bentangle

Since I ran out of Jim Butcher books to read (for now), I decided to go back to a series I started based on his recommendations.  I picked up and started reading the second book in Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series, Heat Stroke.  I had read the first volume, Ill Wind, a few months ago and rather enjoyed her writing then.

Rachel Caine’s writing style is somewhat similar to Jim Butcher’s style in the Dresden Files series, but a bit more femininely-oriented.  Instead of references to slasher movies, etc., there are references to fashionable attire.  In place of guy-ish sexual tension and subtle female objectification, there is, well, some pretty overt male objectification.  But both deal in some good fights both physical and magical in nature.  And both describe the use of their respective magics as a balance of mystical powers and application of physics.

In this second volume, we see the story line from Ill Wind continued quite literally – as in almost no break in time between the arcs.  It would be nearly impossible to summarize the plot of this book without partially spoiling the ending of its predecessor.  So if you haven’t read the first book but plan to, I suggest you stop reading here.

Ok, for the rest of you – the end of the last book had Joanne Baldwin throwing all of her power into stopping a pretty deadly demon-based scenario from unfolding by absorbing two demon marks into herself and allowing them to effectively cancel each other out … thoroughly killing her in the process.  But her newfound Djinn ally, David, saved her by converting her into a Djinn.  At first this seemed a pretty sweet setup for a happily ever after, but it seems her ‘birth’ as a Djinn was a costly process that had consequences that no one had anticipated – amongst which was a rift into the Void (the realm from which demon-kind hail).  So after having a couple of days to adjust to her new existence, she has to jump right into the fray of fixing some things that it seems no one else has the power to fix – including trying to keep her hair from turning up curly every time she turns solid.

Unlike the previous volume that ended in a sort of serendipity, this one ends with a pretty big cliffhanger.  So naturally I will be continuing to read through book 3.  So far the female perspective appreciation of hunkiness factor hasn’t turned me off to the series yet (I guess I’m that big of a geek that the weather and magic talk drive me to soldier on).  But I sense more of it to come – if it becomes overwhelming I may have to cut my losses, which would be ashame as I do enjoy the overall narrative.  The only complaint I can offer is that the book, while only about 200 plus pages, was divided into only 3 chapters.  I guess to an extent I’ve gotten used to Butcher’s screenplay-esque chapter handling.  Again, I can tolerate this as I will stop where I feel the need to stop, but it is nice to have more frequent clean breaks.  But I will continue on – potentially straight through the whole series … or at least until Jim Butcher releases something else.

I’m not getting any younger, and I hope that I’m still trending in the direction of smarter.  In less than 24 hours I’m going to be entering the latter half of my 30′s.  As my dad would put things, today if you rounded my age to the nearest decade, I’d be 30 – tomorrow it would be 40.  While oversimplifying things, it is hard to argue with the logic of it.

In truth, I hardly feel like I’m about to be 35.  But perhaps my mind just likes to let me feel that way.   Most of the signs of my age are things I can live with (I’ll take graying hair over balding) or tolerate (ibuprofen helps at times).  Some are comparative – while I don’t feel like I’ve matured more than a little in the last decade, but if I was anything like some of the 25-year-olds I know 10 years ago, then I’ve come a longer way than I’ve noticed.  I guess that a lot of it is perception.  But so far there are no costs to my age that I can complain about.

Kids help.  While on one hand they certainly can be challenging a lot of the time, the biggest challenge they offer is to your own perceptions of the world and what matters in it.  Before I had kids, even in my 20′s I found myself making efforts to define myself as an individual – both to myself and to others.  Now I know who I am and don’t feel a need to prove it to anyone.  My responsibilities are clear and my resolve is steadfast.  Plus they can make life so much fun.  They have personalities that are so big and bright that I can’t help but be drawn into them like the best show to watch is happening right in my house.

All that said, as I reflect on my time thus far in life I feel the need to question my progress.  Have I done all that I should have done by this point?  Do I know all that I should know?  It is the kind of introspect that leads to no good answers and often just to no good – the kind that leads to mid-life crises (and I can’t really afford a new sports car right now).

But again, perspective helps allay my mind.  I’ve never been one to give in to peer pressure or be all that comparative to or covetous of my neighbors.  And so I can soldier on in the knowledge that I know what I know and I’ve done what I did.  The only thing I can do is keep making the most of my time.  And at the moment I think the best use of such time might be for some sleep and prepare to tackle another opportunity for life experiences in the morning.  If I have any of note, I’ll be sure to let you all know.  In the least, perhaps you might learn from my mistakes.

I finished reading the final volume of this fantasy mini-series.  I read the first book borrowed on multiple recommendations.  I went out and bought myself the second and third books as I worked through them.  The fourth and fifth I bought simultaneously while on a recent business trip out west.  And this sixth and final tome was my first ebook purchase for my Nook.  I’ve been a fan throughout the arc and I am a steadfast fan to the last.  But if anyone wants to borrow the series, well I can only really partially help out.

Before I even started this book, I noted something that struck me about the series. As I was finishing the fifth volume, I noticed that Tavi did not end up in the role represented by the subsequent title prior to the end of the book (which tended to be the case in the previous books).  As I found, Tavi ends up having multiple struggles to face through the sixth arc in order fulfill said destiny.  As previously established, the realm is in peril of being overtaken by the Vord and the odds are severely stacked in the invader’s favor.  But Tavi proves to have so many tricks up his sleep you wonder where he must keep his arms.  What also bears out is that many of those faithful to him have pretty keen heads on their shoulders as well.

What I find most fascinating about this series is the way that Jim Butcher weaves such a vivid world with so many well developed races and creatures.  On top of that, he has woven in a subtle stitching of narrative and history to suggest that the origin of the story’s human population could have been a lot roman legion – that a full legion and its follower camp mysteriously came to in this strange and hostile land.  And over the course of the millennia that passed  on Earth where we developed advances in technology, they instead came to harness these elemental furycrafting abilities and used them to similar ends (transportation, communication, etc.).  This narrative also bears the subtle suggestion that societies constantly at war could have the tendency to stagnate and to demur progressive ideas.

First Lord’s Fury proved to be a more satisfying ending to The Codex Alera series than I had anticipated.  And while I’m was happy to enjoy a series with a definitive run, part of me wonders what the fictional future could hold for the people of Alera (not that I’m suggesting a continuation or another mini-series is needed, but if Butcher has any such designs already in mind I know I would enjoy the reading).  I guess I’ll have to get my fantasy kicks elsewhere now (at least for a while) and look forward to more Dresden Files novels.  In the meantime I will keep reading something (there is always something to read).

As I’ve stated more than once recently, I am now the proud owner of a Nook by Barnes & Noble (great thanks to my parents for the early birthday gift). If you are a regular reader of my blog, you likely know that I have been on a fairly consistent reading kick lately. After wrestling with a few instances of trouble finding a book I intended to read, It only seemed reasonable to consider going digital. And at the current price it is hard to argue against it (though technically in this case my price was free, if I didn’t get it gifted I would likely have bought it myself anyway).

I’ve just finished my first ebook on the Nook and I have to say that I really enjoyed reading as such. There are a number of features I haven’t even fully played with that I intend to explore in the future (such as loading some music on it and playing some tunes while I read). I have a colleague who is all psyched to try out the LendMe feature with me as well as take a lunch to B&N to enjoy some of the perks that come with being a Nook owner (e.g., access to free titles in the store, discounts on food and drinks at the café).  I have also experimented with the text highlighting and annotation features.  I will say that the touch keypad takes a little getting used to for text typing (as is typical to any new handheld device I’ve experienced), but I’m sure I’ll adjust – otherwise I’ve been very happy with the device.  The screen is easy to read, the battery has a long life-span, and navigation is simple and intuitive.

I opted to skip the 3G version as I don’t see a need for constant online access when I only will likely be downloading books as I need them and I have access to WiFi both at work and home.  Though the difficulty of getting onto my work network consistently has made me question this choice at times.  But arguably there are more pressing matters I should be attending to at work anyway (supposedly).  I’ve tested the beta browser on the device and it is sufficient, though a bit slow.  But truly I don’t anticipate spending a lot of time web browsing on the device (though if it were faster and the keyboard easier to use, perhaps I would be able to post my book reviews directly from it).

All in all I am fairly happy with the device and I’m enjoying my reading experiences on it.  If anyone else has one (or gets one) and has books they would like to lend or borrow, feel free to let me know.  So far my library is one 2 books deep, but I’m sure it will expand quickly.

I’ve decided that I need to redefine what I term a vacation. While I enjoy visits with my family immensely as they are rare due to distance, such visits are not truly vacations and often another one is required shortly thereafter (no offense intended to those family members I recently visited – we absolutely enjoyed coming down). Being back at work is no vacation, that is for sure. Anyway, there is no single cohesive narrative of my trip, but a number of small anecdotes. So that will be the form of this post.

Part of our visit to my parents’ house overlapped with a visit from my grandmother. My grandmother is very religiously-minded and has a very low tolerance for bad language. I like to think I was tame, but my wife pointed out on our drive home that I still managed to drop a few mild bombs (e.g., what the hell, darn) and whenever I did, my grandmother would visibly flinch. Meanwhile, one of these overlapping evenings she was playing cards with my mother and had a moment of frustration with her choices in discards to which she exclaimed some phrase that was clearly not a swear, but carried all the tone of one. I made a comment along the lines of whether it was really not cursing if the inflection was there to which I got no response from her, but my mom nearly burst into snorting laughter.

On the ride home (which was during the day this time), the kids spend good amounts of the time ‘reading’ – by which I mean the got out theyr Tag books and let their Tag readers read the stories to them. They were entertaining themselves and not complaining, so I can’t fault them on it. Well there was a book that Cricket wanted to read that was one of Grasshopper’s and which was only on his Tag reader, so she asked him nicely if he wanted to switch readers. He responds by looking at her and saying “No,” in a tone suggesting it was a stupid question then turns to the back of the reader where his name tag is affixed and drawls out his name as if reading it slowly to her. Being as he is 3 and can barely recognize all of the letters in his own name, I couldn’t help but find the moment hysterical.

Due to coincidental travel, my sister-in-law had left her cat at our house while we were gone (there are clearly a lot of questions as to the logic there, but bear with me). See she lives about 30 minutes away from us and her parents (who live a mile from us) and she doesn’t have any reliable acquaintances near her who could feed and check on the cat at their own home. But she didn’t want to have to burden her in-laws with another cat in their own house, and since my mother-in-law had already been commissioned to water our plants, it seemed to stand to reason that she could feed the cat while she was there. So we came home from our travels to a paranoid cat. It would spend the majority of its time hiding from all of us and only seemed to eat food at night when we were all sleeping. Cricket wanted to take it for a walk … in its carrier. She seemed rather disappointed when we turned her down.

We also managed to fit in a beach trip this weekend (though it still involved visiting family). The kids had a blast – Cricket spent hours getting knocked over by waves while Grasshopper chose to have no truck with the sea and stuck to digging randomly in the sand. I played in both capacities off and on and eventually resigned to relaxing in a beach chair and reading on my new Nook (book and product reviews coming soon). Being that it was a very sunny day, we were vigilant with sunscreen application – the kids got at least 2 extra coats and I reapplied at least 3 or 4 times. Ironically the kids came out of the day with minor rosiness in a few spots and I ended up lobster red from waist to neck. But I was able to drown my pain in boardwalk food, so it is all good.

Now if only I could find time (and money) for a real vacation ….