...I spend entirely too much time listening to what other people say. It is /beyond/ useless to worry about what I'm doing before I've even done it. That said, I love my friends and my family and my home, and it's good to know that I don't have to take things so seriously. In theory, anyway, because we all know how my brain likes to do business with reality. XD

Now, about this new Anne McCaffrey book, Dragon's Kin. It's co-written with her son, but I have to wonder just how much of it she wrote at /all/, because as much as her writing's been headed downhill recently this was still a whole new kind of strange. There was even a flat-out mistake, in the characters referring to dolphins as dolphins, not shipfish (because this is most obviously not set after All the Weyrs of Pern!). And where was the dating of the Passes and the Intervals that begins every chapter, hmm? It felt like the story was deliberately suspended in a nebulous Random Interval, which would have been fine, except that it seemed to suffer for it, with all the muddled references to general knowledge and history that came off as barely-credible. The entire affair of being completely ignorant of watchwhers, in particular, struck me as just shy of complete bullshit from page one. Yes, they're always dismissed offhand as being reject dragons, but that doesn't mean that in nearly a thousand years of coexistence with bonded humans NOBODY has managed to pass on even the tiniest bit of distilled lore concerning their behavior and care. That's just silly. This book could have, maybe even should have, been twice as long and much less condescending-- as it stands, however, it was an easy and not unpleasant read, but I felt like it belonged on the juvenile fiction shelves, next to Dragonsong and its sequels. Which I actually want to read very much right now, because there was a distinct lack of dragonrider action in Dragon's Kin and I missed them terribly. McCaffrey's characters were always so entertaining; I loved best the parts where all the most influential and/or flammable of the personalities got together and had a good shouting match. There was less of that and more of the sappy, this time around. Everyone was, dare I say it, too polite and easygoing and understanding. (Unlike Mercedes Lackey's books, for instance, where half the cast is just too evil to be believable for long.) Although, to be fair, if her son did have the lion's share of the book then it could just be that he's new to the whole business of novel-writing and hopefully he will improve with practice. Even so, where in all of this was a good sensible editor's influence?

My little quibble with Memoirs of a Geisha seems to have arisen from ignorance (or forgetfulness)-- Mineko Iwasaki was actually one of Golden's major sources of direct info when he wrote the book. It's been five years or more since I read the novel, so I really should revisit it soon, but in any case Iwasaki's autobiography was impossible to put down. Fascinating and entertaining, and frighteningly well-organized. It made me miss Kyoto something awful-- even more, it made me wish I knew more artists and intellectuals. Heh. And Hokkaido Highway Blues was a lot of fun to read; it's actually a book I could read more than once, which is unusual where travelogues (or any first-person nonfiction narratives) are concerned. I was sorry it ended where it did, however. It felt like a cop-out of sorts.

Rene and I went down to Charlotte last Wednesday, to see her boyfriend and his friend who was visiting. It was a wonderful mini-vacation; for nearly 24 hours I didn't think about the rest of the world at all, and that's the best kind of stress-free /ever/. We went to the Mint Museum and saw the Jon Kuhn exhibit, which was infreakingcredible. A whole room full of sparkly! What's not to love? Friday Dad and I went to see Secret Window, and Sephie came with. Johnny Depp was amazing, the plot was less so, but it was still good. Watching loads of back-to-back Kim Possible eps at Sephie's house was best of all, though. Right now I can't think of a single cartoon, Japanese or otherwise, that I love more than Kim Possible. It makes the world a better place.

Which reminds me, Samurai Jack Episode 39 blew my mind-- not because it was especially creative, although it did pay fantastic homage to old-school adventure shows, right down to the cut shots and the cheesy obstacles-- but because Jigen was in it. Or rather, a version of Jigen with a dash of Lupin III, only in a white suit and hat, with red hair and a trick briefcase. It made my weekend. I'm going to end up buying Lupin III manga in English just because Goemon and Jigen are showing up more often, and it's driving me crazy. I am madly in love with them both, or at least I must be because I'm contemplating spending ten bucks on a book full of Monkey Punch's scribbly tortured drawings.

I think once I get grad school sorted out, or at least some kind of animation-related job, it'll be time to put down some roots, if only so I can indulge my book-fetish. I was in Malaprop's with Sephie on Saturday, a gorgeous spring day with blue mountains and gold sky and the streets smelling like incense and *cough* other things, and the huge stacks of books that I didn't have time or money to read were mocking me. There was a beautiful book of photography on Tibet that sucked me in, and reminded me of all the reading I meant to do on Buddhism and Tibetan history... poor timing, indeed. I'll have to see what I can find, a few weeks down the road. If nothing else, I'm grateful because it gave me some good ideas for major projects and themes, which I have sorely needed. And that is, in turn, an even more compelling reason to do the research.

Sunday there was church, and a blessedly lazy afternoon of reading. Spring is finally here! The amaryllis in the dining room has four gigantic red-and-white blossoms and more about to open; I'm afraid it will start to lean over if it gets any more blooms. It looks spectacular.

I have way too much to do, I have to stop there. I feel like I need to actually focus more on my immediate surroundings, get things done and re-orient my imagination... and stop agonizing over the distant future DAMMIT. Art is better. Art is all I need to worry about. It's a fundamental truth... is that why it's so hard to remember?

ED wandered off @ 08:45 p.m.

__________________________________________________________________________