Friday, September 5, 2014

A peak into Nine Goblins

OMG - It's Friday!  Where did Thursday go? Or Wednesday? I would try to get a grip on this week but apparently I have already missed it. Good grief.

So for Book Beginnings on Friday, hosted by Rose City Reader I guess I will fangirl up the novella Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon). It may be short but it is totally awesome.

It was gruel again for breakfast.

It had been gruel for dinner the night before, and it would be gruel sandwiches for lunch, a dish only possible with goblin gruel, which was burnt solid and could be trusted not to ooze off the bread. It usually had unidentifiable lumps of something in it. Sometimes the lumps had legs.




For The Friday 56 hosted at Freda's Voice something from the 56% mark of Nine Goblins


Many people like animals in the abstract. Sings-to-Trees liked them in the way saints like lepers. He lived with them, he treated them, he patched them up and fed them and sent them on their way. In return, they kicked him and bled on him and oozed on him and had offspring in the middle of his bed, which was admittedly something that saints have rarely had to worry about from lepers. 



Ah - I usually post a nonfiction work too but, um, as you might have already guessed this week has been a bit of a train wreck for me. So instead have this amazing photo of the ongoing eruption in Iceland (the problem here is scale - this is BIG).

Bárðarbungu- Iceland Geological Survey

On 27 August an overflight showed a 4 to 6 km-long row of cauldrons 10-15 m in diameter south of Bárdarbunga. On 29 August a small fissure eruption started in Holuhraun along an old fissure about 600 m in length north of Dyngjujökull.

Lava again erupted starting on 31 August along a 1.5 km long fissure.

On 1-2 September a white steam and gas plume rose 4.5 km (15,000 ft) above sea level and drifted 60 km to NNE and ENE. Lava flowed north and lava plumes rose tens of meters.

On 2 September the lava had covered 4.2 square kilometers and was 4.5 km from the nearby glacier's edge.

Today reportedly two new fissures have opened up and are now erupting. They are closer to the glacier than the fissure that started erupting almost one week ago.

The lava field is just few days away from entering Jökulsá á Fjöllum glacier river. When it does it will create steam explosions and start to general some significant ash.

The eruption is ongoing and does not seem likely to end anytime soon.

From Sept 3rd via Twitter - Icelandair         @Icelandair

Here it is at night


The night footage here http://www.ruv.is/frett/everything-changes-when-night-falls is amazing!

Just WOW!  Sorry this is a bit babbley - If you are interested in more information visit the Icelandic Meteorological Office Bárðarbunga information webpage.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

The 2014 Cybils - Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards

The 2014 Cybils Awards are getting underway and there is only one day left to apply to be a judge or panelist. 

The FAQ and application links can be found here
http://www.cybils.com/2014/08/call-for-judges.html

I am also sorting out the books that I want to nominate.

Nominations open October 1st and close on the 15th. Anyone can nominate one book per catagory. The book has to have been published in English in the period of time lapsed since the last Cybils.

Low and behold - I have looked back at the books that I have gotten around to reviewing (or even reading) lately and they have been very children's and young adult skewed. Seems like I should follow this passion and pay a bit more attention.

Not only do I get to read books with my children (Hurray!), these books tend to make a lovely counter to the adult nonfiction and journal articles I spend most of my time reading (environmental and forensic in nature usually) - restoring my faith in humanity.

Julia's House for Lost Creatures by Ben Hatke micro review

Julia's House for Lost Creatures 
by Ben Hatke

Publisher: 1st Second


Format: hardback  
Copyright: 2014
Pages: 40

Genre: picture book - children's
Source: purchased  

Summary:
When Julia and her walking house come to town, she likes everything about her new neighborhood except how quiet it is! So Julia puts a sign up: "Julia's House for Lost Creatures." Soon she's hosting goblins, mermaids, fairies, and even a dragon. Quiet isn't a problem anymore for Julia...but getting her housemates to behave themselves is! 



Love it - love it - love it! We got this in the mail two days ago and have already read it five or six times. This is a really sweet picture book with a short but wonderful story filled with amazing artwork. The pictures are truly lovely! We were still picking out details last night. Plus there are several morals gently wrapped up in here.

We pre-ordered this book because my daughter and I both loved Hatke's Zita the Space Girl series. Obviously a short picture book is not going to have the depth of a graphic novel but it is perfect as a bedtime book for my daughter (she's six).

So cute!  Five claws.

Nine Goblins by T Kingfisher - micro review (just a squee! really)

Nine Goblins 
by T Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon)

Format: ebook  - digital only 
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc. (Smashbooks too)
Publication date: October 27, 2013
Pages: 147

Genre: fantasy

Source: purchased  

From Ursula Vernon's website Red Wombat Studios:
When a party of goblin warriors find themselves trapped behind enemy lines, it’ll take more than whining (and a bemused Elven veterinarian) to get them home again. A novella of low….very low…fantasy.

Nessilka had been in any number of battles, and she couldn’t remember the first ten minutes of any of them.

She had a theory that if you could remember the first ten minutes, you’d never, ever charge at anybody again, so parts of your brain blotted them out.

The problem was that she couldn’t imagine why her brain would want her to continue charging at people, and this then led her to the theory that parts of her brain worked for the Goblin High Command, which she didn’t like at all.

Regardless, it was ten minutes into the battle, and she couldn’t remember what had just happened. There’d been a lot of yelling. Everyone yelled. No matter what species you were, elf, human, goblin, orc, random bystander, you yelled. There had been a lot of hitting things. Her shield was bent in four or five places, and her arms ached dreadfully.

Okay - I am a total Ursula Vernon fangirl at this point.  I love Dragonbreath (which is how I was introduced), adore Nurk and found Digger quite a profound graphic novel (and want more of her story!). I knew that Vernon had written something under the pseudonym T Kingfisher but didn't get around to reading it until the tail-end of Bout of Books.

For a short 147 page novella there is great attention to detail and some wonderful world building. Lots of humor and a really horrific presentation of the costs of war. I loved it and wanted to re-read it immediately. I also don't want to say much more about it because the way the story unfolds is part of the magic. If you liked any of Vernon's other work, or if you like Terry Pratchett - give it a try.

Oh - this is NOT for kids.  I mean it when I said it spoke graphically about war.

Wondrous Words Wednesday 23

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Kathy at the Bermuda Onion where you "can share new words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love. Feel free to get creative!

Classes have started at the college and school has started for the kids so that past couple of weeks have been nuts. I have been doing lots of reading but in a pretty incoherent way.  I really have to pull together some reviews soon. And now as a special added bonus - none of the equipment in my lab is working. ARGH!  

So, anyhow, the words this week are a totally mixed bag ...

The folletti tended the fire, the goblins mopped up, ...

folletti plural of folletto masculine
Italian
imp, goblin, fairy; especially : a supernatural being who is a survival in popular form of an ancient Etruscan or Roman deity
Origin: Italian, from Old Italian, from Old French folet fool, goblin, from fol foolish, mad

Portrait of a sprite made ​​by professional designer Godo .


You don't throw out the car just because you've run over an echidna

echidna
Also sometimes known as spiny anteaters, they are monotremes - i.e. egg-laying mammals. The four extant species of echidna, along with the platypus, are the only surviving egg-laying mammals in the world. They are native to Australia and New Guinea. Their diet consists of ants and termites but they are not related to the anteaters found in the Americas.

short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus)


I knew this one but was totally blanking on it when I read this sentence in the middle of the night. Something about it made my brain go boink.

Here are a couple of good videos for a better look:

http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/echidna

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/weirdest-echidna

Which makes me think of a nice weird song by They Might Be Giants ... Mammal ! (Warning - the camera work here is dreadful so if you get motion sickness from unsteady video don't watch this. It's too bad because the art is great and they wrote out the lyrics for you!)




... giving it calcium tablets and oiling its cloacal vents every four hours.

cloaca [kloh-ey-kuh]
zoological anatomical term

1a: a cloaca is the posterior opening that serves as the single generative canal for the intestinal, reproductive, and urinary tracts of certain animal species. All amphibians, birds, reptiles, and monotremes possess this singular orifice, from which they excrete both urine and feces, unlike most placental mammals, which possess two or three separate orifices for evacuation.

1b:  a comparable chamber of an invertebrate 

2: a sewer, especially an ancient sewer.

Aren't you glad you know ? I will take mercy on us all and not provide a picture of a chicken's rear end here. But this is kinda cool ... for certain values of the word cool ... The Cloaca Maxima !

Map of central Rome during the time of the Roman Empire, showing Cloaca Maxima in red

Constructed in Ancient Rome, the Cloaca Maxima is one of the world's earliest sewage systems.  It was constructed to drain local marshes and remove the waste of the populous, carrying the effluent to the River Tiber. The name literally means Greatest Sewer. The red line near the center of the image shows the location of the Cloaca Maxima. Here is a cool article about it https://classicalstudies.duke.edu/uploads/assets/08_CloacaMaxima.pdf



... and a pine marten with a broken foot, who would happily eaten any of the other patients if he could catch them. 

pine marten
Pine martens are small mammals - about the size of a cat - with bushy tails and large paws. They usually live in wooded areas - forest or taiga. They have small rounded,  sensitive ears and sharp teeth. They eat small mammals, birds, insects, frogs, and carrion. They have also been known to eat berries, bird's eggs, meat, nuts and honey. Martens belong to the mustelid family, which also includes mink, otter, badger, wolverine and weasel.

There are European and American pine martens, as well as a Newfoundland subspecies. Plus there appear to be several other martens around the world. Ack - genus Martes is polyphyletic, which is cladistics term that means the species in this genus have a similar appearance but do not share a common ancestor. Messy.

Martens are the only mustelids with semi-retractable claws which enables them to lead semi-arboreal lifestyles, such as climbing or running on tree branches. They are mainly active at night and dusk.
American Pine Marten

European Pine Marten

Newfoundland Pine Marten
Very cute and probably more than happy to bite your fingers off.