Oh, dear. I made the mistake of reading the first few pages of Luck in the Shadows on Amazon, and ended up ordering the whole Nightrunner trilogy by Lynn Flewelling. Considering the number of recommendations I've had for it and my own appreciation of the opening, I suspect that I'm safe, but I wish I hadn't already ordered Empire of Ivory - it would have saved extra trips to the mail. As it was, I was forced to add Martha Wells' Entanglement to get free shipping: such a sad fate is mine.

Now the question is: when the hell am I gonna find the time to read them? Last weekend was literally the first time since school started that I haven't had to a) shoot a film or b) drive to New Haven to buy apartment crap at IKEA (also an excuse to visit my roommate's adorable brother at Yale, with whom I always end up arguing the merits of film vs theatre).

I'm having a fantastic semester: three film classes and West African dance. Heaven! So I've watched over 20 movies since school started, and that's not including all the one-reel silent films from my Action and Adventure class. Higgins does love his silents, but he provides hilarious commentary, so we love them, too.

A lot of them are for my Race and Film class, though, and therefore heavy on the offensive/bad end of the spectrum. I watched Birth of a Nation on fast-forward (the benefit of it being silent and me being fast at reading intertitles).

Additional trivia:
--Isabella Rossellini donated money and some of her mother's collection to our film center, a fact learned while snacking outside the editing room.
--My production prof used to teach at UT/work in Austin, so we bonded over missing Tex-Mex the first day of class. Also, he make ninja filmmaker jokes.
--I have three radically different types of dance this semester: West African, rapper sword dancing, and swing.
--I haven't watched a single TV premiere or pilot :(
--All my classes are within 100 feet of each other.
--Rudy Valentino was a damn attractive man, but don't watch The Sheik. Skip straight to the sequel, Son of the Sheik, in which Rudy has some great scenes with himself.

The day did not dawn auspiciously - I lost my fangirl badge for thinking the midnight release was Saturday night rather than Friday night, then we tarried too long at my uncle's dinner and I had to resort to driving to a 24-hour HEB at 11 PM, where I finally secured their second-to-last copy. I returned home triumphant and finished reading about half an hour ago, in the same chair where I read the first book - a chance pickup by my father at the library when I was 12, thinking I would like it. I certainly did - I couldn't put the damn thing down until I finished, and then made Lindsey read it rightawayOMG.

( Spoilers for Deathly Hallows )

I am such an idiot. I thought, "Self, how about starting His Majesty's Dragon, just to lull you to sleep?" And now I'm 200 pages in and I really don't want to stop. Damn, this is hella cool. Dragons! Aerial battles! Comraderie! Napoleon! True love friendship! Temeraire is so *awesome* and all the characters are well-written, and Laurence's cadences are so patently British and you immediately get a sense of his character.

I suppose my lack of self-preservation has some practical purpose: I have come to the tail-end of my cold, reading so late, and no longer...drip so horrendously. (I'm sure you all needed to know that - happy to oblige)

This was such a good decision! A new world to play in, with more books and possible Peter Jackson movies! Naomi Novik rocks, and I would be eager to tell her so should we ever meet.

*prances off to read more* I really can't think of a better reason to attempt an all-nighter. I probably won't last that long, but I can try!