Kleene Star

This week's reading:

Button, Button, Richard Matheson
The Unquiet, John Connolly
Lust in Translation, Pamela Druckerman
Invisible Prey, John Sandford
The Witch's Boy, Michael Gruber
More Tales of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov
Educated in Romance, Dorothy C. Holland & Margaret A. Eisenhart
Gateway, Frederick Pohl
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, Frederick Pohl
Heechee Rendezvous, Frederick Pohl

I should remember that I don't like John Connolly. In point of fact, his meandering, rambling, obsessive novels just suck. Friends, if you ever see me pick up one of his novels, remind me that I hate his protagonist almost as much as I hate his plotting. The suggestions of the supernatural mitigate this, but only very slightly; Connolly's taken what, six books to get to where he should have been after the first one.

The wonderful, wonderful, wonderful The Witch's Boy makes up for that with room to spare, though. A lot of fairy tale retellings fall into the trap of "fantatwee," assuming that because they can replicate a story's structure they can replicate its mythic power. (When instead all they do is shout "LOOKA ME I KNOW A FAIRY TALE!" Phatic communication indeed.) Gruber, though, melds together fairy tale tropes to make a heartbreaking story about parenting, power, hope, despair, and growing up. Periodically his characters stop to retell their version of a classic fairy tale - or live it! - and a few of the sub-tellings seem forced. Still, the frame story is a tale of remarkable power and originality, which draws on fairy tales we've all heard and builds something that feels equally mythic from them. Personally, my sympathies were very much with the witch (who adopts an ugly orphan boy she finds in a tree stump, with devastating consequence), but every character had a lovely resonance and I wanted to know more about their stories.

Lust in Translation was disappointing, if only because I couldn't believe the author had so little to say on such an interesting topic. Druckerman does a cross-cultural survey of attitudes and practices toward extramarital sex ... and somehow manages to spend a good 20% of every chapter talking about herself, her writing process, and why she chose to do the research she did. Was she trying to pad the volume? I don't know, but I wanted a lot more adultery and a lot less of her. More stories of other people's experiences would have done a lot here!

Pohl's Heechee series is about what I expected: a terrific classic SF series, which I have to read very carefully to avoid wanting to kick someone in the nuts. I just keep saying, "He didn't know any better" when it comes to his portrayal of female characters. Still, I'd read one Heechee story in an anthology somewhere and realized it was a pretty awesome concept, and indeed the books are really very good when they aren't pissing me off. I could use fewer recaps of the physics - yes, I DO get it already! - but the world-building and action sequences are equally excellent.

Finally, Educated in Romance was just about as good as I thought it would be. (Fuck you, culture of romance!) It's the account of an eight-year longitudinal study of gifted college women in the eighties, and how they "made choices" (i.e. existed within a system that constrained their choices and actions) that took them off serious career paths. The authors show how college culture doesn't reward women for engaging seriously with academics, and in fact makes it a competitive disadvantage to do so. As depressing as that was, though, the authors found that the women who retained their commitment to learning did so because of their ideas about how college should function. Rather than trying to get a credential or maintain their identity as "smart people," the women who stayed on track had a clear concept of college as an opportunity to learn from experts. Even though every girl in this group had to marginalize herself socially and culturally to make this happen, it gives me hope that we can educate girls in ways that will inoculate them against the bullshit that college culture has to offer.

See you next week, folks! Shabbat Shalom!

You guys know how to tempt me to do a meme: make it about books!

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThingâ™s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, and italicize the ones you own but have not read. I'm adding one more innovation of my own - placing an X by the books that I probably wouldn't read if you bought me a copy and then hit me with a stick.

( The list! )

This week's reading - notice that I am finally caught up!

The Seduction of Common Sense, Kevin K. Kumashiro
Eifelheim, Michael Flynn
The Merlin Conspiracy, Diana Wynne Jones
Portrait of a Marriage, Pearl S. Buck
The Mission Song, John LeCarre
Garnethill, Denise Mina
Exile, Denise Mina
Resolution, Denise Mina

What if first contact had already happened? In a tiny medieval German town? And no one knew about it for some very good reasons? That's the premise of Eifelheim, and it's a rocking one. Add amazing historical research, a wonderful sense of setting in time and place, some tragic miscommunication with aliens, and a whole lot of religion, and you've got a recipe for a winner. It's Michael Flynn's best book to date by far, and the best sci-fi book dealing with religion since The Sparrow. Go and read this right now. Seriously. You are missing out.

Denise Mina has been my consolation that Eifelheim is over. These are wonderfully dark, gritty mysteries where the protagonist is seriously messed up. She's an incest survivor and budding alcoholic who's only recently been released from an institution - and yet you never get the sense that Mina is talking down to her or patronizing her, even as many of Mina's characters do. Maureen O'Donnell doesn't go out and solve crimes; she just lives in a world full of people doing violence, of one sort or another, to each other every day. She does what she has to do to survive. The books only get better as the series goes on - and although I often don't find Maureen likable, she's a compelling character that I couldn't wait to find out more about.

On the other side of the spectrum, Portrait of a Marriage was some awful, awful claptrap. Here, let me summarize the book for you. "He was a wealthy artist. She was a farmer's beautiful daughter. He needed her presence to work. She cooked and cleaned and ran the farm, because he was married to ART and not just to her. Oh, wasn't it romantic that he left his life of wealth and leisure, and ended up as a second-rate artist. What a sacrifice he made. Oh, his manly beauty. Oh, her earthy sensuality. Oh, their long and loving marriage." I really wanted to kick someone in the nuts.

Also, I keep feeling like I ought to like Diana Wynne Jones, but I just ... don't. The Merlin Conspiracy was better than most of the other Jones I've read; I loved the world of Blest and the traveling Court, and I liked a lot of the individual characters. But when it comes down to it, I often feel shortchanged by the way her books end, in a welter of too-rapid resolutions and references to throwaway elements mentioned earlier. Which is sad, because given how often she uses time travel, she ought to be one of my favorites.

Shabbat Shalom, folks! Happy reading, and I'll see you next week!

Almost caught up! Here's my reading from the last two weeks:

Smart Girls, Barbara A. Kerr
By Frequent Anguish, S.F.X. Dean
Such Pretty Toys, S.F.X. Dean
Voice of the Whirlwind, Walter Jon Williams
A Hell of a Woman, ed. Megan Abbott
J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Tom Shippey
The Fever Tree and Other Stories of Suspense, Ruth Rendell
Rain Fall, Barry Eisler
Hard Rain, Barry Eisler
Rain Storm, Barry Eisler
Killing Rain, Barry Eisler
The Last Assassin, Barry Eisler
Rising Phoenix, Kyle Mills
Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley
Scaramouche, Rafael Sabatini

I'm writing this post between grading my students' papers and getting the house ready for Passover (eek!), so I don't really have the time to respond to my reading. Sadly! Because a lot of it was delightful! On the other hand, I really don't want to put this off, because this batch of books means I'm all caught up with this year's reading. That number in the post title means 15 books since I last posted - about two weeks' worth - which takes me to 89 books for the year. Ah, such lovely and delightful reading .....

Since I can't review them all, the three books I'll point you all to are the Shippey, the Abbott and the Kerr. (Two non-fiction! What's gotten into me?)

Kerr is part of my ongoing project to read about feminist issues, particularly surrounding gifted women (yes, I am one). I found the book powerful and very personal, to the point that I'm having a hard time writing about it. She has a bit where she talks about how brilliant women have to come to terms with "the cultural disability of being born female," and looks at the various stages of grief that gifted women go through when they realize how handicapped they really are. I was just kind of like ... whoa. Yes. That's me. And I hope I never get past the anger stage into acceptance!

I thought her analysis of how gifted girls transition from being interested in things to being interested in people was quite fascinating as well, and I'm still not sure how I escaped making that transition. The book made me feel incredibly lucky that I've kept work, learning and ideas at the center of my life - and makes me see that the people who argue that love "should" be at the center rarely actually put it there themselves.

Not that love isn't also at my center. But it hasn't shoved my work-esteem-production-orientation aside as it does for a lot of women - I think because I'm pretty consistently willing to say "fuck you" to the culture of romance.

So: FUCK YOU, CULTURE OF ROMANCE.

Which, by the way, is the next book on my feminist reading list! Er, the book that explores the culture of romance is, I mean. Though someone should really write a book called "Fuck You, Culture of Romance." I'd buy it.

Seriously - if you're a gifted woman, go read this book.

After that you should pick up A Hell of a Woman, while you're at it. I just read Megan Abbott's Queenpin, a totally brilliant female-centered hard-boiled noir, and so as soon as I saw she'd edited an anthology of women in noir, I had to pick it up. My faith was totally justified. These stories range the gamut from entertaining to genuinely compelling. "High Yellow," in particular, totally captivated me with its portrayal of "passing" in 1950s Washington, DC. I really like hard-boiled pieces that reach out beyond the emotional lives of the characters to touch something larger about how our world works, and this one was brilliantly done. Nobody - or at least nobody I know - is so stuck in their own heads that they aren't affected by money, work, race, class, power, and, of course, the book's key issue, gender.

Even better, the authors all list their favorite female noir at the back of the book, which means I've got a totally rocking reading/viewing list.

The Shippey is part of my book club with my friend A.; he's been meaning to read it, so I challenged him that we should read it together. I don't read that much non-fiction that isn't for work or school, but I found this one absolutely delightful. I re-read Tolkien every year (Hobbit through </i>Silmarillion</i> only, thank you, I'm not crazy enough to read all the tales), so his analysis was totally ringing all kinds of lovely bells. I wasn't that impressed with his bit about evil - though only because I thought what he was saying was relatively obvious - but his analysis of the use of myth and allegory was totally super. Really it was all great. I loved all the research and the historical background, like the "filling in the gaps" of the linguistic oddities he encountered in his professional work with myth.

Oh. My. God. Tolkien wrote fucking midrash. My mind is so blown right now.

I'll close with that, then. Shabbat Shalom and happy Pesach to you all. I'll see you post-Seders!

Almost caught up! This is the last batch of backlogged books; maybe later today I'll actually log this week's reading.

The Prisoner of Zenda, Anthony Hope
Rupert of Hentzau, Anthony Hope
Red Cat, Peter Spiegelman
The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
Greenmantle, John Buchan
Mr. Standfast, John Buchan
The Three Hostages, John Buchan
The Island of Sheep, John Buchan
Grotesque, Natsuo Kirino
Infinity Plus, ed. Keith Brooke & Nick Gevers
Angelmass, Timothy Zahn
Blindsight, Peter Watts
Archer's Goon, Diana Wynne Jones
Deep Storm, Lincoln Child
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Oliver Sacks
What the Dead Know, Laura Lippman
Bad Luck and Trouble, Lee Child

It's just a few too many books to do extended comments, so I'll just mention the extremes. Nothing here was really terrible - even the Lincoln Child, which had a surprisingly unforgettable climax. Also any story set underwater is going to creep me out doubly! So really that just means talking about the books I particularly liked.

The unexpected surprise - and I'm still not even sure if I really liked it - was Blindsight. It's a far-future story about consciousness and aliens and vampires and love and evolution, which already means it's got a lot of stuff going for it. I'm still chewing over the book's message, and the ending is heartbreaking and sad. At the same time, there are long stretches of the book that involve the characters going "Whoa! An alien thing! We have no idea what's going on, but let's go into long descriptions of what we don't know!" This for twenty pages at a time. I could have done with more plot and less random ranting about the alien artifact - though given the protagonist's nature, maybe it's not such a surprising narrative choice. Still, even with some weaknesses in the middle part of the book, I've found myself thinking about it, off and on, almost every day since I read it. I'm going to have to call that a win.

I love John Buchan, I have always loved John Buchan, and I'm fairly sure I will always love John Buchan. The Thirty-Nine Steps is a glorious adventure novel, far better than the movie. Sorry, Hitchcock fans! Some of the later books have structural flaws; for example, Mr. Standfast jumps around in time and place a bit more than I thought served the story, while in The Three Hostages my poor Dick Hannay didn't get to do nearly as much in the plot as I might have liked. Still, Buchan has a gift for handling drama in a way that feels adventurous but plausible - which is precisely where many modern thrillers fail - and his characters are wonderfully likeable. If I could write a book that felt like this, I'd be very pleased.

Finally, Anthony Hope is everything that I thought he'd be - at least in The Prisoner of Zenda. Love! Romance! Mistaken identities! A kingdom at stake! Evil uncles! Poison! Kidnapping! Swordfights and assorted mayhem! Rupert of Hentzau gets significantly darker, and I regretted the change in point of view. Still, both books made me wish I had more to read along the same lines. Any recommendations?

Shabbat shalom!

... and this is the point where I admit that when I'm really stressed out, I read horribly cheesy thrillers.

I read the entire Lucas Davenport series, by John Sandford. There are sixteen books in it to date. Do you really want me to list them all?

I suppose you must know the true depths of my shame. I didn't just read these books. I re-read them. This is maybe the third time that I've turned to these books for help sleeping during a seriously panicky period in my life.

What's weird about them is that the main character is a cop who makes a lot of money (no, really, a lot of money) on the side. What's his job, you might ask? He's a game designer. Which would be more awesome if it were more plausible; this guy's a freelance RPG writer and somehow manages to pull in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in spare cash. Either the author didn't do his research, or I seriously have to get hooked up with Davenport's gig.

Okay, okay, for the really OCD here (yes, that would be me) I'm listing the books. In order. Are you happy?

Rules of Prey, John Sandford
Shadow Prey, John Sandford
Eyes of Prey, John Sandford
Silent Prey, John Sandford
Winter Prey, John Sandford
Night Prey, John Sandford
Mind Prey, John Sandford
Sudden Prey, John Sandford
Secret Prey, John Sandford
Certain Prey, John Sandford
Easy Prey, John Sandford
Chosen Prey, John Sandford
Mortal Prey, John Sandford
Naked Prey, John Sandford
Hidden Prey, John Sandford
Broken Prey, John Sandford

Now I just have to decide if I want to keep the books. I think it's good to have a literary anaesthetic on hand, but jeez, do they take up space ... and hopefully I won't need to read them again for a couple of years.

I wish I could say "This Week's Reading," but I haven't posted since February. Oops!

Watch this space for a slow catchup on my reading list. If I post more than fifteen books at a time, I won't end up saying anything interesting about them, and I did read some pretty interesting books in the last six weeks ....

So, without further ado:

Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
Stir of Echoes, Richard Matheson
S is for Silence, Sue Grafton
Bad Blood, Linda Fairstein
The Time Bind, Arlie Russell Hochschild
Against Love, Laura Kipnis
The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars, Miriam Peskowitz
The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington
The Book of Three, Lloyd Alexander
The Black Cauldron, Lloyd Alexander
The Castle of Llyr, Lloyd Alexander
Taran Wanderer, Lloyd Alexander
The High King, Lloyd Alexander

... which takes me up somewhere through the first week of March, as best I can recollect.

The Lukyanenko books were quite good - increasingly good, I might even say. Sadly I discovered about thirty pages from the end of the third book that there is, indeed, a fourth book in the series. Argh! I hate not being able to finish a series right away. So I have a bit of sour grapes about that.

The Grafton and Fairstein books were totally "I can't sleep and I need something cheesy" reads. Sadly, the Grafton is the last in the series that's available in paperback; her books are consistently entertaining and remarkably well-written for a long-running mystery series. Even more sadly, the Fairstein was just terrible on every level. The writing was mediocre, the characters barely believable, and the so-called mystery alternated between obvious and incomprehensible. I picked it up because I was looking for a new emergency-anxiety series, but clearly Fairstein won't be it.

The Tarkington was sadly also depressing, but possibly only because my expectations for it were a bit too high. I was hoping for a family saga a la Buddenbrooks, when instead what I got was The Thorn Birds. Still, looking back five weeks later, I'm very glad I read it, and I like it much more than I realized at the time. The characters are sharp and distinct, and for once the female lead shows some good sense when it comes to avoiding involvement with the arrogant, self-obsessed moron who's after her. The parallel love story between the protagonists' parents is heartbreakingly sad, and probably worth the price of the book all by itself. It's easy to forget the kinds of social responsibilities that people thought they had - though given my own background in a very duty-conscious community, I found it not only a sharp reminder, but a sharp commentary on how closed societies function.

Stir of Echoes was a re-read, as was the Alexander series. I like Stir of Echoes more every time I read it; I think I'm on my third or fourth time through it. What I really appreciate about it is that the protagonist gains telepathic powers - but stays rooted within his very small community, and uses it to deal with interpersonal problems that are relevant to his own life. I've always found the "I gain powers and then I GO SAVE THE WORLD" to be less interesting than the personal consequences of ability, and Matheson does a really lovely job with it.

The Alexander is a series I grew up with; as long as I turn off my feminist brain while reading it, I can take great pleasure in it. But, er, I have no personal intention of giving up my great talents so that I can be the nice pretty wife of an important man, so I just pretend that I get to be Taran and not Eilonwy. Though I admit I don't like Taran all that much either. He's kind of a whiny fucker - think Luke and the vaporators. I really read the books for the lovely adventure and the wonderful secondary characters, like Fflewddur Fflam and Gurgi. Munchings and crunchings is a household term for us!

Finally, I read some books that probably require longer responses: The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars, The Time Bind, and Against Love. Against love! I am against love - or, more accurately, I'm against what Kerr calls the "culture of romance" that we like to pass off as love. Of course, I'm not sure I can get behind Kipnis's position either, which is very much anti-commitment and monogamy-as-discipline. I'm more or less built monogamous, and I can't imagine being any other way, so although I hate many of the things she hates, I also felt fairly alienated by her very entertaining polemic.

Happy reading, folks. More books tomorrow!

... one giant leap toward my dissertation.

Today, I took my qualifying exams. And, barring an act of God, I totally passed.

I won't officially hear my results for a few weeks yet, but I'm so close to being ABD* that I can taste it.

Now that I'm no longer alternately studying frantically and worrying studiously, I may once again be around. Thank you all for the various love and support you've given me over the last very stressful month. I'm looking forward to poking my head out of my hole both online and in the real world. Plus, two weeks until spring break! I sense celebration coming up!

But for now, there will be a cat, and a bed, and a very happy smile on my tired, never-want-to-see-another-ANOVA-table face.

*All But Dissertation, also known as the shoals upon which many an academic career founders .....

My siblings and I finally finished the invitation for our parents' joint sixtieth birthday party. It's just a family thing - the four of us are planning a surprise - but we really wanted the invite to be awesome.

Shockingly, this idea actually worked on the first try, even though we're a bicoastal family!



You may not be able to read it, but my parents are getting a poster-size printout which is not only readable, but intended to be hung somewhere in our house. The upshot? They'll be spending a mysterious weekend of joy with their (affectionately-named) miserable children!

This is technically yesterday's thing - I may finish today's before midnight, but maybe not. It's more words from my parents' birthday party invitation.

I had fun with cut paper!





Also with pennies!

My siblings and I are working on the invitation for our parents' joint sixtieth birthday party. (It's a surprise! But fortunately they don't read this.) We're doing it Human Calendar style, with photos of us holding the various words of the invitation. So today I made three of the words of the invite.







(That last is a CD label that I repurposed. I'm going to have some fun with making words out of paper collage tomorrow!)

This week's reading:

R is for Ricochet, Sue Grafton
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
The Riddle of the Wren, Charles de Lint
No Adam in Eden, Grace Metalious
Nightwatch, Sergei Lukyanenko

Man, I love Jane Austen. I have to go dig up my compilation now; the only reason why I'm not reading Austen right now is because I haven't had time to go find it. That's what Shabbat is for!

Nightwatch is a good bit better than I'd expected, given the movie. Not that the movie was bad! But the book is distinctly better. The priceless bits are the throwaway lines - like the moment near the beginning when Anton starts to mentally curse out his boss, then realizes that his boss can hear when people are thinking about him. But there's also real charm in the institutions of Night Watch and Day Watch. My only critique is that after the second time a character realizes, "Hey, this is all an elaborate plot and I'm just a pawn in the game," it gets a little old. But the plots are sufficiently devious that I don't mind as much as I otherwise might!

Oh, and I'm also not thrilled with the treatment of the female characters thus far, but I'll give him to the end of the series before I decide I'm actually annoyed.

Speaking of annoyed: The Riddle of the Wren reminded me why I fucking hate fakey-fake, poorly realized fantasy-Europe analogues. The book was entirely saved by the main character leaving her one-long-cliche home and traveling to various parallel worlds, though not all of them were better.

No Adam in Eden was ... I don't even know how to describe it. A pulp novel written by a talented writer who uses some distinctly non-pulpy techniques, to tell the story of three generations of genuinely fucked-up women? Sadly, Metalious demonizes Monique's desire for a better life, which I really identified with. Who would want to be a sexually and economically exploited mill worker if she had a choice?

Finally, I have no idea what's going to become my "I'm stressed out and it's the middle of the night" go-to reading, after I finish with the Grafton oeuvre. Advice please?

Shabbat shalom!

Since I'm studying for my generals, I find that I really want to do creative acts that involve my hands. Last night that meant doing a macrame friendship bracelet - the kind you make for your friends in fourth grade. This one was in more sophisticated colors, and my partner promised he'd wear it to work today, so I think that makes it a "love bracelet" instead.

Having recently read Pride and Prejudice, and thinking of the Emily Dickinson game design challenge, I thought my creative act for the day would be sketching a Jane Austen game design.

Fortunately, I'm relatively well equipped for this. I love Austen, and this is my fifth or sixth reading of the book (though admittedly I've read most of her other books only a couple of times). Even better, I recently watched Regency House, a more-or-less reality TV show in which ten adults go "back in time" to the Regency period and try to mate-and-date. (It's actually kind of a Jane Austen LARP. Seriously, people, go and watch it!)

The show emphasized just how little opportunity men and women had to interact meaningfully while choosing a mate. You were expected to be in public the bulk of the time, and your behavior was seriously constrained by etiquette at ALL times. This was cool to see visually, because as I was re-reading the book it made that aspect of the story really jump out at me. With the Jane/Bingley storyline, for example, you realize just how little opportunity they've had to truly speak to each other, and it makes his behavior later in the novel much more understandable.

But, in any case!

This game is a computer game. I imagine a single play-through would take about 45 minutes, so it's a semi-casual game. The goal is, in those 45 minutes, to take a character and get him or her appropriately married! Over multiple plays, you would develop a "stable" of characters you have married off, more or less successfully.

Your overall success at the game is judged by the well-being of the characters you're married off, with different measures of competition including rank, money, happiness, children, and the like. You can submit your character stable to a central server for scoring, or create badges to show off your characters. There would also be tools for supporting fan-fic and fan-art about your favorite characters, to give the biographies texture and meaning beyond just stats and scores.

However, the core of the gameplay would be taking your character to a country house party to get married.

First, the player creates a character. The player can choose a male or female character, and customize their appearance to some degree. The player receives some number of characteristics which are fixed and randomly determined, such as rank and money. The player can choose personality characteristics for their character, which will affect their compatibility with potential mates. Some personality characteristics, such as optimism, may also affect the character's overall happiness even with an unsuitable spouse.

Play is divided into seven "days" of three phases each. On the first "day," the character arrives at the country house. If the character is not married by the end of the last "day," they are doomed to be unmarried forever. (The mechanics here are assumed to be the same for male and female characters, although women generally faced more severe consquences for not marrying, and their period of eligibility was shorter. This element requires further consideration before a mechanical distinction will be made between men and women.)

The first phase of each day is the daytime events. Men and women are separated, with men outside the house and women inside it. Occasionally groups of women may venture outside, but woe to the unchaperoned woman who wanders around the woods! Similarly, men dare not venture inside without a specific purpose. Day lasts for three minutes.

The second phase of each day is dinner. All characters are present at dinner, and the phase lasts for one minute.

Finally, the third phase is the post-dinner socializing, with both genders present. The post-dinner phase lasts for two minutes.

During each phase, the goal is the same, though the details of the mechanics differ. The goal is to discover the true nature (i.e. rank, money, personality traits) of the marriagable characters in the house, while keeping your own propriety score high. The game is about showing what you wish to show, while concealing what you wish to conceal, and seeing what others wish to conceal.

The player has a set of actions available to them, which range from "Observe" (which allows the player to understand the meaning of, for example, a gesture with a fan) to "Flirt" to "Pull rank."

Every action impacts NPCs differently depending on their social status and personality variables. For example, flirting with a "Staid" NPC might lower your desirability to them, but flirting with a "Adventurous" NPC would increase it. As your desirability rating is what determines whether your offer of marriage will be accepted, it is important to increase your desirability with the NPC you desire to wed. An NPC whose rank or wealth is above yours will require a higher desirability rating to acquire than someone who is your social inferior.

Each action also reveals information about the NPC in question to the player. For example, a "Flirt" action would reveal one personality characteristic of the NPC. A "Gamble" action would reveal something about the character's wealth. This information is for the player to use in choosing whether this person is in fact a good match.

Finally, most actions also have a cost in propriety - if "society" witnesses it. Losing propriety impacts one's desirability for ALL NPCs. The most useful actions can only be performed alone with an NPC of the opposite sex (or while the NPCs are looking the other way), if one is not to lose a great deal of propriety. Other actions will only bother certain categories of people. For example, young NPCs will not mind seeing you flirt, but if you are caught by the party's hostess, you will certainly lose a great deal of propriety. The more important the NPC who catches you, or the more inappropriate your action, the more propriety you lose. Different actions, are, of course, more and less inappropriate in different phases of the game. Gambling at dinner is completely unheard of, while it is not unreasonable to make bets over a friendly game of loo.

From moment to moment, the player must be paying attention to what is going on around them, which NPCs are looking at them, which potential spouses are available to them, what actions will bring them the most benefit, and whether they can make a good match. Think Austen meets Assassin's Creed!

This atmosphere of highly civilized paranoia is, if not traditionally Austen, precisely the Austen effect that I am looking for!

Yesterday: Ars Magica session. We played until after 11pm, and then people wanted to stay and hang out and chat until well after midnight. Awesome fun, not conducive to actually posting any record of the "thing," which was, well, session.

We orchestrated a huge fistfight among all the PCs and a few other characters, using a "point simultaneously at whoever you are attacking" method. I'm calling that a creative act. :)

It was a rough day. I'm turning to my go-to art form.

Discussion of "The map is not the territory" in my research seminar somehow led me to writing this (moderately sexy) little poem about love.

Departure

Hip to hip,
lip to lip,
kiss to kiss,
this to this,
that to that,
tit for tat,
we go to a place
where there's no coming back.

Mind to mind,
intertwined,
love to love,
hand in glove,
heart to heart,
torn apart,
I'll make you my map
if you'll make me your chart.

Eye to eye,
sigh to sigh,
touch to touch,
much too much,
head to head,
locked in bed,
we're never alone
with whatever's ahead.

I think my favorite aspect of thing-a-day is being inspired by everyone else's projects. I keep adding new projects and media that I want to try!

Today's adventure was learning to bead. After salivating over Elizabeth's ametrine and copper necklace, I dragged my boy down to Chinatown, where we acquired beading supplies. I've never made jewelry before, but with some how-to tips, a good pair of pliers, and an "Intro to Jewelry" kit, I managed to make this:



This is a three-strand bracelet. I put a loop in one end of a length of wire, secured it with a crimp bead, and then loaded the wire with beads. Then I looped the other end shut and secured it the same way. Once I had three strands, I hooked them together at each end with one of those claspy ringy things, and added a clasp and a little dangly charm.

See?



I can't believe how easy and fun it was to make something so pretty!

Today I figured I'd try to apply some of the lessons I've learned from improv to written drama. I'm always better improvising than trying to write things down, because my internal critic is super-hard on me as soon as I put fingers to keys. So! I present a brief dramatic interlude, on the theme of At the Crossroads.

( At the Crossroads )

For those following along at home, the hardest part was coming up with two characters who had a definite relationship. I kept coming up with scenes of people introducing themselves, or being lost, or otherwise being immensely boring. I don't usually have trouble with this in actual improv, so I wonder whether it's a function of working on something alone. When I don't have a real person to play off, my brain just wants to introduce me to the character the other half of my brain is portraying, and that ends up being seriously yawn-worthy.

On the other hand, I definitely noticed that every line added something to the consensual reality of the story - at least far more than my first drafts usually manage. So three cheers for learning something from improv!

This week's reading:

O is for Outlaw, Sue Grafton
P is for Peril, Sue Grafton
Q is for Quarry, Sue Grafton
The Overlook, Michael Connelly
Tales of Ten Worlds, Arthur C. Clarke
The Dragon's Nine Sons, Chris Roberson
Therese Raqin, Emil Zola
The Time Bind, Arlie Russell Hochschild

You can tell I'm having insomnia issues because I'm reading a lot of Sue Grafton. I can count on her books to be easy-to-read, not too predictable, just compelling enough to keep my attention, and just not-compelling enough that I can put them down as soon as I get dozy. Q is for Quarry was, maybe, an exception; the ending felt forced and the secondary plotline, coincidental. But that's okay - I can forgive her a lot for being a steady, reliable resource when I just need some entertaining words on a page.

The best book I read this week was The Dragon's Nine Sons. Am I a bad person because I liked it more than the Zola? I'm a sucker for any book whose first chapter features the protagonist getting involved in a giant space battle - and promptly turning tail and running away. I also loved the spacefaring Aztec and Chinese cultures he invented, and I'm planning to read all the other books in this particular future history. It's one of the best, most original, most human near-future histories I've ever seen.

The worst book I read this week was the Connelly, which was bad enough that I feel I need to reevaluate the worth of everything else he's ever written. I guess he put it together as a newspaper serial, and then converted it to a short novel? But honestly, he shouldn't have bothered. His attempt to be topical is fairly laughable (OMG THEY STOLEZ THE NUCULAR DEVICES) and his resolution is blindingly telegraphed starting in around chapter four. Maybe if I'd read it a chapter a week, it would have been less clear, but really, Mike. Your readers are not stupid.

The most depressing book of the week is a tie. The Zola was pretty damn depressing; a pair of lovers commit a crime for the sake of their relationship and thereby doom themselves. But even though no one dies in the Hochschild, her account of the time pressures on modern American workers is equally depressing - and entirely factual. I don't mean to be flip! Her book has made me very sad and anxious, and it's probably worth a post of its own.

That's not going to happen now, though - I'm off for Shabbat. Abby is bringing cupcakes to dinner! Shabbat Shalom, and happy cupcakes to you all!

I thought I'd "follow instructions" by sitting down at the piano and following along with some sheet music. I ended up playing several Chopin pieces out of the book my favorite piano teacher gave me for my high school graduation. (She inscribed it "To Jess, for your passionate nature," which still made me a little weepy after all these years.) A couple of them I'd played before, a very long time ago, but I also tried to dig my way through two I'd never tried.

After that I figured it was time to make my own music, so I set up a mike and recorded three one-minute improvisations. If you're hearing similarities between them, it's because I was deliberately trying to improvise on a very simple theme!

Links:
Improvisation 1
Improvisation 2
Improvisation 3

(Er, I apologize for the terrible audio quality. I may try to do some music composition later in this project, but I'll get myself a better recording device if I do!)

What I learned? I'm damn rusty when it comes to making music, but I really enjoyed doing it, too.