GAAAHHHH!!!… I’ve spent the last week completely addicted to the Girl Genius comics, reading the entire backlog from 2001, and now… now I’m UP TO DATE! Which means there is no more for me to read! And the story is ongoing! Now I’ll have to content myself to 3 pages per week, as they come out.

12 x boohoo!!

I just might get me a heart-shaped gear insignia to console myself. (They are so cute!)

Seriously, though, I recommend the comic. Its tagline says “Adventure. Romance. Mad Science!” and it’s the best description I could give, with “really funny!” implied in there.

PS. And Paula, I found out that comic is STEAMPUNK genre, so now I know what that is!

Girl Genius - Web comics

Alright, time to spill it. My purse, I mean, to follow up on this recent post.

So here is the list of what I carry around everywhere.

What’s in

1. Wallet
2. Card holder (for all the pesky membership cards)
3. Keys, on and off
4. 2 memo pads
5. 1 pen stolen from work
6. Misc. paper things (tickets, prescriptions)
7. Dead batteries (so I can get replacement ones of the same kind, one day)
8. Paper ruler (from Ikea)
9. Gum
10. 3 packs of Kleenex (why 3?)
11. Purell
12. Tylenol, on and off
13. Deodorant
14. Tide-to-Go (that I’ve never used)
15. Lady hygiene stuff (not pictured, bleh)
16. Club Med Perfume
17. Band-Aids
18. Medicated lip balm (not fun at all, but effective, ugh…)
19. Stick make-up
20. Lip gloss — I took the resolution to wear lipstick more often, but it’s a failure as yet.
21. Pocket mirror
22. Sunscreen
23. Bag for the baby stuff
24. 2 diapers, different sizes
25. Baby wipes (not pictured… I ran out recently)
26. Bib
27. Crayons
28. Crackers in a candy box
29. Digital camera (point-and-shoot, not pictured)
30. Extra memory card

What I plan to add
(There’s still enough space.)

1. 1 Sharpie
2. Small roll of duct tape
3. Swiss Army knife (is that legal?)
4. I should also add the waterproof matchsticks I made as a girl Scout… always prepared!
5. USB cord to unload the camera, maybe

The great thing about this bag is all the compartments, keeping things organized.

No phone, no GPS, no Palm, no iPod!! We live in the dark ages, Frank and I.

No pacifier, but there’s often one in my jeans pocket anyway.
No toys, but I carried around a Hot Wheel in my coat pocket most of winter.
I would carry drink boxes if my purse didn’t get kicked around so much.

No spy gadgets! though I dig that this list ended with “lipstick”.

If you have suggestions for useful additions, I’m interested.

When I was younger, one my idols was a B.D. (European comics) character named Yoko Tsuno (and on Wiki). Apart from being a brainy electrical engineer /slash/ Aïkido black belt /slash/ glider and helicopter and jet pilot /slash/ scuba diver /slash/ alien friend /slash/ time traveller — and an all-around very nice person I might add –, one of her cool trademarks (to my eyes) was the fact that she was often carrying around a long-strap bag filled with useful gadgets and tools, which made her ready to tackle any tricky situation (as she is wont to do). This bag — actually, these bags, plural — were somewhat like the one Jack Bauer lugged around for most of season 5 (the one with the nerve gas), except cuter and probably cleaner.

Thus, I have a sweet spot for well-equipped long-strap bags.

Behold, my purse.

This little shoulder bag may not help me face a terrorist threat, but it deals wonderfully with most of my day-to-day crisis. For fun, I’ll let you guess at the contents before I make a list. You’ll be surprised how much stuff this small accessory can snug in.

PS. I leave you with some Yoko Tsuno images. That Asian/European chick is some kick-ass sci-fi hero.

I would not have picked up Glen Cook’s “The Black Company” without a recommendation. I would not have even CONSIDERED picking it up. So much for judging a book by its medieval-Darth-Vader-looking cover.

This book is like sushi: at the onset, it does not seem quite appalling – because of the cover art(s), yes, and even the story blurb sounds simplistic, and the universe a little ‘blah’. Raw fish, eww; evil empire and tough mercenaries, bleh.

Then you have a taste, and you have to get the hang of it, because this is not the type of food you are used to. Personally, I had some trouble initially with the military notions of what the company was and how it worked. The all-men cast of rough mercenaries weren’t my type of characters, either, and the way they jumped into the story with nothing but a name made it hard to care about them.

By the time you’ve finished the first plate, however, you’re getting familiar with the dish and you’re ready to appreciate the flavours and construction involved. The Company is hired by a new employer in the first chapters and moves to a new land (this is not a big spoiler, don’t worry), which helps out the reader, because he discovers the land and politics along with the narrator. It is also logical for the men to appear in the story with no real identity as they do, because that is how they would begin their service with the Company, burying their past and often assuming a new name. Plus, these characters are supposed to be hard men, who avoid letting emotions show, so it makes sense that we would only get to know them through their actions at first.

Before you know it, you find out you’re enjoying the story, just like you started to like sushi a lot. The narrator’s ironic pessimism is fresh and smart (and funny), and I liked his “voice”, his way of narrating the events. I also appreciated the exploration of the distinction between evil and good, how there is not necessarily a clear line between the two, or even that one side being evil does not automatically make his opposition the good guy. Another thing I liked was that the characters were not bigger than life; when confronted to moral dilemnas, they don’t rush to declare themselves heroes and initiate great actions: they think on it a little, but all is not black or white, and the job at hand is less abstract than philosophical questions. Then there are the fantasy elements, which are more low-key in the beginning, but are amplified and craftily worked in as the story progresses.

By the time your second plate comes in, your warm up is done and you’re ready for some real flavour. The second book does not deceive, and pushes some of the initial themes further with interesting twists and characters. I’m really enjoying this series.

I saved myself from buying novels two and three with their equally horrible covers by getting the omnibus for the first three books, which I finished recently. The rest of the series will be in my Amazon shopping cart on a future order.

Meanwhile, I’ve got the rest of the Hyperion Cantos waiting on me (once I finish the cute book of mom/daughter essays my mother lent me).

I’m tempted to wait until I’ve read the second installment of Dan Simmons’ “Hyperion Cantos” (tetralogy) before I comment on Hyperion (book one). I suppose one could read only the first novel, but there is so much to be resolved still, that it feels like we’ve been brought along a trail right up to a precipice, and it would be a bummer to leave it at that. So the follow up books are on my wish list now; I hope they shed some light on the mysteries of the first installment.

But looking at Hyperion solely, I can say the structure was interesting: various stories (one per character), all widely different but also all linked up in the end, which lead up to the ending craftily. The humor threaded in the story was one of the things I enjoyed, as was the complexity of Simmons’ imagined future and the pace at which alien technologies and world details were revealed throughout. There’s a lot of foreign stuff to assimilate at first, but it all makes sense in the end, even for non-regulars of sci-fi such as I. In fact, it seemed to me that the novel is more a blend of sci-fi and fantasy than pure sci-fi – I’ll let genre readers agree or express horror on that one.

Yup, thanks for the recommendations on this one. It gets my vote.

I started reading while nursing Orléane. It makes for plenty of wonderful, guilt-free reading time – ie. I don’t feel like I should be tackling chores or work, as I’m already doing something useful AND caring for the baby. I went through over 3 novels already, so I’ll try to quickly catch up on my reading list:

Widdershins, by Charles de Lint
My romantic side enjoyed it. A well done de Lint (I’ve heard his writing is not steadily great), but it is very much follow up on The Onion Girl, and probably one or two other novels of de Lint’s Newport chronicles that I will want to pick up in the future, so I wouldn’t recommend it to uninitiated fans.

The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman
Much like I did with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, I had started reading The Golden Compass, put it aside after loosing interest, found out some time afterwards it was being turned into a movie, and picked the novel up again before it came out. Someone had mentioned the trilogy deserved a little push in the beginning – and indeed, the pace is slower, the descriptions abound and some confusing details don’t seem to make sense at first. The last leg of The Golden Compass is better, though, and once The Subtle Knife starts, the pace has been expertly picked up. I loved the feeling of the first chapters of that second book.

It is told the trilogy is inspired from Milton’s Paradise Lost, which I have not read, so I can’t comment on that. I do know that, where I to have a go at organized religion through a novel, I’d much rather do it in Pullman’s complex and meaningful fashion than Dan Brown’s here’s-some-controversy, ain’t-I-cool-to-know-this and tack-it-together-in-a-treasure-hunt-flat-plot line with-dull-characters fiction. Then again, maybe it’s just my natural propensity toward the fantasy genre.

His Dark Materials turned out to be imaginative and exploring. I truly enjoyed the adventure and the two protagonist children, Lyra and Will.

——————-
I’m now almost halfway through Hyperion. I can see how it appeals to Star Wars fan, and it is much more sci-fi than what I’m used to, but I’m liking it and appreciating the humor sprinkled in. Will come back with impressions later on.

Read on!