Friday Fun
Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.
Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.
es I know that I owe you guys some serious posts. But stuff is all gloomy at work, so I’m preferring to keep things light on the ol’ blog. I hope you will indulge me a little longer.
Kellie wrote me recently asking me which e-reader I had ultimately chosen after my drawn out debate between the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle. Honestly it turned out to be not much of a choice. I bought the Sony Reader mainly because the Kindle had three major strikes against it: it is more expensive, bigger, and (most importantly) it is butt ugly! Oh my god is that thing hideous! It looks like some Atari/Commodore contraption from the 80s. My reader is small, sleek and blue. A much better fit for her royal divatudeness.
Some people are really into the fact that the Kindle downloads wirelessly. Yawn. As much of a gadget ho as I am, I’m just not feeling that. This is not an all the time book replacement…just something to use when I travel. As such, I’m happy to just download my books to my library on my computer and load the ones I want to read to my Reader using a cable and that’s that. No biggie. The charge on the Reader lasts for 3-4 weeks, so its all good. This is the perfect product for my travel reading. I can’t see myself sitting in a hotel saying, “Oh my goodness, I must have the latest Danielle Steele book right now!” Nah, just not feeling it.
And did it get noticed on my last trip! I can’t tell you how many times people stopped to ask me about how much I liked my Reader. This tended to get a little annoying because the book I was reading was this fabulous thriller called Shadow Man by Cody McFayden.
I had never heard of Cody McFayden before, but I decided to give this new talent a go and I’m glad I did. As a major fan of the serial killer genre, I’ve seen some of my favorite writers have their work go downhill over time. Look at Patricia Cornwell, Minette Walters, James Patterson and Harlan Coben. Well Harlan is still cool, but good lord, what happened to Patricia Cornwell? I can’t even read her stuff any more.
Anyway, I’m not sure where I first heard about Cody McFayden, but I loved Shadow Man. Even though I figured out whodunnit early on, I though the characters (especially Smoky) were engaging and the writing totally hooked me. The story was totally gruesome. The funniest thing is that while curled up in my hotel room bed with my fever and incipient strep infection, I was reading so fast that I occasionally forgot that I was holding an e-book reader and would attempt to turn the page like one would for a normal book! This would consist of my flipping the reader in its cover, looking at the back and going, “duh!” I am such a moron.
I can’t wait to read his next book The Face of Death. Smoky is back! Excellent!
Now speaking of books, just because it got such rave literary reviews and because I wanted to read it before I saw the movie, I made my way through Atonement, Ian McEwan, a few weeks ago. All I can say is that…was….the…most…depressing…book…ever. Well written, a powerful story, but my god, just hand me the IV Prozac right now. I think I’m going to have to tie AdoringHusband down to watch it with me when it comes from Netflix. Oh wait…I’m getting a sadness flashback. Must go find a martini.
OK, now I’m better.
I’m currently reading Obedience: A Novel, by Will Lavender. This was one of those books that people either seemed to love or hate. Me, I’m still at the what the fuck is going on stage, 3/4 of the way through. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing at this point. The book is just odd. I think I’m jonesin’ for another Smoky Barrett novel and this one ain’t it.
Have you read any good books lately? Can I visit your shelves on Shelfari?
And lastly on the topic of books, I don’t know if you’ve seen this cool website: Literature Map. You enter the name of your favorite author and the names of other similar authors that you might like are generated on a map. The closer the other authors are to the author you entered, the stronger the similarity. They also have movie and music maps available as well.
Speaking of movies, now that we learned that Zara’s teachers at day care also do babysitting, we’ve happily managed to get out of the house a few times to see some recent movies. We saw Get Smart (after feeling oh so ancient as I let one of the babysitters know that yes, the movie was based on a TV series!), Sex and the City (and please don’t get me started on the whole Charlotte/pregnancy storyline), and the fabulous Dark Knight. Those of you who have seen the last movie will appreciate this silly YouTube video:
Click to viewAnd apropros of nothing, let me finish with this funny video sent to me by Stillamomma:
Night all!
Edited to add:
First, Obedience, wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. Implausible, yes, but not horrible. I think it is worth reading.
Second, I just discovered that Sony is coming out with a red version of the Reader on August 22nd!
And since AdoringHusband has fallen in love with the Reader that I have, he’s going to buy me the red one and keep the blue one for himself. Also, he loved SHADOW MAN but unlike me, was not able to guess whodunnit!
So what gives you guys? Nobody reading anything good right now? It’s awfully quiet out there…