Adventures in Bookstore Reading

I have read all of Naomi Novik's books (the Temeraire series) in bookstores. That is a lot of book-reading!

I have also recommended them to others, and made a Christmas present of one to a friend, so I do not feel I have cheated Ms. Novik of her moneys...although it is an interesting question of the bookstore reader.

The List:

Books in the Bookstore!

Let's begin with the biggie. That would be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I did not go to the bookstore at midnight; I am not that big an HP fan. I went the next afternoon, a Saturday, and read the book in three and a half or four hours. I confess, I did not read the long long parts where HarryHermioneandRon are wandering around wondering what to do with any great attention, but, well, they were long long and dull. I didn't like it supermuch; a lot of it felt like a very ex post facto explanation of things which had gone before, and really, now, in the last book, you are going to introduce these marvelous artifacts the Deathly Hallows, which have never been whispered of before, despite their Awesome Powahz and the fact that two of them have been hidden in plain sight (if you can say that of an Invisibility Cloak) the whole time?

I shake my head in bemusement, J.K. Rowling. If you care to cry all the way to the bank, this is your cue.

Anyway. I read the book. Then I went dancing and my date was upset to learn I was done already.

I did not know quite what to make of that.

Saturday: Saturn! And in Spanish, "sabado", the Sabbath. So, for the English days, 2 celestial objects, 4 Norse deities, and a Roman holdout; for Spanish, two Christian-derived names, 1 celestial object, and 4 Roman gods. Weird, huh?

Friday!

Name either for Frigg or Freyja, if they are not really the same goddess after all; the former is Odin's wife, the latter the goddess of love (still in the Norse pantheon here). In Spanish, "viernes", for Venus...also the goddess of love. I guess Fridays are romantic.

It had never really struck me before that several of the days retain their association with a quality (the moon on Monday, war on Tuesday, lightning on Thursday, love on Friday) even though the origin of the associated diety is different. Assuming that the Norse got the seven-day week from the Christians who came to convert them, perhaps they kept the idea of the name of the day of the week but swapped gods to suit their own religious antecedents?

Catching up to Thursday!

Tuesday: Tew, the Norse god of war. In Spanish it is "martes", from Mars. I guess there is just something bellicose about Tuesdays.

Wednesday: Woden, aka Odin, the All-Father, etc. etc., chief of the Norse gods. In Spanish, "miercoles" for Mercury.

Thursday: If you see a pattern here you have already guessed...it is for Thor, god of thunder. In Spanish, "jueves", for Jove, which I guess means there is something very fulgaral about Thursdays. <--I confess I had to look that up, but it's a great word, isn't it?

Given the derivation of the two languages it is perhaps not surprising that English (up to this point) has gone exclusively with Norse dieties whereas Spanish has stuck with the Roman gods. This pattern does break, but not 'til the end of the week...[cliffhanger!]

Maybe I will do something shorter than restaurants.

It will take too long to describe them.

I have been given ideas by mah peeps (especially Mom, thanks Mom!) for things to list, which is cheerful.

This week we will do Days of the Weeks, origins of, a reprise of a past post...if I remember right.

Sunday is, well, Sunday. Monday is Moon day. In Spanish they are domingo (they are not capitalized in Spanish, and neither are the names of months), which I do not know the exact meaning of, but which has the same root as domine and probably means the Lord's Day, and lunes, which is Moon Day (luna=moon) again. We will see that the English names are all pagan, whereas the Spanish are 5/7s pagan. I do not know if there is any lesson to be drawn from that, except that we name days for odd stuff.

What we have here is,

failure to communicate.

My poor computer up and bit the dust, or at least nibbled it. So the postings may be less than what we all would hope.

Hiatus

So, let's get back to that SF restaurant list next week, as it is already the middle of this week.

I keep thinking of funny things to put up here and then forgetting them. I will have to imitate Elder A's dad and go about with 3x5 cards in my pocket to jot down my musings.

Here is an amusing thing--a couple of nights ago I had a dream about my dad and I fighting a zombie ogre mage outside this little cabin in the woods. We were all got up like D&D characters with swords and studded leather armor, and we could jump around like the rope-fu guys in the movies (onto the roof, off the roof, right over the head of the ogre, who was about nine feet tall). Dad left in the middle to go get a spear or something and I woke up before he got back, so I guess it ended in a draw.

The really funny thing about all this, of course, is that Dad was a FIGHTER! Wow, how weird is that?

[Inside joke with an audience of one. I love you, Dad. ;)]

San Francisco Thing #7:

On tape delay!

Just kiddin', I just didn't bring my computer home Saturday night.

Thing #7, which I have saved up all week to write, is: FOOD!

Before I came to San Francisco I had never eaten sushi. I had never really seriously considered the possibility of eating sushi. Sushi was, I dunno, a Japanese thing, right? Eating raw fish is just not something we do 'round here.

So said I.

And then, when I'd been here a couple of months, we got the chance to take a visiting professor to lunch (student lunches with visiting professors have provided several memorable experiences for me) and my older and more experienced program-mates made tracks directly for Ebisu, one of the best sushi restaurants in San Francisco.

So, I had sushi. Cuz, well, when in Rome. And it was OK, except the part where I was ambushed by the wasabi hiding underneath one of those little shrimpies.

And then! A couple of months later! We hosted the students interviewing for next year's admissions, and squired them up and down and feasted them upon fat things, including a trip to Hotei, which is Ebisu's sister restaurant, and ordered lots and lots and LOTS of sushi.

And a little light went off in my head, and I said..."SUSHI!"

I am dead sure I ate more than thirty pieces. Forty would not surprise me. I ate the little fried-egg sushi, and the unagi, and the tuna (yellow) and the tuna (pink) and the cucumber-avocado-and-crab-meat, and the spider roll with the crab legs sticking out, and it was SO DELICIOUS.

This is only one of many stories, in fact, so perhaps that will be this week's list: Stories about Food in San Francisco.