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Things on the mind
Jun. 9th, 2005 10:12 pm( How do you know they're famous if you don't recognise them? )
My new duvet worked out even better than I expected. During the night, I had to remove one of the woollen blankets I'd put on my bed recently and I plan to remove the rest before I make my bed tonight. So, that's good. More stuff to add to my bed when I get really cold. It was so nice being warm. I slept well.
My feet are in the process of going numb, but that's not surprising.
I'm reading a book called When the Devil Dances by John Ringo. The book is the third in a series about a rather violent invasion of Earth and there's not much left, aside from, you know, the people who won't say die. Apart from the issues I have with the gentleman's style of writing, the book has some interesting points about the value of a life, in individuals or in millions. And that reminds me of something I read in the paper recently (at least, I think I read it there), that one death is a tragedy, millions of deaths are a statistic. Numbers get too big for the mind to easily comprehend. And when you're reading fiction you can't even remind yourself that these were once real people, you can't bring it down to the individual level very easily. And so you get blood-gutted.
This isn't my first experience with a SF book doing that. There's always the Lost Regiment series, by someone Forsyth, where you have a massive battle a third of the way in and then another almost at the very end, whereupon the humans regroup and try to survive for just a little bit longer and millions of aliens get slaughtered. I made it through seven of those before giving up (I believe there are nine or ten) and I'm vaguely trying to catch up on the other series, which has made it to five or six books by now. If I read one every few months, I should manage. Everyone blurs into one another after a while and I just skim over the detailed descriptions of weaponry and tactics and read about the people.
My new duvet worked out even better than I expected. During the night, I had to remove one of the woollen blankets I'd put on my bed recently and I plan to remove the rest before I make my bed tonight. So, that's good. More stuff to add to my bed when I get really cold. It was so nice being warm. I slept well.
My feet are in the process of going numb, but that's not surprising.
I'm reading a book called When the Devil Dances by John Ringo. The book is the third in a series about a rather violent invasion of Earth and there's not much left, aside from, you know, the people who won't say die. Apart from the issues I have with the gentleman's style of writing, the book has some interesting points about the value of a life, in individuals or in millions. And that reminds me of something I read in the paper recently (at least, I think I read it there), that one death is a tragedy, millions of deaths are a statistic. Numbers get too big for the mind to easily comprehend. And when you're reading fiction you can't even remind yourself that these were once real people, you can't bring it down to the individual level very easily. And so you get blood-gutted.
This isn't my first experience with a SF book doing that. There's always the Lost Regiment series, by someone Forsyth, where you have a massive battle a third of the way in and then another almost at the very end, whereupon the humans regroup and try to survive for just a little bit longer and millions of aliens get slaughtered. I made it through seven of those before giving up (I believe there are nine or ten) and I'm vaguely trying to catch up on the other series, which has made it to five or six books by now. If I read one every few months, I should manage. Everyone blurs into one another after a while and I just skim over the detailed descriptions of weaponry and tactics and read about the people.
