![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Those of you who know me know I don't really listen to music. However, usually when I'm home and awake, I do have the TV on... even if I'm not watching it, I've got it on something, CNN if nothing else. It helps fill up those long silences, keeps me at least a little bit informed, and most importantly, it tends to help me keep track of time better. I know show X lasts until Y time where I change it to show Z, etc, and so even without looking at a clock, I'm at least dimly aware of when it is.
This week, as an experiment, I'm keeping my TV turned off unless there's something specific on I want to watch (beyond a little teeny bit of headline news in the morning).
So far it's.. interesting. A lot quieter. Does make it on the one hand a lot easier to fall into a nap, but on the other hand makes it a lot harder to control how long I'm out (it's easier to catch some cue from the TV about what time it is and wrest myself awake, then it is to consciously wake up enough to check the clock).
Anyway, enough about that...
Finished: Double Star, by Robert A. Heinlein
Started: Startide Rising, by David Brin
(minor spoilers and thoughts behind cut tag)
Okay.. DS was pretty fun. A pretty short book, only 125 pages, but it was some of the better aspects of Heinlein highlighted there. The main character is a bit of a fop with the trace of a rogue in him, at least to start with (one of the things the story plays with is how playing a role can change you). A lot of the other characters are less well-defined, but it's a short book so you can't expect much. The Martians are fairly interesting, and overall it's a good read, without getting too political like some of later Heinlein does.
Startide Rising is the second book in the Uplift universe, where aliens routinely genetically later other aliens to bring them to sentience, leadng to a period of indentured servitude for the race... except humanity, who either uplifted without help or had Patrons who are long gone, and aren't fully in the Galactic Culture.
I'm not too far enough into the book, beyond knowing that the ship is crewed mainly by genetically uplifted (by humans) dolphins, along with a few humans, and they're on the run. I'm running into the minor problem of the aliens being annoying in speaking patterns and so on.
Sometimes aliens speaking in a unique way (that is transmitted along to the reader) works, and sometimes it doesn't. I can't pin my finger on why, but I think part of it depends on not being forced into too much at once, which this does by making the crew mostly Dolphins, who's translated speak is often poetry-like. It's not a serious problem yet, but it's there so far.
This week, as an experiment, I'm keeping my TV turned off unless there's something specific on I want to watch (beyond a little teeny bit of headline news in the morning).
So far it's.. interesting. A lot quieter. Does make it on the one hand a lot easier to fall into a nap, but on the other hand makes it a lot harder to control how long I'm out (it's easier to catch some cue from the TV about what time it is and wrest myself awake, then it is to consciously wake up enough to check the clock).
Anyway, enough about that...
Finished: Double Star, by Robert A. Heinlein
Started: Startide Rising, by David Brin
(minor spoilers and thoughts behind cut tag)
Okay.. DS was pretty fun. A pretty short book, only 125 pages, but it was some of the better aspects of Heinlein highlighted there. The main character is a bit of a fop with the trace of a rogue in him, at least to start with (one of the things the story plays with is how playing a role can change you). A lot of the other characters are less well-defined, but it's a short book so you can't expect much. The Martians are fairly interesting, and overall it's a good read, without getting too political like some of later Heinlein does.
Startide Rising is the second book in the Uplift universe, where aliens routinely genetically later other aliens to bring them to sentience, leadng to a period of indentured servitude for the race... except humanity, who either uplifted without help or had Patrons who are long gone, and aren't fully in the Galactic Culture.
I'm not too far enough into the book, beyond knowing that the ship is crewed mainly by genetically uplifted (by humans) dolphins, along with a few humans, and they're on the run. I'm running into the minor problem of the aliens being annoying in speaking patterns and so on.
Sometimes aliens speaking in a unique way (that is transmitted along to the reader) works, and sometimes it doesn't. I can't pin my finger on why, but I think part of it depends on not being forced into too much at once, which this does by making the crew mostly Dolphins, who's translated speak is often poetry-like. It's not a serious problem yet, but it's there so far.
