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Jun. 21st, 2003 12:21 amPeople complain that their book list is months long. I would arrantly and arrogantly claim that I've got them beat - perfectly good books often have to wait _years_ - once I've purchased them, even! - to get read.
Just finished a cheezy mystery/suspense piece called Basket Case. Ten years ago I wouldn't have seen the slightest point in reading it. My tastes have changed. A romance, some good lines, a few slight twists, and I'm laughing cleanly, which I needed desperately. Heartlifting.
It's a strange progression which sends me from the deeps of fantasy and science fiction to looking towards reading John D. MacDonald - and I'm not talking The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything, either, though I love the story. I'm thinking of collecting the Travis McGee books.
Of course, I also need to actually get more than what, three? of the Grafton alphabet of novels. Those are fun, too.
Silly.
Having gotten started on 1996, and understood that it won't take more than 20 hours of mindless labor to import all of the weeklies, I've recognized that the translation is really the single most trivial element of all of this, and that, in fact, as expected, laying it out So It Doesn't Suck is the challenge which places this in the 'gonna take a year' category. Formats which are acceptable for emails are _wholly_ unreadable for something in novel format. The realization struck me as I was cleaning up the full-page, single-paragraph block about doing night landings on the Jeep carrier. Great story, but I'm wrestling with the balance of being able to read it and leaving it in Grandpa's own style. I can't change it, but it's hard to read. Ethical issues. So far the most I've done is correct obvious typos - transpositions and dropped characters which aren't idiomatic, just wrong.
God, but it's a ride to reread, though. I burst into tears at a long article he wrote about a seminar on heart attacks he went to. I laugh at his reference comparing his Cymbidia to guinea pigs. I want this to be ready, so everyone else can share, and yet I know it's far from completion.
I think things'll calm down after Sunday. There's a ride in itself, though - we'll be going to his funeral, the wake afterwards, and then (possibly) going all the way back to SLO to see Weird Al's Poodle Hat tour in the PAC.
Just finished a cheezy mystery/suspense piece called Basket Case. Ten years ago I wouldn't have seen the slightest point in reading it. My tastes have changed. A romance, some good lines, a few slight twists, and I'm laughing cleanly, which I needed desperately. Heartlifting.
It's a strange progression which sends me from the deeps of fantasy and science fiction to looking towards reading John D. MacDonald - and I'm not talking The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything, either, though I love the story. I'm thinking of collecting the Travis McGee books.
Of course, I also need to actually get more than what, three? of the Grafton alphabet of novels. Those are fun, too.
Silly.
Having gotten started on 1996, and understood that it won't take more than 20 hours of mindless labor to import all of the weeklies, I've recognized that the translation is really the single most trivial element of all of this, and that, in fact, as expected, laying it out So It Doesn't Suck is the challenge which places this in the 'gonna take a year' category. Formats which are acceptable for emails are _wholly_ unreadable for something in novel format. The realization struck me as I was cleaning up the full-page, single-paragraph block about doing night landings on the Jeep carrier. Great story, but I'm wrestling with the balance of being able to read it and leaving it in Grandpa's own style. I can't change it, but it's hard to read. Ethical issues. So far the most I've done is correct obvious typos - transpositions and dropped characters which aren't idiomatic, just wrong.
God, but it's a ride to reread, though. I burst into tears at a long article he wrote about a seminar on heart attacks he went to. I laugh at his reference comparing his Cymbidia to guinea pigs. I want this to be ready, so everyone else can share, and yet I know it's far from completion.
I think things'll calm down after Sunday. There's a ride in itself, though - we'll be going to his funeral, the wake afterwards, and then (possibly) going all the way back to SLO to see Weird Al's Poodle Hat tour in the PAC.
