Open Book Thread: In Ashes Lie

Disabled

It does occur to me (now that I’m starting to get my brain back — I’ll be home this evening, yay!) that street dates are normally Tuesdays, but hey, Amazon swears blind that mine is today, and they’re never wrong, right?

Since I’m not a big enough name for bookstores to put me on the special “don’t shelve this too early or we’ll get sued” list, it doesn’t matter much one way or another. Happy Street Date for In Ashes Lie! Unless you’re in the UK, in which case I believe you have to wait just a couple of weeks longer.

Comments and questions on the book are welcome here (and you don’t need an LJ account to post). If you haven’t read the book yet — which most of you, I expect, have not — just come back later; I’ll link to this from my site so you can find it again.

(Previous discussion threads for Midnight Never Come and Deeds of Men are still open, too.)

0 Responses to “Open Book Thread: In Ashes Lie”

  1. unquietsoul5

    I don’t know about elsewhere, but I do know that for Pandy in Cambridge the books won’t be there and on the shelf before Friday.

  2. janni

    You know, that’s not a bad idea, at all, setting up a thread like that. (ponders doing so as well)

  3. strangerian

    I did get it last weekend from B&N. Real paper book in my hands! Pretty cover! Will finish reading presently.

    Welcome home!

  4. moonartemis76

    Jack. I loved Jack. I laughed out loud several times in public and got looks from innocent bystanders. Yes, Jack is my new favorite.

    • Marie Brennan

      You’re back! Yaaaaay!

      I lessthanthree Jack, myself. I should remember more often that “good-natured smartass” is my natural mode.

  5. Anonymous

    “The Sage of Theare,” I think — I remember that title, though not what the story is about. I’ll keep an eye out for the others. (Do you know if “The True State of Affairs” is in any of her short fiction collections, or will I have to hunt out the NESFA book?)

  6. Anonymous

    Oh, yay! Can’t wait to see you there!

  7. Anonymous

    Dogsbody is among my favorite DWJ books, just one I’ve been studiously avoiding for a while. I first read it as an adult, and have re-read it two or three times, but not for about twelve years, now. I have not picked it up since we got our first own dog. Because even before I had a dog, the ending gutted me utterly. I didn’t feel it was undersold at all. Possibly that’s the dog-person side of my nature. And possibly it’s the beleaguered kids as central protagonists driving my interests, but in fact both Dogsbody and Eight Days of Luke are among my strong favorites in her oeuvre, over several later ones with more adult/ensemble leads.

  8. Anonymous

    I had a dog as a kid and he died not long before I read Dogsbody. Gutted. Absolutely gutted.

    I also think she got the thing about The First Dog. All other dogs, however wonderful, are just dogs. But Otis was Otis. That’s his mother, Psyche, in the icon. Otis was born six months after me, in our home.

  9. Anonymous

    Hooray for ARCs! That looks like an awesome desk.

  10. Anonymous

    I like working in coffee shops, but don’t like either having to leave everything on the table while going for a refill or feeling guilty about taking up tablespace if I’m not drinking a coffee right then. So I need a solvent yet quiet coffee shop within walking distance of my house and with a tableservice where the staff all know exactly what I want without prompting.

  11. Anonymous

    Coffee shops. They have to have:
    1) Wi-Fi & outlets
    2) A good tea selection
    3) Tables big enough for laptop and journal
    4) Prefer not a chain
    5) Walking distance
    6) a bathroom

    You know… I never thought I’d have to add that last one, but my almost perfect coffee shop right now *doesn’t have a restroom for public use!* It totally sucks.

    I suppose I don’t need an ARC. I just didn’t want to be left out. Also, I like talking about myself… or is that *to* myself?

    Nice desk!

  12. Anonymous

    Oh wow, that looks like an awesome desk. Would love a desk like that, though I don’t know that I could bear to replace my huge antique monster heirloom desk at home 🙂

    (I worked for half a year or so in customer service for a mobile phone company after my MA, and they had those kind of desks for every employee as a matter of course. Then I went back to university to do a PhD, where my desk could be adjusted a few centimetres only with difficulty and we needed a doctor’s recommendation to get a mouse trapper. The notion of preventing injuries through proper equipment clearly hadn’t entered their minds.)

    So I’m both nerdy and traditionalist when it comes to my work space, and prefer either the library or my messy offices with my desk and shelves piled with books and papers. It’s strangely inspiring for my own research to feel surrounded by so much knowledge.

  13. Anonymous

    Sometimes I work in the benches in the woods by here. Of course one doesn’t get as good a view of the flowers when in the woods, but it’s shady and secluded. I suppose my ideal work environment would combine the shady and secludedness with the flowers… oh, maybe if I were up in a tree overlooking all that!

    I’ve also worked on the roof of the Cambridge University math department, which has grass growing on it: pictures: view of the middle of the roof, side view from below, and a bit with flowers give you something of an idea of what the space is like: it’s sort of like being on top of a space station or ship, and has a good view of the area.

    Have I mentioned that I like working outside? 🙂 I also miss my senior year dorm room common room, though, which had lots of sunlight and river views, and I had a nice lap desk set up on the futon for working on my thesis… Oh, and one of my math grad student friends has a papasan in her office with two mattresses stacked on it, which is very cozy too, but I haven’t spend that much time working there.

  14. Anonymous

    I’m fine with the third person plural for singular gender unknown, but I’m even better with rephrasing sentences when possible to make them plural about people unknown. “A person ought to remove their shoes” is unnecessary when you have “people ought to remove their shoes.” This doesn’t cover all cases, but some of them it does.

    I have a person in my life, or at least in the lives of some people close to me, who declines to state gender, and I always refer to this person either by first name or by first initial, or else by “this person” if I am trying to leave this person’s name out of it, never by pronoun, because I have similar problems to yours with applying “they/their” to this person, who is distinctly human and singular. I also find the motley assortment of approximations clunky and often not satisfying because I persist in attempting to communicate, not just with the corners of fandom that have coined usages like “zie/zer,” but also with people like my grandmother who will say, “Zer? Honey, what does that mean?” (Also, “zie/zer” sounds extremely female to me, not neutral at all, but that’s a different problem.)

  15. Anonymous

    I ditto everyone on Bloomsbury/St pancras area. Wonderful location with affordable accom.

  16. Anonymous

    Hey, I’ve seen that thing, I think.

    Today, fixing up museum pieces. Tomorrow, ‘shopping models. :p “I didn’t know your husband was so muscular.”

  17. Anonymous

    I just waiting for the action figures, so I can put all my Clancy Browns together for the End Times..

  18. Anonymous

    Oh. After the first paragraph I thought you were going to tell me how.

    Sigh.

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