FR> Why not feel like a "golden oldie" insteead of a "gray oldie"?
 HF> I'd have to drink a lot more carrot juice. ;)
FR> Is that better than prune juice?
It makes you more golden. ;)
FR> Works for me.  What are you reading right now?
That is a tale of woe!  I was almost finished reading Tom Bodett's _End
of the Road_, so I figured I'd leave it home and take along SF/Fantasy
to read at the convention this weekend.
Well, come the wee hours when I'm tucked up in my hotel room ready to
read myself to sleep, I had the awful realization that I grabbed Pamela
Dean's _The Hidden Land_ off my shelf.  I had accidentally stacked it on
top of _The Secret Country_, even though it is the sequel to that book
and I have not yet read the first one. AAARRRGH!
Oh well, at 2 am, you just give up and go to sleep cold turkey.
Next morning I hit the dealer's room at the con, looking for anything
resembling a mystery that I hadn't read.  Fat chance.  The only mystery
in the place was _Bimbos of the Death Sun_.  Been there, read that.  So,
I asked a few used book dealers what they had that might appeal to
someone with a taste for character.  Someone who's only read mysteries
for years, after finally getting downright sick of a run of SF/Fantasy
that kept telling the same stories about a limited lot of cardboard
characters with only the names changed to protect the illiterate.
One dealer wouldn't even try, another pointed me to a vintage Poul
Anderson and raved about it.  All I can say is I'm glad it only cost
$1.25 and I did need to get to sleep quickly that night.  I struggled
through page after page of made-up words that added nothing to the story
and a lot of description that flowed like firetrucks over speedbumps,
only to get to a boy-meets-alien-girl scene that really did the trick.
I was out cold.  Zzzzz.
This was a boiled down reminder of how I got sick of SF in the first
place.  Sigh.  If I pick it up again tonight, it's only because I got
less than 5 hours sleep last night and I need to get to sleep quickly.
Either that or, ever-hopeful reader that I am, I am still praying it
will get better.  Unfortunately, the story has rumors of war.Space
war is definitely NOT my cup of tea, so I'm not holding out much hope.
... Gone crazy. Back soon. Please leave a message.
 * Q-Blue 1.0 *    Helen "Halla" Fleischer, Fantasy and Fiber Artist
--- InterEcho 1.19
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