Question 2

(These questions are coming from my "How well do you know Beccaie Jamieson?" quiz on Facebook. Thus far, the high scores are 35% among my friends, with my sister scoring 74%. I'm bringing the questions to my blog in the hopes that some more people will get to know me better.)

2) Who is my favorite author?
a) Laurie R. King
b) Lois McMaster Bujold
c) Dorothy Gilman
d) Charlotte MacLeod
e) There is no possible way to choose just one.

I have no knitting photo this week. I am still making progress on the second Rivendell sock -- the heel is complete and I'm nearly halfway through the foot. I just haven't taken a photo of it yet, and I don't have one of the first sock at this stage, either. I haven't worked on the Warm Woolies sweater at all this week, since I've been focusing on the sock even for my at-home knitting. This is a good thing because something is wrong with the fan of the computer at work, and it's making so much noise that I want to smash things with sledgehammers (yes, plural) by halfway through my shift. I'm fairly certain that this would interfere with my ability to maintain the correct yarn tension (typically the higher the tension in the knitter, the more tightly they pull the yarn) for any project whatsoever. Since the Rivendell socks are meant to fit one specific person, with specific-sized feet, this would be a problem. I suppose I could cast on for something new and work on it only at work, so at least the tension would be uniform. However, I'm very reluctant to admit, even tacitly, that the fan will never be fixed and the noise is permanent.

Also, I'm very grateful to have 2 days off in a row at the moment. Just saying.

I was going to whine for a bit this week about how I'm so tired of dealing with depression and dysthymia, especially when it's exacerbated by PMS and the injudicious reading of some online fiction (recommended by a friend of mine) that turned out to be way more S&M than the light Dom/Sub vibe that I was expecting. In a rare display of sense, I stopped reading it about 15% of the way into it, even though I'd really kind of like to know if they ever resolve the non-human racial discrimination of the ... immediate setting. I still kind of want to toss my brain into the washing machine though. However, I've decided to skip the long, rambly whining rant-ish blather on the subject and go with one long, rambly whining sentence instead. I hope you appreciate it. ;-)

The answer to Question 2 is Lois McMaster Bujold. It's not easy to pick just one favorite author, but it is possible, so answer e is out. Laurie R. King writes great books, and one of her series includes the character Mary Russell, who is an option in my still-to-come question about my favorite character. She also wrote Keeping Watch, which is great and wonderful and suspenseful and powerful and haunting. Dorothy Gilman wrote Thale's Folly, which I used to list as my favorite book. It's still in the running, although I now have more trouble with that question. Charlotte MacLeod wrote "screwball myster[ies]" according to one reviewer, and I think that adjective is very apt. They're also a lot of fun. Nonetheless, Lois McMaster Bujold beats them all. She has 3 series: the Vorkosigan saga, the Chalion books, and the Sharing Knife series. I love them all, with the possible exception of Falling Free, which is set in the Vorkosigan universe although it has no Vorkosigans in it. FF is a good book, but the villian(s) is(are) just too believable for me to really love it. They don't win, but their defeat isn't quite complete enough for me -- I'm much more vindictive than most of the characters. But for sheer rereadability and shininess, LMB can't be beat.