Yeah, I know, I should have read this years ago. Just got done reading Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. A very quick read – I started it yesterday. I’ve not read much Steinbeck, and now I’ll probably try to read more. I’ve not often read something that packed so much depth in so few pages.
Apparently there’s a movie with John Malkovich in it that’s really good.
Next stop, Mona Lisa Overdrive, by William Gibson.
The Lost Hero, by Rick Riordan, picks up immediately after the first Percy Jackson series leaves off, and introduces a new set of characters. Riordan has improved his writing style – or perhaps he’s aiming at his same audience, who are now a little older. Either way, the characters are more believable, and the story was better.
However, I get tired of the “I know something you don’t know” plot device. Pretty much every character in the entire book has some secret. In every case, if they would just say what they know, it would make everything better, and wouldn’t have any negative ramifications, but they keep the secret for some deeply personal and poorly articulated reason.
Everyone from Tolkein on uses this technique. Some wise old codger knows something, and won’t tell you, for your own good. Galdalf. Alanon. The three fairies in sleeping beauty. But Riordan goes overboard with this. Everyone in the whole book does this, and one grows weary of it.
In spite of that, and in spite of the chapter at the end where everybody spills the beans, I actually thoroughly enjoyed this book, and am looking forward to the next one.
I’m now reading “Of Mice And Men”, and I’m not sure what will come after that.
River Teeth, by David James Duncan, was wonderful. The book alternates between memories (the river teeth) and short stories. I won’t spoil it by telling you the definition of river teeth, which is the first memory.
His writing of memories – even brief flashes of memory – inspire me to write my memories, even when they aren’t full stories. His short stories, inspired by those memories, are wonderfully written, and while there’s no common thread, they are all well worth reading. Highly recommended.
Next on the list, I’m reading “Of Mice And Men” (Steinbeck) and “Tower of Glass” (Silverberg). I think I might give up on “Persuasion” for now. Jane Austen is always an awful lot of work.
One of the many Disc World books I missed on the first time through, Small Gods follows the last believer of the Great God Om on his journey to Ephebe and back. Om is about to cease to exist, due to nobody believing in him any more, and, due to a small miscalculation, or perhaps the universe’s sense of humor, is in the form of a small tortoise.
Although bordering on blasphemy much of the time, the book manages to be both very funny, and rather insightful about religion – or, more accurately, the organizations that surround religion.
A must if you’re a Pratchett fan, but probably give it a miss otherwise.
At the Back of the North Wind, by George MacDonald, came highly recommended by someone who loved it years ago. I found it tedious and poorly told, as though Mr. MacDonald had awoken from a dream, and tried unsuccessfully to get it all down before the memory faded.
I have not enjoyed MacDonald’s other things that I’ve read, so I suppose this wasn’t a surprise. I think he has good stories, but is incapable of telling them.
Next on the list is Persuasion, by Jane Austen, although based on the first few chapters I’m hoping to get through it quickly. I’m also still reading River Teeth, but I’m almost done.
Pretty much all day I have been listening to “Just Look Around”, the new album from Mother Jane. (I’ve since learned that they’ve changed their name from Mother Jane to the Beth Burden Band, due to the number of other bands named Mother Jane.)
So, full disclosure – they’re our next-door neighbors, and watch our dog when we go on vacation, so perhaps I’m a little biased … but I love this record.
I’m not really sure what to call the style. I suppose I’d call it folk music, but it really resists categorization.
I’m especially fond of “Big Wheel”, which talks about the joy of getting on your Big Wheel and riding away. Another favorite is Sweet Wildwood.
There’s also a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” which is, in my opinion, better than the original.
I know most of you have never heard of this band, but you should. They’ve got three records in the iTunes store now, and you should give them a listen. And follow @bethburden on Twitter, too, while you’re at it, so you can see where they’ll be in concert.
Facebook is a very strange thing. It has taken the word “friend” and made it mean things that it never meant before. Or possibly it meant these things to other people before, and I wasn’t aware of it. Any term that encompasses my boss, my mother, my wife, that guy I went to high school with and can’t quite remember, and some random stranger I met at a conference 12 years ago … well, it’s not very specific.
And now that my daughter is 13 and has a Facebook account, we’ve talked with her about how she defines friend, and the simple fact that she’d say some things to her friends – you know, her real friends – that she wouldn’t say to us. This leads to a need to carefully choose her “friends”, and carefully choose what she says.
When we were kids, they’d say “this will go on your permanent record”, and it meant exactly nothing. Today it means something. Everyone from future employers to your priest to your school teachers to that person that’s thinking of asking you out to dinner, will have access to whatever you choose to post on Facebook.
Anything you say can and will be used against you.
And, sure, we all know this, but it’s obvious from sites like Failbook that an awful lot of people don’t really think that it applies to them.
Yes, that’s right, I’ve never read Macbeth before. Now I have.
And later this week, we’ll probably watch Patrick Stewart’s Macbeth. Reading plays is always difficult for me. I have trouble following what’s going on. Hopefully seeing it acted will help.
My biggest complaint with my MacBook Pro has always been the sharp front edge. When using it for extended periods of time without an external keyboard (which I do perhaps 2 or 3 days a week, working in the living room or dining room) it begins to cut into my forearm quite painfully. Yes, I know, I’m not supposed to rest my wrists on the laptop. But I’ve been typing this way for almost 30 years, and am unlikely to change now.
I read a few sites that talked about grinding off that sharp corner, but somehow I think that my employer might frown on me voiding my warranty in that particular way.
So, last week I picked up a Speck laptop cover. Yes, they are expensive, but I figured it’s tax deductible, and it’ll save me some pain.
Turns out that it has a sharp corner on it, too. But, it’s plastic, and grinding it down doesn’t void the warranty on my MacBook. So, with a little work with sandpaper, I now have a front corner of my laptop that doesn’t make me bleed, and I can work comfortably just a little longer.
What I’d really like to see is Apple taking heed of this complaint that’s persisted through several generations of this hardware, and make that corner a little less painful. But, failing that, this is an acceptable solution.
The only negative here is that the part of the cover that goes on the screen is a little heavy. The screen/lid of the MacBook is pretty well balanced, and adding even a little weight to it causes it to fall open quite violently when leaned too far back. The cover provides just that needed weight, and picking it up by the base while it’s open can cause the lid to slam all the way open. I’m concerned that one of these times it’s going to snap the hinge.
I mentioned a few days ago that I got a Mikey. I’ve been using it for the past few days, and it is absolutely wonderful. I’ve used it for a few actual live recordings, but that’s not the main thing I’ve used it for.
I have hundreds of cassette tapes, and over the last few years, they have faded from my daily use, because it’s just not how I listen to music any more. And my various attempts to convert them to MP3s have been largely failures, for a variety of reasons.
With the Mikey, and a audio patch cable, I can set my ipod next to the stereo, and in as long as it takes to play the tape, plus perhaps five minutes to split into tracks, I have an entire cassette as MP3s. I’m using Blue FiRe, the recording app from Blue, to do the actual recording, and Audacity to do the post production.
Along the way, I discovered how to split a long file into individual tracks, which I had been doing the very long way up until now, so this added to the speed of the process. I’ve converted perhaps a dozen cassettes in the last three days, and have added back to my daily music listening list several things that I haven’t heard in ten years or more. It’s wonderful.
This has also given me new incentive to get back to converting my LP collection, now that I know that one simple trick. Most of my LP conversion time was being spent on the track splitting step, and now that should only take 3 or 4 minutes.
I’m also really looking forward to opportunities to use Mikey as a portable recording device. E is starting to talk quite a bit, so that’ll give me the excuse I’m looking for, I’m sure.