(no subject)

[bloodygranuaile]

Today has been a very good day, and I think this is because I did not have work, which meant I got to wake up naturally instead of what's been happening the past few days, which has been that my alarm will go off, and before I can even tell myself "Okay self, that means it's time to wake up" I'm off and having all sorts of weird tumultuous dreams. Sometimes before I've even closed my eyes again after opening them to find and turn off the alarm. And they've been really weird dreams, too; some of them are the sort that go through cycles of dreaming I've woken up and gotten out of bed, and then I wake up just enough to realize I'm still in bed before another dream closes in on me. Tuesday might have been the weirdest morning; the alarm rang at seven, and then I had a whole bunch of weird wrenching dreams in which the only people that showed up in them were my family and people I went to high school with. Not a single Clarkie, but a bunch of odd high school classmates that I wasn't even friends with and haven't thought about in years. One of the dreams involved my mom almost driving me and my brother and Leah and Pam off a cliff several times (she was doing a k-turn). For some reason, we were in a bus, and I was sitting way up front peering over the dashboard at the front wheels, which were little close together and actually in front of the bus, like on a shopping cart (apparently even in my dreams, my mother has almost superhuman driving-really-big-things skillz). Also had a dream about cleaning out my locker; it was my high school locker but most of the things in it were the exact binders and shit I had in fourth and fifth grade. Apparently, I have unresolved issues with high school? But that was just Tuesday. Wednesday's dreams were completely random and I remember them being much more upsetting, but I can't remember what they were. Also had a dream last night where I was arguing with Dad about cars; somehow in this dream there were like five or six different cars all being shuffled around, including a shiny red one that had been cut in half and some dude was just driving the front half of it around, and everyone was arguing about what cars (and... halves of cars) were going where and to whom and what was getting sold and what needed repairs, and I remember pitching a fit that I was taking ONE of them even if I had to duct-tape it back together to do so. (The anxiety in this dream is obvious: if my Kia doesn't get its transmission fixed by the 23rd, which is when I'm supposed to take it up here so I can go job-hunting like a real person and not be completely dependent on my friends to go grocery shopping, I will throw a temper tantrum like I haven't thrown since I was two. Or like Tim hasn't thrown since he was two; I was the well-behaved baby.)

None of these dreams have had any of my usual repeated things in them; the last time I had a teeth-dream was about a week ago (it was only moderately unpleasant as far as my teeth-dreams go). Also, none of them involve getting IMs/phone calls/other none-face-to-face messages from people saying they don't want to be friends anymore, but I guess that's 'cos I only have those dreams when I'm having major awkwardness with a friend.

Out in the real world, sort of, I am mostly preoccupied with finding spoilers and news stories related to Breaking Dawn and having amazingly cracktastic conversations with elladarcy over how even more amazingly cracktastic the book is (and about vampire watermelon sex), until I can actually read it. When this happens, I am going to lock myself in my room for seven and a half hours with a pint of Ben & Jerry's, ample provisions of scotch & soda and Sambuca, and the aforementioned pile of crackfic. I can't wait.

I found a bug in KoL yesterday. In typical me fashion, I didn't realize it was a bug, I just assumed that there was some perfectly legitimate reason why there were a lot more magical grenades and bandages and things than the dungeon logs said we'd made, and was curious to know what it was. So I asked my lovely knowledgeable clan leader and he basically said "umm, wtf" (except much more eloquently). Apparently, there's still some dumb trusting child in charge of some part of my brain that thinks that if something seems to not make sense, it's just because the grown-ups haven't told me why yet. >.> At any rate, Tony sent off an error report, so I have been fighting as many hobos as possible before the magically increasing grenades run out.

A review of The Monk will be forthcoming as soon as I finish it. Which will probably be like tomorrow. So far it's pretty cracked out; I'm adoring it.

Comments

[skygiants]

Oh man, is this Wacky Gothic Novel The Monk? Because if so HAHAHAHAHA AWESOME.

[agentclaudia.livejournal.com]

It certainly is!

I'm adoring it. I especially liked the bit that was like "Woe is me, I was supposed to elope with my girlfriend disguised as a ghost, and instead I eloped with an ACTUAL GHOST and it's ICKY, so now the WANDERING JEW has to SHOW UP OUT OF NOWHERE AND SAVE MY ASS." Almost choked on my tea several times during that one.

[skygiants]

I KNOW IT IS SO HILARIOUS.

And then how at the end, when his little squire-person tries to show him this poem he's written, he's like "I tried poetry once . . . it had VERY UNFORTUNATE CONSEQUENCES. Also it was terrible." *CRIES*

[indigochild111.livejournal.com]

I have weird, cracked-out dreams a lot. Most of the time they are unpleasant and leave me feeling disconcerted when I wake up. Sometimes they are wonderful..and other times they're just weird and funny (after I wake up and realize that it was just a dream). I think that people with over-active imaginations are typically the ones with the really vivid, crack-infested dreams. Or people who kind of..daydream/live their lives inside their head a little. Or maybe I'm just trying to justify why I have crack-filled dreams when I don't actually do crack. Could be a combination of all of these.

I need a book (even though I'm currently in the middle of two). I need a book of Harry Potter involvement level. Any suggestions?

[agentclaudia.livejournal.com]

My immediate suggestion would be "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, because I just bought it and it makes me happy. I'm not quite sure how to compare it to HP... it's a lot sillier, for starters. But it's British and it draws on a lot of old mythology, since it's about the Apocalypse. And any other works by either of the authors are definitely worth checking out. (I would specifically recommend getting addicted to Discworld, because it will keep you occupied for years. There's like 35 books and they never start sucking. If anything, the first few are weakest.)

Most of the other YA fantasy series stuff I read is either (a) flat-out bad or (b) really awesome, but the awesomeness derives from either comedy or Ass-Kicking Heroines, and are generally less dark and epic, so I generally think of them as being of the genre "Adventure Fiction for Twelve-Year-Old Girls," which is not quite where HP is. Although if you like adventure fiction for twelve-year-old girls, Tamora Pierce's three Tortall Quartets have been favorites of mine for ages (the first one is the "Song of the Lioness" quartet, girl disguises herself as boy to become a knight, saves the world, etc.). Also with the cross-dressing trope, at least in the first book, is the "Bloody Jack" series by L.A. Meyer, a series of improbable adventures by a former London street rat in which she joins the navy and becomes a pirate captain and rescues her entire school from slavers and all sorts of swashbuckly shit.

For slightly less ridiculous fantasy, Garth Nix' "Abhorsen" trilogy ("Sabriel," "Lirael," "Abhorsen") is pretty good. I only read it once; I should probably read it again, but it's about necromancers, and the world-building (and underworld-building) is very good and not quite like anything else I've read.

I would also like to take this opportunity to plug a little-known but very good fairy story called "Fairies of Dreamdark: Blackbringer" by Laini Taylor. It's going to be a series but right now there's just the one.

I don't know if any of this is quite what you're looking for? If it's not, tell me more and I'll look through my library.