For about two decades, I’ve owned an odd and appealing fantasy paperback called The Labyrinth Gate. Somehow it wasn’t until I saw a digital copy of it for sale at Amazon tofday that I realized it was by Kate Elliott. Apparently I first read her much longer ago that I’d thought.
Digression the first: If you read Kindle books at all, Amazon has scads and scads of them on sale for a dollar or two today, as par tof their Cyber Monday sales. Here. There’s some more Kate Elliott, loads of Barbara Hambly, the Cecelia and Kate books by Wrede and Stevermer, most or all of Charlotte Macleod, and for some reason tons and tons of the Boxcar Children mysteries. Given that there are 82 pages of mysteries alone, there’s also plenty of stuff I’ve never heard of.
Digression the second: The Labyrinth Gate is probably not going to look “odd” to a reader today, but in the 1980s, finding a book set in an alternate Regency London with magic wasn’t a common thing. I bet it will still stand up to a rereading now – I’m about to find out. And maybe I can finally figure out why those sisters have such a range of coloring – yes, I know it’s related somehow to *redacted* and *redacted*, but I never could figure out how.
Digression the third, or rather return to orginal topic: a check of the paperback says I’m not being that obtuse after all. It was published under the nom Alis Rasmussen, not Elliott’s own name.
Outside the worlds of pages and electrons, we went to Ted’s parents for Thanikgiving, taking an erg with us so we wouldn’t fall behind on the annual Holiday Challenge (200,000m between Thanksgiving and Christmas). Since Thanksgiving falls so late this year, there’s less time than usual to get all that distance in. Some years you need to average as little as 6km per day, while this year it’s 7400m. I’ve got about 37000m down so far.
It was nice being back in the US, especially getting Thursday and Friday off for the holiday, though I do miss the big expat dinners in the Netherlands that we’ve gone to the last few years.
I hope those of you who celebrate had a good time likewise.
With Chanukah being so early and two family birthdays in the next week, my holiday shopping is all done. I’ve been notably unsuccessful in avoiding the lure of the sales, and have bought myself a slew of cheap books (see above) and some cute boots, because I’d been lusting after them and found them for 30% off. Those are supposed to arrive tomorrow.
I’ve also bought myself a new Kindle, but that’s not my fault; apparently the cats decided they wanted me to have one for CHanukah. I’d left it laying with the cover open on the kitchen bar, and someone nameless (but almost certainly white with black spots, because her sister dosn’t prowl up there) stepped on the screen. THere’s just a tiny crack that produces a bright spot in the screen lighting, but in my experience Kindles are frail beasts and this one will probably cease working at any time now. Though it has lasted like this since Wednesday – a new Chanukah miracle, maybe?