rattfan | Engaging in my book habit

Rest day! Major sleep in. I hiked over to the shops to get a few groceries, since it wasn’t too much to carry and I could then get in some exercise/sun exposure, since it’s now the time of year when one looks for it. The sun, not the exercise! Still haven’t remembered the Vitamin Ds Dr K wants me to take, but am getting sufficient outside time IMO. I finished reading Robert Heinlein’s Glory Road which I since discovered was written in my birth year. Since I had not read it before, I guess there are others who haven’t encountered this 57-year-old book, so here’s a cut for some details.

I’m glad Heinlein stuck more to sf as this fantasy foray wasn’t, to my thinking, very interesting. It’s one of his works I had saved, but not really worth the wait. Couldn’t understand what the gorgeous empress of 20 Universes saw in Our Hero, to be honest, certainly not enough to select him out of untold millions to be her champion, slay dragons and defeat Cyrano de Bergerac to obtain the Holy Grail, oh, sorry, the Phoenix’s Egg/source of all recorded knowledge for her.

Every other woman in the book seems to be mad for him too, including the 13 year old daughter of his lord-of-the-manor host at one point. I found that just a few toes over the line. There were many elements you could excuse it for its age (mostly the sexism of the period) but not that. I never felt that the Hero was actually in danger, no matter what gallant deed he was supposed to be performing at the time. There’s a few other Heinleins I either haven’t read or just once, so I retain very little of their details, which I mean to go back to at some point.

Gardening. Autumn is well advanced but weather has gone back to fine, giving me a chance to get a few jobs out of the way. I’ve done a bit of trimming and watering of the potteds with the last of the rainwater for the moment. Also found the rest of the nasturtium seeds and scattered them about in pots and garden. They include those I saved from the red nasts of last season and the one before, so a one in three chance that they’ll also be red. If I have sufficient energy I’ll trim the tops of the hibiscus; keep meaning to but that’s not super urgent. The nasturtium seed planting was my final acknowledgment that I’ll be here at this place to see them grow and flower.

I had the company of the neighbour-across-the-way’s kitten, who was fascinated by my seed burying and then watering procedure, so much so that she nearly got some of the water on her several times. Hope she doesn’t try to dig them up.

I’m also doing a super fast re-skim over Stross’s Empire Games and Deep State after my reread of the first worldwalkers’ series. I initially read them without doing that as I thought I’d remember well enough but not really, as it turned out. I remember the core story and protagonists but less well the background characters and subplots. Interesting to see the USA portrayed as the gung ho villain, or at least no more virtuous than the worldwalking tinker/drug smuggling Clan. Stross also nuked the White House which given the behaviour of the fictional incumbent and government, was no less than it deserved.

Next reading goal is Andy Muir's new one, Project Hail Mary, when I'm able to get my hands on that. I want to get an actual copy of that, rather than a virtual one, which the other books I've talked about are. Muir has become one of the few authors whose books I will just get without necessarily knowing much about them! I also think that's an awesome title.