It's international book week. The rules: Grab the closest book to you, turn to page 52, post the 5th sentence. Don't mention the title. Copy the rules as part of your post.

"Her dress rustled as a matter of course, but it was the sort of sound that was easily lost in the Quarter, beside the water most especially."

"Ganymede," by Cherie Priest.

I've gotten behind on the 30 things meme because I am TERRIBLE and a HORRIBLE PERSON oh my GOD. Also I've been doing some fiction writing/world building for something that I don't have a PLOT for but have a lot of BACKGROUND for so maybe I'll just illustrate it as like a dictionary/bestiary possibly with some short stories/vignettes I don't even know.

So now: 30 Things: 8-14

8) What is your favorite holiday?9) What is your favorite season?
Autumn. Definitely. Totally. The cool, crisp weather; the season change; the colorful leaves; the approach of winter and end of summer (hot! humid! ARGH NO); the comfort food; the ability to make soups and stews and want to eat them instead of wanting to die because it's hot; etc.

10) What are you afraid of?
Haha! Everything? No! I have Anxiety and so pretty much The Entire World scares me to some degree unless it is very very familiar and safe and even then sometimes I feel like the Hand Of God is reaching down to smash me into the ground. TOTALLY FUN, RIGHT? I am very hesitant to try new things, and I'm a little afraid that Niko is just as nervous cautious. That being said, I also have specific Phobias, and those mainly involve: heights (which yes makes riding an elevated train as my main source of getting-around TOTALLY A THRILL A MINUTE); needles; vomit. I think that's it.

11) Do you like trains?
I grew up in a tiny subdivision surrounded by corn and soybean fields, and forest preserve/wetland. It was pretty rural except for our 1 block or so of houses. Like, I didn't grow up on a farm, but I worked with horses one summer between 7th and 8th grade and there was corn and soybeans EVERYWHERE. It was fairly isolated! And sound traveled pretty far. At night, sometimes I'd lie in bed unable to get to sleep, and I'd hear the long low horn of passing high-speed freight train and imagine traveling anywhere, everywhere, escaping SOMEHOW and just getting OUT. The romance of trains has never left me, and I totally love trains and would really like to travel by long distance train more. I am so thrilled to live in a city that has such a great public transit system.

12) Do you like your name?
I used to hate my name. Haaaaaaaaaaaaate. It's spelled weird and is kind of harsh (buh and a hard "g" and a hard "d" at the end) and oh yeah, it totally rhymes with "frigid" hur hur hur I HAVE NOT HEARD THAT BEFORE NO YOU ARE VERY CLEVER THANKS SO MUCH. But the alternative was being named Myrna Louise which... I don't know. I try to be a rational person but I think with a name like that I would have turned out very different both mentally/emotionally and physically. MAGICAL THINKING WRT NAMES OK. I think I grew into it and I like it a lot now. (another option would have been Molly; that is the girl name my parents selected for my mom's other two pregnancies that produced boys. One of my best friends in high school was named Molly. It's a lovely name, but that would have been WEIRD.)

13) Do you have a pet or pets? What is your ideal pet?
I HAVE NOTHING TO LOVE ME UNCONDITIONALLY. No pets. I grew up with dogs and I really really miss having dogs. I would love to have a dog again. Preferably one that is house trained, obedient, never gets sick or hurt, and can feed and walk itself. Wait. No. Actually, yeah, I'd really for real love to get a dog again. I've thought about getting birds but then... it's unfair to keep a flying creature with a big roaming area in a little cage (and I don't want to clean bird poop off my couch/furniture, so no, I wouldn't let it out to fly about the house); I'm allergic to cats and don't want a box of poop in my house; Nesko is scared of lizards; I am not fond of mice/rats/rodents. I've thought about getting a hedgehog but don't think we can provide a warm enough environment for them, sadly. We tend to live in old, drafty buildings. In a few years, when Niko is older and we're more set financially, I want to adopt a rescue dog, though.

14) What TV shows are you currently watching?
We finally got a clear plastic cover for the push buttons on the tv, so we can once again watch TV without Niko turning the tv on/off and changing the channel. LOOK THERE ARE BUTTONS HOLY GOD THEY DO THINGS WHEN YOU TOUCH THEM OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. We're working our way through Ashes to Ashes a little more slowly than I'd like. Other than that, I don't watch much tv. PBS sometimes, especially travel shows and Antiques Road Show because I'm a boring nerd. I want to watch Undercovers but it's on the same night I tutor and Nesko gets home late so I miss it on tv, and then I forget to watch it on the internet. I caught an episode of Raising Hope which was pretty terrible.

6) What color are your eyes? Do you wear glasses or contact lenses? Do you wear colored lenses that change your eye color? Would you rather have a different eye color?

My eyes are a light grey/green color. They are light enough that they pick up and reflect color and light around me so look different depending on what I'm wearing, how bright it is, etc.

I do wear glasses. I'm very nearsighted and also have astigmatism and I really rely on them to, you know, function. I've tried contact lenses in the past but my eyes get really dry with them, and I have a lot of trouble getting them in/out.

I like my eye color just fine and if I were going to get tinted lenses they'd be red or reflective silver or something unearthly like that.

4) What is your ideal meal?

It's one eaten with family and friends who I love.

Food-wise it'd either be really great pizza and Mexican or Greek Coke followed by tiramisu, or else avgo lemano soup, saganaki, and the swordfish shish-ke-babs at Greek Islands. I don't normally like fish, but ho man, their swordfish is excellent. Baklava for dessert.

The Friday Five courtesy of thefridayfive:

1) What is your favorite mode of travel? (Car, train, plane, etc).

Oh man, I love trains so much. I have a serious THING for trains. My current temp job involves riding around Metra (long distance commuter) trains and counting passengers who get on/off at stations and it is SO EFFING COOL.

2) Where is the northernmost place you've traveled? The southernmost?

Northernmost is Toronto, southernmost is Florida Melbourne, Australia.

3) What is the last place you visited for the first time?

Nesko (my husband) and I drove to Dallas/Fort Worth during January about five years ago. Other than that I've been to some distant suburbs of Chicago (where I live) recently, but haven't had very long stopovers.

4) Of all the places you've traveled, which is your favorite?

Melbourne, Australia. Absolutely and definitely. I would love to go back. Maine was really nice, too.

5) Where would you most like to travel to next?

I have several places, actually! Within the US I'd like to visit friends in Boston,MA; Philly,PA; San Diego,CA; Seattle,WA; and Eugene, OR. Oh, and Fort Wayne,IN. Other than that, I'd love to return to Oz, visit New Zealand again, and travel through Montenegro which is the country my husband's family is from.

1) Where do you live?

I live in a ~~vintage~~ brick 2-flat in a cool neighborhood in Chicago. It's a 3br 1ba with washer and dryer in the unit, in the enclosed back porch. We have a sun room, too, and a fireplace that doesn't work but we're discussing 1) opening it back up or 2) getting a gas insert. My in-laws own the building, so we have leeway in Doing Things to the place, including painting. I adore our neighborhood and like the building a lot as well (although if I could, I'd add another bathroom and some more closets) although, being an old building, it has its issues. We have tentative plans to take out the central heat and get the radiators working again, and then redoing the kitchen. Eventually, we are going to gut this apartment because the walls are in bad shape. I'm looking forward to what this apartment will eventually look like... it will be a gem!

1. Grab a book near you.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet. Just pick up whatever is closest.

I had been cuffed across the back of the head, hard and more than once, for "looking" at my lady visitors. I kept my head down.

And was that pragmatism or broken pride?



--Corambis by Sarah Monette. I'm pulling quotes from it to make text icons, which is why it was handy.

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

Day 19 – Favorite book cover (bonus points for posting an image!)

The original cover toThe Changeover , by Margaret Mahy, is one that’s always grabbed me. Laura is not a conventionally attractive girl, nor is she entirely White. I mean, she’s not HIDEOUS, but it was clear in the text that she didn’t really fit in for a number of reasons. And here’s the book cover featuring her¹², and she looks as described, and she’s got olive skin and dark curly hair and looks kind of tired and what’s with that coin? That looks interesting. Hm, let me just pick this book up and huh! wow! Witches? Really?

Margaret Mahy… gosh. I read so much of her stuff when I was younger. She’s an excellent writer.

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

Day 17 – Favorite story or collection of stories (short stories, novellas, novelettes, etc.)

I really, really enjoyed Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and once we’re settled where we’re going to live permanently¹, and I have a bit of extra money, I’m going to start collecting all the volumes. They will require their own bookshelf. When I was younger, one of my goals was to get something published, and then have it reprinted in Year’s Best. I still haven’t been published, and Year’s Best is no longer active, sadly. I discovered a lot of new-to-me authors in the pages of those anthologies, both printed in the actual volumes and in the honorable mentions.

Datlow and Windling also edited several books of retold fairy tales: Snow White, Blood Red, Black Thorn, White Rose, Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears, Black Swan, White Raven, Silver Birch, Blood Moon, Black Heart, Ivory Bones. I’m pretty sure I’ve read all of them, and own most of them. I dip into them time and again.

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

Day 15 – Your “comfort” book

Every few months or so, at least once a year, Nesko and I talk about moving to his family’s country of origin. This would be a very long over seas voyage, and shipping things would be expensive as all get out. So every time we talk about that, I take mental stock of All My Books and try to figure out which ones I’d pack and take– or, as eReaders become more and more common, which I’d repurchase in electronic format.

During our second to last move, we divested ourselves of quite a lot of books. Literally, about a third of them. It was weird and hard and almost traumatic, and I felt lighter and free-er afterwards, although I have gone back looking for a few of the books we got rid of and once we are permanently settled some place I am totally going to repurchase volumes of “Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.” I dipped into them too rarely to justify their weight and amount of shelf space they took up.

This is one of those questions that’s so incredibly hard for me to answer. Like a lot of my introverted, socially awkward friends I turned to books for socialization and companionship. In the absence of human connection, kindness, and understanding, I had books. They were as close to friends as I had, until my awkward social fumblings in high school. Like a lot of my friends, I’m inordinately attached to books. I think that’s part of why I re-read books I enjoy so frequently. It’s very much akin to visiting good friends. (I think it’s also part of why I’m so horrible at maintaining human friendships. You can put a book down and pick it up later on and nothing has changed. With humans, you need to make an effort and keep in touch and be considerate.)

Anyway, although I didn’t like them at first (until I read The Fall of The Kings, which for whatever reason snapped everything into connection and made me fall in love with the world and characters when before I’d only appreciated the books for their excellent writing), I turn again and again to the Riverside books. I also dip frequently into Robyn McKinley’s Damar books, although recent rereads have left me frustrated at the pro-Colonialism brown-people-saved-by-feisty-white-women elements. I’ve mentioned these books at least once already in this meme. A lot of these questions are pretty repetitive.

I’m working on a real blog post about Political Correctness and what it is and isn’t, and why complaining about PC thought police makes you look like an asshole. However, I have a 16 month old who is refusing to sleep unless it’s with another person (usually me), so I have very little time to myself at the moment. If you’re interested in reading baby stuff, feel free to hop on over to http://brigidkeely.com/baby/ and check it out. Be warned that most of the recent posts are about OMGSLEEPISSUESWTF.