ndrosen

I have seen a few seventeen year cicadas lately, and expect to see many more. In fact, I think I saw one dead one on the sidewalk a number of weeks ago; if so, he or she probably emerged too early.

I do remember the previous year of the cicada brood, when I went to Balticon to see, among others, the great Lois McMaster Bujold; my cycle of Bujold in Haiku was printed in the convention booklet. Ms. Bujold has said that her experience of the cicadas back then was part of the inspiration for the Sharing Knife series, because the cicadas got her thinking: what if the heroes can’t just slay the monster, or the evil overlord, and be done? What if new monsters keep emerging from the soil, so the monster slayers have to keep up their vigilance year after year, generation after generation, knowing that one failure could result in a monster consuming the whole world?

The cicadas should be credited for their contribution to literature, if nothing else.

Before heading to work this morning, I successfully downloaded Knife Children, a sequel to Lois McMaster Bujold’s Sharing Knife series, to my Kindle Fire. Then I dutifully went in to work, and now have other duties to delay my reading the new book.

Sometimes adulting stinks.

It's snowing today; I remember chatting with a friend yesterday. She warned me about the snow, and I said I should be used to snow, having grown up further north and at a higher altitude. She warned me, though, that drivers around here might not be so used to snow, so I should be careful of them. That was a good point.

I have finished listening to Shards of Honor on a set of tapes formerly owned by Meg Justus, may she rest in peace. I thought it well done; there were two participants, Carol Cowan and Michael Hanson of the Reader's Chair, but they managed to make more than two characters sound distinctive.

I just downloaded Lois McMaster Bujold's new novella, Penric's Fox. Sad to say, I have a job that cuts into my reading time, but I hope to settle down and read more than the first few pages soon.