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Tue Feb 4th, 2014
 | 11:31 pm - Tastes vary
Either creature of habit or simply lazy, I have the same breakfast every day, some times for decades at a time. Soy powder concoction did me just fine from 1995 to 2009, and had the up-side of smoothing out my hormones so I didn't realize how much they were fluctuating. Since 2010 I've eaten an unsweetened bran and flax cereal with strawberries and milk. This suits me down to the ground.
And then I caught this virus and lost my appetite and had to choke the cereal down-- yecch blargh-- and now I can't stand the sight of it. *Now* I want the same company's instant oatmeal, what I bought at Christmas because no one had the cereal just around then, and it was yecch blargh until three weeks ago.
This is disconcerting.
Even more so is the sudden inability to read Pratchett at all, and the unlikely craving for John M Ford's Star Trek novels. I mean, I'm glad I have Ford's Star Trek novels to read now that I've got this craving for them- thank you, G; but still-- 'I am changing, fearfully changing.' What next, I wonder: Regencies? westerns? Cyberpunk? (Not the last, I fancy: just finished Tea From an Empty Cup and have no notion of what it was about or why. Got it from some list, now vanished, about SFF novels with protagonists of colour. Err well yes, I suppose.)
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Your tastes may change back again? Not that that's much comfort, I know. Not so much that we change, but that we are changed...
I'm glad to have supplied the Ford, though. He's one of those authors which I think my mother regretted losing when I moved out, even if it was for his books other than Star Trek ones. It's a consolation not to be set in my ways, I suppose.
One might well regret losing access to one's Fords, if one is a subtle reader and/or a masochist. I'm waiting to see how obscure The Final Reflection will prove. So far it's relatively straightforward-- for Ford-- as long as I accept that I'll never understand how Klingon politics or chess work and I don't try to keep the various captains and commanders straight. Possibly the tie-in aspect reined in some of Ford's more extreme ellipticism? OTOH wasn't this the book that made TPTB tighten up all the rules for writing ST tie-ins? I think that it was partly that book (The Final Reflection), and partly the other one, How Much For Just The Planet, which is an outright comedy. I'm not sure of the full details, but I would suspect that The Final Reflection simply developed the Klingons too well and took them outside the series' relatively simple imagery, and How Much For Just The Planet raised hackles for being too irreverent or referential - for some tastes, at least. It's the development of the Klingons that I cherish. Other tie-in novels-- even the very early episode retellings by Blish-- didn't capture what I was seeing on the screen, merely the generic American SF that (not to put too fine a point on it) I suspect The Guys were seeing on the screen.
Ford manages to convey the wonder and complexity that ST occasionally achieved, often in spite of itself. OH my ... I went through the 'spaghetti' westerns and the second world war phase far, and away in my 10 to maybe 15 years old age. In amongst my Sci-Fi stuff. It was all Douglass Reeman, Alistair Maclean, Biggles, The Dambusters and Reach for the Sky kind of thing. Do you know .... I've never read any of the Star Trek novels. ^_^
As I've said before I couldn't read Stardust or American Gods ... but found "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" by Neil Gaiman quite readable. Enjoyable even. Thus toyed with the idea of giving Stardust another go ... but the moment was fleeting. Thankfully I think.
Have picked up other Mieville things after Perdido Street Station. But sadly have not found them as captivating as Perdido was.
Ahh yes the rollercoaster that becomes of our tastebuds post-op/after meds/while sick/hormonal. *hugs* A lot changed for me from 'before pregnancy' and then 'after'.
More hugs. Star Trek was a formative part of my adolescence. Occasionally I'll read something ST just to see if the author can capture the 17-year-old's magic: and the answer is, fanfic or tie-in novel, no. Oddly, Ford comes very close, and so far does it by not writing any of the series characters at all.
Gaiman is-- not an uneven author, but an unexpected one. Sometimes amazing and sometimes one wants to kick him. I have Stardust: cost me nothing, and I might look at it just to see why it annoys so mnay people so very much. Ocean is actually quite charming.
Perdido put me off Crobazon or whatever. Still wnat to finish Kraken one of these days, simply because it's Weird London.
My taste buds have never gone weird like this. Going off the food one ate while coming down with a stomach bug, yes, though I never stay off it. Pregnancy hormones I hear do strange things to unexpected areas; I can state that menopause hormones do not. Ahhh yes it is Kraken for me too that I'm plodding along with. Weird London ... that's exactly it! ^_^ ... I think that is what makes me want to read it the setting.
I think the lure of Perdido was the characters and character dynamics and how broken a lot of them seemed. Not just figuratively but physically as well.
I have been gifted with a couple of others ... but am eyeing them with trepidation. So I will see about finishin Kraken first. And yes Ocean I thought was quite lovely. (I read 'Unfortunately the Milk" with the boy and he found it wonderful!) I'm the same with breakfast, though not for years, more likr month. Right now it's multigrain porrige made from the multigrian rice mix that they sell in koreans stores, with a hanful of jujube added, also from same store. Results in something close to eight treasure porridge, and lovely for winter |
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