trees there were.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love the Spanish time thing! We don't have a good word for it in English; I've generally heard it called siesta, but that more seems to refer to a one-time thing, and not really the daily schedule. A lot of the archaeological digs I've worked on have used that schedule: get up at dawn or slightly before, work until noon or so when it gets too hot to really be active outside, sleep for a few hours, and then do more stuff in the evening. It really appeals to me, and I wish I could do it more often, but it doesn't seem to work when you have to figure in commutes, alas.

Oranges trees sound great! I love fresh orange juice.

[lousy-science.livejournal.com]

This was really interesting! I would love a letter. Would comment more but so, so drunk typing this is bedeviling.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

The hottest I've ever been in was 49c/120f, which wasn't actually as bad as you'd imagine (it also was a very dry heat), but we definitely did not feel very active that day. That was when I was in Syria! I spent a summer on Cyprus once, and I don't remember it being overly hot, but perhaps Greece is worse.

I'd love to see your photos! :D

[hamsterwoman]

49C, oh dear XD (I was going to guess it was in Syria, heh, as that definitely seems like a full-blown-desert sort of temperature.) I think I've probably been out in something close to 120F in Phoenix, but very, very briefly, because as soon as I step outside, I just want to scurry back into the blessed reach of air conditioning. (B says Cyprus is not as bad as Greece on account of being an island and thus more cooled by winds or whatever. But it's also possibly he's exaggerating the heat factor with Greece because the other reason he's reluctant to go there is the economic crisis and resulting strikes and riots and such.)

Photos! :D Valencia (if you're an aquarium person, they have a really impressive one), Granada, and Cordoba + Seville

Oh, and to the comment below: I found myself adjusting very easily to Spanish time / the habit of eating dinner at 11 p.m. We didn't actually take naps because we didn't want to spend so much time non-usefully when we only had a couple of days in each place, but we rested and relaxed in the hotel pool, and it was great. I prefer to eat late anyhow, and having an entire country synchronized to that was very handy. (Although we mostly didn't eat dinner at all, except in Valencia where we had an apartment and B cooked; in Granada, we just did the thing were you order beer and they bring you a plate of tapas with it, and in Seville, we mostly just drank a lot of sangria with the occasional potato-based tapas dish :P)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Haha, memeing while drunk is a great idea. For you: R!

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

No worries - I've seen you around too (I think maybe eglantier's journal or maybe also ursulav?) and of course you can friend me!

Oh man. Temeraire. I've temporarily given up on it - I think when Novik finally finishes, I probably will read all the books, but at some point I got SO fed up with Iskierka and the utter futility of some of Temeraire's wishes.

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

Dinner at TEN O'CLOCK?

This is def a cultural thing I know, I know, but I feel like I am late for dinner when I don't manage to feed myself by 7:30 or so.

[hamsterwoman]

Yes, probably egelantier's lJ, and ursulav is another possibility though I mostly lurk there. :)

What was the point you quit? Blood of Tyrants left a bad taste in my mouth, and I feel like the books have been rather downhill since Victory of Eagles, though I enjoyed Crucible of Gold, but even the less favorite ones had their moments for me. I'm definitely curious to see how any, let alone all, of the remaining problems are going to be resolved. But the worldbuilding is fun (because dragons!) and I really love a lot of the characters (Perscitia, Tharkay, both Rolands, Laurence, etc.)

[cloudsinvenice]

I really want to get into Neal Stephenson; I picked up Anathem a while back on ukashi_goshi's advice, but then I had trouble getting into it, and had to panic-lend it to a friend because it was a massive hardback and we were trying to clear shelves before we moved!

[cloudsinvenice]

Oh, and I'd like a letter, please!

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

I remember mostly enjoying Empire of Ivory, and have little to no memories of Victory of Eagles (though I definitely read it) - Victory of Eagles ends with Laurence getting in trouble and being arrested right? For trying to help out the French dragons getting sick? I think at that point I got tired of the whole world being constantly against him and quit. I'm reading through the Wikipedia entry for the series to find the chronology of books, and reading the summary of the first book is reminding me why I liked the first few books so much. But it was so frustrating!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, yeah, Anathem is realllllllly slow, especially at the beginning. I know several people who had the same problem.

For you: L!

[hamsterwoman]

Actually, that ending is part of Empire of Ivory, and VoE deals with the aftermath (but I always think that part belongs to VoE too, because I liked VoE a lot and Empire of Ivory not that much).

I definitely prefer the Temeraire books set in England, which have been few and far between... Well, there's just the final one left, and hopefully that will bring some resolution at last.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That makes sense, about Cyprus being an island! I hadn't thought of that.

Those photos are gorgeous! Thank you for linking me. Now I want to go even more, ha.

[hamsterwoman]

You're very welcome! :) It's really a very beautiful place! (And, indeed, lots of orange trees. Although, for drinking, peach juice seems more common, and very tasty.)

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's in Empire of Ivory? Hm, maybe I didn't read Victory of Eagles after all (possibly why I have no recollection of the book!) I liked Empire of Ivory but mostly when I think of the book I think of where they lived in the caves, which was pretty cool.

Yeah, I really did like the first three books! And then the circumnavigation of the globe thing got to be a bit much.

Is the last going to be A League of Dragons? Oh man, then there'll be just 9 books (one more to 10!) Though I have to say I'm really glad Novik's pretty good with deadlines and publishing books consistently. Argh so many fantasy authors who embark on gigantic series and have ever farther-away publishing dates!

[hamsterwoman]

Do you recall the breeding grounds? If not, you probably didn't read VoE :P

I think the last one is still planned to be A League of Dragons, yep. I have nooo idea how she will wrap up everything in just one more book (there are so many additional plots the last couple have introduced! and pretty much nothing has been resolved).

But, yeah, she's been really good about timely publications. I'm also a fan of ASOIAF and Kingkiller Chronicles, which, ahaha, and also have been reading the Vlad Taltos book for something like 20 years (which, it's a 19-book series, so it's bound to take a while, and when Brust is working on them specifically he goes at a good clip, but occasionally he gets distracted for a few years with other projects. but three-year-gaps are not uncommon.

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

I remember Temeraire being all depressed at the breeding grounds, but not much else >.> Maybe I just read the first chapter preview in the previous book or something.

Oh dear. I feel like last books (whether it's the third book of a trilogy or the capstone for a long series) are hard - there are a lot of book series where it starts really well and then the ending is disappointing.

*nods* Diane Duane's A Wizard of Mars kept getting pushed back and back and back. She was having personal/medical issues and I can't blame her, but I remember every time I went to look up the release date it'd been pushed back another half year or so each time. But 20 years! Man.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I think it's really popular even outside of Spain, in any place where it gets too hot during the day, simply by virtue of being pretty much the only schedule that will work.

ORANGE JUICE IS THE BEST THING EVER

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Yes. As I understand it and broadly speaking, the further north in Europe you go, the earlier dinner times will be. When I lived in Ireland, dinner was usually around 5pm. In Spain, it's around 10pm.

As a French person, I tend to eat towards 8pm and will more easily go later than earlier.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I like spiders.

I'd love a letter!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Someone needs to like them! I'm just glad it's you and not me.

For you: B!