AKICOLJ

[nineveh_uk]

Where can I buy a copy of Winterfair Gifts without buying Miles in Love?

Where would you recommend I start my parents on Bujold? I am convinced they'd like them, but my mother seems never to have read any SF, and my father seems virulently allergic to it. They are otherwise open-minded readers who like Patrick O'Brien and Sayers, and I'm convinced they'd like Bujold if only they could open it in the first place. Would Komarr be impractical for my mother, who enjoys Heyer?

*

Seen in a remaindered bookshop at lunchtime, a book on Finnish cooking. I let it stay remaindered - any book that thinks beestings is commonly obtainable anywhere there's dairy farming (hands up if you are not a dairy farmer and have ever heard of it) is not a book that I want to rely on serving me edible food.

Comments

[leni-jess.livejournal.com]

If you find out the answer to the first question, tell me! I've been trying to find it for yonks.

Wouldn't starting your parents with Shards of Honour and Barrayar (aka Cordelia's Honour) be the way to go? Adults dealing with an adult problem, rather than manic adolescent Miles starting his career of running into walls? In many ways the initial books are only incidentally SF, depsite Bujold using SF possibilities to dream up even more moral dilemmas.

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

Winterfair Gifts is sold as a stand-alone ebook by Fictionwise (http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/b29885/?si=0) for about £1.50, if you're happy with electronic versions.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

In the anthology it first appeared in. It's real title escapes me, but it should have been called, "Winterfair Gifts and some stories you wouldn't normally have bought".

*checks*

Ah, yes. "Irresistible Forces"

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I'm not a dairy farmer, and I know what beestings is (colostrum) but I must say it sounds kind of yucky even if it were readily available.

I know some parents are a) slow readers b) insist on finishing everything and c) feel entitled to condign vengeance if they spent hours reading something they hated because of a recommendation, but if yours are not, then the worst that can happen is they'll get a few pages into a Bujold book and say, "This really isn't engaging me."

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

Your OED link taunts those of us without a subscription. ;) I am a dairy farmer's daughter and I have never heard it called beestings.

[chazzbanner.livejournal.com]

I'd like to ban the phrase "space opera". The term may have a long history, but it's keeping at least three of my friends from trying the Vorkosigan saga, and the Miller-Lee Liaden books -- and these are friends who read fantasy and some sf.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Dairy farmer's daughter, Finnish translator and enthusiastic-reluctant-enthusiastic again Bujold reader checking in.

I didn't know what beestings was until a Finnish cookery teacher I was teaching English to asked me about it and I rang my dad who said his great aunt used to refer to beestings but he'd never heard anyone else use it in living memory. I think it got into a Finnish-English dictionary at some point and has fossilised. If I was translating the recipe, I'd have said colostrum, with a footnote pointing out that it is illegal to sell colostrum in the UK and you will have to actually be a dairy farmer to make the recipe.

As to Bujold, I would recommend Komarr as that's where I got into it again after being put off by bouncy Miles. After Civil Campaign I then went back as far as Borders of Infinity, Brothers in Arms and Mirror Dance (in one volume) and feel I could even cope with early Miles again now. I ended up discussing them with my mother this week as a result of lunchtime conversations about cloning (dairy cow milk crisis) but don't know where to start her either as she's not particularly into romances. However, she does read Ian M Banks and many years ago lent me The Left Hand of Darkness.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not a dairy farmer but I do know what 'beestings' is - I have to know things like that to win at local pub quizzes! (my brain is full of weird stuff that 'will come in useful for a quiz'), but I really don't want to consume any, ever!

[joyeuce]

I know what beestings means, without having any connection to dairy farming, but I am another picker-up of unconsidered trifles. (Query: Could one use beestings in a trifle?)