Exciting weekend. Saturday was MarithCelebration, which I had organised. Six of us (me and Earl, Trip, Chrisber, Marith, Adam) went to San Gregorio, and then to Bean Hollow, and then to Santa Cruz for dinner. It was a stunning success, except for Earl being somewhat overly cold and thus quickly tired. Everyone had fun, though, at least so far as I could tell.

Sunday was Trip's Nexus game, which I was unfortunately way too tired to enjoy. I think I'm coming down with a cold; yesterday I was just stupidly tired, but today there's a little tickle at the back of my throat. I think it's all terribly unfair. I went to sleep early on Friday (11pm!), and slept eleven hours, and then I got a good eight hours Saturday night -- and then I had to go and get sick, which means that I'll be tired no matter how much sleep I get. Unfair, I tell you.

Friday night Earl and I had sushi (really good ebi and hamachi, and the tako was much better than I anticipated), then went to Bookbuyers where I spent too much money. I picked up the first three Thieves' World books, as well as the first three Merovingen Nights books. My big find, however, was a copy of CJ Cherryh's DownBelow Station, which (if one trusts Jo Walton's taste, which I do in many things) I ought to adore. So far it's quite nice, but depressing enough that I quit reading it after I dropped Earl off at the airport. I'll go back to it this weekend, when I'm in LA again.

Once Earl left I finished (finally) The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope, which is a stunning interpretation of the Tam Lin ballad. Better even than Pamela Dean's TamLin, which has been one of my favourite books for years. (And will probably continue to be, since TPG is far too twisty to be a good comfort book.) I am tempted to write Dean a letter asking her all sorts of questions -- I want to know if she's read TPG, and if it had an influence on her novel, since I kept hitting pieces of dialogue in TPG that echoed back to TamLin, and I couldn't pinpoint why.

After finishing TPG I read Robin McKinley's new novel, Rose Daughter. It's a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, unconnected with her previous retelling (Beauty), and quite different in tone -- much darker, I think, and more haunted. I liked it a lot, although it wasn't very much like previous McKinley and thus might make her fans unhappy.

My weekend, in a nutshell. Am I leaving out all the important bits?

And thank you, Anita, for catching my previous typos. And hopefully my future ones.