Things coming round

Clearly I haven't written here in too long. I apologize to my intrepid readers.

It isn't as though there hasn't been anything exciting going on.

I must also apologize to my future-self for not having documented the birth and first weeks of my son's life. It has been quite an experience to have a child. I'm responsible for more than just myself, which is not and unscary thought.

But what I came here to write isn't anything profound like that but only a passage I read lately that stuck with me.

I'm reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens on the recommendation of my mother-in-law after having enjoyed Moby-Dick, The House of the Seven Gables, and various other "classic" books. I've been enjoying it for the most part though, and this is strange to me because of my experience in reading epic fantasy, I'm having a bit of trouble keeping all of the characters straight.

Multiple disparate threads of the story are seemingly coming together ever so slowly as characters from one thread are starting to interact with those in other threads. Dickens did a nice thing in giving his characters unique, funny, and even descriptive names, but for some reason it isn't helping very much.

Anyway, the book was published in 1852 and 1853 and it was amazing to read something that must have been true back then but still so very true today and that hits home in my own life. I suppose that is what helps make something a classic.

Here is the setup and the passage:
Three men, Mr. Smallweed, Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Jobling are having dinner and afterwards turn to Mr. Jobling's prospects. Mr. Jobling has come into a streak of bad luck lately and has been leeching off of Mr. Smallweed for food and drink all evening. In the discussion Jobling utters this line followed by the narrator's commentary.

"Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, "I will not deny it. I was on the wrong side of the post. But I trusted to things coming round.
That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their being beaten round, or worked round, but in their "coming" round! As though a lunatic should trust in the world's "coming" triangular!

It is so true! So many people, myself included, just sit "content" in their lives and wait for things to get better. (But then complain when nothing improves and complain when things go better for others) How many of us, if we're really honest, really work at making things better? I know I usually don't. But those times that I did, things did improve. Or wonderful things happened. It is a lesson I need to continually remind myself of. Sometimes you need to take your life and beat it in to the shape you'd like instead of merely waiting for it to come round.

What have I been reading?

I feel like I really need to do a few posts on something other than some physical activity. And I also feel very disappointed in myself that I haven't even recorded what I've been reading. Let alone what I thought about anything. So that's how we arrive at this post.

Right now at home I am reading Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle. This follows right on the heels of Steve Jobs and Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire. I borrowed Softwar and Hard Drive from a friend a long, long time ago and then my (Apple-loving) father-in-law loaned me Steve Jobs' biography to read. Having this trilogy of technology biographies finally spurred me to read them.

I decided to try and read Steve Jobs and Bill Gates quasi-simultaneously to try and get a contrasting picture of these two contemporary giants of the computer industry and see if I could figure out why one was so loved and the other so hated. One problem with that task is that Steve Jobs was published last year after the amazing rise of Apple following the production of the iPod and Hard Drive was published in 1994 as Windows 3.1 was dominating the world of the PC but the crazy success of Windows 95 hadn't even happened yet. The other was that the writing in the Steve Jobs book was far superior. The authors of Hard Drive even used the phrase "He could care less" once. I had to put the book down and switch back to Steve Jobs after that one. I found both books very interesting and enlightening.
After reading the two books and trying the answer the question I posed above I really couldn't figure out why Jobs is so loved and Gates so hated. Again, the publication dates are one thing, it would be very interesting to read about Gates from the 90s through the 00s including the DOJ anti-trust suit. But solely based these books it seems like Jobs is loved because the typical person in the modern United States cares mostly about consumer goods and not much else. Other than a nice sense of design I didn't find much admirable in Steve Jobs. He was a jerk of a sociopath who denied reality right up to refusing to let his cancer be treated. While Gates could be ruthless and driving/driven he didn't seem quite so detached from reality and actually had the technical skills and knowledge that his company was built upon. That's my biased opinion anyway.

I also finished two other books recently. I finished A Tale of Two Cities today on my bus ride home. Then this weekend I took a break from Softwar to read one of my all-time favorite books: Ender's Game.
First, Ender's Game is a sci-fi book telling the story of an amazingly gifted boy who must find a way to live up to his potential quickly enough to save the human race from the threat of extinction by an alien race. It is just a great story with perfect pacing and a surprising conclusion.
Then, as happened with War and Peace and the Napoleonic Wars, I got more of a history lesson on the French Revolution from A Tale of Two Cities than I can remember ever learning at any level of school. And while written from the viewpoint of an Englishman, the French Revolution sounds like a horrendous time all around. The book was of course excellently written and filled with wonderful characters, some of whom kept me wondering right up until very nearly the end.

That's what I can remember reading in the last few months. I wish I had kept a better record because I know I've read other great books that I can't remember now. Up next I'm planning to finish reading The Dark Tower. I can't quite remember exactly where I left off. I think I finished the fourth book, but I think I'll start there again just to get back into it. After that the plan would be to at least start The Dresden Files, which I've heard many good things about. At home I plan to go on another biography kick, but this time on American presidents. I own books on John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, and plan to get one on George Washington.

Well, that's all for now.

What have you been reading?

The Hunger Games

I read The Hunger Games yesterday. Well, mostly. I think I read the first two or three chapters the night before.

You see, Allison and I had plans to see The Hunger Games movie over the weekend but the plans fell through. So we decided to use a LivingSocial deal for one of the local theaters to see the movie this week. The coupon was only good for Monday through Thursday and Allison worked at 6am every morning except Thursday. That meant that Wednesday was the night for the movie.

Allison had read the book a while ago and really liked it. I can't remember who she found out about it from but it came highly recommended. When we didn't see the movie over the weekend she guessed that I could read the book before we went to see the movie. I liked the book okay. I didn't find it quite as enjoyable as most other people I've heard talk about it.

For one thing it is written in the first person which I don't like quite as much as the third person with Point-of-View, which seems to be the main perspective used in modern fantasy and sci-fi, which of course is my main reading material. I think that first person is probably more difficult to write in and I'm not sure that Suzanne Collins was really up to it. I don't know if she had used it in previous novels but I don't know about it here. I think I understand why she did it. None of the other characters would have been as interesting as POV characters as the main character, Katniss. And getting the inner thoughts of Katniss is obviously easiest this way. A lot of the novel is spent with Katniss alone trying to stay alive with nothing but her thoughts. But still, I am not sure it was really well done.

The story itself is interesting enough but being the person I am I of course would have wished for more background of the world itself. And here is where the first person comes in, we can only know as much or see as much as Katniss knows or sees. We only get as much character development in the other characters as much as they develop in Katniss' eyes. She had a couple good relationships with other characters, but she wasn't the most likable character herself.

As for the movie, it necessarily compressed a lot and changed a bunch. As with most adaptations you are left wondering why they made which decisions, especially considering that the author herself wrote the screenplay. I enjoyed the movie but the other characters were even less developed than in the book. The actress who played Katniss was good and she made Katniss more likable than in the book. I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

I enjoyed the movie, though it won't be making a top 10 list or anything. I'm glad I saw it and enjoyed a date out with my wife.

One of those days

This is one of those blog posts that people who don't blog are referring to when they say things like "Why would anyone read a blog? Why do I care about some joe-schmoe's day?" This is a post chronicling a day in my life: yesterday, March 17th, 2012, St. Patrick's Day.

Do you ever have one of those days?
One of those days where everything you do is exactly what you wanted to do?
One of those days where besides all the fun you even did something productive?
One of those days where even the things outside your control (like the weather) go your way?
One of those days when you're enjoying what you're doing and then you all of a sudden remember one of the other awesome things you did earlier that you almost forgot about?
Well, I have. I had that day yesterday.
Though, I must admit, it didn't start off perfectly...
Now when I say that, I mean it was still a-okay and even expected. Just not perfect. (It should be very well known to anyone who knows me that I have and have had a pretty good life. Not much goes or has gone wrong.)
The first one awake was Boudreaux, our dog, which is typical on the weekends. I didn't want to get up with him but he was insistent. So I dragged myself out of bed, headed downstairs, fed the dog, let him out, let him back in, and then climbed back upstairs and into bed. After a little while Allison and I finally got up and made ourselves a nice simple breakfast of oatmeal with strawberries.
Then we got dressed and headed out to Old Cedar Avenue near Long Meadow Lake for a hike. Allison had had the brilliant idea that since we had so much fun hiking in Arizona maybe we should just keep hiking after getting back home? And you know what? There are lots of places to do that within or close to the Twin Cities. So the three of us went on a wonderful ~2 mile hike along the lake. There were numerous people out hiking and bird watching (some of the people had some serious scopes on tripods). Boudreaux got very excited when he saw some ducks in a pond and really enjoyed walking up and down a stream.
Something else there that was neat was the Old Cedar Avenue bridge. It is a two lane bridge that used to be the only way across the Minnesota River in our part of the southern suburbs. And it was what my dad took to work every morning from Burnsville to Golden Valley when I was growing up. It is right next to the new 6 lane Cedar Avenue bridge. Whenever I drive over the river and look at that rickety old bridge my mind reels at trying to imagine rush hour crossing the river.
After our hike we headed back home and had a delicious lunch of leftover andoule sausage jambalaya. I had made it the night before (from a box) and it was still quite tasty.
Next came the productive part of our day. Allison and I moved some of the furniture around downstairs so she could paint one of the walls. There are only a couple left and it looks much nicer than the stark white we had before.
While Allison was painting I headed outside with Boudreaux and got out the chainsaw. I cut down a few lower branches from some of the trees in our yard. I was trying to get rid of the ones that really hang down and make it difficult to mow the lawn. I dragged the cut branches back into the woods behind my house and while coming back from dropping off the last couple of branches five white-tailed deer ran by. Boudreaux had been watching me take the branches out of the yard and he was transfixed by the small herd. I then took some pesticide and diatomaceous earth (which is supposed to help with box-elder bugs) and sprayed and spread around the base of our house.
By the time I was done Allison had pulled out our plastic yard furniture bench and started reading her Kindle (she's in the middle of A Clash of Kings, in preparation for the upcoming season of A Game of Thrones on HBO). I headed inside to grab my own Kindle and grabbed us both a nice, cool, Leinies Sunset Wheat and then headed outside to join her.
We sat there for maybe an hour, maybe two. Just reading our books and sipping our beers. The last I had checked the mercury had reached 78 degrees, but it wouldn't surprise me it it hit about 80 while we were out there. And I tell you what, we had zero problems reading our Kindles in the bright sunlight. In fact, it was probably even easier than reading a real book because it isn't the bright white of a page made of paper.
The last time I talked about what I was reading I was soldiering through a fairly poorly written book. Since then I had read a bunch on the plane and also while enjoying myself in Arizona. I finished that book, Fight For the Abyss, the next book, Mechanicum, the following book, an anthology of short stories called Tales of Heresy, and am currently reading the 11th book in the Horus Heresy series, Fallen Angels. I've quite enjoyed everything since Fight For the Abyss.
Around five o'clock I headed upstairs and grabbed a couple of New York Strip steaks out of the frig in preparation for dinner. There was no way I was going to let this day go by without turning on the grill. When the grill was ready I used a little Famous Dave's Burger and Steak rub and threw those bad boys on the fire. The steaks were served with a simple arugula and tomato salad with balsamic vinaigrette dressing and an excellent French wine that Allison had picked up a couple weeks ago. It has 50% Grenache and 50% Syrah. I can't describe to you what "notes" it had, or what it "hinted at", but I can tell you it complemented my medium-rare steak excellently. And if I do say so myself, the steaks were fantastic.
We cleared away the dishes and cleaned up after dinner and an odd notion came into my head. The beautiful sunny day harkened back to summer days of my youth and I wanted to something I hadn't done in quite some time. I asked Allison if she wanted to hit the Dairy Queen drive-in and just go on a little drive in the country. She surprised me by saying "Yeah, let's go." And the three of us got back in the car and took off.
We headed out to Rosemount and the Dairy Queen there. As expected the drive-in line was long and there were family's at every picnic table and all over the parking lot enjoying sundaes and cones and Blizzards and other treats. We got up to the window and I ordered a mini Oreo Blizzard for Allison and after a small internal debate I ordered a small Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Blizzard for myself. The debate was not over the flavor but the size (I've had a couple medium and even large Blizzards in my day) and by the time I had finished I was happy with my choice.
From Rosemount we headed for downtown Farmington. Neither of us had actually been to our neighbor town to the south. It was not quite what I was expecting, at least not where we drove through. Downtown Lakeville is a cute and quaint little area. "Downtown" Farmington, or at least the main commercial drag through the center of town was anything but cute. A couple of strip malls and a restaurant/gas station. I'm sure we missed other stuff and we'll just have to return again some day. By the way, Boudreaux really enjoyed the drive. His head was out the window nearly the entire time.
We got back after sunset and for our next activity Allison suggested we head down stairs and play a board game. You never have to ask me twice to engage in my favorite hobby so with newly filled wine glasses in hand we went downstairs.
Then the tough choice became which game to play. Allison was debating over whether to play her favorite game, Dominion, or try playing Stone Age again. I got Stone Age for Christmas and we had played it once so far and she opted to bring it out again. Allison won our first contest a few months ago, but I'm sorry to say that I beat her this time. It was another fun contest and I was glad we got to play it.
When we finished packing up the game I didn't even have the chance to ask "What do you want to do now?" when Allison asked "Do you want to watch Iron Man?" Ummm, yes.
I had seen Iron Man in the theater and Allison had not. I have never been a big comic book collector but I've always enjoyed the stories and the heroes. With the Avengers movie coming out in just a couple months I had planned to watch the related movies that I hadn't seen yet. I had seen Iron Man and Thor, but hadn't yet watched The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, or Captain America. When I got Hulk in the mail Allison expressed an interest in watching it with me. She enjoyed it and since I was getting Iron Man 2 next I asked her if she wanted me to get Iron Man first, which she did.
So we poured out the remainder of the wine, popped in Iron Man, and watched a great super hero action flick.
Phew! I think that's it. After the movie, on the way upstairs to bed, I was thinking about what a great day it had been and I suddenly remembered my Blizzard which I had nearly forgotten about. It was then that this blog post started forming.

So let's recap:
Up early with my wonderful dog, Boudreaux
Oatmeal and strawberries
Hike near the Minnesota river
Andoule sausage jambalaya
Chainsaw and branch cutting with a deer sighting
Sitting in the sun and the heat with my wife, my Kindle, and a beer
Steaks and wine for dinner
A cookie dough Blizzard and a drive through the country
A game of Stone Age with Allison with a glass of wine
Watched Iron Man with a glass of wine

Yep, not too shabby.

Put the Thesaurus Down!

As I mentioned in a previous post one of the books I'm reading, Fight for the Abyss, has writing of a...lesser quality. But I couldn't quite put my finger on what or why. The story was interesting enough (but again, not as interesting as the previous book in the series) but the actual words on the page seemed poorly chosen and poorly put together. Sometimes things seemed to be repeated more than was necessary. Or really odd words were used to describe thing. The series often uses interesting and archaic words in place of everyday things to give the world a certain feeling. But the author seems to be having trouble with that in this particular book.

I finally came across a passage that nearly put me over the edge. This passage illuminated (pun intended...you'll see in a second) a lot of what I didn't like about the book.

Let me set the scene. A small, rag-tag group of futuristic warriors (Space Marines) and the crew of an old and now partially disabled space vessel are chasing after a mammoth enemy ship filled with the traitorous former brothers-in-arms of the aforementioned Space Marines. This big, evil ship is set on destroying the home world of the good guys. In the middle of a pitched battle the author gives us this description as the leader of the Space Marines steps into the bridge of his ship:

Drenched in the crimson gloom from vermillion alert status, the bridge looked bloody in the half-light. 

So you're saying the room was red, huh?

And are you trying to tell me that in the grim darkness of the 31st millennium that humans have become so advanced that they shy away from mundane things like "red alert" and prefer the far more futuristic "vermillion alert?" "Vermillion alert?" I had to read the sentence again and then put the book down while I let out a small chuckle.

Let me tell you, I've written my share of overly worked prose. I can see myself scribbling on a page with the thesaurus at my side. Whenever a word seemed a little boring I'd pop over to the thesaurus to see if I could make it "better." But then again, I'm not what you'd call a "writer", and certainly not a "published author." I'm a hack with a blog.

And don't get me wrong, I love a good turn of phrase littered with flowery adjectives. Not everything has to be Ernest Hemingway. But it has to be done right. Look back at my recently read list. Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edward Gibbon knew how to drip a little extra spice on a sentence. But not everyone can do what those authors did, at least not successfully. And most people should know that. I'm also a little mystified that the editors let this stuff through. Of course, it is in the middle of a very popular SciFi series. It isn't like the sales numbers were in doubt. Why spend the extra time to do it right?

Anyway, I'm almost done with this one, which is kind of a relief. I can't wait to move to the next book in the hopes that it will be much better. One nice thing about this series is that it is definitely easy and light reading.

Next on the reading list

 Here is the tome I'm reading (at home) now.

It is The Annotated Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. It has a page count of 1312. It is a big, bulky book. But let's look inside, shall we...

You'll notice that about half of each page is just a margin. On this particular pair of pages (which I have not reached yet) we see two annotations printed in the margins. Would anyone have ever guessed?
What this book is for me is a trip back in time. It is one the first fantasy books/series I ever read, The Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy, annotated by the above mentioned Weis and Hickman (among others). I was introduced to these books by a friend probably in 7th grade. I can't remember how much fantasy I had read before this but it wasn't all that much.
I had certainly read The Hobbit. And I had probably at least tried to read The Fellowship of the Ring. (It took me a couple of tries.) My parents had read The Chronicles of Narnia to my brothers and I as younger children (which was the real beginning of my love of fantasy). And I can't remember if I read The Dragon King Trilogy by Stephen Lawhead (which lead into other novels by him) before or after Dragonlance Chronicles, probably after. Like I said, it wasn't that much. I've read much more since then.
Anyway, I'm about 100 pages into the first book of the trilogy, Dragons of Autumn Twilight. It isn't the greatest prose ever but it is entertaining. And most of the annotations are pretty interesting either giving insight into the authors' thoughts or talking about how they are foreshadowing future events in the series.
I've also started the next book in the Horus Heresy series, Battle for the Abyss. It is actually pretty disappointing so far. One of the interesting things about this series is that each of the books is written by one of a group of authors. The previous book was written by one of the best authors of the series and the drop off to this book is easily apparent. This same author wrote the 3rd book in the series and I don't remember that one being particularly bad. But for some reason this one is just kind of rubbing me the wrong way. I'm about 30% in and hopefully it will pick up soon.

Reading list

I've been a reader all my life. I love reading. I love both finding out new things and traveling to different worlds.
Toward the end of my time out in Montana I wasn't reading as much as I used to. I brought the lack of habit back with me to Minnesota. But then a few years ago I started back up on a big reading kick. I mainly started to read over lunch at work.
I know some people say that you're not supposed to eat alone and you're supposed to connect and network over lunch. But I found I really enjoyed that 30-45 minutes of peace to myself in the middle of a hectic day. Reading was the perfect activity to accompany that time. And so I started reading a lot of books a half hour at a time. It soon made its way back home where I started reading before bed again.
I also started reading two or three different books at a time. One at work and one at home and then maybe some other one thrown in somewhere. The reason was simple: I didn't want to forget a book somewhere and not have something to read.
Since Junior High I mostly read fantasy. But a couple years ago Allison and I were at a book sale and I saw a bunch of classics that I had never read for $1 a piece. I bought a bunch of them and they got me on a classics kick.

So here is an incomplete list of what I've read over the last few years, not in chronological order. I think my favorite book is The Count of Monte Cristo. Just an amazing book

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe 
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin (fantasy)
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (abridged) by Edward Gibbon
The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky
War and Peace by Tolstoy
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Books 1-7 of the Horus Heresy (SciFi series) -- I just finished book 7 today
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Texas by James A. Michener
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, and The Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie (fantasy)
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas