Eh.

I finished Lord Dunsany's "The Charwoman's Shadow" yesterday, as well as Marjorie M. Liu's "A Taste of Crimson." I much preferred the Marjorie Liu book, which probably says something awful about my literary taste, but there it is.

I remember being enchanted by Dunsany's "The King of Elfland's Daughter" when I was in middle school, but I think it would have been the moment: up at dawn, in a quiet house, visiting a friend, reading from her parents' vast collection of books while the sun rose and everyone else slept. Reading his books now for me is like looking over a border into a country where my passport won't take me, and it makes me feel like Susan in the last Narnia book, being excluded for the sins of Eve. There's just no place for women as the "do-ers" in Dunsany, and I can't stand it anymore. I like Patricia McKillip much better, who obviously absorbed a lot of his style but who generally allows the women to do stuff.

I was feeling kinda gray (not blue, just blah) last night so I went down to the library and checked out Robin McKinley's "Beauty" again. I think I've read it thirty times or more in my life. I just find the gentle first person story of a girl who really likes books finding love with a beast who isn't very beastly very appealing. It's my conviction that Disney quietly stole the whole "Beauty loves books" thing from McKinley's version, or possibly just some of the animators had read it.

J. bought me a book called "A Field Guide to the Little People" and mom is doing me an urban fairy-creature sketch for my birthday, so I'm all prepped to do that other novel/story idea that's been germinating. Weehaa! Oh. yeah, it's my birthday today, so J and I are disappearing tonight to go to Minnesota to celebrate with friends.