thank the stars "the real housewives of orange county is over", snore! goodbye vicki and tamara, crossing my fingers your show will be canceled. or please bravo manufacture their comeuppance! well, vicki regularly gets hers, but damn, she just won't go down!
betheny, jill, hello my lovelies. you rock!
yesterday, i tried the lobster bisque sold at costco. i wanted to throw up with every spoonful. the creamy, tangy, mustard concoction just didn't jive with my palate, no matter how cultured i think i am. i got fed up and dumped what was left in my bowl, which pained my thrifty heart to no end. can i return the rest to costco? i understand they have a very customer-friendly return policy :)
Read more...so i was supposed to run the marathon, but because my running mate decided to swap to the half, i ultimately decided to follow suit. but come the big day, she bails to hang with her friends and fails to tell me so until i'm already at the event. so i was in a foul mood and we haven't spoken since.
in reality, i'd say her decision only factored 25% into my decision to switch. the rest, i was equal parts unprepared and fatigued. i was actually up until 2am, with marathon cliff notes in hand, in the throes of finding some conclusive reason why i shouldn't run the marathon, attempting to make the inevitable inevitable.
i finished the half marathon in 2 hours and 32 minutes, not bad given how i much i hate running in the arizona sun. the day saw nary a cloud in the sky until i was about to cross the finish line. i don't think i want another shot at the p.f. chang marathon.
true to form, i went crazy at the refreshments area. later, when i bothered to look at what i was actually putting into my body, i balked that the best-by date for chips i heartily chomped on was three days prior. the marathon was on january 18. the best-by date on the bag was january 15. (ok, you can't read the date, but trust me.)
major plot points in "lirael" set the stage for some climatic conclusion in the final book, "abhorsen":
lirael is a daughter of the clayr, but who, at a rather mature age of 14, still hasn't woken with the sight to see into the futures. her despondency drives to make the decision to end her life by throwing herself off the clayr's glacier. but events conspire (ha, phrase of the day!) so that she becomes an assistant librarian in the clayr's library instead. and here, she begins to become who she really is...
meanwhile, in belisaere, prince sameth is grappling with a traumatic episode he suffered while crossed over in death. this experience has effectively rendered him unable to continue his abhorsen studies and he whiles away his days tinkering with mechanical menageries infused with magic.
and elsewhere at red lake, an evil greater than the one sabriel vanquished in the first book is arising...
in "lirael", nix opens up the scope of his fantasy world, in both space and time, to cast special signifance on the present. and because nix puts so much detail in the telling, the scale of what's about to unfold feels epic. in the end, much is brought to light, but the story ends at a cliffhanger to be continued in "abhorsen".
first off, "lireal" is a rather hefty tome at 700 pages, even if it has the characteristic larger type and spacing befitting a teen book. so nix provides himself plenty of space for character development. with respect to lirael, nix succeeds very well, although, nix, presents lirael's initial inner struggles with affectionate derision through the experience of someone who has the benefit of hindsight. nix's presentation of sameth is lacking in comparison, especially in regards to sam's haphazard decisions. odd that nix, being a man, is able to suceed so much better in relating a teenage girl's mental state than that of a teenage boy's.
rating: 8/10
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