Quelle suprise!
Jun. 1st, 2007 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I just sat down with the version of Candide I've had out from the library for more than a week now. I opened it, only to realize that it was in the original French.
Sigh.
I suppose I could try and use my rapidly-atrophying Spanish skills to puzzle it out (and if I find myself with writer's block and nothing better to do tomorrow, I may very well do so), and yet...so much easier to get the English version on Sunday.
And I was looking forward to something witty and amusing after finishing The Diamond Age this evening--Stephenson has some awesome ideas about what society with nanotech could/will be like, and can write some decent action scenes, but the extraneous orgies really killed the mood, as did ending things with more of a whimper than a bang. Er, plotwise. I assume the orgies went off okay. I mostly skimmed those parts.
*
I just recced Billy Collins to
alto2, and in doing so, I found this ad-and-popup-riddled site which, despite being horrifying to navigate, nevertheless has 40-odd of his poems up there. If you haven't run across Collins before, treat yourself to any of them. (Although my personal favorites out of what's there are "Flames," "Nostalgia," "On Turning Ten," "Litany," and "Walking Across the Atlantic.") He's fabulous, and very funny to boot. ("Flames" has an awesomely hilarious punchline.)
Sigh.
I suppose I could try and use my rapidly-atrophying Spanish skills to puzzle it out (and if I find myself with writer's block and nothing better to do tomorrow, I may very well do so), and yet...so much easier to get the English version on Sunday.
And I was looking forward to something witty and amusing after finishing The Diamond Age this evening--Stephenson has some awesome ideas about what society with nanotech could/will be like, and can write some decent action scenes, but the extraneous orgies really killed the mood, as did ending things with more of a whimper than a bang. Er, plotwise. I assume the orgies went off okay. I mostly skimmed those parts.
*
I just recced Billy Collins to
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