Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves (no, it's not a YA fantasy novel)

Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves by Matthew Reilly
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book reads like a James Bond story on steroids. It's basically a running battle from start to finish, rarely slowing down to ease up on the running and gunning (and driving and exploding). In that way it's fluff candy for action-adventure enthusiasts, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but there are just too many really implausible moments for me to give it an enthusiastic recommendation. I'll say this much: at least Reilly knows his firearms. This in itself made the book more readable (listenable) than it could have been. Reilly is not a bad writer, in fact it's a telling thing that I made it to the end. I liked the characters, the dialogue is believable, the situation intriguing, the tech is cool, and the pacing is good. At some point, though, I realized that I was making the same pained face I made when I first watched "Van Helsing" (the Sommers film starring Hugh Jackman). The pain was from too many cartoony moments of disbelief suspended so thin it was beginning to fray and about to snap. No, wait, it did snap. Several times.



* * * Spoilers * * *




...like when our hero is electrocuted to death and then miraculously resuscitated via defibrillator, and immediately leaps back in to action. Want more of that kind of "getting blown across the room and through a window by an explosion with no apparent injury" type of thing? Read the book. The author also needs to bone up on how and why explosive compression works underwater. If an object sinks because it's open to the sea at multiple gaping points, it's not going to collapse catastrophically due to crushing pressure...because there is no pressure because it's open to the sea. And if our hero were in a water-tight compartment in said sinking object, which then would be in danger of structural failure due to high pressure, then he'd be awfully deep to swim to the surface for several reasons. Ask a diver. Ask any grade-school kid. Seriously. This is basic science stuff. Anyway, it was fun, but kind of goofy at times.



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Blustery winter night musings

Hurts to sit, hurts to stand, let's see if I can type semi-reclined...with a cat on my arms because apparently this is an open invetation.

Quote of the day: "Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back everything's different." C.S. Lewis

Current weather: pouring down rain, windy, 46F...in January! The exclamation point is for the temp, not the wind and the rain.

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Apparently I am terrified of "doing it wrong" or not knowing how to start or over-thinking everything I want to do, so I've made a vow to just write something, anything, every day. There used to be a nifty little web site where you typed like a crazy person and earned little rewards for typing more than X amount every day, but about two months after I discovered it the site went to paid subscriptions and I bailed because I just can't afford pretty much anything that isn't food, household expenses, gas, and other boring grownup things. I'm just going to have to make my daily quota without benefit of virtual awards, because I really need to make writing a habit and a need as much as brushing my teeth and drinking enough water. I think it's that important for me.

I don't have kids, but that doesn't mean I don't have plenty of distractions to keep me from just sitting down (or standing up) and getting the writing done. At this moment I can just barely hear my rooster crowing in the henhouse behind the gusting wind and the rumble of the rain on the kitchen skylights, and I'm tempted to go see if they're all right. Even though I know the difference between the squawk of a terrified chicken and the casual call of a rooster who doesn't care that it's the middle of the night but feels the urge to alert the world to his magnificence, I still worry, because a few minutes ago I heard the neighbor's mare whinnying in her paddock next to my chicken coop. In a suspense film this would be a dead giveaway that some creature, human or otherwise, was lurking about in my yard. In this case, however, knowing what I know about horses in general and this one in particular, I'm pretty sure she's just annoyed that her "boyfriends", the two geldings who live in our pasture, are locked up in the barn for the night and not able to visit with her across the fence, and she's calling to them for attention. A whole pack of coyotes could parade by any of those horses and they wouldn't bat an eyelash, but separate them for five minutes and it's the end of the world.

Being very distractable means I tend to go through my day bouncing from one task to another and not really completing anything. I start to do something, but then that something reminds me of another thing I should do first, so I defer to that, then the process repeats itself. Making a list of things to do helps a bit, but I still rarely if ever get to the end of a list, no matter how small I make it. Right now the most important thing I keep putting off, besides writing, is walking. I really need to walk at least three times a week, and really more than that, if I ever want to get my health back up to a decent level. The flat disk in my spine is acutely painful all the time these days, but I don't think walking on level ground will exacerbate it much. I have to get my overall health buffed up or I'm doomed. Walking, pilates, and some free weights are where I need to start. I was doing pretty well with weights over the past few months, but then I dropped the ball over the holidays. I'm trying to keep painkiller use to a minimum, so I'm in pain most of the time and spend several sessions each day lying on ice packs so I can stand and walk a bit. Maybe the walking will help with pain management as much as taking vitamin C seems to help, I don't know, but it can't hurt to try, I guess. If my pain escalates I'll have to do something different.

Changing my diet has certainly helped. Removing wheat from my life was huge. Within a week I saw a major change in my GI system and went from borderline IBS to almost normal function for the first time in my life. After a week or so I noticed something else: my headaches, an almost daily condition, almost disappeared. Now, instead of being thankful for the occasional headache-free day, I'm surprised by the occasional headache. Again, this had been going on pretty much since my teenage years, non-stop. Nothing seemed to help prevent them, and only ibuprofen relieved them. Now I rarely take anything for a headache, and it's usually because I cheated and ate wheat or too much sugar and that triggered it.

Fixing my terrible sleep patterns is an ongoing struggle. I know I'd feel better, have less depression, and probably less pain if I could get to bed earlier and sleep through the night, but I fail more often than not in this department. My biggest hurdle is having to share a bed with my spouse, whom I love, but...I'm just not great with sharing sleeping space with another human. It's hard for me to relax when there's another person in my bed because I really need my personal space. The cats are fine, but another human, especially one who becomes very annoyed if awakened in the night by anything, makes for stress that impairs my ability to relax most nights. The upshot of this is that I want to be sure he's good and solidly asleep before I crawl into bed. Occasionally I make an attempt at getting to bed before him, but this usually results in us heading for the shower at the same time and then doing the "After you." "Oh no, after you!" dance. Then either I feel like I need to rush through my ablutions and race for bed, or I send him in and start some project which results in my usual staying up too late again. Someday I hope we have a house with two bedrooms so this won't be an issue. Until then, I really need to find a way to get to bed earlier, because I need a lot more sleep than he does. He seems to be good with around eight hours, but I'm groggy with less than nine or ten, especially if I don't sleep soundly. I'm experimenting with various supplements to help with this, and niacin is helping a lot. Valerian root and melatonin never seemed to do much, but 1,000 mg of niacin about an hour before bed seems to help me relax. Herbal tea is good, too. I read an article that talked about using honey before bed, so I try that sometimes, too. Then there's the pain management. Right now I'm pretty much stuck with taking a couple of naproxen every night in order to notch the spinal pain down enough to get to sleep. By morning it's worn off, but it usually gets me through the night. Getting a better form of magnesium has helped with muscle cramping, too. It's a constant experiment to adjust the supplements and diet and painkillers, but I kept myself out of the ER in 2013: yay!

It's half-past midnight, so I should quit. I dreamed about the "square house" night before last. It shows up every once in awhile. Not sure what it means. In my dreams it's supposed to be the house of a family in Seattle, the kids of which are friends of mine and I believe my sister's. It's not really the old Lyons' house on Queen Anne, at least I don't think it is, but then I barely remember that place. It's like a cross between that house and a place near the U of WA in which I rented a room for a few months after college, not long before I moved to Japan. Edwardian, square, bigger than a bungalow. Three stories with a central staircase and a sun porch on the East side. A house of many rooms, once grand but now a bit frayed at the edges. Lived in, loved, and full of the accumulated detritus of the years. It doesn't represent "home" to me, but I'm not sure what it does represent, then. I've been dreaming about it since the 80s, I think. One of these days I'll figure it out. In the meanwhile, time to hit the shower and sneak in to bed. Sam cat is probably warming up my spot right now, as is his wont. He won't mind when I move him over so I have a place for my feet. He'll just curl up and go back to sleep. Cats are pretty unflappable when it comes to sleeping arrangements.

In the Courts of the Sun, by Brian D'Amato - post-humanist bio-punk essay as novel

In the Courts of the Sun by Brian D'Amato
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Michael Crichton meets Neal Stephenson meets Frank Herbert with a Mesoamerican flavor. Good stuff about game theory and lots of fun tech in the beginning. Unfortunately, for my taste anyway, it bogs down in the middle with an endless journey to the horrors of 6th century Mesoamerica. It's very interesting in an academic way, but the long drawn-out descriptions of every little thing, including multiple acts of violence, really killed the pacing in my opinion. It was like he was channeling Jules Verne or Herman Melville, with laborious illustrations of Mayan culture and folkways and ceremonies and architecture ad nauseam.

I did enjoy the protagonist and his tongue-in-cheek approach to life, and although his relationships with other characters are a bit odd at time, this fits with his Aspbergers and other issues. Overall it's an amazing novel, but when I find I'm just waiting for it to be over, then I can't give it five stars. The last few chapters were so heavily philosophical that I felt like it sucked all the energy out of the plot and just became a treatise on post-humanism or something.

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Reamde, by Neal Stephenson

Reamde by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Engrossing, entertaining, dryly amusing...a real page turner. Lots of it to love! Guns, hackers, terrorists, spies, and MMORPGs. It ends a bit abruptly, but that's one of Stephenson's few and very minor weaknesses in my opinion. Mostly I felt squarely in the action and lost in the moment. He nails the experiences that I can personally empathize with, and the situations foreign to me to one degree or another ring true. Highly recommended. If you want a more detailed review, I'm sure there are scads of them.

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Happy 1st Birthday, Elanor

As of today you've been all the way around the Sun once. That's a long, long journey for a little shiny black beastie. You launch in to each day with fierce abandon, always ready to let bystanders know what's on your mind. Every exertion is punctuated by a growl, grunt or yowl. The rain, much to your disgust, has yet to cede to your muttered complaints, and yet you will rant to anyone with an ear on your dissatisfaction with the weather on stormy days.



You have ridden part of the solar circuit swaying in the tops of various trees, your nose in the wind, like a lookout in the fighting top of a ship of the line.

Part of the journey you've spent burrowed deep in various piles of bedding, visible only as a shapeless lump. The world is your gymnasium, it's wads of paper your footballs, the chickens in the yard your ninepins, and various laps your yoga mats.


You are Eric the Red's last "child", as he is growing old and losing patience with kittens whom he would once have cheerfully raised. You befriended Sam, the patch tabby we brought home from the shelter a month before we picked you up. He is no longer a sad, lonely ex-street cat with few social skills, but a happy, goofy, friendly cat who is happy to play tag with you indoors and out.




You started life with a double hernia which you ignored, but which frightened us terribly. The kindness of friends paid for your surgery and today nobody would ever know this lithe, ferocious little panther had ever been fragile and broken.

Here's to another wild ride around the sun, little demon.

 

Watching Paint Dry

Writer's quote of the day, courtesy of @adviceToWriters:

"Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
      ANTON CHEKHOV

I wish more writers would take this advice. I just finished a couple of romance novels, both of which I found somewhat less than romantic. Mostly they were boring, and I don't use that word lightly. I think the word "boring" or "bored" is overused. I myself am never bored. The world is too full of things to do and think about. Some writers try to bore me with bland prose, a paltry collection of tepid adjectives, and sine-wave story arcs. They fail because I either speed-read my way to the end (paper) or start skipping tracks (audio). If it's really awful, I'll just throw in the last disc if I care to hear what happens at the end. I will not let them win. You can't bore me: I quit!

OK, I wasn't going to name names, but the last thing I tried to read was "Honeysuckle Summer" by Sherryl Woods. I should have known I was in for a rough ride when I saw it was the last book in the "Sweet Magnolias" series. "Honeysuckle", "sweet", "magnolia"...do your teeth hurt, yet? Woods is not a bad writer, but these kinds of books just leave me wanting to stab myself with a fork so I can at least feel something. The phrase "watching paint dry" sprang to mind frequently. This happened a year or so ago, before I started my quest to research romance novels in a more methodical way, when I picked up a couple of Debbie Macomber books at the library. She's local to me, and I love her tea house in Port Orchard, so I thought I'd give her a look-see. I can't remember if I made it past the first chapter of either book, but I do remember that they were the equivalent of sitting in the "fellowship hall" at church listening to nice, wholesome, yet bland people talk about their grandkids, golf games, the altar guild, and what they were planning for Sunday dinner.

Writing about ordinary people does not have to be coma-inducing. Rosamund Pilcher did it all the time, and I adore her novels. Then again, there's usually some kind of social or relational Macguffin in a Pilcher story: a regretted affair, a lost love, a buried secret like a hidden past life. Sprinkle that with some interesting events like, say World War 2, a natural disaster, a tragic accident, the appearance of some kind of villain, all contrasted with vignettes of charming but quirky everyday life, and you have Pilcher in a nutshell. That may sound boring, and it may be to some people, but she is so skillful with her writing that it isn't.

I think that's what writers like Sherryl Woods are trying to do. There is some past drama, a medical malady or two, and even a homicidal ex-husband, but she just doesn't have the chops to keep me interested. The only reason I bothered toughing out "Honeysuckle Summer" is because it was read by Mary Robinette Kowal, who writes wonderfully ("Shades of Milk and Honey") and is a talented Voice Over artist as well. She had her work cut out for her in trying to make this bland story interesting. She did succeed in making me want to listen to the last chapters, but it was a tough haul.

Major problem #1: Woods is very obviously trying to raise awareness about agoraphobia and anorexia (two different characters), but manages to harp on them constantly without actually educating us in any meaningful way. If you're going to be preachy, at least cover the issues in some detail rather than just giving the same surface treatment over and over.

Major problem #2: "Twilight syndrome" or "I only have ten adjectives and you're going to hear them over and over!" Please don't tell me that the hero is "handsome", tell me why he's handsome. Don't tell me the girl is "sexy", tell me why the hero finds her sexy. Points off also for overuse, any use, really, of "rugged".

Major problem #3: Lavish descriptions of things we've already seen multiple times. Things like the protagonist's back yard or the hero's broad shoulders. Also included here are lavish descriptions of cooking and meals. I don't care what they're having for lunch, unless it's pertinent to the plot or unusual in some way. I also don't care what color his or her shirt or jacket is unless, again, it's noteworthy for some reason. Can terrorists fast-rope in and start taking hostages already?! Ahem.

Here's hoping for some romantic romance in the near future.