Jackpot!

Oh baby, did I ever hit El Dorado in the new reads/fresh authors department! I just started Catherynne Valente’s Space Opera and by page 21 my mind was officially blown. Every single paragraph is a neon technicolor dream-coat of graceful, gymnastic word dancing.

Given that I’m tight up against some jittery, agitata times right now, is this the absolute most perfect book escape? Yes and no. I wanna savor, absorb and live inside every sentence. That, at the mo, can be a wee bit exhausting.

So, I’m stirring up my reading pot. I’m leavening Space Opera with John Scalzi’s very first book, Agent to the Stars – aliens from another world decide to get an agent.

The space-faring Yherajk have come to Earth to meet us and to begin humanity's first interstellar friendship. There's just one problem: They're hideously ugly and they smell like rotting fish. So getting humanity's trust is a challenge. The Yherajk need someone who can help them close the deal. (source)

Between the two I feel confident of being so consumed with wonderment, marvel and flat out fun that I forget to be nervous…mostly. Can I bring one of these into the OR so, right up until they say count backward from 100, I can have FUN?

Here are a few snippets from Space Opera. You’re welcome!

Life is beautiful and life is stupid. This is, in fact, widely regarded as a universal rule not less inviolable than the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Uncertainty Principle, and No Post on Sundays. As long as you keep that in mind, and never give more weight to one than the other, the history of the galaxy is a simple tune with lyrics flashed on-screen and a helpful, friendly bouncing disco ball of all-annihilating flames to help you follow along.
~~~
Are you kind enough, on your little planet, not to shut that rhythm down? Not to crush underfoot the singers of songs and tellers of tales and wearers of silk? Because it's monsters who do that. Who extinguish art. Who burn books. Who ban music. Who yell at anyone with ears to turn off that racket. Who cannot see outside themselves clearly enough to sing their truth to the heavens. Do you have enough goodness in your world to let the music play?

Do you have soul?
~~~
When the aliens come, there’ll be one queue to fight them and one queue to fuck them, and the second one’ll be longer by light-years.
~~~
 The world had gotten gritty enough. The only thing left to do in all that dirt was to shine.
~~~
the only wall we could ever build against What’s Going On was the glitter and the shine and the synth and the knowing grin that never stops knowing. The show. Because the opposite of fascism isn’t anarchy, it’s theater. When the world is fucked, you go to the theater, you go to the shine, and when the bad men come, all there is left to do is sing them down.
~~~
I’ll put this in words you can understand: humans are hideous, pain-guzzling, pollution-spouting space monsters who might threaten our way of life. Now, how does that usually pan out in the movies, kitten? At least we let you try to convince us we’re wrong. I doubt you asked the dodo birds what they thought about it before you blasted the last one in the face with a blunderbuss.