(no subject)
I got to post about books, but typically me , I sort of forgot already what I was exactly reading last week or before. Somehow books are like food, I remember the most memorable, but I can´t keep staight what was my lunch every day of last week. ( which is why I put book lists on excel).
I just finished another Vivian Vande Velde book Heir Apparent - I am going to try to push this book to S, YA slightly sf, a teen girl in the future gets stuck in a RPG game which has to win to survive for real. I think it might be more fun for gamers, but even so it was fun, light and easy. I think those two first VVV books I really loved were probably atypical. Also read a book I picked up on the weekend in that used bookstore (*happy sigh*) Toast by Nigel Slater, a piecewise biographical piece about food relating to growing up in England in the 50s/60s. It´s very short and easy to read, it was my airplane book, I really appreciated this, and loved the look at how food fashions evolve and change, that has been in my mind a bit recently. It took me a while to get through Palahniuk´s Choke and uh. Probably the worst interesting of his books I have read. Main things here are sex and addictions, there is a sf (possibly. or it´s just madness) subplot, something on religion. Palahniuk does anger and criticism pretty well, there is some here, but the result is not brilliant. If you never read Palahniuk or are not sure about his books, avoid this one, not a good start.
And now for football, very sorry but got to talk of it. National team action seems to be preparing itself to start again. I have been pretty listless about Euro2008 qualification ( it seems like a let down somehow. It is a letdown after the WC) partially due to pessimism and superstition, other partially due to football tastes. While Belgium, Kazakhstan, Poland, Finland and the rest of the smaller ex-USSR nations are perfectly capable of beating Portugal ( and have done so), these are not the sort of teams I would choose to watch play. Belgium-Finland. Armenia-Kazakhstan. Would I normally choose to watch such a match up? I am not talking about winning or loosing, I am talking about show and it´s not terribly interesting.( BTW Serbia is quite respectable IMO). Portugal just played a friendly with Brazil this week. In London. In February. Portugal and Brazil. Somebody is a masochist or just greedy. Or possibly there was corruption involving the sale of thermal underwear to both teams, since everybody looked very bold and wearing turtlenecks and gloves.
The game was fun. I really liked to see Portugal play here, I think Portugal might be getting over its World Cup depression and renovation problems, the team is changing but there is a team thing built. And Ricardo Quaresma could fit in there extremely nicely here, though my footballing knowledge is not enough to figure out if you can get Simão, Cristiano Ronaldo and Ricardo Quaresma on the same starting 11. We got no strikers. We never do. We don´t do strikers, in our mentality it´s somehow as if they are leeches of real players ( midfielders of course). But we manage at making wingers, perhaps too well. If Portugal manages to play against Belgium or Poland, as it did against Brazil it´ll do. That is not a given.
Also, I wanna know who is captain of Portugal ( sniff, I miss Figo). For one game, and at age 22 (and a day) Cristiano Ronaldo was captain of Portugal, that is at least a couple years earlier than anybody expected. It was a dying wish, and I think it was meant to toughen him up but also as a gesture to the easy to predict booing english fans. Not that it was meant to shut them up, ( the opposite is more like it. But while I am sympathetic to the player, in self intererest the booing seems to sharpen the kid so...) but it was a good gesture. I don´t think it will stick though and I wonder who will be captain the next game. Rightful captain would be Ricardo by seniority, but there is the keeper thing, they are a bit apart from others to be captain. Then by seniority probably Nuno Gomes and Simão which are not necessarily starters all the time.After that is all seems sort of tied among several people with CR among them. But if Scolari does not by seniority then the favorite contender seems to be Jorge Andrade - nice guy who everybody including Scolari loves, articulate and steady.
I just finished another Vivian Vande Velde book Heir Apparent - I am going to try to push this book to S, YA slightly sf, a teen girl in the future gets stuck in a RPG game which has to win to survive for real. I think it might be more fun for gamers, but even so it was fun, light and easy. I think those two first VVV books I really loved were probably atypical. Also read a book I picked up on the weekend in that used bookstore (*happy sigh*) Toast by Nigel Slater, a piecewise biographical piece about food relating to growing up in England in the 50s/60s. It´s very short and easy to read, it was my airplane book, I really appreciated this, and loved the look at how food fashions evolve and change, that has been in my mind a bit recently. It took me a while to get through Palahniuk´s Choke and uh. Probably the worst interesting of his books I have read. Main things here are sex and addictions, there is a sf (possibly. or it´s just madness) subplot, something on religion. Palahniuk does anger and criticism pretty well, there is some here, but the result is not brilliant. If you never read Palahniuk or are not sure about his books, avoid this one, not a good start.
And now for football, very sorry but got to talk of it. National team action seems to be preparing itself to start again. I have been pretty listless about Euro2008 qualification ( it seems like a let down somehow. It is a letdown after the WC) partially due to pessimism and superstition, other partially due to football tastes. While Belgium, Kazakhstan, Poland, Finland and the rest of the smaller ex-USSR nations are perfectly capable of beating Portugal ( and have done so), these are not the sort of teams I would choose to watch play. Belgium-Finland. Armenia-Kazakhstan. Would I normally choose to watch such a match up? I am not talking about winning or loosing, I am talking about show and it´s not terribly interesting.( BTW Serbia is quite respectable IMO). Portugal just played a friendly with Brazil this week. In London. In February. Portugal and Brazil. Somebody is a masochist or just greedy. Or possibly there was corruption involving the sale of thermal underwear to both teams, since everybody looked very bold and wearing turtlenecks and gloves.
The game was fun. I really liked to see Portugal play here, I think Portugal might be getting over its World Cup depression and renovation problems, the team is changing but there is a team thing built. And Ricardo Quaresma could fit in there extremely nicely here, though my footballing knowledge is not enough to figure out if you can get Simão, Cristiano Ronaldo and Ricardo Quaresma on the same starting 11. We got no strikers. We never do. We don´t do strikers, in our mentality it´s somehow as if they are leeches of real players ( midfielders of course). But we manage at making wingers, perhaps too well. If Portugal manages to play against Belgium or Poland, as it did against Brazil it´ll do. That is not a given.
Also, I wanna know who is captain of Portugal ( sniff, I miss Figo). For one game, and at age 22 (and a day) Cristiano Ronaldo was captain of Portugal, that is at least a couple years earlier than anybody expected. It was a dying wish, and I think it was meant to toughen him up but also as a gesture to the easy to predict booing english fans. Not that it was meant to shut them up, ( the opposite is more like it. But while I am sympathetic to the player, in self intererest the booing seems to sharpen the kid so...) but it was a good gesture. I don´t think it will stick though and I wonder who will be captain the next game. Rightful captain would be Ricardo by seniority, but there is the keeper thing, they are a bit apart from others to be captain. Then by seniority probably Nuno Gomes and Simão which are not necessarily starters all the time.After that is all seems sort of tied among several people with CR among them. But if Scolari does not by seniority then the favorite contender seems to be Jorge Andrade - nice guy who everybody including Scolari loves, articulate and steady.