6 things about me.

[seanan_mcguire]

And now, ladies and gentlemen...Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] is officially six days from release. That's less than a week! How am I supposed to get all my freaking out finished in less than a week? Since flailing around screaming that the sky is falling doesn't help with my countdown, here are six things you may not know about me.

6. I love snakes and spiders, have no fear of sharks, and tend to giggle hysterically when I'm on a plane and it hits a patch of turbulence that makes it feel like we're going to fall out of the sky. I am, however, morbidly terrified of pudding. This translates into a fear of any type of slug that isn't so ludicrously colored as to seem like a special effect.

5. I will not go into brackish water, because of the potential for leeches. Even if I am assured that there are no leeches in the entire country, I will not go into brackish water, because of the potential for leeches. Leeches are just not okay. Thank you, Stand By Me. In an attempt to conquer my fear, I kept a jar of leeches in my kitchen for a whole year. Those leeches were okay, because they were behind glass.

4. My collection of My Little Ponies is epic and vast, and contains almost all of the larger buildings from the original 1980s run of the toy line. Yes, including the Paradise Estate, which is roughly the size of a large card table. In that misty, far-off future where I actually have an office of my very own, it's going to wind up evenly divided between research material and plastic horses. Because that's just how I roll.

3. I grew up really, really, really poor, and I read really, really, really fast. These things combined mean that I grew up a dedicated re-reader, and will read books that I enjoy five, ten, or even twenty times. My count on The Stand is somewhere in the mid-fifties. The weirdest thing about my current bounty of available reading material is the lack of re-reading. I haven't read any of my favorites in over a year, and it's making me twitchy.

2. I have these long, elaborate, lucid dreams that seem entirely real when they're going on, even down to my needing to eat and use the bathroom in my sleep. They always end when someone tells me that I'm dreaming, and while they tend to be very realistic and grounded, they also tend to involve elements of "in a perfect world," like, you know, being published. Part of me spends every day afraid someone's going to tell me I'm dreaming.

1. My childhood idols were Vincent Price, Marilyn Munster, and Doctor Who. Considering that, and considering the way my life has turned out, I don't think I'm doing so bad. And I think they'd be proud of me.

Comments

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I've been pondering re-reading a few favorites where the next in that series has come out and it's been so long since I've read the last ones that I want a refresher. Some part of my brain had been thinking "but that would be WASTED TIME because there's all those NEW books waiting!" But I've decided that this thread gives me permission to go ahead and re-read those. Yay!

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

I tend to designate one re-reading month a year (usually February or March) to keep from getting that out-of-whack feeling. Sometimes I interleave rereads with new reads, particularly if the rereads are shorter books.

I tend to reread The Westing Game, The Last Unicorn and Ballet Shoes the most often, but I've also been known to reread longer things, like Brightness Falls From the Air and A Deepness in the Sky. IT is also on the reread list, to no-one's especial surprise.

[ladymurmur.livejournal.com]

The Westing Game is one of my constant rereads, as well. And now that the various honorary nieces & nephews are at an appropriate age, it has become one of my standard gifts. :-)

[filkferengi]

Based on your enthusiastic recommendation, I've put _Westing Game_ on hold at the library. How close is the movie?

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

I've never managed to see the film. I tend to either love or hate book adaptations, and I'm so close to The Westing Game that it would have to be a really good adaptation to win me over. On the other hand, I loved the BBC version of Ballet Shoes, but I was also exposed to it at a very early age.

[filkferengi]

I've got the more recent, Emma Watson version, but haven't seen it yet.

Have you read _Thursday's Child_? It was my first Streatfield.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

No, but I've been meaning to, that and The Whicharts, but I need to actually, y'know, obtain copies. :)

I enjoyed the Emma Watson version. I stumbled across it being played on a big screen TV in a Barnes & Noble with the sound turned off and recognized it by setting and plot because it was one of the theater sequences, and the hairstyles were right, though it turned out the girl I thought was Winifred was actually Petrova.

[trialia]

Hee. Indeed. I'm actually terrible about getting through new books because of all my re-reads. Somehow I started re-reading Rosemary and Rue AND The Fifth Elephant this morning - sort of simultaneously, one on paper and one in Aldiko for Android. But oh, my to-read pile is overwhelming!

(I hope you don't mind that I added you, btw. :) I actually sang a stripped-down version of Mal's Song at the DWcon open mic in '08 (unrecorded, I promise! *g*), and I had no idea you were on LJ until I saw Seanan mention you here. :))

[muddlewait.livejournal.com]

If a book's good, and I give it my full attention, I usually find that, if I've changed since I last read it, so has the book.

Books I read once are like interesting strangers or chance encounters. They may affect me deeply, and I may never forget them, but my relationships with them are fundamentally fragile, based on first impressions, drama, and exaggerations of memory. The books I re-read are the ones that get the chance to be family.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Okay that is my new favorite analogy ever. :)