In which some things happen.

[icepixie]

1. I can get out of bed and otherwise move around without wanting to amputate all my back muscles. Progress!

2. Because I've been stuck in bed for the past four days, I've made it through several books:

• James Alan Gardner's Expendable: The first in a series of which I apparently read the last one first, so it was good to actually get some of the background I was missing earlier.
  
• Frank Beddor's The Looking Glass Wars: Worth finishing, but I don't think I'm going to bother with the other two in the trilogy. The premise is that Alice Liddell was in fact Alyss Heart, princess of and refugee from Wonderland, which underwent a rather brutal civil war when her aunt Redd took over, and much of the book chronicles her coming back to lead a rebellion. With that kind of setup, I was expecting better, but despite all the action, this seemed somehow limp and lifeless.
  
• Joe McGinniss's Going to Extremes: In the tradition of several other books about Alaska I've read and enjoyed, McGinniss spends a year traveling around the state, writing about the natural landscape and some of the unusual people he meets. Good times, except for his annoying habit of using clusters of sentence fragments when a comma or three would've done much better.
  
• Kafka's "Transformation" (aka "Metamorphosis"): Uhhh...wow. I've never read Kafka before, and that was...hmmm. Depressing, yes. I never realized how cheerful much of the Modernism I was familiar with actually is.

3. It snowed about 2.5 inches today, and another inch is expected overnight. It currently looks more like four or even five inches on some surfaces like our patio table. (There's also about an inch of ice under all that snow. Lovely.) This is all rather impressive for us, especially in early December.

4. THE CUTEST THING EVER. *squee*

Comments

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

"Expendable!!!" ♥ Yes, I can see how it would provide invaluable background on the last book. And Festina is so much more awesome once you've seen her when she's young and uncertain(ish) and all. ♥

And oh, "Metamorphosis." We read it in high school, and it's... such a strange little thing. All I really remember of it is a feeling of "well... that's... different?" I should probably re-read now that I'm older, but I get the feeling I would come out with much the same "uhhh... okay......" kind of feeling.

[icepixie]

Festina is indeed very cool. I also like how she just kinda casually implies that she's bi, and there's not a big deal about it.

I'm still trying to make sense of "Metamorphosis." I kind of want to make a link back to the dehumanizing quality of modern technology and the modern workplace, but it doesn't seem to quite be inveighing against them; if anything, the target is the family. Then again the family members all start working, so...maybe? Maybe I should look up Kafka's own politics...