My reading progress this month has been rather poor. I was stuck on The Raven Boys for three weeks because it took that long to catch my interest. Every time I tried to read a little, it made me sleepy, which is never a good sign. The characters developed slowly, and I guess I don’t identify with them much. In fact, I had trouble even liking most of them, though I suspect I’m intended to. Emotionally tormented rich kids might seem romantic to some people, but to me they’re just shitty people. There seem to be two, perhaps three, main characters. I reached a point where I could say what each character’s story goal is, but none of them are particularly urgent. This is the start of a series, and I’m undecided about whether to read the rest. By the end of the novel, there are several characters I could enjoy seeing in subsequent novels, but if the stories aren’t going to be any more compelling than this, maybe I’ll pass.
I managed to meet up with the science-fiction book club, and it was a pleasant discussion. This was due as much to meeting some new people as it was to the conversation. The book under discussion was Uprooted, which was quite good. (It was nominated for the Hugo award this year.) I look forward to the next meeting, discussing a Hugo award winner I had skipped, The Three-Body Problem.
I did not make the latest meeting of the writer’s group. I had a prior commitment, and after it got rescheduled, I had forgotten about the meeting. I’m a little disappointed about that.
I am also disappointed that I couldn’t make it to WorldCon this year. It was hosted in Kansas City this year, an easy drive from here. However, the timing of other things and my finances conspired against me. Who knows when I’ll get to go. The next one is in Helsinki. I’m sorry to see that the naughty puppies were up to their old tricks again this year, but mollified to know that they were even less successful than last year. If the Sad/Rabid Puppies don’t like the way the Hugo awards have been going, instead of trying to game the nomination/voting process, why don’t they just create their own award?
I shot some video with Ami Amore, which will become a belly dance boot camp training video. I think it went well. I have some editing ahead of me.
Speaking of video, I got some new toys, the most interesting is a Manfrotto MVM450A video monopod. It doesn’t really look like a monopod, since it has sort of a three-toed foot. It is a monopod equipped with a fluid tilt head and a fluid pan foot. It is a run-and-gun solution, most commonly used for weddings. I acquired it thinking I would be using it for interviews at conventions (but now it turns out finding such gigs will be more difficult than I thought). I also picked up a Sennheiser MD 46 for the same purpose.
