[LMB] OT: Krentz, again: Light in Shadow

[Paula Lieberman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lois McMaster Bujold" <lbujold at myinfmail.com>



> *** I don't usually like farce because it so seldom passes the IQ test.
> I read the first two Nerd books, liked them well enough, bounced off a
> couple of others.  Her attempts to blend nerd-types with fantasy-man
> tropes don't always convince -- I mean, *real* nerds don't work out, in
> my experience.  And I know from nerds, so when she puts a foot wrong, I

Some of them do... the crew team at MIT are prime examples.  You never met 
my cousin Ron who's a physics professor, the Ultimate Nerd (grading physics 
paper during your only sibling's wedding ceremony in the Extreme Nerd 
category....), who had been so far into the workout stuff that he was on one 
of those diets of powders dumped in liquid for serious workers-out....(what 
he "ate" at the wedding reception...)...

One of my contemporaries in ROTC was as  good enough tennis player that he 
turned  down the opportunity of a pro career in favor of an aero & astro 
degree and flying military fighter jets.

And then there was man-mountain Erland von Lith de Jeude, basso profundo, 
actor and professional wrestler,  and MIT graduate...

And the two fellows on my dormfloor who used to go handwalking down the 
hall, they worked out.... (there are some people who graduate from MIT who 
aren't nerds. They are the exceptions--it's a LOT easier to find people who 
work out there--see "crew team" and "wrestling team" and "tennis team" and 
"sailing team" etc.  When I was there MIT was tied with the Navy Academy for 
most intercollegiate sports teams....)  (It's not the physique, it's the 
mindset that makes a nerd.... there are lots of out-of-shape non-nerds....)

> wince.  I'll have to try some of her others, perhaps.
>
> I do have very fond memories of the sequence in the first of the Nerd
> series where the two protagonists, stranded on a deserted jungle  island
> and both nearsighted, have to share their one remaining pair of
> eyeglasses between them...
>