Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:50 PM

I found a list of other peoples' book logs, and some of them make quite interesting reading. I don't want to try to change formats in midstream, but maybe next calendar year I'll find some way of adding reviews or commentary to my Books Read list.

Meanwhile, on Colleen Doran's forums, in response to Colleen's list of her five favorite fantasy novels, other people have started listing their five favorite books. Here's what I came up with (alphabetically by author):

• War for the oaks by Emma Bull: The Faerie war meets the 1980s Minneapolis musical scene
• Enchantment by Orson Scott Card: A student of Russian folklore gets caught up in a Russian fairytale
• Fire stone by Tanya Huff: A swordsman, a wizard and a thief on a quest to save the kingdom
• Silver metal lover by Tanith Lee: A romance between a poor little rich girl and the android of her dreams
• The Armor of light by Melissa Scott: An alternate Elizabethan history where magic works and Marlowe survived

My one-liner plot summaries don't do them justice. These are all books that really touched me deeply upon first reading and that I keep finding myself referring back to (and getting sucked back into) over and over and over again. I've probably read War for the oaks about three times so far this weekend; something similar happened the first time I read Enchantment.

Since I wrote this up for Colleen Doran's boards, I figured I could safely assume that everyone there already read A Distant soil (so I could safely leave that off my list). But it's interesting how the list grows and evolves and changes over time, given that I last discussed a similar topic in August.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:35 PM

Hee, hee, hee

Ian was feeling somewhat down earlier, so I suggested we go out into the sunshine for a while. It started as a random drive, but we eventually wound up driving down and up Route 1 in Saugus. We stopped at both pet stores where animal antics made us laugh so hard our guts hurt.

In the first place, they had just taken about a half-dozen puppies and put them in the big pen for exercise. Puppy tag -- they were all running, jumping and picking on one another. Every time one would escape to the side for a breather, another puppy would run over and pull him back in. Then we wandered through the store, admiring the fish and reptiles before winding up near the rodents and birds. They had a small quail for sale which was kinda cute. Then this one hamster plastered himself against the glass in front of his cage with his front paws scrabbling as high as he could reach and started walking on his hind legs from side to side across the width of the cage. Ian and I started singing "The Hamster dance" -- which perfectly fit his movements. We nearly fell over laughing. We played a bit with the dwarf rabbits (which we were actually very tempted to get at some point) before finally managing to extricate ourselves from the store.

After spending a while in Newbury Comics (where we got a copy of the soundtrack to the Buffy musical (worth buying even if you've heard all the MP3s, because Xander talks over the best lyrics of "The Parking ticket")) and a craft store to get some stuff for Ian's class, we stopped at the other pet store. We wound up watching the cage of "fancy" mice. Did you know that if you get more than three mice on the wheel at a time, just one of them choosing to run can can overbalance the wheel, causing unlucky mice to ride the full 360 degree loop. There was this one brown mouse clinging to the wheel with all his might as other mice got on and off the wheel. When we finally couldn't stand it any more, we started counting how many times he got dragged around upsidedown on the wheel, and lost it at thirty (after at least another twenty or more). Don't know if he was too nauseous to get off or what, but we were hurting for him...

I'm not sure whether I'm describing this at all well enough, but we both were laughing so hard we were falling over. And laughter is good medicine.

Now Ian wants us to get about five or so mice for us and Boopsie to watch and laugh at.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:55 PM

I've been listening to Standing Room Only, a weekly radio show of Broadway tunes on WERS (Boston 88.9 FM, Saturday mornings 10am - 2pm). They just played "Book Report" from You're a good man, Charlie Brown -- a very funny song. Ian pointed out that Charlie Brown's lyrics sound like some of my rationalizations:

"If I start writing now, when I'm not really rested, it could upset my thinking, which is not good at all. I'll get a fresh start tomorrow and it's not due till Wednesday, so I'll have all of Tuesday unless something should happen. Why does this always happen? I should be outside playing, getting fresh air and sunshine, I work best under pressure, and there'll be lots of pressure if I wait till tomorrow, I should start writing now."

Should I mention that I've got a paper due on Wednesday? ;}

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:45 PM

Ian and I just watched our DVD of Singin' in the rain, after which I lit candles and Ian put a beautiful looking Cornish game hen in the oven for our dinner tonight.

But, given the movie mood, I couldn't help singing like Debbie Reynolds:

Good Shabbos! Good Shabbos!
We've worked the whole week through!
Good Shabbos! Good Shabbos to you!

Have a good weekend, everyone...

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:10 PM

An amusing quote:

For more quotes that I've found pithy, insightful or amusing, take a look at my Quotations page.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:20 AM

On Colleen Doran's recommendation, I sought out Emma Bull's novel, War for the oaks.

Wow.

It's so good, I can hardly conceive of words to describe how marvelous I found it. Exquisite comes to mind. Captivating. Achingly beautiful.

I was only a few chapters into it when I realized that it was probably one of the best new books I've read this year, and given how many books I've read this year (140), that's a high compliment.

I wanted to linger and savor each passage and scene and yet I also felt driven to find out what happened next. I found myself both eagerly anticipating the story's climax and dreading the thought of actually reaching the final page and having to leave the world.

As I said before: Wow.

Needless to say, I highly recommend it.

Added 11 AM:

PS: Members of my former gaming group should be glad that I only discovered this book after I created and played Goodfellow, because in this book I've just found yet another reflection of what I was trying to do with his character. Had I read this book earlier, it would've definitely impacted how I played him. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Wow. I just realized that it was exactly one year ago tonight that I first played Goodfellow before the group, although I had the inspiration well over a year before that. In a perverse sense, today is one of Goodfellow's birthdays (his others being in-character dates). He's officially one year old, and what a year it's been. Given the way his character has sometimes driven (ridden?) me almost to the point of possession, he's certainly been a demanding child. At any rate, I feel that I should... not celebrate it, but at least acknowledge the anniversary with some honor or salute. So, <respectful gesture> to you, Goodfellow. And, for those who are confused by this paragraph, maybe someday I'll be capable of actually writing down his story, but not yet. [Maybe next NaNoWriMo.]

Anyway, on that chilly note, Happy Halloween, everyone!

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:25 PM

Alas, I still haven't fully recovered from my cold. Mostly I'm left with a tickle in the back of the throat that keeps erupting into a dry cough. And last night, I simply couldn't fall sleep, so I was a bit vague in class today.

Class was interesting; we talked about the promise and expectations around distance learning, from the overblown hype of Western Governors University to the interesting realities of MIT Open Courseware and the results of a recent Pew report on college students' computer behavior.

I also just found the neatest website -- a Harvard survey on regional dialects. To see a nifty regional split, take a look at this map of people's generic term for carbonated beverages. Meanwhile, I just got hooked on a new (to me) online comic, Something Positive. And, there's a big elephant in my living room that I'm not writing publicly about right now (no, not Boopsie!)

On his way home today, Ian bought cider from Wilson's farms (really good!) and several pumpkins. He carved the largest one and roasted the seeds. Nummy...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:30 AM

Went out for Chinese food last night. I had a huge bowl of steaming-hot soup to help me get over this cold. At the end of the meal, my fortune cookie said: "Your optimisim will see you through." Here's hoping!

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:55 PM

Well, even though the snow only fell for a couple hours, as usual snow is followed by cold.

As in sniffling and sneezing.

I finished my competitive intelligence class yesterday, but the last day was a bit of a trial to get through because I was clearly coming down with something. I got home from school about 3:30 on Saturday, went to bed and didn't wake up until late this morning.

I'm feeling a bit better now, but I'm still a bit out of it.

In other news, there's been some movement on the job front, but I don't want to say much about it for fear of jinxing it.

Computers and Society class remains incredibly interesting; we've been discussing the bursting of the dot.com bubble.

And that's really about it <ah-CHOO!> I'll post more later...