In Which I Get Caught Up
You may recall, dear reader, that I skipped a week in my 'read a book a week' resolution a couple weeks back when professional obligations and social commitments left me with four busy evenings in a row. I wrapped up the book last week and I've taken advantage of the holiday break to get myself back on track by polishing off two books! I'd actually rather hoped to get three books in, but remarkably, staying in LA actually led to less time to read than driving up to San Jose would have done.
The lovely bewcastle started feeling sniffly at the beginning of the week, and we started considering the possibility that we would not be able to head up to San Jose to have Thanksgiving with her family, which has been our tradition since we got married. Tuesday found her feeling worse, so we decided to pull the plug on the trip. It's not that she was too miserable to travel so much as we feared bringing germs into her elderly mom's home. What's a minor annoyance of congestion and coughing for a healthy younger person can be much more serious to somebody older after all.
Now, ordinarily we drive up to San Jose on Wednesday morning and return home Saturday afternoon, so we have Sunday to do laundry and recharge our batteries for Monday's return to work. That's about 12-14 hours of found time, hence my optimistic assessment of getting a third book read. The reasons why I had to settle for two, however, are perfectly fine with me - I got to spend lots of time with friends!
Wednesday was spent in relaxing and getting the last-minute shopping done so we could actually have a Thanksgiving dinner for ourselves, the preparation of which occupied a chunk of Thursday. No big turkey for just the two of us, just a turkey breast complemented by some chicken drumsticks so bewcastle could have some dark meat. The mashed potatoes, acorn squash, and brussel sprouts were all fresh, and while the stuffing (StoveTop, I will confess) and pies (store-bought at Trader Joe's) were not, the meal was delicious. Friday I met my friend JM for lunch at In-N-Out (it is our custom to stop at the Santa Barbara In-n-Out for lunch on our way up to San Jose each year, and i was missing my double-double with animal fries fix) followed by a pleasant early afternoon geeking out at the gaming store. I bought my first random pack of D&D minis (I usually buy from the store's excellent display) and got a dragon among the figures! Woohoo! Not that I really have any use for a dragon in my campaign - nope! None whatsoever. I really can't imagine what I'd do with a dragon...
Anyway, later Friday we headed over to get our trivia on with zorker and postgoodism who invited us over to contribute to the hive mind in the XBox 1 vs. 100 game that was slated for that evening. We had a lot of fun, and in our last round we finished in the top 100 players - out of over 50,000 nationwide and across Canada! Yay us! The secret, as in Jeopardy!, seems to be having a quick trigger finger. Knowing the answer before they flash the choices is a decided advantage.
Saturday we went to the Page Museum with Rzelle and CDSB, who took his mind off his broken bones by looking at... bones, some of which were broken (I stole that quip from CDSB's facebook feed, to give proper credit). Despite livng within walking distance of the place, I'd never actually been. Well, now it's off my 'to do' list, and well worth the trip! Impressive skeletons of Ice Age megafauna, but the sheer scale of what they've taken out of the pits (one display showed 404 dire wolf skulls!) matched the individually impressive specimens. Still need to see the Natural History Museum by USC, and the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Any other suggestions for big cultural sites in the area? I've done the Getty (museum and villa), LACMA, Huntington, and Norton Simon (a return trip is pending for the near future) to name some of the biggies...
I do have two books to review don't I? Well, I'll keep things brief, as both books were installments of series I've already praised in earlier reviews. Simon Scarrow's The Eagle in the Sand follows the continued adventures of centurions Macro and Cato. In this installment, they find themselves shipped to Judea to take command of an auxiliary cohort garrisoning a border fort guarding a caravan route from Arabia to the Mediterranean ports. This, however, is only their cover. The emperor's chief spy suspects that the governor of Syria is interested in stirring up the always-restless Jews into revolt for his own nefarious purposes. Is the brutality of the Roman garrison in the area an understandable reaction to relentless hostility from the natives, or something more sinister? The plot keeps the pages turning, and the battle scenes are, as usual, top notch - well-imagined, exciting, and original. You never get the feeling with Scarrow, as you do with some lesser writers, that you're just seeing the same verbal bits rearranged. It's also great fun to try to pick out his reimagining of Biblical figures who pop up to play key roles in the plot, from a burly caravan guard named Simeon to the matriarch of a pacifistic sect named Miriam, both followers of a local rabble-rouser/prophet executed by the Romans a decade or so earlier. If there's one flaw to the book, it's the plot twist that keeps Cato and Macro from taking full command of the garrison immediately upon their arrival. While the complications that ensue are suspenseful, the underlying premise to this particular thread in the plot seems a bit contrived. On the whole though, if you've made it this far into the series, such a minor problem is easy to overlook.
I have to keep my complaints about the second installment of Joseph Delaney's Last Apprentice series, The Curse of the Bane, a but more vague as I'd give away too much of the plot if I got too specific. Suffice it to say one of the main villains (although not the Bane of the title) is a bit too boo-hiss EE-VILLE for my tastes - I like my bad guys highlighted in shades of gray, a bit more complicated than this one. Delaney usually complies - most of the characters are complex and ambiguous, which is why I will be coming back for future installments. But the handling of this one villainous character rankles whenever he appears. The rest of the plot, however, is suspenseful, the characters compelling, the setting engaging, and the action hair-raising. I'm glad to see there are several more in the pipeline.
Well, I'm off to make a bigger dent in William Gibson's latest, Spook Country. The start has been slow, but he's done enough good things in the past to earn some patience from me. I'll report next week whether it was deserved.
The lovely bewcastle started feeling sniffly at the beginning of the week, and we started considering the possibility that we would not be able to head up to San Jose to have Thanksgiving with her family, which has been our tradition since we got married. Tuesday found her feeling worse, so we decided to pull the plug on the trip. It's not that she was too miserable to travel so much as we feared bringing germs into her elderly mom's home. What's a minor annoyance of congestion and coughing for a healthy younger person can be much more serious to somebody older after all.
Now, ordinarily we drive up to San Jose on Wednesday morning and return home Saturday afternoon, so we have Sunday to do laundry and recharge our batteries for Monday's return to work. That's about 12-14 hours of found time, hence my optimistic assessment of getting a third book read. The reasons why I had to settle for two, however, are perfectly fine with me - I got to spend lots of time with friends!
Wednesday was spent in relaxing and getting the last-minute shopping done so we could actually have a Thanksgiving dinner for ourselves, the preparation of which occupied a chunk of Thursday. No big turkey for just the two of us, just a turkey breast complemented by some chicken drumsticks so bewcastle could have some dark meat. The mashed potatoes, acorn squash, and brussel sprouts were all fresh, and while the stuffing (StoveTop, I will confess) and pies (store-bought at Trader Joe's) were not, the meal was delicious. Friday I met my friend JM for lunch at In-N-Out (it is our custom to stop at the Santa Barbara In-n-Out for lunch on our way up to San Jose each year, and i was missing my double-double with animal fries fix) followed by a pleasant early afternoon geeking out at the gaming store. I bought my first random pack of D&D minis (I usually buy from the store's excellent display) and got a dragon among the figures! Woohoo! Not that I really have any use for a dragon in my campaign - nope! None whatsoever. I really can't imagine what I'd do with a dragon...
Anyway, later Friday we headed over to get our trivia on with zorker and postgoodism who invited us over to contribute to the hive mind in the XBox 1 vs. 100 game that was slated for that evening. We had a lot of fun, and in our last round we finished in the top 100 players - out of over 50,000 nationwide and across Canada! Yay us! The secret, as in Jeopardy!, seems to be having a quick trigger finger. Knowing the answer before they flash the choices is a decided advantage.
Saturday we went to the Page Museum with Rzelle and CDSB, who took his mind off his broken bones by looking at... bones, some of which were broken (I stole that quip from CDSB's facebook feed, to give proper credit). Despite livng within walking distance of the place, I'd never actually been. Well, now it's off my 'to do' list, and well worth the trip! Impressive skeletons of Ice Age megafauna, but the sheer scale of what they've taken out of the pits (one display showed 404 dire wolf skulls!) matched the individually impressive specimens. Still need to see the Natural History Museum by USC, and the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Any other suggestions for big cultural sites in the area? I've done the Getty (museum and villa), LACMA, Huntington, and Norton Simon (a return trip is pending for the near future) to name some of the biggies...
I do have two books to review don't I? Well, I'll keep things brief, as both books were installments of series I've already praised in earlier reviews. Simon Scarrow's The Eagle in the Sand follows the continued adventures of centurions Macro and Cato. In this installment, they find themselves shipped to Judea to take command of an auxiliary cohort garrisoning a border fort guarding a caravan route from Arabia to the Mediterranean ports. This, however, is only their cover. The emperor's chief spy suspects that the governor of Syria is interested in stirring up the always-restless Jews into revolt for his own nefarious purposes. Is the brutality of the Roman garrison in the area an understandable reaction to relentless hostility from the natives, or something more sinister? The plot keeps the pages turning, and the battle scenes are, as usual, top notch - well-imagined, exciting, and original. You never get the feeling with Scarrow, as you do with some lesser writers, that you're just seeing the same verbal bits rearranged. It's also great fun to try to pick out his reimagining of Biblical figures who pop up to play key roles in the plot, from a burly caravan guard named Simeon to the matriarch of a pacifistic sect named Miriam, both followers of a local rabble-rouser/prophet executed by the Romans a decade or so earlier. If there's one flaw to the book, it's the plot twist that keeps Cato and Macro from taking full command of the garrison immediately upon their arrival. While the complications that ensue are suspenseful, the underlying premise to this particular thread in the plot seems a bit contrived. On the whole though, if you've made it this far into the series, such a minor problem is easy to overlook.
I have to keep my complaints about the second installment of Joseph Delaney's Last Apprentice series, The Curse of the Bane, a but more vague as I'd give away too much of the plot if I got too specific. Suffice it to say one of the main villains (although not the Bane of the title) is a bit too boo-hiss EE-VILLE for my tastes - I like my bad guys highlighted in shades of gray, a bit more complicated than this one. Delaney usually complies - most of the characters are complex and ambiguous, which is why I will be coming back for future installments. But the handling of this one villainous character rankles whenever he appears. The rest of the plot, however, is suspenseful, the characters compelling, the setting engaging, and the action hair-raising. I'm glad to see there are several more in the pipeline.
Well, I'm off to make a bigger dent in William Gibson's latest, Spook Country. The start has been slow, but he's done enough good things in the past to earn some patience from me. I'll report next week whether it was deserved.