How much do I love Fay reading Elizabeth Peters while having her own Egyptian adventure?

I'm almost done with Krakatoa by Simon Winchester. I'm loving it. Of course, I'm a total sucker for "small" history books like this, books that deal with the minutiae of everyday life rather than the epic actions of princes and generals. Also I love natural history. All the same, Winchester's gotten much better at splitting his sensationalism and random points out from the main focus of the book. They are still in there, and it's clearly a little difficult for him to stay on target, but he gives it a manful try.

Cause for all these men to be so beautiful and Anita to be the only XX worth boinking doesn't make any sense at all.

nods again

Although she does describe women in similarly sexual terms - when she introduces a new female character she generally describes their figure in depth, including size of breasts, which may be a characteristic of Jackie Collins-type literature, I don't know, but it seems rather loaded. I mean, homophobic though she clearly is, Anita seems to be checking the girls out. (I'm expecting that LKH is eventually going to give Anita some girl-on-girl action, once she's got past her own squick - the books seem to me to show LKH's personal squick zones shifting fairly rapidly.)

And the ardeur is completely involuntary yet only responds to A Penis.

Yep. The ardeur - it's just - gah! Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid badfic nonsense! Damn it! Cheesy plot device! ...there are many annoying things about these books. Many. But, yes, I do like the notion of Anita being an Animator, I like Animators Inc, I like that she talks in hard boiled prose most of the time and that she describes her guns so lovingly.

I think Jacqueline Kirby is more a Mary Sue that Elizabeth Peters might want to be.

Ah. Haven't read those books yet. May give them a try, though.

I can't call Amelia a Mary Sue, because Peters is herself an Egyptologist.

Which, twinned with the pictures of Peters dressed as Amelia, would be more liable to make her a Mary Sue, imho - but I don't think Amelia reads as a Mary Sue for the simple reason that we're often encouraged to laugh (affectionately) at her. Peters pokes fun at Amelia, and shows us her weaknesses and her unreliability as a narrator. I think that undercuts any Mary Sue-ishness.

I'm now more than half way through Silhouette in Scarlet and it's definitely an improvement on the first Vicky Bliss book, but I'm not finding it compelling in the way that the Amelia books are. There's a lot more irony in those books - a lot more moments when the gateway character interprets matters one way, and the reader interprets them in a different way. Which is fun.

Also - Hagrid's not Ms Goodall! shakes head. He is clearly and most definitely the Wizarding World's answer to Steve Irwin. His love for all bitey poisonous critters is a deep and tender love, and he regards their vicious and blood-thirsty snappings and thrashings as nothing more than evidence that they're 'A grumpy little fella'

OMG - Fay this is it! Exactly. No wonder ita cannot stand him. He only needs to marry Rita Skeeter and have her publicize his adventures with magical creatures with some sort of tv show. (On a Wizarding Channel, of course.)

Coincidentally I started Krakatoa on the bus this morning. He is quite the digresser, isn't he! It's a vast change in pace from Seabiscuit, which raced along. This is a meander.

This may be a stretch, but what about Klinger in MASH? He isn't very good at his job, he's eccentric, he doesn't fit in, he's less educated than the people around him, and the "good" people accept him as he is.

Aside from the funny but disconcerting picture this brings up, I think this might fit with early Klinger. Later in the series, Klinger developed into a more three-dimensional character. He became smart, effective, and, of course, wore a uniform.

He is quite the digresser, isn't he!

It's like reading an episode of Connections, except we don't always end up back in the same place.

Can someone with a better Brust-memory remind me -- what is the cycle of the Teckla supposed to be like?

Poor, nasty, brutish, and short?

Are Teckla nasty and brutish? They seem meek and self-effacing. And the cycles are of various lengths? It's been so long since I read the more modern ones. I forget they mythology.

As I recall, it usually starts out as some sort of peasant commonwealth created by a revolt against the despotic Orca, and ends up getting bought out by the Jhegaala. Yes, the individual cycles do vary, but there are minimum and maximum lengths. Not sure what they are, but I think the shortest length is 289 years and the longest is 4913 years. Multiples of 17 and all that.