Komarr
Puppy: off Phrase of the day: "abundant year"
A quote from the column “Welcome Back, Duke: From the ashes of Sept. 11 arise the manly virtues”:
Once about 10 years ago there was a story–you might have read it in your local tabloid, or a supermarket tabloid like the National Enquirer–about an American man and woman who were on their honeymoon in Australia or New Zealand. They were swimming in the ocean, the water chest-high. From nowhere came a shark. The shark went straight for the woman, opened its jaws. Do you know what the man did? He punched the shark in the head. He punched it and punched it again. He did not do brilliant commentary on the shark, he did not share his sensitive feelings about the shark, he did not make wry observations about the shark, he punched the shark in the head. So the shark let go of his wife and went straight for him. And it killed him. The wife survived to tell the story of what her husband had done. He had tried to deck the shark. I told my friends: That’s what a wonderful man is, a man who will try to deck the shark. (Peggy Noonan, October 12, 2001)
I read, I write. I think I’m over the hump in Blue Mars, so if I’m feeling especially industrious this weekend I may have a review (informal, broggy and plausibly deniable) up by Monday. I’m trying to finish the neverending Mars trilogy before I read Memory, an LMB book that recently reappeared at the Copley branch of the Boston Public Library. I won’t hoard it for as long as the previous borrower. I hear that LMB just finished her next book, Diplomatic Immunity, but it won’t be out until May, and then only in hardcover–well beyond the budget of starving artists, more’s the pity.
If you’re asking who LMB is…what can I say? You haven’t lived? You haven’t read? I myself lived in ignorance of the execellence that is Lois McMaster Bujold until a few short months ago. I started with A Civil Campaign, which was not a good place to start but was the only LMB book in the local Brighton branch of the Boston Public Library. That’s just another sign of the wretched ignorance of LMB that pervades this, her native land.
Most of her books are about Miles Vorkosigan, a man who would try to deck the shark (not to mention succeed) and his family. My favorite LMB book is Komarr, although it seems to have received the least recognition. My favorite line: “It doesn’t hurt.” When I said Startide Rising was a perfect book and just mentioned Shards of Honor, that was only because I’ve come to assume perfection from LMB, and assume the worst about most other sf writers, even if they’ve gotten Nebulas for their efforts. You can find out all about LMB at The Bujold Nexus.
Yesterday during the freeshell slump I added the Brog to blogdex, but I haven’t had the time to check my logs for foreign activity. Though freeshell keeps GMT time, here in Boston it’s dinnertime, so I’m off…