Am torn between cooking for the party with Charlie Jane Anders, et. al. on Saturday, and devouring her new book, All the Birds in the Sky, which I am now halfway through. It reminds me a bit of Hiromi Goto’s Half-World, mostly in how true it is to the fine nuances of middle-school misery in the first section (the characters are older in later parts of the book). But I think what I’m loving most about it are the unexpected bits of magical / scientific fabulosity. I wonder whether the author would rather I finished the book before she arrived, or rather I cooked curries for the party…
(I am guessing she couldn’t care less whether I finish organizing the basement, which is the third thing tugging at my attention. When I’m not working on the draft of my own novel…)