Planning Poorly

Oops, copy/paste error. Here's today's real post.

I'm getting really tired of this cold/allergies/whatever. It's better, but now at the annoying stage where I want to do more but don't quite feel like it. I don't want to miss ballet tonight, but we'll see how it goes. I did impress the preschoolers last night by turning a very nice pirouette. They were playing ballerina and spinning, so I joined in. Knowing ballet seems to give me some credibility with the little girls. I bailed early on choir, though, because singing made my sinuses hurt.

I've just realized that I've planned things very badly. We're coming up on rerun/hiatus season for most of the things I watch on TV, and I'm at a work phase where I don't need that time. I've got almost completed books and I've got a book in the planning/research phase, and I often find that the planning goes better against a TV backdrop. This is a time when I could spend the day doing fun stuff and write at night. Maybe I'll dream up something to just write at night while I spend the day doing research and planning.

I do have a lot of reading to get done. I like to try to read the Nebula finalists so I can vote. This year, for the main novel Nebula, I've read and liked one of the books. Two were by authors whose earlier books I didn't finish. One of those did have strokes of brilliance, but I just didn't like it. I read it in a book club, and nobody finished it (though we seem to be in the minority, as the author is wildly successful). One I thought was okay, but I was reading it for awards voting and I could tell I wasn't going to vote for it, so I stopped and moved on to something else. It was a mildly entertaining book, but I'm surprised that books in this series seem to be perennial award contenders. They're not bad, just not particularly special. I've read the previous book by the author of one of the other finalists, and while I thought that book was an award contender kind of book, it wasn't my cup of tea. The descriptions of some of the others had me going "eww." I know it's best to judge on the book's merits rather than on personal taste, but let's face it, this is generally a popularity contest, anyway, and if you find a book unpleasant, it's hard to objectively judge its qualities. For the young adult award that isn't technically a Nebula, I hadn't read any. A lot of the finalists were the dystopian type story that's so hot now and that I can't bear to read, but several sounded really good and I'm going to try to get through them.

Meanwhile, while I'm still doing market research reading on mysteries, I'm also going back and reading some of the classics of the canon. Right now, I'm on the second Peter Wimsey book by Dorothy L. Sayers, and it's interesting how quickly I'm plowing through it, even given the different pacing expectations from that era, compared to the current book that took me forever to read. Granted, I have more reading time at the moment, but I've found that when a book grabs me, I tend to create reading time. (And, hmm, I must be out of the mainstream again because the Amazon reviews for the book that bored me to tears are overwhelmingly positive and even mention that you'd better be prepared to read it in one sitting. I really am an oddball.)

So far, Mom gives the current book a huge thumbs up and is already demanding the sequel. Let's hope publishers agree with her.