What do you want to do with me?

Oh all right.  I try to avoid memes, but I'll do this one.

Please reply with something you'd like to do with me someday.  Then post a similar request in your own journal if you're so inclined.

Travel plans

I have paid my money to go to the FCF Convention July 28-30 in Miami.  So I'm planning to be there.  I hate to fly, I have notions of taking more stuff than I would want to fly with, and I don't have a lot of demands on my time right now, so I'm figuring on driving.  However, I don't want to just drive to Miami, spend 3 nights in a hotel, and drive home.

If you've any suggestions for other things I should do on my trip, please offer them.  Things to see or do shouldn't cost very much if any money, and I'm mostly interested in nature rather than city things and tourist traps.  I am interested in friends, though.  Especially friends who wouldn't mind putting me up for the night in a quiet out of the way place; I can take this trip because I don't have a job, but that also means I want to keep expenses down.

The exact length and timing of the trip is yet to be decided, but it will depend on what I figure out to do on the trip before I leave.  Until my itinerary starts to become better defined, pretty much any destination that's south and east of Champaign and still in the continental US could possibly be included.  The hard limits are that I'm not leaving before Monday, July 18, and I want to be back by Saturday, August 13.  I'm not planning on being gone all that time, but I would consider it if I can line up things worth doing to fill the time.

Breakfast philosophy

Nothing says "the world hates you today" quite like peeling a perfectly decent looking banana and discovering that inside, it's too bruised to eat.

Book Review: Kushiel's Dart

Today's book review is Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey.

Wow, I finally finished it.  At 700 pages of smaller-than-usual print, this is a pretty big book, but there's so much in it that it's surprising that it didn't take more.

This is a fantasy novel set in a very rich world which starts out being very nearly the historical earth.  Some geography and many names are changed, but it mainly diverged when something different and very significant happened on the Via Dolorosa on the way to the Crucifiction.  The story actually takes place a somewhat inderminate number of centuries later, and the ramifications of that event have made a very different world.  The world feels very real and should appeal to most fantasy fans.

What makes this book really unusual -- and the reason it will definitely not be for everyone -- is that the heroine is not only a sacred prostitute, but a genuine masochist; the things she has done to her will turn some people off to the story, and the way she reacts to them will trouble more.  To appreciate this story, the reader must be able to empathize at least somewhat with a character who enjoys and seeks out pain; to the reader to whom such feelings are completely alien or abhorrent, this book would be a real struggle.  This is not to say that this is just a book about sadomasochism; there is a great deal more.  But much of the story is seen through the lens of sadomasochism; for the reader to whom that lens is totally opaque, this book would be inaccessible.

There is grand intrigue, noble sacrifice, love both heroic and touching, and almost non-stop action and excitement.  It's quite a ride, if you can handle the heroine.  9 out of 10.