Re-Greetings

Long time, no post.  I no longer have the internet at home, so please forgive my long absence.  Perhaps in the near future I shall become even more indebted to the evil Comcast and subscribe to home internet.  I tried to ditch Comcast a few months ago and switch to DirecTV, but alas, my neighbor's tree blocks the reception.  Ironic since most of her trees fell on my roof a few years ago.  The one remaining stalwart tree  in her backyard is in the precise location necessary for a satellite dish.  One just has to laugh.

A lot has changed, and nothing has changed.  I'm still working, driving my MINI, reading books, and loving on my kitties.  I'm 40 now.  It seems the same as my 30s other than the fact that some days I think that one of my limbs might just fall off due to sheer creakiness.  I was walking down the hallway at work the other day and realized I could give Anna Kendrick a run for her money by doing her "Cups" song by just walking and making my knees and ankles click. No cups necessary for my accoustic accompaniment!  If you haven't watched her short version of the song in the movie "Pitch Perfect," there is a new video online that's all glossy and professionally done.  She's making biscuits.  If that doesn't make you look it up, I don't know what will.

http://vevo.ly/123c5Wp

Ooh. Maybe I just learned how to insert a link into my blog.  Cool. 

That's all I have for now.  Maybe I'll get time for another post in the near future, and not wait three years or whatever it was between this and my last post.

Be well.

Cable Man + No Posts = ?

I know, I know. I got cable and then I've been silent for many many moons. Coincidence? I wish I could answer in the affirmative. Alas, I have been squeezing out every penny of my newly purchased cable and watching it on my big ass tv. Sigh. It's been fun. But now I think my eyeballs are about to fall out of my head from too much tv. As much as I have enjoyed the many hours of "Charmed," "House," "Law & Order (regular and SVU)," and SciFi channel, my brain and eyeballs need a little bit of a break from ye newe ginormous tv. (I can't call it "ye olde tv" because I just got it, so I thought I'd spell "new" with an extra "e." Does that work for you? Can you tell tv has atrophied my brain?)


But just so you know -- I have finished two books. I finished Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility." P&P was a re-read. So good. So witty. So entertaining. The story just zipped along. S&S, however, paled in comparison. I think it was her first novel. And while it is great and I couldn't do something that amazing as a first novel, it is not nearly as witty or zippy as P&P. There were some passages that went on for pages and I just wanted them to be over and done with. But on the whole, it was a very good read. You can't go wrong with Jane Austen.


I've started Robert Fagles's translation of "The Odyssey." It's fantastic! Makes me wish that I could memorize some of those phrases and passages. Maybe someday, when I get my brain back from cable, I'll attempt it.


As for my little MINI, Simon, he had a good holiday. I bought reindeer antlers and a Rudolph nose for him. He looked sooooo cute. Unfortunately, it rained most of December here, so he didn't get to wear them very often. But there's always next year. Wow. Which is right around the corner.


I feel like this year I should make up some kind of reading list. You know, pick some books that I've never read but feel like I should have. We shall see. I'll let you know how that thought progresses.


Hope you had a Merry Christmas and have a fantastic New Year!

Cable Man Has Cometh

So I finally went over to the Dark Side and got cable yesterday. Took the poor guy 4 hours to install it. It probably didn't help him that when he went to activate my high speed internet, my computer chose that moment to act like a little diva and made her screen go blank. You could read the screen if you shone a flashlight on it at just the right angle. So by the end of the four hours, there were four cable dudes in my house, holding flashlights and angling around the screen to see if they could read what was going on. And of course I opened my persnickity computer this morning and she worked perfectly. Diva. I told you. I'm just glad I don't have to fork out the moolah for a new computer. I can put up with her hoity-toity attitude so long as she works 95% of the time.

The reason I finally got cable is for the simple reason that I bought a ginormous flat-screen tv. (Insert big cheshire cat grin here.) So now I can see actors' pupils! How wild is that? Plus, I was watching some Xena the other day and saw that the actress has a freckle on her upper lip! I've been watching the show for 13 years (it only ran for 6, but I bought the DVDs) and never knew she had a freckle! Holy cow! I love ginormous tvs! I've kind of developed a Gollum-like obsession with it. I look at it and say, "Precious. My precious" to myself. Is that bad? I didn't think so.

So, now I have my hugemongous tv and cable. I'm worried that I won't read as many books. But I'm thinking there's so much crap on tv, there will still be times when I don't find anything I want to watch. And while I'm thinking of it -- when did CNN become a channel of hip, young things with no brains? Gone are the stodgy old farts who knew what the heck they were talking about. Sigh. I sound like an old curmudgeon. Oh well. Can you tell it's been a long time since I've had cable?

Anyway, before I got cable, I read plenty of books. I finally finished "Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea" that history book about the Greeks. I did NOT like that book. Call me a prude, but there were about 10 pages of pictures in the middle of the book, and they all revolved around sex scenes. I think the author, Thomas Cahill, could have illustrated his point that the Greeks were obsessed with sex with just a few pictures. And my prudishness aside, I didn't like the organization of the book, or his "insights." This time period is evidently not his strong suit. I loved his book on the Middle Ages. This one -- not so much. Oh well. We can't and don't have to like every book by an author.

Then I finished "All the Windwracked Stars" by Elizabeth Bear. Awesome sci-fi book. She took the legends of the Valkyrie and twirled them around and put them on a different planet. Really awesome. I love those books that make you figure things out. But I loved the characters in this book. A Valkyrie who chickened out at the final battle and ran away. All her brother and sister angels were slaughtered. So she, being immortal, had to wonder among humans for thousands of years. Very interesting.

Last night I just finished "Another Thing to Fall" by Laura Lippman. She's an awesome mystery author. I loved "What the Dead Know." That got me hooked on her. So now I'm going back and reading her other novels. She has a recurring character of Tess Monaghan who lives in Baltimore. Good character. And Baltimore is another character. One of those towns that has seen its glory years fall by the wayside. Anyway, she's got good character development, and great pace. Highly recommend.

Since it's getting cold out, I thought I'd read some Dickens. I have to read certain novels in specific seasons. The classics and fantasy and sci-fi are all great to read in the fall and winter. The mysteries and potboilers are great for spring and winter. Guess I'm not the only one because they love to publish "beach reads" in the summer. You know -- the quick read authors like James Patterson. And if I haven't mentioned it before, Stuart Woods is awesome. His books are quick reads, but his character development is awesome and the plots kick butt! Highly recommend.

As for Simon, I bought him some reindeer antlers and a red nose to wear during the holiday season. I'm going to rush home tonight and wash him before it gets totally totally dark so he can be all clean and look fabulous with his antlers. Oh! I got a hand-me-down digital camera from my favorite (i.e. only) sister, so as soon as I learn how, I'm going to post some pictures of my Simon. Stay tuned for that.

Guess that's all for now. Bye.

Happy Birthday, Simon!!!

Simon, my beloved MINI, turns two today! Yay! As soon as the sun comes up and it gets a little warmer outside, I'm going to give him a long, hot bath and shine him up like a new penny.

Hard to believe that I bought Simon two whole years ago. Seems like he's been a part of my family for much longer. I remember the day I brought him home. I didn't know how to drive a stick shift, so my mom had to drive him off the lot. Pretty funny. She gave me driving lessons in the Target parking lot near my house. Took about a month before I stopped getting adrenaline dumps into my system because of the rush of fear I got everytime I got behind the wheel. I was totally terrified for a whole month. After that, I felt confident enough that I took out the "Keep Back" and "New Stick Driver" warning signs from Simon's back window. And now, he and I zip around corners like madmen. I get a little smile when I walk toward Simon in the parking lot. And I sometimes pat the steering wheel and whisper, "I love you" to him when we're alone together. I don't care if that's crazy. Simon is the most fun I've ever had with a car. If you haven't been behind the wheel of a MINI, I highly recommend the experience. Although if you can't drive a stick, I suggest you get behind the wheel of an automatic MINI. That would make it more fun for you. Now if I can just figure out a present for Simon, everything will be perfect.

On a book note, I finished Wilkie Collins's "The Moonstone." It was good,but I still like "The Woman in White" much better. The ladies in the book group enjoyed "The Moonstone." A lot of them had never read it before. It's a perfectly structured book, and it took Collins a long time to plot it out. Each part of the story is told in first person narrative from a character's viewpoint. So you get different voices from the different characters and different perspectives. Some people get the wrong idea, and the reader is taken down that false path with that character. It's really quite clever. But as I said earlier, "The Woman in White" had such a strong female character in Marian Halcombe, that I really enjoyed that book much more than "The Moonstone." But they are both great books.

After I finished Collins's two novels, I went to a bookstore and stumbled upon a new author. Elizabeth Bear. She writes fantasy and science fiction. I read "Carnival" first which is about another galaxy and there's a planet run by women. Yay. But the evil galactic empire is coming to quash them or simply envelop them in its net of planets. It sounds hokey, but it was really good. Because two male emissaries come from the evil empire, but the men have plans to undermine the evil empire.

What I love about science fiction is the fact that good authors incorporate actual cutting edge science that exists today, and they give it a little nudge with their imagination to push the technology into a realm of possibility that just doesn't exist today, but which we can imagine will exist someday. It totally fascinates me to read older sci fi novels where they've actually been pretty close to how some technologies have evolved. In "Carnival," the people of the evil empire have "wardrobes" created by nanotechnology implanted under their skin. This means they have holographic projections of different outfits. Their wardrobe also can act as a shield. One particular scene had bullets stuck in one character's wardrobe shield, and the bullets were stuck in the shield and hovering like angry bees. How cool is that? That's what I like about sci fi. And good sci fi, like "Carnival" doesnt' explain the technology. The reader just has to figure it out. Use the ol' noggin'.

I liked "Carnival" so much that I picked up more of Elizabeth Bear's novels. These are fantasy novels set in modern day, but where Faerie actually exists. The Fae, from Celtic myth. Fascinating. Anyway, this series of books is really good. Already read "Blood and Iron" which is about the start of a potential war between Faerie and the human world. I don't know why, but fantasy novels are my favorite genre. Must be all the medieval castles and velvet dresses and kings and queens. So much potential for intrigue, too. I'm reading the sequel, "Whiskey and Water" right now. I love getting sucked into whole trilogies at one time. So much more fun than getting hooked on a trilogy but having to wait for months and even years before the next book comes out. Yes, George R. R. Martin, I'm talking about you. Just finish the fifth book already!!!!

You may have noticed that one book has stayed in my "What I'm Reading" column for quite some time. That would be "Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea" by Thomas Cahill. I've loved his other history books, but this one is quite jarring. He keeps using the "f" word over and over. And then he'll use very crude words for particular sex acts. I'm a prude. I don't think a history book should use such language. It's so unusual that it pulls me out of my reading hypnosis. I just pop out of the book and shake my head. And there's no reason for it. I dunno. I think they should save such cussing for a Martin Scorsese movie. Call me whatever you like. And anyway, the book is not as coherent as his other books. It just feels like he cobbled together some tidbits, but there are no overarching themes or reasons why he's going down a certain path. Too bad, too, because the Greeks really did give us the foundation for Western Civilization. I'll keep trying to finish it, but I'll be relieved when I finally get to put it back on the bookshelf.

Guess that's all for now. Still too cold out outside to wash Simon, but my kitties think they're dying because they haven't had second breakfast yet. I call them my little hobbits. They must have first breakfast, then shortly thereafter they have to have second breakfast. I don't know how I fell into that trap, but they have completely embraced their roles as hobbits, so I'm stuck with it.

Go Read -- The Woman in White

I finished "The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins a few days ago. It was fantastic! I wish I had written this post as soon as I had finished reading it because I was just so thrilled by that book.

I don't know why the character Marian Halcombe is not as well known as Elizabeth Bennett. She's just as smart and spunky as Elizabeth. If I ever need to invent a name for myself at a party, I shall call myself Marian Halcombe. She's my hero.

And she's not the main character of the story. Well, I guess you could say she was one of the two main characters. Anyway, she helps drive the male character on to find out the solution to a mystery.

I don't want to give it away, so I hope you go read it and enjoy it as much as I did.

I'm now reading "The Moonstone" by Collins. I loved that book when I was younger. Reading it back to back with "The Woman in White," I find it pales in comparison. "The Woman in White" is so much better. Mostly because of the spunky Marian Halcombe.

But "The Moonstone" has its charms as well. Collins structures both novels as narratives written by different characters. They only tell parts of the story that they learned first-hand. So you get the different pieces of the story from different people. And in different tones and narrative voices. Very clever. Plus, some characters mistake what they see or hear. And you don't learn the truth until another character tells his or her story. Very clever.

"The Moonstone" is the book for Monday's book group. I wonder if the other ladies are enjoying it. I love those books that are about mysteries or dramas or comedies set in 18-19th Century England. Jolly good!

Well, I have about 150 more pages of "The Moonstone" to read before Monday. Might as well settle down on the couch and fall back into the book. Couldn't think of a better thing to do on a cold Saturday morning. Later.

Drifters, Pedophiles and Victorians, oh my!

The title of this post refers to "The Drifters" by James Michener, "Thief of Souls" by Ann Benson, and "The Glass of Time" by Michael Cox.

"The Drifters" was a novel a co-worker loaned to me. Not one I would have picked up on my own. Plus, it deals with the hippie flower children of the 60s. Not my favorite time period. For some reason unknown to me, I don't like movies or books set in the 60s or 70s. Especially movies set in the 70s. Go figure. I think it's the outfits. Anyway, the books was pretty interesting. It was looooooong. Almost 700 pages long. But it introduced you to a band of young people who were hanging out in Europe. The narrator is an older man who works for an insurance company who befriends them and keeps running into them.

The thing that captivated me was that Michener, writing about the late 60s in 1972 totally understood what the young people were trying to do and what they were struggling against. He also correctly hypothesized about the consequences of the actions/inactions of that generation. Very insightful of him. A lot of times you can't encapsulate a period of history until long after it's passed. That way you can look through the prism of time to help you sort things out. But Michener really got it. I told my co-worker when I handed the book back to him that I felt like I had wasted my youth. No trips to Europe in a VW camper for me. No ragtag group of friends. No radical anti-establishment ideas. It was an interesting book. I can't say that I liked it, but I'm not sorry I read it.

As for the pedophiles part -- Ann Benson's "Thief of Souls" is my kind of book. Or it should have been. Set in the Middle Ages. That's my favorite time period. If I could do over my college years, I would become a specialist in medieval studies. How fun would that be? I guess it's for the best that I can just read about that time for fun, rather than be forced to study it for my livelihood. Anyway, it's a good book. Benson's little literary trick is she sets her novels both in the present and in the middle ages. There are always two mysteries going. The mysteries run along parallel lines. So this one deals with a pedophile/serial killer in the middle ages and another one in the present day. The book states that the medieval character is based on Bluebeard. Huh. I always thought he was a pirate. But he was actually a nobleman who kidnapped, raped, and murdered hundreds of little children. Nice, eh? I won't spoil the modern day mystery part of the book.

But the thing about the book was that you knew who was killing the kids in the medieval part. A nun was trying to piece things together. But you as the reader knew whodunnit. I guess you were supposed to know and the suspense was supposed to be about whether they could actually get enough on the nobleman to convict him. Me, I prefer to not know whodunnit until the very end. I like a little more mystery in my mystery books. Plus, the end of the book went on for far too long after the conclusion of the main events. Got a little bored, but overall it was a decent book.

Now, "The Glass of Time" was a book I just bought on a whim this past weekend. Something about mysteries set in Victorian times are like catnip to me. Plus, it had a really great cover. I'm a sucker for a good cover on a book. Crappy book covers can mean death for an author. Too bad they have absolutely no control over the covers. If they get saddled with a crappy concept, they're screwed.

But, I digress. The book was pretty good. I thought it would have worked better as a young adult novel. The cover blurb talked about "stunning plot twists" but I saw them coming from a mile away. And I don't try to figure things out. I like to be surprised. But this held no surprises for me. But, the book really captured the feel of the Victorian era. And plus, it deals with an estate and inheritance and identities. Wonder why that's such a big motif of books set in and written in the Victorian era? Hm. Something else to ponder.

Anyway, I was kinda "eh" about the book when I finished it last night, but then I read the author's acknowledgments at the end and he started off by saying it had been a terrible two years for him while he was writing the novel. Evidently. He thanked 10 doctors. 10! That's a lot of doctors. Somehow, knowing that he had written this novel during a terribly trying time in his life made me like the book a little bit better. This was his second novel. Evidently his first novel, "The Meaning of Night" got rave reviews. I'll have to pick that up next.

It's fall again. My favorite season of the entire year. And something about this season makes me want to dig in to classics and mysteries and fantasies. The summer is for adventure stories. But fall is when I dive into gigantic books and get away from reality. Plus, the books set in the middle ages and in Victorian times are much more enjoyable when you're reading them cuddled up on the couch with a hot cup of tea. Yay! Let the reading begin!

As for MINI news, my little Simon went to the fix-it shop yesterday morning to get a new dome light. Evidently it's quite common for the buttons on the light to just fall off. Mine fell off approximately two weeks after I bought my car. I just haven't made the appointment to get that fixed until now. So they fixed Simon all up. They also washed my car for me. I got what I paid for. Meaning it was free. There were water spots all over my baby boy! And the windows were all smeared. How distressing! Fortunately, it's been raining all day today, so that erased the problems. Who knew I could be excited about rain on my little Simon? My MINI dealership is going to have a "Homecoming" party next weekend. I'm so there. I already RSVP'd. It's all about the free t-shirt. Yeah, baby!

Sinclair Lewis's "Arrowsmith"

Well, I went to my second book group meeting last Monday. It's like I get a contact high from being around people who are as passionate about books as I am. Two new women were there, giving us a total of nine people. Good group.

Our book for the month was "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis. I have never struggled so hard with a text. If it hadn't been "required reading" for the book group, I doubt I would have read beyond the first 100 pages. That's my tolerance level. If a book isn't good by 100 pages in, then it's never going to get good. Life is too short to read bad books. This particular book wasn't bad. I saw what Lewis was trying to do. Decrying the split between doctors practicing for money and status, and doctors who practice "pure science" for the love of discovery. But the eponymous "hero" of Arrowmith was a truly unlikeable person. He aged in the novel but never matured. He was incredibly whiny and self-centered. The book was written in the 1920s, so this could be one of the first attempts at the anti-hero. But I just didn't like it at all. I did like a few slang words I picked up from the book. "Chickabiddies" refers to young girls. "Hobbledehoy" evidently is a rube. I enjoy learning new words.

Not many of the women in the book group finished the book. Those who did echoed my sentiments. It's interesting to see the different views brought to the book group conversations. No one talks about their jobs, or their former jobs (some seem as if they are retired). I find that refreshing. I hate how Americans (and yes, I am an American, but I can still criticize my own culture) always ask "what do you do?" as an introductory question. Europeans don't do that. I read this quote once -- "Some day we shall be judged by who we are and what we did, not what we are and who we did." About sums up my wishes for the future.

"Arrowsmith" won the Nobel Prize, I think. Perhaps it was more poignant when it came out as a criticism of the burgeoning greed overtaking the medical establishment in the 1920s. Just a few years before, you literally had "doctors" selling snake oil to people. But the book hasn't withstood the passage of time for me. It's very dated. Stilted. The characters are all very one-dimensional. Not very much dialogue. So again, I think at the time of publication it might have had much more impact.

And I'm not one to poo poo on literature like some critics. I can admit when I liked a fluffly little book by James Patterson or Stuart Woods. I don't need to savage books in order to make myself feel intelligent. That's just silly. But this book I can honestly say I didn't like.

I have high hopes for our next book -- "The Moonstone" by Wilkie Collins. One of my favorites when I was growing up.