Friday, December 8, 2023

Arcadia

Kitten update

Still no foster kittens. It is very quiet here.

Arcadia

I've spent most of the day screwing around and listening to audiobooks of Peter Grainger novels. I first listened to Arcadia (Book 3 in the "A Case For Willows and Lane" series) earlier in the week and it was pretty solidly written, so I'm listening to the rest of his catalog as I can — I get my audiobooks from the library and a bunch are already checked out.

The first half of Arcadia follows two timelines, set a month apart, and it took me a bit to get accustomed to it and then to realize why the author made that choice. (Short answer: because one of the main characters doesn't appear in the second timeline, so it would have weighted the novel oddly if the story had been told linearly. Also, all the action is in the second timeline, so this way it punches up the beginning quite a bit.)

I always read a lot, and most of the time I don't have much to say about the structure of a book, but it's kind of fun to get one that makes me think a bit — like in Arcadia, weird structures are usually solving a problem, so the puzzle to solve is to figure out what would go wrong if the same story was told linearly.

If you have novels with odd structures (whether they end up working in the end or not), let me know in the comments!

Pet Picture of the Day

This is Sabrett, from the litter I fostered in September. Isn't she gorgeous?


Accomplishments of the Day

  • Honestly, I feel fine, just completely unmotivated. So I spent the afternoon playing solitaire and listening to audiobooks. Hey, I set my own schedule.
  • Wrote 900 words on the urban fantasy novel.
  • Yesterday's total step count: 12,470. Today's will be a bit lower.
  • Still to-do today: nothing.


2 comments:

Mel said...

The October Daye series recently did a two-book arc that involves alternate timelines and overlapping stories and I was mesmerized. I can't imagine how complicated all that was to figure out!

Theresa B (of Nebulopathy) said...

Seanan McGuire is such an amazing writer!