Category: Books

Never Leave a Meeting Early

Never leave a meeting early when they are holding elections.

This coming weekend, the science fiction club to which Jack and I belong are sponsoring a science fiction convention called “COSine”:http://www.rialto.org/cosine/ here in Colorado Springs. Friday night, I attended the last COSine meeting before the con, but left before the business meeting of the club itself, which was holding annual meetings.

I was elected secretary of the club. I thought this was curious since I rarely attend more than one or two meetings a year. Jack explains that the plan is for someone to take minutes, which I will then put on the web. I actually had volunteered to maintain the club’s website.

I am reminded of WSFA in DC which was notorious for years for electing people as secretary and then never seeing them for the duration of their term. I think I broke this trend the year they elected me secretary.

Reading as a child

Epersonae’s emergency weblog entry reminds me of my own bemusement when I used to see those library programs enticing children to read ten books in the summer. I was lucky if I could make ten books last me a week. The high point of my week during the summers was when my mother would go to Safeway, and drop me off at the Gaithersburg library on the way. I can still visualize the layout of the old library, which was replaced by a much larger version after it burned down.

It was easier during the school year, when I volunteered in the library before school started so that I could make sure I had my two or three books to last me through the day. (Yes, I read them in classes. At the time, I didn’t realize that my teachers had to know I was doing it, but I don’t recall ever being reprimanded for it.)

Paladin of Souls

The only author I currently buy in hardcover, Lois McMaster Bujold, has a forthcoming book called Paladin of Souls, to be published on September 23. The first chapter has been published on line at Souls. Additional chapters will be added each week.

The Foundling

Occasionally, I get audiotaped novels at the library. I don’t really have a great time to listen to them. Even when I was working, my commute was short enough that it didn’t seem to be worth the hastle of putting in the tape. However, I do like to listen to them when I take my daily walks.

Right now, I am listening to Georgette Heyer’s The Foundling, read by Phyllida Nash for Chivers. I’ve read all of her commonly available books: most of them several times. I find that I actually prefer to listen to a story that I have read before. I am something of a speed reader, and the pace of the audioapes seems too slow if I don’t already know what is going to happen.

Phyllida Nash is a great reader. The best readers develop “voices” for each of the characters. Although a voice will occasionally not agree with my own interpretation, I usually can get used to it after a few chapters. I don’t think I have disagreed so far with any of Nash’s voices.

The Foundling has never been one of my top favorites, but I have found in listening to the Heyer books that sometimes even my less favorite of her books gain a new attraction when read out loud. Listening to The Foundling, I realize that my lack of enthusiasm for it is due to the initial chapters. The protagonist, a young man with a diffident personality who dislikes quarreling, is a doormat for his uncle and the other members of his household. Heyer’s skill is such that I feel sympathy for his plight rather than disdain for his lack of assertiveness. However, the bullying in the first chapters is too well drawn to be comfortably comic. Later, the novel turns into a picaresque comedy as the young man escapes his household and travels about on his own. I am looking forward to that part.

Based on trackback from Anita I corrected the publisher to Chivers from Chilton (also a publishing house, but not the right one.) 07-17-2003 06:29 am