My Book Report

So let's see where we are.

I have recently read the latest Kate Daniels book, Magic Breaks, from Ilona Andrews.  In keeping with the theme, may I just say the the manure carts never stop hitting the windmill.  I was happy for the forward which states that while the book may seem like a last book, they are under contract for three more.  It is another wonderful continuation of the series, and I highly recommend it.

Then I tried to read a new series beginning with Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines.  I had scanned a recommendation from iO9, and it soon disappointed.  I had picked it up because it was described as a good story with super powers.  Since i had recently read Steelheart, I thought another in that vein might be good.  Then the zombies appeared.

I have to figure there is a geek somewhere in Japan that doesn't like anime.  On another island in the Land of the Rising Sun is another geek who is tired of Kaiju.  And sometimes I feel I'm the only geek in the US that doesn't like zombies.  I've read one zombie book (Death Troopers), and was kind of "meh..." about it.  I've only watched two full zombie movies, and those was "Sean of the Dead" and "Zombieland", and that's only because they were comedies.  Now it's not like I'm disparaging Doctor Who, but zombies are a big wedge of the geek pie chart.

(Oh wait, I also saw "28 Days Later", and then maybe 20 minutes of "28 Weeks Later".)

In Ex-Heroes (not really spoiling anything, this is revealed pretty quickly), a meteor falls to earth and seems to be the catalyst for some people getting super powers.  Then somehow (I stopped reading before this reveal) that also starts creating zombies.  I think I could have made it through, but then Clines started in on the graphic descriptions of the zombies.

Look, I get it.  There are dead-ish bodies walking around.  They're rotting and missing limbs, appendages, or digits.  And they're the full cross-section of the population.  We all have seen it.

So I moved on.

I read a few of the short stories in George R.R. Martin's Rogues.  The Neil Gaiman story was great as was Patrick Rothfuss'.  But they were each about supporting characters in a great book and a great series.  It just made me want more.

So this morning, I had a little time, so I started going through my library of e-books, for something else.

I moved over the Grimnoir Chronicles by Larry Correia, and the Huger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.  But then I saw the Kage Baker folder.

I remember reading the Company series, having started it early on, and reading each book as it came out.  I quickly wondered how it would be to read it straight through.  And so that's what I'm doing now.

I'm Not Dead, I'm Working

It's just been a couple of those weeks.

Last week, I started my new job.  I'm doing geology work again, and spent most of the first week reading up on the three sites I'll most likely be working at in 2012.  Then this week, I was in San Rafael at one of those sites.  We were scheduled to be there for five days, but we were so awesome that we finished in only three days.

Now I'm reading up on a site in Watsonville.  The kind of cool thing is that our subcontractor for the excavation there is going to be the company that I worked for before coming here.  It will be good to see the guys I got to know again, and I'll know they do a quality job even before going into it.

Now, I'm already on my third book of 2012.  I had to set aside my Lovecraft book because I had all of these books come in at the libraries.  Yes libraries, because from my office I'm only two (very long) blocks from the Walnut Creek branch of the Contra Costa Library.  And I had also put in some requests at the Oakland Library as well.

First I got to devour the latest book of the Discworld, Snuff by Terry Pratchett.  This one is more of a social commentary than any he's done before.  But it was lots of fun to see His Grace, the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, the Blackboard Monitor in action again.  And very much in action.  It only took me a couple days over the weekend to finish it.

Then I read After the Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn.  It's the tale of a woman who is the unpowered daughter of two of the greatest heroes of her earth.  Her father is a Superman-esque hero, and her mother is a fire manipulator.  And the poor woman keeps getting kidnapped in an attempt to control her parents and their super team.  It was a fun read, and Jennifer is going to see if she'll like it.  Apparently Vaughn also writes an urban fantasy series.  Jennifer has requested the first two books of the series, so we'll see how things go with that.

And now, I'm almost done with the  latest Kate Daniels book by Ilona Andrews.  Jennifer burned through it while I was reading the other two, and I can see why.  The MacGuffin in this one is powerful and dangerous, and has toally given me a great idea for a GURPS adventure.  SUre it will take a little tweaking to make it work jsut right, but it'll be great to throw it out there.

And then after this, I've got some books by one of the co-discoverers of the DNA double helix, James Watson.

The Hot Zone

So I've been doing methane research for work. And somewhere in the sites that I visited, I picked up a malware virus. It posed as a anti-virus program and took over my computer at the office. It kept scanning for things, and prevented programs from running. Like the Symantec anti-virus we have at work. And Windows' Add/Remove Programs option. And the Windows Task Manager.

Our IT guy ended up having to reformat the hard drive.

So today at work was pretty much a waste other than getting some reports reviewed.

* * *

Tonight I finished Ilona Andrews' Magic Strikes. It was lots of fun and her best one yet. She revealed a little more of Kate Daniels' abilities and secret, and tied lots of relationships together in an exciting story.

It's really a fun series, and while I'd like to know more of the secrets right away, I'm enjoying the journey.

Many apologies... again

I had no idea I had not updated all week.

Tonight, Jennifer and I are going to Beckett's because she is craving prime rib. Not that she'll have a whole steak, but my description of the meal I had last week with John has her wanting it. I don't know if she'll be getting her own meal, but she says she just wants a few bites of the steak, potatoes, and asparagus. Plus we had a big lunch together today at Fresh Choice.

Then we have fun plans for Saturday. First we're going to see Wall-E at the Hacienda Crossings Regal Cinemas in Dublin. They have a 9:35 showing on their digital projector. We're hoping that will be too early for the chilluns. Then we're going to get the hibiscus charm that Jennifer got for her charm bracelet put on at Cardinal Jewelers in Pleasanton. They have a great selection of things, and we like checking them out every few months. Then we'll get my comics in Livermore.

Then we're planning on going to Vacaville to put a deposit down on my next tattoo(s). I'm ready for the flaming and bleeding "S"s. I'll get the black outlines and shading done first, then after that heals I get the color in a few months.

After that who knows?

I finished Magic Burns Wednesday night. it was really fun, and even better than Magic Bites. Now I'm reading Zorro by Isabell Allende. I've been a Zorro fan since seeing "Zorro - The Gay Blade" with George Hamilton, and that only grew as I learned more about Zorro. I really like the Mark of Zorro with Tyrone Power (which is the version Bruce Wayne and his parents were seeing at the cinema the night his parents were shot and killed). I can see elements that the writers in the 90s added to the Batman mythos. And I've been getting the Zorro comic book by Dynamite Entertainment which is really fun so far.

Magic Burns - Quote

Page 7: "Why no, I won't drink your mysterious love potion."

It's a good start.

New books, new books, new books...

I tried, I swear I tried, but I just could not get through either The Botany of Desire or The Ominvore's Dilemma both by Michael Pollan. I made it through the section on corn in The Ominvore's Dilemma, but I couldn't handle his writing style anymore. So I stopped. Then when I tried to read the apple section in The Botany of Desire, it seemed a replay of a recent "Suppressed Transmissions" by Kenneth Hite in the online 'zine Pyramid. So I quit.

So since since then I've read Nancy Cartwright's autobiography My Life as a Ten Year Old Boy. It has some neat things in it like her first time meeting Phil Hartman to the ridiculousness of Elizabeth Taylor and "directing" Kirk Douglas.

Then I got William Shatner's autobiography Up Till Now. That was great. I read it in a day and a half, getting it Saturday morning and finishing it Sunday night. The thing that makes it so easy is that its like he's talking to you. You can hear his voice. And not just the... pauses. It's so conversational. The best sections are the ones covering his three big television series, but it's amazing the parts he played in TV and movies, and even on Broadway. The part that was the funniest was the charity paintball tournament. It made me laugh out loud it was so funny (Oh, wait. This is the Internet. "It made me LOL!"). If any out there reads it, let me know when you get to that point. My overall favorite part was him describing how he came to be with his fourth (and present) wife.

He made a list. He became incredibly lonely after his third wife had died from drowning in their swimming pool while drunk and home alone. So he decided he would make a list of everything he would want in a woman. And very quickly, he found her. I found this extremely touching because when I was in Kentucky for graduate school, I was feeling lonely, and I felt I needed to really define what I was looking for in a woman.

So I made a list. And within a year I was dating Jennifer. And she is everything that I had put down. I think that's why we liked "Practical Magic" so much because as a little girl Sally Owens makes a list of what kind of boy she wants to marry. And even though she made the list to be impossible to match, that is who she ends up with at the end.

Oh, just in case... Spoiler Warning. Sorry.

And so as you can see, I am now on to Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews. And of course interspersed are my basic comic books.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!

Reading issues

I tried to read The Omivore's Dilemma, and I got through about a third of it. The first section on corn was good, but I think I just got tired of the author writing style. The narrative of things stopped carrying me through the book and instead frustrated me.

So now I'm reading My Life As a 10 Year Old Boy by Nancy Cartwright. It's been fun, and is interspersed with stories from her journal while she's been recording. There's her first meeting with Phil Hartman; how she met Jonathon Winters; everyone's reaction to Elizabeth Taylor when she recorded Maggie's first word. All in all lots of fun little bits.

My next book in my stack is The Botany of Desire which is by the same author as Omnivore's Dilemma. It's smaller, so I hope I can get through it.

Then I've got the next Ilona Andrews book Magic Burns from John.

And on a Fucking Finally note, I got over the fire in Portal, and am now dodging the smashers. I'm in the room where they are going in all kinds of horizontal directions above me, and I have to find a way up. (See Picture at Top) Have I mentioned before how much I hate jumping games? And they do kind of remind me of the bit in "Galaxy Quest" where Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver have to go through the smashers room. Again in Portal, they serve no purpose whatsoever.