doing something about it
Oct. 13th, 2004 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7I decided that sitting around the house would only lead to brooding, so after taking a short, unintentional nap huddled in a little ball on my bed (if one is going to weep pitifully, one should do so in a comfortable position), I got up and decided to Take Care Of Stuff.
So i got my absentee ballot appication sorted out (didn't miss the deadline yet, yay! but spent an hour looking for where the envelopes got unpacked to, boo!). I unearthed and paid the gas bill. (Two days late. Shoot me.) And I took care of cancelling my car's insurance, so that's sorted.
I also found the nearest branch of the Buffalo / Erie Co. Public Library, found a map of where it was, and walked to it.
It took a little under a half an hour each way, and I looked at all the silly Halloween decorations in the quaint little town along the way. Lots of really tacky stuff. Tonawanda/Kenmore is tacky that way. Some nice houses-- I'd say much of the neighborhood near the library was built in the 30s, with a lot of postwar filling-in of gaps. My neighborhood is almost entirely postwar, though my house is exceptionally early in the postwar period. Not very interesting, architecturally. But Kenmore's nice. And there were a lot of children playing, and the Kenmore West football team (I think JV or even freshmen-- many of their voices hadn't even broken yet) was doing sprints right toward the fence where I was walking, and I couldn't help but laugh at their earnestness. Such cute little boys. Wouldn't think so if they were making all that noise right outside my front door (as the St. Joe's team does, bleah), but it was cute in someone else's neighborhood.
I got myself a library card, though not without convincing the librarian I was a total idiot. "I need a library card. Can I do that here?" The woman looked down at the stack of library card applications right in front of me, looked back up at me, and said, "Er, how old are you?"
"Twenty-five," I said with a laugh, "though one would hope an adult were smarter than this."
So I borrowed six books, all different kinds of novels. I'm sort of stalled in writing my novel, and I thought perhaps reading some published ones might put me back into touch with the structure of a novel. It's been a while since I did any reading.
With that in mind, I borrowed from a variety of genres. One mystery, one historical fiction, one really crappy-looking pulp romance, one historical-fiction-mystery, one pseudo-historical fantasy, and one outright fantasy. Only two of the books are actually very interesting to me-- one by Hillerman, whose Navajo mysteries I have loved since I was about eleven, and one (of course) by O'Brien. I also got one by Neil Gaiman, though i'd never heard of the book before.
Me, I don't read much, which is why I concentrated on writing instead of literature in college. I prefer to write. I prefer to write without anyone else's influence, which is why I tend not to read.
Also, i read like an alcoholic drinks. I cannot put a book down, and once i have begun reading I tend to want more. I will re-read a book several times if no more are available. I get sneaky, especially with series like the Aubrey/Maturin ones or, worse, whassname's Sharpe series-- staying up late and stealing the one Dad's currently reading off his desk so I can read it overnight and slip it back onto the desk before he wakes up in the morning, so I can skip ahead of him in the series. Things like that. I am a shameless stealer of books that way. And I sometimes read so fast, just to find out what happens next, that I miss things. And I cannot put the bottle away while there's some left in it. ...
Anyhow. Indulging an addiction like this is probably harmless once in a while. i'll run through all of these, if they're any good at all (it takes a lot to get me to not finish a book), and then I'll start requesting titles, because that little branch library has almost nothing in it. Bah.
Now, the question: Should I start with one I really want to read, or should I make myself read the shitty, lavender-colored romance paperback about the girl who wants to teach her arranged-marriage-of-convenience, dark-brooding-nobleman husband-wth-a-past to love again?
Meh, it was a shitty day. I'm cracking open the O'Brien. See you all in six hours.
So i got my absentee ballot appication sorted out (didn't miss the deadline yet, yay! but spent an hour looking for where the envelopes got unpacked to, boo!). I unearthed and paid the gas bill. (Two days late. Shoot me.) And I took care of cancelling my car's insurance, so that's sorted.
I also found the nearest branch of the Buffalo / Erie Co. Public Library, found a map of where it was, and walked to it.
It took a little under a half an hour each way, and I looked at all the silly Halloween decorations in the quaint little town along the way. Lots of really tacky stuff. Tonawanda/Kenmore is tacky that way. Some nice houses-- I'd say much of the neighborhood near the library was built in the 30s, with a lot of postwar filling-in of gaps. My neighborhood is almost entirely postwar, though my house is exceptionally early in the postwar period. Not very interesting, architecturally. But Kenmore's nice. And there were a lot of children playing, and the Kenmore West football team (I think JV or even freshmen-- many of their voices hadn't even broken yet) was doing sprints right toward the fence where I was walking, and I couldn't help but laugh at their earnestness. Such cute little boys. Wouldn't think so if they were making all that noise right outside my front door (as the St. Joe's team does, bleah), but it was cute in someone else's neighborhood.
I got myself a library card, though not without convincing the librarian I was a total idiot. "I need a library card. Can I do that here?" The woman looked down at the stack of library card applications right in front of me, looked back up at me, and said, "Er, how old are you?"
"Twenty-five," I said with a laugh, "though one would hope an adult were smarter than this."
So I borrowed six books, all different kinds of novels. I'm sort of stalled in writing my novel, and I thought perhaps reading some published ones might put me back into touch with the structure of a novel. It's been a while since I did any reading.
With that in mind, I borrowed from a variety of genres. One mystery, one historical fiction, one really crappy-looking pulp romance, one historical-fiction-mystery, one pseudo-historical fantasy, and one outright fantasy. Only two of the books are actually very interesting to me-- one by Hillerman, whose Navajo mysteries I have loved since I was about eleven, and one (of course) by O'Brien. I also got one by Neil Gaiman, though i'd never heard of the book before.
Me, I don't read much, which is why I concentrated on writing instead of literature in college. I prefer to write. I prefer to write without anyone else's influence, which is why I tend not to read.
Also, i read like an alcoholic drinks. I cannot put a book down, and once i have begun reading I tend to want more. I will re-read a book several times if no more are available. I get sneaky, especially with series like the Aubrey/Maturin ones or, worse, whassname's Sharpe series-- staying up late and stealing the one Dad's currently reading off his desk so I can read it overnight and slip it back onto the desk before he wakes up in the morning, so I can skip ahead of him in the series. Things like that. I am a shameless stealer of books that way. And I sometimes read so fast, just to find out what happens next, that I miss things. And I cannot put the bottle away while there's some left in it. ...
Anyhow. Indulging an addiction like this is probably harmless once in a while. i'll run through all of these, if they're any good at all (it takes a lot to get me to not finish a book), and then I'll start requesting titles, because that little branch library has almost nothing in it. Bah.
Now, the question: Should I start with one I really want to read, or should I make myself read the shitty, lavender-colored romance paperback about the girl who wants to teach her arranged-marriage-of-convenience, dark-brooding-nobleman husband-wth-a-past to love again?
Meh, it was a shitty day. I'm cracking open the O'Brien. See you all in six hours.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 01:38 am (UTC)I've only ever read his Sandman series, which entirely changed the way I look at graphic novels.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 02:13 am (UTC)