you care about everyone

I am amused - and pleased - at the headlines about the Mets' rookie pitchers Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler after they won both games of a doubleheader yesterday in Atlanta - 'pair of aces' and 'dynamic duo'. I didn't see Harvey's game (he took a no-hitter into the seventh, and only a mistake by the first baseman kept it from going longer) but Wheeler managed to get over some early wildness and work through a couple of tough innings to get the win in his first major league start. I try never to get my hopes up when it comes to the Mets, but this could be the start of something good. Not this season, which is pretty much done for already, but next year and the year after that.

In other sports news, I guess it's good that the Rangers hired Alain Vigneault? Maybe they will actually learn how to play offense again, especially on the power play? I guess we'll see.

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Reading Wednesday!

What I've just read

Since last we spoke, I finished When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, which I enjoyed immensely, possibly because I was 9 years old in 1979 when the story was set, and also obsessed with A Wrinkle in Time (okay, no, technically it wasn't until 1980 that I read/loved/used the L'Engle books for all my book reports etc. but close enough for these purposes) so Miranda felt really familiar to me. It reminded me more of The Young Unicorns in terms of L'Engle's books, and also From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, so I think nostalgia plays a large part in loving this book, but I think it does a good job with a young narrator, so that you as the reader know stuff she obviously doesn't. So the big twist isn't really a surprise? But still, I liked the book a lot.

I also read Emilie and the Hollow World by Martha Wells, which was also highly enjoyable, though I was shocked when Emilie said she was 16, because she comes across as no older than 13 at most, and the book reads more like a middle grade than a YA to me, and she spends a little too much time eavesdropping and tagging along before she really gets in on the action, but still, enjoyable steampunk hijinks, and recommended if it comes into your hands.

And as I mentioned the other day, between books, I reread Devil's Cub, which is my favorite Heyer. There are certainly some iffy things in it - not just the class issues, but also Vidal's treatment of Mary early on (he forcibly abducts her and there is some violence involved) - but ( spoilers I guess )

What I'm reading now

Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, which became available (along with three other books) from NYPL almost immediately after I said I had no more library books out. *snerk* I'm about halfway through and I find it a really enjoyable/fascinating thought experiment - it's an alternate history where 99% of Europe was wiped out by the Black Plague, so China, India, and the various Islamic empires are the major powers in the world. I'm not particularly emotionally invested in the characters, mostly because ( spoilers )

I'm enjoying it but we'll see how it goes, since I'm only halfway through.

What I'm reading next

Well, in addition to The Years of Rice and Salt, I also have Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt, Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen (as recced by one of you), and The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker from the library, since they all became available at once. Oops? And The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, which I had forgotten I'd pre-ordered, but which doesn't have a due date, so it'll have to wait.

I'll let you know how that all goes. *snerk*

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I feel like it is time for a wsip roundup, even though I don't think much has actually changed.

Right now, I'm currently paying attention to four stories, though there is a fifth that rotates through when I think about things that I want to happen in it, so:

( I'm cutting because I feel weird about talking about these right now. Idek )

There's a few others on the list, but these are the ones I'm actively working on now.

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So yesterday I got an email from Ticketmaster with the subject "See Psychedelic Furs Live in Concert!" and I was like, did this email come from 1986?

But then today, snacky linked to this: The Replacements Announce First Shows in 22 Years!

!!!!

I knew they'd put out new material as a charity project, but I... I did not expect this.

In other exciting news I never thought would actually happen, they started filming the Veronica Mars movie yesterday. I AM EXCITE! PLEASE DON'T SUCK. (Though honestly, I think the whole thing might be worth it just for Ryan Hansen's video. There are no words, people. No words. None.)

*

Teen Wolf: Fireflies

( spoilers )

*

So I reread Devil's Cub Friday during my train ride out to the island. It's my favorite Heyer - the first one I read, and the one I imprinted on at an impressionable age, and I think that shows because it has so many things in it that I've continued to love and look for in the stories I consume (and write):

• competent ladies who take control of dangerous situations,
  
• heroines who shoot (at) the heroes,
  
• heroes who are cranky to everyone but (eventually) the heroine,
  
• road trips/reluctant partnerships on road trips (see also It Happened One Night and The Sure Thing),
  
• and a relationship that starts out completely unequal that equalizes over the course of the story (of course, there are still serious imbalances due to the society they live in, but for the story, set when it is and written when it was, the seeds of it are there - she's certainly equal to the task of dealing with him, anyway),
  
• plus the madcap comedy of the supporting cast (e.g., Leonie and Rupert and the bottles of wine)

It's Heyer, so there are certainly issues (class issues up the wazoo in this one), but this one is so firmly ensconced in my heart that I continue to love it despite seeing the problems. (I didn't read These Old Shades until I was an adult, so it didn't have the same impact.)

I mean, I'm sure on some level I was aware of how many of my narrative bulletproof kinks are wrapped up in Devil's Cub, but it really popped out at me on this reread.

I think between this, Star Wars and The Thin Man, you can easily trace the beginnings of my penchant for bickering, bantering het couples.

My m/m BFF-turned-boyfriends thing comes from my early shipping of Legolas/Gimli and Alexander/Hephaistion, which were pretty formative between the ages of 9 and 12. (Well, I was mostly interested in Alexander + Bucephalus as a pre-teen, but Hephaistion was obviously there and his boyfriend in my mind. And it never occurred to me that Legolas and Gimli didn't get married until I was much, much older and discovered that there were people who didn't believe that. Imagine my shock and horror, because really now. They spent their lives together and then Legolas takes Gimli over the sea with him. I don't think it could be any plainer that they were married or whatever the elf/dwarf equivalent would have been. I am just saying.)

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I hope everyone who celebrates had a lovely Father's Day.

I have two links for you:

= 12_12_12 talks about season 1 of Orphan Black. (spoilers for the whole season)

= troublesteady is running the Marvel Femslash Prompt Fest. Go forth, prompt, and fill.

*yawns*

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