Books read, late January.

I quit reading nearly half the books I started in the last fortnight, and that's counting the poetry and graphic stuff I did finish as individual books. It was just a terrible fortnight for library books. The library's system is having a glitch fairly often, wherein you can't request just any book from your wishlist, it has to be one of the top four on the list. Well, I have my lists divided up into categories, but still, one of those categories is "nonfiction." As a result, I've been requesting a lot of things that have drifted to the top of the list by virtue of being long-shots in my interest levels, and now I'm finding that most of them are not in fact for Mrissas. This is good in some ways; the point of a library list is not to maintain itself indefinitely, nor to trick me into thinking there are more books I will like than actually are at the library waiting. But it does lead to a rather lower hit-rate.

( what I did read )

Two pieces of news

1. My Tor.com story from last year, "Uncle Flower's Homecoming Waltz," made the Locus Recommended Reading List. So that's pretty cool.

2. Also pretty cool: Podcastle's version of my Lightspeed story from last year, "On the Acquisition of Phoenix Eggs (Variant)." Go, listen, enjoy.

Grammy nomination celebration concert and The Institution

Last night markgritter and I went to the celebration concert for the Minnesota Orchestra's Grammy nomination. Walking in was a bit like going to a large convention where you don't know very many people (but still recognize the people around you and know that you're all anticipating the same thing) and a bit like coming back to Gustavus after the tornado, where everything is a bit more fraught than usual, every small detail a bit sweeter.

And, like coming back to Gustavus after the tornado, things aren't over yet. (For those of you not following this story, this was a special concert--the lockout is still ongoing.) The storm was only part of what went wrong there. The life lesson I learned fifteen years ago in March was that there isn't anything so bad that humans can't make it worse on each other. There were heartwarming life lessons, too, but that one was...a little less obvious.

Mayor R. T. Rybak got up before the concert and talked about the institution we all love, and...look, I'm glad there are people like Rybak who can care for institutions, because institutions are not all bad, and like everything else they need care if they're to continue. But I wasn't there because of the institution. I don't love the institution. Or at least, I don't love it unconditionally. I want to go to a large classical music ensemble at which talented musicians play awesome music. If they completely disbanded the Minnesota Orchestra and re-formed as the Minneapolis Symphony, I would not mourn the old institution if the new one treated its musicians better. For some people the institution is more important than the members who make it up. I'm not one of those people. I will roll with the changes that have to come along as different musicians move along to different parts of their careers and lives...but for me it'll be the musicians and the music over the institution every single time. We judge institutions not by their antiquity but by their works, and one of the most important facets of that is how they treat the actual people in them, now, today.

Anyway. The Sibelius symphonies were just grand. I was in a mood to be appreciative, but they more than earned that mood and its appreciation. And tears came to my eyes when I heard the notes of Finlandia for the encore. It was exactly the concert it needed to be.

Let's hope that some key people were as moved as I was.