Two things about yesterday’s post: first, my review of this wonderful novel can be found here, at Tor.com: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/08/review-the-native-star#.
Second, and contrary to what I posted yesterday, I was delighted to see that copies are already available in Vancouver… Kelly and I bought one in downtown Vancouver yesterday.
It’s August 31st! This means M.K. Hobson’s delightful, ambitious, quirky, romantic, and thoroughly delectable first novel The Native Star
My experience with Indigo Springs
To keep you from dying of anticipation while you are sorting out the logistics, Hobson has kindly posted the first chapter, Ashes of Amour, here. Or if you missed her Journey interview earlier this month, you can check it out too!
Congratulations, Mary!
Today I am posting on Favorite Thing Ever again, this time raving enthusiastically (if semi-coherently) about my true true love for a nine-part series of BBC life sciences documentaries that are absolutely filled with wonders, with a particular focus on The Life of Birds
(And while you’re there, stop in and laugh hard at the video clips in 
Kelly‘s post about Maid Marion and Her Merry Men!)
I had a fallen maple leaf in my hand not an hour ago, a glorious tattered mosaic of red, orange, and green. It conveys a a sense that I blinked and someone whisked July and August away while my eyes were closed. I’m not complaining–at least, I hope that’s not how it seems. Just noting that the past ten or so weeks, which have been crammed with lovely things and people, have as a result zoomed past me without brakes.
Summer in Vancouver can have the pace of a leisurely saunter along the Seawall. Sometimes the good weather comes in May, and stays and stays, through a warm September that segues into the beauty of a West Coast autumn, so gracefully you can’t say where the one ended and the other began. Other years, the demarcation is sharp: the kids go back to school and the air’s suddenly chilly. The trees drop bales of leaves all at once. There’s frost in the air and the raincoats come out. Either way, fall means counting golden orb spiders along the Grandview Cut, where they proliferate in the dozens upon dozens. It means seeing the roofs steam with thawing ice in the morning, and watching how the fallen leaves get rain-sodden and leave their imprints on the pavement. It means squash and turnips and beets and all the other harvest vegetables; it means stews and casseroles and comfort food.
But even as it scatters maple leaves at my feet, the weekend is showing us a lot of gold and sun, reminding me that summer’s riches aren’t spent quite yet:
Victoria was a bit of a pit stop, as cruise moments go… the ship was there for about four hours in the evening. With that in mind, Kelly and I had decided the thing to do was make straight for Munro’s Books. My uncle came along for the hike–between one thing and another, we hadn’t spent much time together over the course of the preceding six days.
It was a pleasant and scenic walk. We saw the Legislature, naturally…
and, in accordance with B.C. tourism laws, I took the obligatory shot of The Empress Hotel!
We happily dropped a pile on books before Munro’s closed, and decided that was enough. (Note to any Victoria readers: I did sign the copies of Indigo Springs they had in their sf section.) Back to the ship we went, in a nice taxicab.
We used to go to Victoria from time to time, years ago. It was a handy and inexpensive tourist-type outing for us. Then life shifted, and all our trips Vancouver Island became family focused, taking us to Qualicum Beach instead. I have been wanting to go back, and it was nice to get a glimpse of the city, but a proper visit is still on the Gotta Do list. The bookstore was, of course, lovely. If I was gonna do one thing, that was the right one. No complaints there!
But there’s so much more to visit & revisit: Craigdarroch Castle and the Royal BC Museum (Where the Past Lives!), and flower-mad as I am, it’s a little crazy that I’ve never made it out to the Butchart Gardens.
Any of you have a within-reach tourist locale you’ve been meaning to get back to?