No houses, some books and much moaning

Hey, before I start the moaning, I have a happy thing to say - yay! It is that my wonderful cherry green tea arrived from the wonderful generalblossom on Friday morning! Saved the early morning, as I was sitting here dreading the upcoming ordeal at the dentist. And saved the afternoon, as I made a couple of cups for myself as I was recovering, and it's just delicious! Thank you again!

I'll spare you details of the appointment itself, except that it was seriously not fun. And much as I kept feeling that it should all be put in perspective by the on-going news in my left ear about the ending of the school seige, all that did was make me weepy as well as scared and in pain. But the lowest point might have come when they switched over to other news and I heard: 'Well, that's it wrapped up - George Bush will be re-elected.' Just an opinion, of course, but it was all too plausible, and what it said about the mentality of the voters in America even if he isn't re-elected was almost as depressing as thoughts of the future if he is. Oh, it wasn't a good morning (aside from the tea)!

I finished my reread of Falcon on Friday, which was pretty interesting. I guess I can see a little better why some people don't like it - I think the two parts of the book not fitting together very well is one objection - and I might even be forced to say that it's conceivably just a tiny bit over-written in parts, but I still loved it. Maybe you have to be a little too much in love with Niki for rationality to appreciate it so much (as I am, and as I suspected Emma Bull might possibly be too)? ;)

What was very odd was being very aware of the weird mix of futuristic SF stuff and just normal everyday computing stuff - which hadn't struck me as much last time. So I was reading along going from 'yes, he found that on his computer' and 'oh, of course, everyone didn't have internet access at home back in '89!' and then 'wow, hope they can fix totally smashed spines and bones that way soon!' Slightly disorienting somehow. Does the science or anything else put you off it, generalblossom? And myntti and pikapolonica (you back yet?), have you read?

When I finished that I read Jenny Nimmo's Milo's Wolves (which I haven't registered yet, but probably will, in order to dump it). My younger daughter bought it, and thought it wasn't great but sort of wanted a second opinion. As usual, her critical ability seemed spot on to me! Some cool ideas, but a very unconvincing 11-year-old first person narrator and (as daughter said) really hammered home the 'the wolves are a metaphor' message far too hard. Would have been much better with a lighter touch. Don't know how typical of Jenny Nimmo this is, but it didn't inspire me to try more. Now reading the third in Catherine Fisher's - um - quartet (this one is Flain's Coronet). Don't know what the name of the series is! But I was very pleased to find the book in town discounted (to €2.50 - cheaper than most second-hand copies would be around here), as I liked the first two. It's not amazing literature, but she's doing an interesting thing with the setting - a world which has 'magic' or whatever you'd want to call it, but the 'relics' of the Order which uses it, are clearly technology from human settlers who lived on the world long ago. Also pretty good characters, though not her best, I think.

Oh, and a question: does anyone here know how to edit pdf files? I really want to take the 'read and release' off the BC bookmarks I put in books to give to the fair, but haven't a clue how to do this, and got no suggestions from a query on the Forum.

My tooth still hurts, which seems unfair after I went through all that to kill the nerve! Just to top off the moaning level before closing...