Uncreated Conscience

I am wondrously, gloriously tan, although not as tan as I have been on past Hawai’i vacations. Growing up in Los Angeles gives you a permanent semi-tan; living in New York makes you pale and pasty. I look better when I’ve got some colour in my skin, otherwise I am the exact shade of sour milk.

As gorgeous as Maui was, I am extremely grateful to be home. I need a holiday from my vacation, primarily because I had little or no time to myself in Los Angeles. My introverted heart was going spare. But now I am nestled in the comforts of my own bed, trying desperately to catch up on both sleep and errands. Sleep is winning out, even though I need to go grocery shopping, deposit some checks, find a full-time job in publishing (anyone, anyone?), stock up on items from The Body Shop, and finish revising my novel. (I was very good and actually did a lot of work while I was in Los Angeles.) Sleep might be winning over being productive, but internet and books to read are competing for first place.

I might have mentioned before that my brother and I had a little agreement over our holidays: he wouldn’t bring his video games to Maui if I didn’t bring any books. It wasn’t such a big deal at first; we keep ridiculously active on Jones Family Vacations. There was more nonstop hiking through rainforests, swimming in clear blue waters, sunrise volcano walks, snorkeling with sea turtles, sportfishing, yoga on the beach, and restaurant-eating than you could shake a stick at. But on the last night—at a luau—both my brother and I caved. I stole his copy of THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN and he played Brick on my mother’s Blackberry as we waited for the kahlua pua to finish cooking.

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Ka'anapali Beach, Lahaina, Maui

Greetings from the Westin Ka’anapali in Lahaina, Maui! My body is absolutely confused as to what time it is. My family and I flew into Kahului Airport last night around 4:30pm Hawai’i time, which meant it was 7:30pm in Los Angeles, and 10:30pm in New York. Coordinating daily phone calls with Bear was a bit of a challenge as he is now six hours ahead of me. I woke up around 5:30am here to a beautiful silvery full moon was hovering over a lavender and indigo ocean in the pre-dawn light. I’m excited; it’s been five years since my family and I went on vacation together. Unfortunately as I seem to have forgotten my camera battery back in LA, I can’t photodocument everything I normally would, so you will have to make do with a random photo of Ka’anapali Beach I found online.

But gloating over being in Paradise is not what I meant to blog about. I bought and finished GRACELING by Kristin Cashore several days ago and meant to review it before I left Pasadena. Without further ado:

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So last Christmas I bought my brother UGLIES by Scott Westerfeld (which I don’t think he’s read) as a gift. I read it but never got around to getting my hands on the other books in the series. Yesterday (after a successful venture to H&M for two very cute retro swimsuits), I stopped by a bookstore to get PRETTIES and SPECIALS (as well as GRACELING by Kristin Cashore) so I might find out how this all ends. I’ll gift them to my brother when I return to New York. Hopefully he’ll get around to reading them. (He’s read all of THE HUNGER GAMES in less than a week! I have hope!).

Spoilers for the UGLIES series below.

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The Naming by Alison Croggan

I tried my best, I really did. But I simply cannot get past the “Note on the Text” pages of this book. I’ve written about sword-and-sorcery and the derivative nature of many high fantasy works, but never in my life have I seen something so blatantly obvious about its linguistic debt to Tolkien.

The “Note on the Text” opens like this:

The Naraudh Lar-Chanë (or Riddle of the Treesong), one of the key legents of the lost civilization of Edil-Amarandh, is here translated in full for the first time. This great classic of Annaren literature deserves, it seems to me, a much wider audience than the academics it has so far attracted.

I am going to betray the depth of my geekiness but I do not care. I have never hidden my love for Tolkien and THE LORD OF THE RINGS—I even went so far as to study the Elvish languages Tolkien created, both Sindarin and Quenya, although I focused mostly on Sindarin. (For the linguistically inclined, I would absolutely recommend the Ardalambion.) The place-names and character names in this book remind me far too much of Tolkien, there is even a map in the beginning of this book that looks suspiciously like Middle Earth, complete with Tolkien-esque calligraphy.

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It’s been a long time since I’ve had to wash chlorine out of my hair.

There are things I love about southern California: that I woke up yesterday to a chilly overcast morning, that by 10:00am it was warm enough to swim in my parents’ complex’s outdoor pool, and that it was cool enough all day to never need air-conditioning.

Yesterday I saw Star Trek again after having been thwarted in my quest for a decent swimsuit. (Spock is just as hot, if not hotter, the second time around. Also, I did not realise Zachary Quinto was Sylar from Heroes. Somehow this makes it all more awesome because he is a villain.) What is it with tie-dyed animal print bikinis this season? They are simply the ugliest things I’ve ever seen in my life. Have I missed out on last year’s retro-inspired styles? And do cute-but-sturdy-enough-for-surfing bikinis exist?

In addition to running all over dodge for a non-hideous swimsuit, I found myself searching the length and breadth of Pasadena for Sarah Rees Brennan‘s THE DEMON’S LEXICON, as every bookstore I knew failed to have it on its shelves. On its release day. Bookstore fail.

Nevertheless, I was eventually successful in my quest for the book (if not the bikini) and without further ado:

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