What I'm Reading Now -- The Great War

Probably ten or 12 years ago, I "borrowed" this book from Dad.  By borrowed, I really mean that he had read it and said I should.  I know this was 10 or 12 years ago, because I was in college.  I remember that I was in college because I got about a third of the way through it, got busy with the semester, and never went back to it.

The book is The Great War: Perspectives on the First World War, a collection of essays.  I have been fascinated by WWI since I took a class on it in college, but this book got lost in the boxes and has recently resurfaced.  Hopefully I'll have better luck than I did the first time!

What I Watched -- Gravity

I don't know how it is that I neglected to write about my last-minute trip to see Gravity at the dollar show (which is actually now four dollars, by the way - damn that inflation) before it left theaters, but somehow I did.

Neither T nor I had seen it, but both wanted to.  We missed its run at major theaters, but T found it showing in South County, so off we went.

Surprisingly, despite all the buzz around the movie, the end hadn't been spoiled for me - and I will do my best not to spoil it for you!  I will just say that the story gets moving right from the beginning of the movie, and it's tense.

And it doesn't stop until the end.

Bottom line: simple, straightforward, but well constructed.

Goal #17

Goal #17: early to bed, early to rise.

I am trying to get back into rowing after falling off the wagon.  Last week I worked hard at going to bed early.  This week, work is going to be insane, so I need to keep up the early bedtimes so I can actually go get my workout in.

Recap of goal #16: I did actually make some good use of my time, though I had help with some of these tasks: I read a couple of magazines, made progress on a (short) book, baked a two-layer chocolate cake (I had to pre-test for a baby shower in a couple of weeks), went for a bike ride, and moved the computer in my office to make better use of the limited space on my desk.

Keystone

We will all miss you, buddy.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette? -- Take 2

This is a strange book.  I listened to the audio version, and I think that was a huge help in understanding the narrator, who is a 15-year-old girl.  I was a 15-year-old girl myself roughly half my life ago, but holy hell, it might as well have been a hundred years in the past, for all the kinship I feel with the person I was.

Anywho, the narrator did a pretty good job voicing the girl, and I think it made the story much more engaging than it probably would have been if I had been reading it.  There were a few times when I thought she was overboard with the drippy emotions, but on the whole it was likely an improvement over having to voice the character myself.  I do not believe that would have gone well.

As for the meat of the story, it was pretty good.  I was intrigued by the disappearance at the center of the book, but a bit disappointed by the resolution.  That's all I'll say about that, because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it yet.  But I very much liked the way the book was put together, largely built out of letters, emails, and other forms of communication between the various characters.

Bottom line: maybe it's not so different from Gone Girl after all: interesting assembly of the story, but I was left a little flat at the end.  Between the two, though, I'd pick this one.

What i'm Reading Now -- 84, Charing Cross Road

C had a party on Friday night, and probably my favorite thing to do when I'm at someone's house for the first time is to peruse their bookshelves.  I left the party at the end of the night with two books.  Incidentally, both of the books belonged to C's wife.  He had read one of them.  Not this one.

As 84, Charing Cross Road is the shorter of the two, I decided to start there.  I know nothing about it, but it looked interesting and caught my attention on the shelf (probably due in no small part to the fact that the titular address is in London), and that's a good start for a book.

Because as we all know, we judge books by their covers.

Goal #16

Goal #16: make use of some alone time.

Letter J is going away on a climbing trip.  T will be in California for a few days.

I have much to do around my apartment, many things to do around town, and hopefully the weather will be nice again so I can also do some things outside!

Recap of goal #15: this goal was a little bit of a difficult to quantify, but somehow I think I accomplished it.  Obviously it will be an ongoing effort, so in truth, time will tell.  But I'm feeling a bit better and, you know, more focused.

What I'm Reading Now -- Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

Round about the time Gone Girl was getting so much hype, Where'd You Go, Bernadette? also came out.  It wasn't completely lost on the critics, but it didn't get nearly the fanfare of Gillian Flynn's clever but ultimately overrated third novel.

The concept seemed interesting, so I picked up the audio and thought I'd give it a try.

Thunderstruck -- Take 2

As I suspected from the first few chapters, Thunderstruck does indeed follow a similar pattern of profiling parallel lives until their intersection as Devil in the White City.  As the story unfolds, it becomes clear in Thunderstruck just how they're going to intersect.

Regardless, the actual moments of truth were tense.  Larson is quite a storyteller, creating clear pictures of the characters just by sharing stories about them.  Could some of the stories have been edited out?  Sure, but the picture would have been less vivid for it.

If you're into history and like narrative non-fiction (and really, who doesn't?), this is worth a peek.

Random Links

A new kind of dominoes.

A romantic view of a dark night's sky.

Taking ice cream shops to a new level.

Feel like learning a little something?

A funny April Fool's prank.

Let's hear it for underprotected kids, and the parents who love them.