Yesterday I finished The Sorcerer’s House by Gene Wolfe, and found it to be entirely awesome. It has all the usual Wolfean unreliable narration, elision, indirection, misdirection, and nested weirdnesses, but in an altogether more accessible mode than in many of his other books. It was quite a page-turner. (I was a bit trepidatious about reading it, since I have an idea for a book that involves someone inheriting a house owned by a sorcerer, but I was pleased to find pretty much zero overlap between the things I’m thinking about and the things he did. Though of course my book won’t be as good as his; because he is Gene Wolfe.)
My wife banged her head at the playground on Friday, hard enough to make her nauseated, and has been a bit woozy ever since. (A visit to the emergency room and a scan of her head indicate no lasting damage or blood on the brain, but they think she got a concussion, and she may suffer aftereffects for days or weeks afterward.) A bit scary, but she’s all right.
We had a picnic in the park on Saturday, enjoying the insanely warm weather. (It’s been in the 80s in recent days.) The picnic was our kid’s idea, actually, so we packed up sandwiches and hummus and fruit and cheese and other goodies, spread our blanket on the grass, and had a wonderful lunch before setting the boy loose on the playground.
Did I mention I turned in that book that was due on April 1? I did. My wife read it last week and spared me from some terrible continuity errors. She continues to make me look smarter than I am. Glad that’s done. Next on the to-do list is a new short story, which I started plinking away at on Sunday.
Wife and kid went to Wondercon on Sunday. There’s photographic evidence: My son on the Iron Throne, with my wife as the power behind the throne. (He dressed as a pirate for the con. Though he debated about going as a monkey, or a monkey-pirate hybrid, as revealed in this brief video.) After they got home, I took the kid for a long walk around Berkeley, ending up at a playground, where instead of building sandcastles he dug sanddungeons. Or maybe sandoubliettes. (Seriously: dig a hole, put toys inside, cover hole with the lid of a bucket, and finally cover lid with sand, making the hole invisible.)
A good weekend. They usually are. And next weekend, we’ll be in LA for the Literary Orange festival, and Disneyland, and swimming in the hotel pool, and going to the beach, and so forth. Should be glorious.
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