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The baby likes to sleep on top of me, which is bad when I need to sleep, but great if I want to flop on a couch and read. Consequently, I managed to get through the rest of In Fury Born, the David Weber "blow more things up!" book... that was a great read. It's been a while since I read a David Weber stand-alone. Then I went hunting (again) for my copy of Inda and couldn't find it. It's at the hospital, I'm sure... Bah. I'm going to have to buy it again. Ah well. More royalties for ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) sartorias! Speaking of which, sartorias, I don't know if you've seen it but Orson Scott Card reviewed the sequel and loved it. :) Anyway, since I might be doing this for a while, now's a great time to give me book recommendations... preferably fiction, since my nonfiction queue is full. I'm having fun with the "marines blowing things up" theme, future or contemporary settings, so if you've ready any good military fiction lately tell me about it. (Must be all the girl-ions from baby care... when I stop moving, I don't want to think about more girly things, I want to watch people shoot armored installations with large weapons). Several of you have sent me magic coffee money. I <3 you. That money is paying for my niece to babysit so I can get more than an hour's sleep in a row. I actually have the mental energy to draw and write... and the physical energy is important, too. I'm back to work on the last of the Aphorisms, for instance. I want to set up my painting supplies again and get back to work...! Honestly, the people who work full-time out of the house while taking care of a baby? I don't know how they do it. *shaking head*Life is good. :) Stardancer Home.Tags: reviews
Current Mood: tired but perky
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 After I was a color pencil artist and before I was a watercolor artist, I was a marker artist. That was in the early part of the 2000s or so. At the time, the Trias reigned supreme and you paid for them accordingly; I couldn't afford the full set, but I got what I could and supplemented them with the cheaper and less satisfying Prismacolors (original generation). I got quite a bit of mileage out of those markers before elusivetiger bought me my watercolors and ended that era decisively. So the Copic craze started up long after I'd moved on from markers as a medium. I didn't really think about them again until recently, because after a while even someone as single-minded as I am can get the message if enough people rave about how incredible a particular art supply is. After some bleary-eyed confusion and a lot of review-reading, I decided that these markers might represent some great advance in marker technology or something and that I should try them. I picked out one of the sets and a few singletons in the Sketch line and ordered them to see what they were about.
 In short review, then: Copic markers are... markers.
I've heard that they're incredibly vibrant. I don't find them more or less vibrant that the new generation Prismacolors (which are amazing) or even the old generation Trias.
I've heard they're incredibly easy to blend because they remain wet longer. I don't find that they stay any wetter any longer than any other markers (and as always, the paper makes a big difference in this; more than the markers).
I've heard they have extra special tips and attachments. Tria has had replaceable nibs in various sizes/shapes, airbrush attachments and refillable barrels since before I used them back in the beginning of the decade.
I've heard they have a broad color range: 310 colors available. Tria had 293 in their original system (they're working on their next generation set right now from what I understand). Prismacolor has around half that range, though you get the benefit of their synergy with the color pencils. This is the one area where I suppose there's some added value, but I'm not sure it's worth the $1 more per marker.
I've heard that the color on their barrel is actually equivalent to the color you get from the ink. This seems a peculiar thing to get excited about, as it's rare in any medium (my gouaches don't exactly resemble the colors on their tubes either). Even so, I havent found it to be true.
I have been trying very hard, in short, to figure out what it is about these markers that inspires such excitement. I have to conclude it's a subjective thing... either that, or it has something to do with the manga craze, and like other Japanese things people just assume they're better. (Yes, I know that's harsh, but maybe you haven't run into these people yet. Trust me, they exist.) In the end, there's only one advance in marker technology that could make me pay the Copic cost-per-marker: if someone figured out how to markedly improve their lightfastness. Since I haven't heard or seen that Copics are any less fugitive than their competitors, they don't seem worth the premium. So: they're good markers. They have nice barrels. They're effective, have many colors and are fun to use. But they don't walk on water, contrary to what you might read. If you're shopping for markers as a medium, I'd encourage you to give equal time and attention to the Prismacolor and Tria lines, which are cheaper and might do for you just as well. My dog, as an aside, sat under the table at my feet during the making of this review. I present her here because... well, cute.
Stardancer Home.Tags: art, reviews
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I have just tossed Book #5 on the sell-back pile. I didn't even get forty pages into this one. I never thought I'd say this, but... there is such a thing as a bad clone of a good book. Usually I like variations on a theme, but the key is... they have to be variations. They can't be obvious attempts at copies. Look, I know Anita Blake did great and Harry Dresden is hot, and everyone thought Phedre was sexy. But can we at least change the books that are trying to capitalize on their success a wee tiny bit? Do they all have to be written in First Person Gutsy? Do they all have to have the same kind of romantic problems as the originals? God above, you could even just change the gender of the protagonist and it would be more interesting. 'Inspired by' is one thing. 'Attempting to hit the formula' is just... *covers face* God, I am so disappointed. When someone said, "I'm trying to buy books like Kushiel's Dart, so give me fantasy with a female courtesan," I sent in science fiction with a male ambassador. No wonder no one buys my work. Stardancer Home.Tags: reviews
Current Mood: sigh
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Before I write about any of the topics you suggested yesterday, I want to pause and say "Hooray!" over some books that haven't made me want to throw things: Dauntless and Fearless by Jack Campbell. For those of you who like crunchy military science fiction, this is great stuff. In particular, if you're sick of military SF that starts out with a normal person and turns him into a superhero with alarming casualty rates, this series goes at it backwards, starting with someone who's considered a hero and has to work hard to have people treat him like a fallible human being. Awesome stuff, fun, some math, lots of tactics, some intrigue, and believable, likeable characters. I haven't had this much fun in a space war in a long time. Also, I really like the author, who I've met in person, and I'd love it if he made more money. He's retired from the Navy, so the books have that nice ring of authenticity. :) Anyway, here's his website, which has excerpts so you can see if you like it. Pick it up, it's great entertainment. Stardancer Home.Tags: reviews
Current Music: U2 - Stateless
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susanspunsugar tagged me for a meme and it's about books! So I figure this is a goodness. I also feel special now. No one tags me for memes. |) 1. One book that changed your life:Only one? Then I'd have to say Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. I like some of her other works much better, but The Fountainhead's effect on me as an artist was staggering, with its emphasis on what it means to be an artist. It came at the exact right time in my life: I was in the middle of my Fine Arts degree and fighting a titanic philosophical battle with my professors and peers. I was beginning to wonder if I was insane for being so intransigent, particularly since the defining art movement at the time was away from what my professors sneeringly called "the romantic ideal of the single genius artist" and toward collaborative work. While not all artists can or perhaps even should be as polar as Howard Roark, I am far more like him than I'll ever be like some cheerful collaborative post-modernist... and when I was struggling to keep my spirit alive in the midst of some truly crushing critique and discussion, Ayn Rand kept me from giving in. 2. One book I've read more than once?I think I've read a good half of the books I've bought more than once. The other half I sold to used stores. If it's any good, I come back to it again and again for pleasure. But, to keep to the question I'll say that I'm currently rereading the Anne of Green Gables novels by L.M. Montgomery, because I am only just realizing how how great an influence they had on me as a person and as a writer. 3. One book you would want on a desert island. I would take Tolkien, because I love the travelogue-feeling of The Lord of the Rings, and it would make me feel as if I were in more interesting places than a desert island. 4. One book that made you laugh. I have to admit, a lot of the early Star Trek books were written with a great sense of humor--tender humor, that neither mocks people nor embarrasses them unduly, the best kind--and they make me giggle. 5. One book that made you cry.Not cry, but worse in terms of falling into bleak depression and then extremes of anger, and that would be Douglas Adams's last book in the Hitchhiker's series. It took me a colossal effort to feel anything for those characters since I'm not a fan of absurdity as humor, but I forced myself to keep going because everyone insisted I must read them. Finally I discovered I could have sympathy for them because they were being messed with so much by their author. Then I discovered that the author had no problem messing with readers, either. Authors [insert rude word here] with me make me very very angry. They break The Contract. A lot of my moral code is tied up in Art--you do not want to get on the wrong side of my Artist's Code. 6. One book you wish had been written.Not had-been, but finished writing certainly: Elizabeth Barrette is working on a wonderful, romantic, brightly colored, sense-dense and splendiferous fantasy that I desperately want to see finished and published so I can read it and pet it. I love the cultures, the language and all the characters. In the mean-time, I content myself with her poetry (one of her poems was recently nominated for the Rhysling!), and you can also, by checking out this link. 7. One book you wish had never been written.I'm afraid when I was in my early teens my sister left her copy of American Psycho in my grandmother's family bathroom. Rapacious reader that I was, I said, "Oh, hey, book I haven't read!" and picked it up; polite reader that I was, I didn't want to lose her place, so I checked to see where she'd left off before flipping forward. It was open to a scene so graphic and so heinous that I almost used the bathroom to relieve myself of my grandmother's excellent cake. I don't often think that books shouldn't be written, but I am not glad I went anywhere near that book. 8. One book you are currently reading.A couple right now: Lost Languages: The Enigma of Undecipherable Scripts, by Andrew Robinson; and Fibromyalgia & Chronic Myofascial Pain: A Survival Guide, Second Edition, by Devin Starlanyl and Mary Ellen Copeland. The former is a very readable discussion of scripts that have been deciphered (like heiroglyphics) and those that haven't, which appeals to my inner linguistics geek... the latter is probably obvious. I haven't found any useful fiction to read in paperback lately (recommend some new things?), which is why I'm re-reading the Anne of Green Gables books. 9. One book you've been meaning to read.I have a list of these, and try to get to several every year. On top of my pile right now is Dante, but I admit I've had to come to a brief halt on that one because it was depressing to discover he'd consigned lovers to Hell. And now I am supposed to tag ten people. Ooh! Hmm. I choose... shadesong, dnellin, aureth, puffbird, denali_kat, sythyry (likely to result in interesting fictions themselves!), eisenkreis, maggock, moonwolf and elusivetiger. Stardancer Home.Tags: reviews, writing
Current Mood:  sleepy
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A while back (a long while) I observed Del Rey getting into the manga business with only the faintest sense of dismay: business is business, and while American graphic novels never took off, manga had the magic and the magic was money. If it kept Del Rey solvent to continue publishing fiction, I figured there was some good in it... even as I watched the shelves that used to be devoted to SF/F empty to make room for more and more of them. I was looking through these shelves recently, more out of a Twilight Zone sense of my world changing while I wasn't looking than because I was seeking anything in particular, when I noticed one of the books was backwards: the cover was on the American side of the book, not the Japanese side. So I picked it up and flipped through it and discovered it was a novel. No pictures at all. Fluke, I thought, and moved on. But another day, I found another of these manga-shaped (and priced) novels in the normal SF/F section. And then another one. So far they're all by Japanese authors, translated, and relating to a specific series already existent, from what I can tell. I found it increasingly bizarre, however... and as always, in an attempt to understand the trends that shape the industry I'm trying to break into, I decided to bring one of them home. I picked a random one, since I don't know anything about any of the series, and ended up with Del Rey's The Kouga Ninja Scrolls, by Futaro Yamada, a historical fantasy set in the late days of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Now... the truly incongruous thing is that I'm currently re-reading Shogun and Gai-Jin, by James Clavell. Which also seem to be set along the same period. Except of course Clavell is writing straight historical fiction... no ninjas with semi-sentient ropes made of maiden's hair. But seeing the historical characters treated so radically differently is messing with my brain entirely...! Stardancer Home.Tags: reviews, writing
Current Location: flopped
Current Mood: o_O
Current Music: Glen Campbell - Wichita Lineman
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Since I'm spending a lot of time laid out lately, I've been reading a lot. Last weekend, I ate two completely different books, one SF and one fantasy... and somehow, in a bizarre coincidence, both of them involved romantic threesomes. The SF one handled it well; it had already set a precedent within the universe for a man marrying multiple wives, so when the main characters decided to go with it, it worked well. The fantasy book, on the other hand, did something very irritating. In the first half of the book, where they are setting up the romantic trio (male-male-female in this case), they made it clear that the male lead was having feelings for the second guy and feeling weird and uncomfortable about it. He spends a lot of time dithering about whether there's something wrong with him, and though he never says "What the heck BBQ am I turning freaking gay or something?" you can't have the male lead constantly thinking, "Why do I want to kiss him?" or "Why do I have these feelings for him?" without, you know, that being the message. So, fast forward to second half of the book, where our romantic triad has declared for one another and been together for a few months. We see the girl reaching out for Guy #1. We see the girl reaching out for Guy #2. But the male lead, while he sleeps with them in the same bed, never ever 1. kisses Guy #2, 2. thinks any more uncomfortable thoughts about Guy #2, and 3. is never portrayed as hanging out with Guy #2. In fact, at one point, Guy #2 calls the male lead his brother, which I assure you made for a completely unmentionable clash in my head (what is this, kin with privileges?). Now, I am totally okay with two guys who love the same girl not wanting to sleep with one another, and that's probably more realistic in most cases. But you can't spend the entire first half of the novel having the male lead freak out about having romantic feelings for another guy and then in the second half just have them drop it and become best buds. That's just... not keeping the authorial contract, as it were. So, yeah. Weird reading weekend. A little disappointed that the fantasy dropped the ball, but the SF made up for it by being fabulous and handling the issue well. Stardancer Home.Tags: reviews, writing
Current Location: cube of doom
Current Mood: hmph
Current Music: Heather Alexander - Wanderlust
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As promised, here were some of the books I enjoyed last year. For the first time, after years of tuftears thrusting her books at me, I read Lois McMaster Bujold, and yes, yes, Lynx, you were right, I should have read her ages ago. I enjoy her SF more than her fantasy, but she writes both engagingly... and she's one of the only authors I can think of off the top of my head who writes a character who thinks the same way I do about children: that part of romance is choosing worthy of your genes, and bearing them many babies. This makes me realize that there's a distinct anti-family trend running through SF... such a | | |
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