Last Week
I had a nice spring break.
Monday’s meeting with my writing group went pretty well, although one of the girls didn’t have a piece ready and the other girl’s was a look into God and his therapist, which for whatever reason didn’t do much for me, though I think conceptually it was probably a good idea. They told me that my second scene for Tower of Nine was better than my first and suggested that I tweak it so that I start out on the second scene and give the important elements of the first scene in other ways, but I’m reluctant to do that because I don’t like the idea of a book starting on the note of a character waking up.
Before the meeting, I picked up David Weber’s new book, Storm from the Shadows, which was told from the perspective of Michele Henke, Honor Harrington (his main character in the series) ’s best friend and a close cousin of the Queen. I read it after the meeting, and it was pretty good. It begins at the battle in which she is captured and going through her release and stationing in a recently-acquired star system where she is poised to gain command of a fleet. The book was interesting, but for me, my main reaction was that Henke’s command style, which is good but in my opinion uninspired, is so very different from Honor’s, which makes her a much less engaging character. It was interesting to see the different situations across the Honorverse, but truthfully, Henke is not one of the more engaging characters of the series — the characters from the subseries based around Honor’s students (Shadow of Saganami), or around the newly independent Torch plant (Crown of Slaves), all have much more readable characters who are very sympathetic, and Henke, who I do like as a character, just wasn’t as good a perspective as some of the other side characters have been. Which makes me glad I checked it out from the library instead of buying it.
Although I am looking forward to the next book in the Honorverse, which Storm from the Shadows set up very nicely.
I think one of the things I really disliked about the latest Honorverse books, truthfully, is that it annoys me when I as a reader know that the characters are barking up the wrong tree, or are being duped. When I read a scene from the bad guy’s perspective and then the good guys fall for the trap, it just makes me want to skip stuff until there’s something that doesn’t fill me with dread and frustration to read, but rather inspiration and a good feeling about the characters’ cleverness.
St. Patrick’s day was fun, though I didn’t drink much. I watched the new Punisher movie at a friend of a friend’s place (it was so awful it doesn’t even bear explaining), then we went to the bar. Saw some people I haven’t seen in a long time and had a lovely conversation with the girlfriend of one of my oldest friends. I really like her, which is good. Around midnight a guy I went to high school with showed up, which was a little awkward for me - last year around this time, I puked in his car, and I haven’t seen him since… - but we got along alright, and at close we went back to my friend’s house because one of the guys was too drunk to drive home with any degree of safety, esp. since he didn’t live close by. I’d had one beer around 10pm and one around midnight, so by 2am I was pretty much fine, but I went to keep company and hang out.
I got home around 5am, so tired I didn’t make it up the steps and just decided to crash on the couch.
Wednesday and Thursday I pretty much… slept. Then Friday my friend and I went to this awesome Thai place that I saw on the Food Network. It’s called Thai Basil and the woman who runs it was in one of the throwdowns with Bobby Flay, over her Pad Thai. I hate that particular dish, but I’m a huge curry fan and it’s hard to find yellow curry chicken in Baltimore, and my friend likes Asian food. So we went there, then to justify the trip, we checked out the Smithsonian in DC.
We didn’t get there until around 3:30 (the original plan had been to go to the museums first and then eat dinner at Thai Basil) and we didn’t realize that the Smithsonians close at 5:30, which is the most ridiculous time to close down anything touristy in DC ever, because OH GOD THE TRAFFIC.
After that we went to see Duplicity, which, while decent, mostly reminded me of a weird mix of old-school Bond and Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
Oh, and I won first place for last week’s writing prompt over at the prose_challenge group.
Filed by Cally at March 22nd, 2009 under Tags: book, curry, dc, duplicity, movie, smithsonian, st. patty's day, thai, weber, writing, writing group