Devices and Desires

Whenever people see the title of the book I'm reading, they get a "look" on their face. It's kinda funny. Let's get to the good stuff.

"They closed the door on him, and he sat back down on the floor. It had been a valid question: what on earth had possessed him to do such a reckless, stupid thing? Unfortunately, he couldn't think of an answer, and he'd been searching for one ever since they arrested him. If they bothered marking the graves of abominators, his headstone would have to read:

SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME

Wonderful epitaph for a wasted life."

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[a prisoner's friend has just paid him a visit and left]

Remarkable, Ziani thought; I've know Falier most of my life and I never knew he had magic powers. Always thought he was just orindary, like me. But he can walk through doors, and I can't.

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[one character ponders his relationship with another]

This isn't love, Valens told himself. He knew about love, having seen it at work among his friends and people around him. Love was altogether more predatory. It was concerned with pursuit, capture, enjoyment; it was caused by beauty, the way raw red skin is caused by the sun; it was appetite, like hunger or thirst, a physical discomfort that tortured you until it was satisfied...and so this couldn't be love, in which case it could only be friendship; shared interests, an instructive comparison of perspectives, a meeting of minds, a pooling of resources...Not love, obviously. Different. Better...

[a little bit later, he reflects further]

It was just as well he and the Eremian Duchess were just good friends, when you thought of all the damage a lover could do in the world.

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There's an enormous amount of detail in the book about seemingly trivial things. But there's also a good deal of insight and individual asides that are fun and funny. There's a lot of authors whose work I love and admire. But right now, I'd want to write like K.J. Parker.

Back to watching the Super Bowl. I bought some chips and pistachios to eat during the game. So far I've just been drinking tea and blogging.