Notes to self

1. Be nice to the body. The body is very good at expressing its displeasure with your lifestyle choices. It is clearly telling you that no lunch and five hours a sleep a night is not Good For You.
   
   I haven't been able to fall asleep lately. For once, this is not necessarily my fault (i.e. I haven't stayed up till an ungodly hour trying to finish "one more chapter"... famous last words). Instead, I go to bed at a reasonable hour and then toss and turn for two hours. So when I get to work, I down excessive amounts of caffeine (that's over a cup for me... I am a cheap date in all shapes and forms, apparently), which probably doesn't help me get to sleep any that night. And then more caffeine in the morning. The vicious cycle of sleep deprivation?
   
   I also forgot to eat lunch because I was busy, and I must remember that regular eating habits are not an option for me.



2. Trying to multi-task at work only leads to sixteen half-written emails and a whole bunch of unfinished things. If you must multi-task, try doing two things at a time instead of ten.

Ok, going to nap on the couch now with the fuzzbutts (aka the rats). Then maybe will catch up on book posts, actually read the FL, and maybe even email my family. And sautee mushrooms. And.. doh. Can I have a pause button for the day so I can get more things done?

(no subject)

In which I spend too much money at the used bookstore...

Went by the used bookstore yesterday, and was rather sad and amazed that I have managed to not go there for a good month, at the very least. Mostly it's been Borders trips these days. I suspect a large part of that is the desire to stand there and read manga, since the used bookstore doesn't have nearly half the selection there. Chatted with old co-workers there, which was extremely nice (I suck so much at keeping in touch with people), and then I got rather carried away.

I swear, I was only in there to look for Liz Carlyle's The Devil to Pay, thanks to oracne's rec in a previous post and my burning desire to read more spy/thief/women-of-dubious-morality romance novels. I found it. I also found a whole bunch of other stuff!

The bookstore has changed! There are entire new sections, and the videos section has expanded enormously! And there's a new paperback room, and more space for the sf/f mass markets, and the romances have been moved to an entirely different corner all together! But most surprisingly, the bookstore has started buying category romances. *gasp* It used to be one of those things that we just never bought. And now they are there! This makes me really happy, as this means I can hopefully get my hands on more of Crusie's backlist. Amazingly, they did have one of her old Harlequins there (or was it Silhouette? I can't remember), but it's one that's already been republished (Strange Bedpersons). Anyhow, now I can look for out-of-print Regencies and stuff. Joy!

Bookspoils:

• Liz Carlyle, The Devil to Pay
  
  
• Laura Kinsale, The Shadow and the Star.
  Thankfully, the reprint, not the one with the dreadful Fabio cover. I actually read the first half several years ago and disliked it, but I figure it's everyone's favorite Kinsale (or so it seems), so I should try again.
  
  
• Diane Ackerman, A Slender Thread: Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis
  Because I really liked her A Natural History of the Senses and because it's on her experiences working on a suicide hotline, which is a subject that very much interests me on many levels.
  
  
• Monica Furlong, Robin's Country,
  Because I didn't realize she wrote something outside of the Wise Child books and because it's Robin Hood.
  
  
• Joan D. Vinge, Ladyhawke.
  I actually have no idea why I got this one, because I didn't like the movie. But someone mentioned it somewhere on someone's LJ (I hate it when I can't remember where I heard something) and I think it was part of a list of not-bad movie tie-in novels.
  
  
• Georgette Heyer, Powder and Patch,
  Because I like the Georgian era (I am an atypical romance reader in that the Regency era doesn't do much for me at all... I don't hate it, but I don't get the fuss) and I was curious about the male-Pygmalion scenario and how it would play out. This is now the third Heyer that I own (others being Sprig Muslin and Convenient Marriage), all of which I have not touched. I'm just not in the mood for nice, proper romance right now, I suppose, but in case I ever do get in the mood, ye gods, I will have enough for a minor rampage!
  
  
• Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon's Daughter
  Because rachelmanija keeps reccing it and I finally saw it in a bookstore! Ha! I feel like I have won. I'm not quite sure what I have won (besides the book, of course), but I have confounded the two nearby libraries that do not have it. So there.
  

Of course, now this means I have overshot my budget and must eat microwavable mac and cheese or frozen pizza or whatever else is hiding in my fridge for a few more days. Oh well. I have books! Really, it's almost like food ;).

ETA: reformatted because my eyes hurt from the giant blocks of text

Datlow, Ellen, and Terri Windling, eds. - Swan Sister: Fairy Tales Retold

Anyone familiar with Datlow and Windling's anthologies of retold fairy tales for adults (starting with Snow White, Blood Red) will be familiar with the general type of story in this anthology. However, since it's the second of their anthologies for children (it seems to be marketed to a younger age group than YA), there's definitely not nearly as much as the blood and horror and sexuality in their anthologies for adults.

I got this because I am a completist and because I love fairy tales. I was fairly entertained by the anthology but not particularly blown away by any of the stories. My favorites all seemed to be ones that took fairy tale imagery and translated them to modern psychological concerns, much as Buffy does with horror. While I generally don't like modern day fairy tale analogues, my two favorite stories in the collection were both retellings set in the present day.

The first was Lois Metzger's "The Girl in the Attic," a retelling of Rapunzel that rewrites the figure of the wicked stepmother and the tower into something about motherhood and the expectations that parents have of their children and vice versa. It was a little story, but I liked it. I also liked the title story, Katherine Vaz's "My Swan Sister," which has the image of what happens to the final swan brother at its core. It's another small story on loss and the inability to stem loss, and never having enough time.

The others I was rather fond of were Neil Gaiman's poem on Arabian Nights, which reminded me of rilina's short story, something about the importance of story, of the act of storytelling and its importance, Tanith Lee's take on Sleeping Beauty, in which the sleeping princess actually has a hundred years to explore the world.

The rest of the stories sometimes felt a little too stretched for the fairy tale parallels, and they just didn't sit right with me. Ah well. It also may be because I've read so many retellings, or so it feels. Anyhow, I still think one of the best retold fairy tale short stories are in Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch.

ETA: fixed tag