(no subject)

Random thoughts:

Listening to "It Sucks to Be Me" along with "Schadenfreude" makes me giggle at the irony.

I guess iconning goes along in trends like everything else does. It's weird because a lot of the ones I've seen lately in communities and whatnot are all this sort of monotonish color, very faded. It's a trend that drives me absolutely crazy (sort of like the low-low-waist pants). I think it's because I like bright colors and clear images, and it's really annoying when I have to squint at the icon for several seconds just to figure out who's in it, much less what they're doing or what the text is. Plus, as mentioned, I like colors and sharp images. The boy is perpetually amused whenever I walk through Target and see bright colors and go ooooooo. Particularly if they are plaid or polka dotted. I fear my aesthetic sensibilities are straight from the fifties, heh. Er. That was my random observation of the day.

Instead of doing useful stuff today, I went through my LJ memories and compiled a giant Excel list of books I have read this year. Never let it be said that I am not a total dork ;). Apparently, I've read a grand total of 97 so far, and yet I haven't even made a dent in the list of Books-To-Read. I rather like my list though -- I find myself sort of ogling at its lovely alphabetical-order-ness. It's very much like that satisfaction I get when I have an organized bookshelf with everything in the right place. The best part is the manga section of the store (which I am doing now, whoo), because the giant series all look the same and when they are organized, it is a quite satisfactory wall of books, all about the same size too.

Hrm. Maybe I was a librarian in a past life or something.

Abe, Shana - The Last Mermaid

The book is actually three novellas structured around one of those curse/legend type stories, so I was a bit reluctant to pick it up... I'm generally not a big fan for romance short stories because there's not enough pages for character development, but each novella here clocks about 200.

Legend is that a siren falls in love with a human man, Kell, and they live together on an island for years and years. Unfortunately for the siren, Kell eventually begins to feel pent in and opens the locket she wears containing his soul and dies on the spot. So she curses the island to be unapproachable until, of course, three couples unite in true love. I have to say, I found the practice of having one's supernatural lover keep one's soul in her locket pretty freaky.

The first story was a little blah to me, partly because I started it right after I finished Cuevas' Dance. It was sort of hard getting back into normal romance novel mode after that, heh. It's set around 500 AD, which isn't a period of great interest to me, and it seemed pretty standard. The current siren of the island saves a prince from drowning, etc. However, the siren, Ione, is pretty convincingly alien, and there are some nice moments in which you can tell she completely does not understand why Aedan (the prince) insists on certain things, like clothing. It's not played for humor, just incomprehension. Actually, she sort of reminds of Illyria, strangely.

I liked the second story best -- Georgian period and female assassins will do it every time ;). And a male siren who is nice and falls in love with female assassin. Yeah, hits a large portion of my buttons. And I just liked Leila a lot because she was so somber and serious, and thus, I liked Ronan because he liked her. Also, this is one of the rarer romances in which the hero, though in love with the heroine, is willing to stand back and wait for her to make up her own mind and tries not to force the issue, despite a few inopportune kisses.

The third story, set in the present time, didn't work quite so well as the first or second. The lovers here are supposed to be the reincarnations of the siren and Kell, except I don't think enough time is given over to this concept... the author does try to sketch out the siren and Kell's characters, which did work, but I think it happens at the expense of the hero and heroine, sadly. ( Slightly spoilery )

I sort of wanted more exploration of issues like abandonment and feeling caged in by love that I was a little disappointed by the ending.

But, all in all, not bad, and now I think I might pick up some of Abe's backlist. I really liked her Secret Swan, but her first book (Rose something) was so bad I didn't finish it.