Friday, September 02, 2005
I like my new blogger template. I spent about an hour and a half tinkering with the HTML to get it to look how I wanted it and even though it's tedious, I found myself enthused about the task. I haven't tinkered with that intricate of web coding in over a year and I didn't realize how much I missed it. But anyways, the template is how I'm feeling right now: cool, crisp, tarty and refreshing. I do love tarty and citrusy things.
I'm in the middle of reading Diana Gabaldon's The Fiery Cross(I'm so bad, I am waiting for my hold on Drums of Autumn to reach my library but I saw TFC on sale in Wal Mart and if I buy a book, I am so going to read it) and just adore this series. And unlike most readers, Jamie isn't my favorite character. He was when I first read Outlander, but I HEART Fergus and Roger. I love those two male characters to death. Maybe because Jamie, who is the soul of honor, comes across as larger than life, impervious to failure, etc etc through Claire's eyes(aka Gabaldon's) that I long for the gritty "realness" of Fergus and Roger. Not to mention the fact that I find Fergus to be hilarious.
I also am halfway through with Teresa Medeiros' new one, After Midnight. I actually loathed her first two Avon releases, and the only reason why I picked this one up was because the blurb seemed at once funny, gothic and sexy. But really, After Midnight is a chore to read. Barring the fact that Medeiros' books have morphed from the gritty emotional reads of her early career into these...cute,fluffy,sunshine books, AM is reading like a paint by number Regency Historical. Have we the insta-martyr "oh-I'm-so-unattractive-which-is-why-I-am-an-eternal-spinster" heroine? The tortured, always dead-sexy hero with a secret? The built-in sequel bait of siblings? The so-called witty banter? The hero flustering the spinster into revealing her "hidden passions"? The heroine in a foreign place yet still runs around as though the world was made of kittens and butterflies? Check, check and check!!! I don't know whether I have the patience to finish this book, but I will, because I paid for it.
On another good read note, I finally got around to reading Judith Ivory's Sleeping Beauty. Delicious, sexy, emotional and just...tarty. I had avoided reading this book because I was afraid that if I read it, I'd inadvertantly "steal" from it as I was writing. But now, I was ready to read it, free of that fear and the past feelings of inadequcy, because I was content with the knowledge that I no longer had the pressure to live up to my admiration of Ivory/Cuevas. Everytime I picked up a book of hers, I finished it, entertained and full of admiration and wonder, but depressed because I knew I could never do anything half as good as it. But I'm free of that pressure due to my decision to write what I want. And during my brief hiatus' from the meaty Outlander series, I feel Beast tugging at me.
i can be. anything.
2.9.05
