Between my ears:

I never thought I'd find another.

Most Of The Time
Bob Dylan
Take it. Listen.
4.85MB MP3

This is now only the second song, ever, that can make me cry. The first, a small ditty that struck too close for many years, was something by Dan Fogelberg. Which? Oh, I could tell you, but...

Still looking for:

Suggestions for comics, graphic novels and other such image-heavy, story-heavy printed products, y'know... stuff you think I would like. :-) Yes, of course I know all about Sandman and most common Neil Gaiman stuff (although if you can think of something he's done that may be more obscure, I'd be really glad to hear of it). Aside from the Sandman series and the other, related DC titles, I tend to like Alan Moore's stories.

Currently reading:

On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft ($)
by Stephen King
Scribner, 2000

I am finding this to be surprisingly readable, funny, poignant, a good egg all around. It's not exactly a manual... not unless your goal is to be King, but then I'm not that far in, and I don't plan to finish it for a while.

The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales ($)
by Bruno Bettelheim
VINTAGE BOOKS, 1989

I cannot wait for some proper time to dig into this. I've been waiting since Christmas, when my husband was kind enough to purchase this for me. It's like this: I've been fence-sitting about the whole "encouraging fairy-tale universes in children" question in parenting for a while. There's the Montessori school, for instance, which basically holds that children should be brought up concretely, and taught to rely on and trust facts, reality, etc. - fairy tales, myths and other such magic is discouraged. Then there's my own upbringing: I probably wouldn't have made it past 12 were it not for the stuff I read and for the worlds I made up in my head. I have questions, about both avenues.

Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories ($)
by Angela Carter
VIKING 1997

This was another surprise Christmas present from Patrick (he loves me). It's a stunning collection, packed with some of the best turns of phrase and imagery I've ever read. There are hits and misses so far, not for lack of prowess, mind you, just for my particular taste in stories, which continues to change, its focus narrowing by the day. I'm still kicking myself for not knowing about her sooner.

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places ($)
by Alberto Manguel, Gianni Guadalupi, Graham Greenfield (Illustrator)
HARVEST BOOKS 2000

Wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. I honestly mean to finish this cover to cover. I've been working on it.

Just finished:

I haven't actually finished a thing in months. The mountains of books by my bedside, however, continue to grow.

Eternally by the bedside, meaning to restart one of these days...

Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
by Umberto Eco
November, 1999
I've been packing the paperback volume ($) on every trip for the past few months. It's accessible and utterly fascinating (classic Eco), but every time I approach it, I want to read a couple of paragraphs, close the book and smile and go on with my day. It's just that thick with goodness. A series of essays on the influence of fallacy in history, it includes, among many other tasty bits, several pages on Leibniz' idea of a polydimensional encyclopedia (think: hypertext) and beyond.

Litany of the Long Sun
by Gene Wolfe
April, 2000
This new omnibus volume ($), dubbed the first half of the "Book of the Long Sun", contains Nightside of the Long Sun and Lake of the Long Sun. I'm trying to get over my long-standing aversion to serialized fiction, just for this volume. I'm only about 150 pages in, but it's beautiful and I want more; I just don't have the attention span right now. You know how some books need to take over your life in order to get you through them? This is one of those.

The Dream Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World
by Thomas M. Disch
July, 2000
A romp through the history of SF and its effects on life-as-we-know-it, as far as I can tell it couldn't have been written any better by anyone else. The paperback ($) is available from Amazon, though I've seen the hardcover and it's very pretty, if you're into that "books as objets d'art" fetish that afflicts some of us sometimes. I managed to get distracted away from this one, but I'm sure, not for long.

Shame
by Salman Rushdie
June 1997 reprint
I resolved a few years ago to read everything this man has written. It started with Haroun and the Sea of Stories ($), one of the most brilliant and vivid fables ever written. Shame is just the latest. I'm making room for it, slowly.

Thinking about...

I'm currently trying to figure out what my favorite SF/Fantasy books are, of everything I've read. Oddly enough, though I'm not a consistent reader of Fantasy and wouldn't categorize myself as a fan of the genre (the covers are enough to turn me off, as is the genre's obsession with serials), it's far easier for me to pinpoint favorite books from among Fantasy volumes than it is to do that with hard (semi-hard? semi-soft? :-) ) SF. So here they are, for now. I'll think about this some more:

3. Grass ($)
Sheri Tepper
August 1990
Three years ago, this would have been Sideshow but I've changed since then, and so have my obsessions. To boot, these days I lack the stomach for Tepper's more hardcore feminist preaching. Grass, however, is still stuck in my mind as an incredible (and unusual) portrayal of first contact.

2. Tigana ($)
Guy Gavriel Kay
December 1999
Special 10th anniversary reissue
For years and years, this was it, the best fiction ever. If you've read it, you'll know why instantly.

1. The Snow Queen ($)
Joan D. Vinge
Currently being reissued; a new print might be worth the wait.
I'm afraid to say anything about it that may betray it. I've pushed a copy of it onto everyone who's ever come close to me. Its sequel, The Summer Queen is almost-perfect, too.

The basics:

E-mail: maggy@kia.net
Mood:

Magdalena Donea, b. 07-22-1970, Piatra Neamt, Romania. Currently residing in Fairfax, VA, 9 miles north-west of the White House Arrived here by way of Costanta, Romania (1970-1983), Athens, Greece (Aug-Sep 1983), Salt Lake City, UT (1983-1992), Los Angeles, CA (1992-1994), and Chicago, IL (1994-1998). Now here, and that's the short version.

I love the East Coast, I want to stick around for the long-term, but I despise this area, the insidious and gross prevalence of fundamentalist, protestant Christianity here, and the fact that I'm forced to deal with its idiotic effects every damned day. It doesn't help that everything here is about politics and government, either. I'm full of bile about that, too, well-informed but unpleasant nonetheless.

I'm a queer, atheist anarchist. I'm ever so happily married, the wife of a sexy, maniacally intense and beautiful genius and the mother of two marvelous little girls. I am aware that I pass. I am likely repressed. I am likely on edge. Love me.

The purpose of this pseudo-weblog should be fairly straightforward: I'm trying to get my output in balance with my input. There are many reasons for this, most of which have to do with a story I'm writing and which I will sell if it's the last thing I do (although if it does turn out to be the last thing I do, that would be a pity, because I'm planning a second, a third, a fourth, and somewhere in there a novel or two). I would call myself a Writer, but since I haven't written for shit the past couple of years, you'd laugh. So I'll call myself a Scribbler instead.

What I read tends to be called Science Fiction. What I think up tends to be labeled Science Fiction. What I write is all over the place, well enough rooted in SF but branching out everywhere else but. I'm trying to shimmy my way onto a track. It's not working out too well.

The current sites:

MOMENTS.ORG »
I've been trying very hard to make my current personal writing fit into this project, because I think it was good and because I'd like to continue it. It was meant as a repository for memories, real or imagined, a contextual trip through the themes in my life. Lagging behind other areas of interest at present, for technical reasons that boil down to a severe shortage of style in my writing. I'm almost certain that when I do get back into the flow there, I'll be taking down the last few things I wrote, or editing them. They're serving their purpose for now.

MAXMCCULLER.COM »
Babymax' homepage. Patrick takes most of the pictures; I upload them. This should tell you where to complain for the lack of updates, Mom.

KATRINABECKER.COM
Coming soon. You didn't think we'd leave this out, did you? The girl is thinking about what she wants to put up. This may take a while :-)

In your INBOX:

MAGGYMAIL »
Occasional news, updates, meanderings and whatever else is on my mind. The list is fresh as of August, 2000, so subscribe, especially if you're a friend. I hardly ever answer my e-mail otherwise. If you don't know me, take what you read with a big grain of salt because I have no current clue how revealing (or not!) it will get. I never know these things anyway. An archive for subscribers is in the works.

Coming soon to a web near you:

52COLORS.COM »
It's Tine's fault, he made me do it. Actually, he only gave me an assignment, but from that grew the germ of an idea I think I may just be able to pull off given enough time and help. So, y'know, watch out for a call for help, currently being written. Meanwhile, its current incarnation and future predecessor is still online.

KNOWYOURGOVERNMENT.COM »
The launch keeps getting put off, and put off, and put off. Another one that needs help; my current opinion holds that this should wait until after the presidential inauguration in January. There's too much politicking afoot as it is and no-one's paying attention to the important stuff right now; maybe post-election will make for a better season (not that I'm expecting this one to win any popularity contests).

The story until that point:

WATER »
The little homepage that was. Its previous incarnation, Maggy's World, ran from mid-1994 until late-late 1996, when Water was launched. At its heyday, it won Cool Site of the Year, in the Personal Homepage category. The trophy is holding my desk drawer closed even as we speak; sometimes, when it gets too hot, it covers the heating vent in the office. It chronicles an important part of my life, confusing, tumultuous, opinionated and passionate, as 20's tend to be. In many ways, I'm glad that time is over. In many other ways, I still wish it hadn't ended. Such is life, though, and no number of resuscitation attempts could have saved it, or the person that I was. On a very personal level, deep down, re-inventing's been a fearful, awful task... which is not to say that I didn't do it, nor that I'm not happier than I ever thought I'd be.

All work and no sleep . . .

KIA.NET »
Launched in 1996, and initially meant as a loose consortium of various folk who at the time were hoping to make their living on the Web, it's now made up full-time of Patrick McCuller and myself. The company was officially incorporated and opened its virtual doors to customers in 1997. We do custom web hosting. We do applications development. Despite efforts to the contrary, we've become good at extranet work and custom applications hosting. We get ourselves into all sorts of trouble.

Libertarian Party »
This represents the last year of our lives, and then some - work is still being done on the back-end applications, but someday we'll turn it in, all shiny and complete, much to the delight of our wonderful and amazingly patient customers.

Others . . .
I was stupid enough to lose an important customer over the summer, due to sheer exhaustion, lack of funds, all manner of various and sundry other things. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I'm sorry :( You know who you are.

R . I . P . . .
bleed.net
vocabulary.net
<HEAD>
letters.org
the Dead Letter Office
Stolen Moments
the HOME project.

... and almost everything else I've tried to touch, launch or resurrect over the past year. I'm starting over.