Buffy 4x12-4x13, spoilery up through S7

I love my iPod soooo much ^_^.

One of the cool bits -- when I import my CDs, it somehow gets the info for my Chinese and Japanese CDs online! I don't have to painstakingly transliterate or translate all the titles or look at gibberish! Not on that, but it does it in the original language, without any prompting at all.

Very cool.

( Buffy 4x12-4x13, spoilery up through S7 )

R. A. MacAvoy, Tea with the Black Dragon

I don't know how to talk about this book at all. It's not really an Asian-inspired fantasy, although there is an Asian dragon in it. It's not that much of a fantasy, despite the dragon. It's not really a mystery, or thriller, although it has elements of both, nor is it a romance, although it has that too.

I'm trying to paint what it's not to leave an outline of what it is, but it's not really working so far.

It's a very little novel, not very long, and nothing very big happens, although, I could also argue that everything that does matters happens. MacAvoy has a way with words that isn't an obvious style; it reminds me a bit of LeGuin for some reason. She (MacAvoy) writes so that everything is perfectly transparent and obvious, not quite like Diana Wynne Jones' matter-of-fact humor, but in a way that gets to the very essence of things. It feels like there is nothing extraneous about her prose.

It's about Martha MacNamara, who fears her daughter is in trouble, and Mayland Long, a man who is sometimes Chinese and sometimes English and sometimes neither, and how he became such a man.

It also is about Silicon Valley and computer crime in the early eighties, which amused me, because a lot of the action takes place in Stanford and San Francisco -- I got a huge kick out of reading about Rengstorff St. and University Ave, places I live around (do NY people get a kick out of stuff like this?).

And there's a dragon in it, a black dragon whose name makes perfect sense but took me even longer to get, because Oolong is automatically "tea" for me. And of course he was a five-toed dragon. Oh! And the dragon was in Taipei!! Sorry.

Anyhow, the book is still quietly steeping in my mind and sending little tea-scented tendrils everywhere.

Links:
- gwyneira's review

Randomness

Does everyone get purple lint in the laundry? Or is it just my special blend of clothes? The boy says he gets grey lint.

And I bet everyone thought I was so intelligent because I talk about books ;).

On another note: it was sunny today! It was sunny yesterday too! Sunny and warm, though not warm enough to walk around without a jacket. But it was lovely, and there was sunshine, and I strolled outside to the library from work for lunch with the boy (waaaay too many prepositional phrases in a row). I rejoice in the general sunniness.

I'm also greatly looking forward to going home (Wednesday! Just a few more days...) ^_^. I'm also going to be seeing a high school friend I haven't seen for a few years, which will be great fun! Currently debating what books I should buy for her, and am also going to give her my Buffy episode, not out of the goodness of my heart, but because I shamelessly try to addict everyone ^_^.

ETA: the boy complains about a headache from work: "I had to play lots of first-person shooter games at work on Friday because we were testing."