mrissa | "Do the dumb stuff I gotta do. Touch the puppet head."

Well, the chairs are here, and so is

timprov's new anti-death machine. I feel like

gaaldine in the chairs: my feet don't quite touch. (They are not for me to sit in mostly anyway.) They were not the hugest ones in the store, not by a long shot. There are some mighty huge chairs out there. Our living room will not contain them. Happily, it doesn't have to.

I managed to get back to sleep after taking

markgritter to the airport. I'm getting to be an old hand at this. The key is for me to eat breakfast before trying to go back to sleep. It's good to know the tricks and secrets.

I'm hoping to spend my fountain pen store gift card today. Mostly I'm being useful, but also I'm working on "At the Sign of the Fish and Amulet" and reading Lord Byron's Novel: the Evening Land, which was going so well until it got to the damned e-mail. I almost got up and ran upstairs to put it on my list to buy for the nearest

gaaldine-related holiday. And then, the e-mail struck. Blerg. Very few people can handle epistolary novels or sections of novels so that I don't want to fling them out the window, but the existence of Sorcery and Cecelia and Freedom and Necessity and Laughin' Boy does not mean it's generally a good idea. And in this case -- LOL OMG i like totally cant use caps or punctuation now that im writing an email section of this book ROTFLMAO -- it's just wretched. I hope it improves fast, because I really liked the previous section, and I hate those books where I'm tempted to skim one section to get to the other (I'm looking at YOU, Margaret Atwood!).

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T replies below.

As someone currently in the middle of at least one 'letter game' collaborative story project, I can only say, "Eep."

I do capitalize properly, honest.

I think that epistolary style needs to serve a purpose in perspective and information revelation/concealment, and also that the characters need to have a plausible reason for being separated, and also it needs to not make me want to kick their heads in.

Really it's a pretty low standard, and yet.

And yet.

What's funny (to me) (mildly) is that I love Freedom and Necessity, but really didn't have much use for Sorcery and Cecelia. (I don't know your third example.) But it wasn't....

...I had to stop and think about it, but no, I think it really /wasn't/ anything to do with the epistolary style in Sorcery and Cecelia which made me so impatient with it. I just didn't like the book.

I think I'm fortunate in that I haven't read very many epistolary novels, and the ones I have read have met at least the first two items in your set of criteria. You reveal to me great worlds of novels I badly want to avoid.

(I could imagine wanting to kick in the heads of some of our characters, but not, I think, because of their letter-writing skills.)

A new type of CPAP mask.

In the past, when I've tried to nap in recliners, I've discovered a tendency to fall over backwards. Haven't tried in the new ones yet.

This was supposed to be a reply to

the_red_shoes.

This is me switching to full-face, because even with CPAP I can't manage to breathe through my nose. If I could exhale comfortably, I'd love the new one.

There are enough types of nose-only masks that it's worth looking into, if your nostrils actually work.

I'm reading Lord Byron's Novel, too; I'm about two-thirds of the way through. Thea's e-mail style is certainly annoying --- I think it's meant to signal her mathematical genius, or something --- but her e-mails are really quite a small fraction of the book.

I am entirely unsympathetic to the use of illiteracy as a signal of mathematical genius.

I'm still going to keep reading the book, though.

It makes no sense to me either, considering the mathematically-inclined folks I know and the difficulty of getting an academic job without demonstrating basic literacy.

That, and all the math majors I've known are super mega anal retentive about spelling and capitalization and shit.

I mean, hell, the only time I every type anything like "OMG LOL" is when I'm making fun of that sort of thing. (Then again, I was a math major only by a technicality, so I suppose I don't count.)

Haven't you seen that "Futurama" episode? "You are technically correct -- the very best kind of correct." It may be the very best kind of math major as well.

I've heard the quote in context - it's stuck in my head now - but I've totally forgotten what that episode as a whole was about.

And I'm sure there are better kinds of math majors. I just haven't met them. ;)

It's in "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back," with the lovely song I sing all the time: "When push comes to shove, you gotta do what you love, even if it's not a good idea."

And you've probably met a fair number of math majors, too. I know I have.

I had the same initial reaction to the email sections. I can't stand the character who isn't interested in punctuation and seems almost anti-intellectual. I really cannot tell what her partner sees in her. Indeed, it ruins the elegance of the book, but I think it's deliberate, is meant to be a short, sharp shock. I just don't think it does the novel any service.

I am not surprised that it doesn't later become a great asset to the book. I'm still going to keep reading it, though.

"Do the dumb stuff I gotta do. Touch the puppet head."

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