book rec

Looking Glass by James R. Strickland.

It's from FlyingPenPress.com, which as a small press means there's a good chance that without my ranting you would never hear of this book. I'm not done with it yet, and when I am I'm doing a review for Gather, but it's one of the best cyberpunk books I've read in years.

And the main character is a forty-ish, bisexual woman in a wheelchair. It's sent in a post-war world where North America is dividted up into CalTech, TexMex, Canada (and the Southern Canadian Provinces) and the United Christian States of America. And it's filled with all that ridiculous Gibson-esuqe lingo that meant something really different in the days before we were all online.

The thing is the author knows and loves his net culture. But it's not like name dropping. It's seemless and hillarious. A minor character critiqued for being the sort of asshole who leaves feedback for fanfiction providing technical advice on the porn. A reference to the bastardized version of the mentat thing for Dune changed to be about caffeine. Furries. Poly. Multicultural and none of it rings false, politically correct, cheap or nasty except when the characters are being so.

Seriously, if you buy one book sight unseen, as I have no idea where you would find a copy to flip through it before purchasing it, this is it. It starts competently, becomes great and looks surprisingly like what is my world.

It's not, for me, one of those life changing books, but it's serious and very smart candy.

next several days

museum this evening, then getting ingredients for beach picnic tomorrow.
beach picnic tomorrow.
then farmers market and making tomato sauces on Sunday.

Last night we had Vietnamese food and walked through Central Park while I cared a huge sack of gluten-free goodies I had never seen before -- cookies and mixes, and some various rice entrees. In the park we stumbled on all sorts of random things, including a group of nordic folk dancers with live music, and so we sat in the dark and watched for a while. The music was lovely the dancing was lame.

The park amazes me at night. It is what was impossible in my childhood which was the Summer of Sam and the Preppie Murders.

aha!

Playing the six word story game over on Gather, I actually came up with a succint thing to say about the world of my damn book: "coal replaced magic and war came."

Ha!

domestic scene

Patty is sitting corss-legged on teh couch eating fried chicken and watching Project Runway.

Meanwhile, THERE IS A GRASSHOPPER WALKING ACROSS THE FUCKING CEILING!