The Blog With No Name

Tanya Huff writes mostly fantasy books (I think), so I was a little nervous about reading “Valor’s Choice,” which had been highly recommended on the Bujold mailing list. I am now most of the way through the second (and, at least for now, last) book, “The Better Part of Valor.” Generally, if you say “military SF” to me, the first thing that springs to mind is not “laughing so hard I have to put the book down and roll around on the floor,” but these books just kill me. The main character, Staff Sgt. Torin Kerr (a chick, by the way, but definitely a Marine) is just too too hilarious. The exchanges between Kerr and her commanding officers alone are worth the purchase price of the two books many times over. So, like, read these books, OK?

What IS it with the freaking weather?! Whenever our family wants to go to Iowa City for some special occasion, we are harried and harassed by the very forces of nature itself! It’s SO not fair.
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A week or so ago I mentioned that I was starting the fifth book (out of six) in the Foreigner series by C. J. Cherryh. I finished it late on a Saturday night. I already had the sixth book checked out of the library. I decided to read a few pages, then go to bed. Well, at 2 AM, more than halfway through the book, I decided what the hell and finished it (at 4 AM). It was good. I just love those aliens (the ones that have been in the series all along as well as a new species introduced in this last book).

My kids have recently become very frightened of tornadoes. Too much Weather Channel. Living in Tornado Alley, this has become something of a problem. The elder child, who can read, now pores over the newspaper weather forecast each morning, and the younger worries about tornadoes coming into his room. He wants to know also whether there are any “nice” tornadoes. I told him that tornadoes and weather in general aren’t “people,” whereupon he hauled out my USA Today Weather book and showed me a stylized graphic of a cloud, with a face, blowing on a bunch of trees. “See! I told you!” How can you argue with that?

…to see a movie made by my sister-in-law (I think it’s her PhD project). It’s all about card-counting blackjack players in Las Vegas. She’s been working on it for AGES. I’m very excited about seeing it.
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“From the landward side, there are no guns at Aqaba.”
(NPR piece on T. E. Lawrence I heard today while driving to work)

I am about to start the fifth book (second book of the second trilogy) of the Foreigner series, by C. J. Cherryh. I foresee the purchase of six large paperback books in my near future. These are spectacular, if you like interesting aliens (I want to grow up to be one of the alien characters of this series…) and political machinations.