Full Metal Wheelbarrow
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "cat63" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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08:29 pm
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Book 12 for 2010
C Is For Corpse by Sue Grafton
Kinsey Millhone is doing physical therapy for a broken arm in her local gym when she meets Bobby Callahan. Bobby is also doing physical therapy for far worse injuries he sustained in a horrendous car crash nine months previously.
The crash damaged his memory as well as his body, but Bobby is sure that someone tried to kill him and he hires Kinsey to find out who. But before she can make much of a start on the case, Bobby has another crash, this one fatal. Kinsey has taken a liking to the young man and resolves to solve the case, even though her client is dead.
Meanwhile Kinsey's retired but sprightly landlord has a new girlfriend, and Kinsey instinctively distrusts the woman.
I like first person narrators and detective stories and this series is both. That said, I liked the first two Kinsey Millhone books well enough to keep reading the series, but wasn't overly delighted with them. I thought this one was a fair bit better than the first two. I'm not sure if Grafton had hit her stride in the series, if it's because we learn a bit more about Kinsey's past in this one or simply that Kinsey herself cares far more personally about the case in this book. In any case it's enough that I'll be looking for the fourth book in the series.
There's still something about Grafton's style that doesn't entirely gel for me though. Her prose simply doesn't seem to flow as well as some people's does. So I'll be looking for book 4 in charity shops and on Bookmooch rather than buying it new.
Current Mood:  blah
Tags: 50 book challenge, books, detective stories
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09:21 am
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Come on, own up...
Who ordered the snow then, eh?
We are Not Amused!
Current Mood:  cold
Tags: weather
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09:16 pm
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With apologies to Lewis Carroll
Apropos of nothing much at all...
The time has come, The Lolrus said,
To talk of many things,
Of shoes and noms and Ceiling Cat
Of Cheezburgers and kings
And where my bukkit might have gone
And Itteh Bitteh things
Tags: silliness
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08:28 am
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Hippo Birdbath!
Happy Birthday ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) blackberry44 !
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08:39 pm
[Link] | I am unimpressed with the announcements at the end of each episode of "Survivors" where they refer to Adrian Hodges as the "series creator". He might be responsible (and I use that word very deliberately) for the current incarnation of the show, but saying he created it is like saying Russell T. Davies created Doctor Who or that J.J. Abrams created Star Trek. In other words, utter bollocks.
I'm surprised Terry Nation's estate stand for it, frankly.
Current Mood:  mildy irritated
Tags: bloody cheek, who he?
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05:00 pm
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Book 11 for 2010
Casey by Joyce Stranger
Stranger is comfort reading for me. Her writing is far from faultless, and even as I enjoy it, I'm not blind to the things that are wrong with it - her prose is stilted, her views are lacking much in the way of shades of grey (country good, city bad) and the idyllic country lifestyle she writes of probably never really existed. But her idealised version of the British countryside is a nice place to visit now and then, even so.
Casey tells the story of the Waymans who run a small dairy farm and of their animals, principally the eponymous Casey , a half-Siamese cat who develops a close friendship with the farm's vicious Jersey bull. There are tragedies and triumphs and one thing Stranger is good at is eliciting an emotional response - I recognise the manipulation involved, but it still works and I nearly always cry at least once when reading one of her books. Casey is no exception.
Probably not the most realistic depiction of farm life in fiction ever, but a pleasant piece of escapism, all the same.
Tags: 50 book challenge, animals, books
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08:35 pm
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Book 10 for 2010
From A Buick 8 by Stephen King 462 pages
After Pennsylvania State Trooper Curtis Wilcox is killed in the line of duty, his son Ned starts hanging around the barracks where he was based, and the men and women who work there do their best to help him. Eventually, Ned notices the abandoned old Buick in the shed behind the barracks and his curiosity is piqued, just as his father's had been before him....
This is probably the best Stephen King book I've read for some time, and possibly one of the best of his altogether. Certainly a vast improvement on Lisey's Story, which I read last year and felt was horribly overwritten and under-edited. This book does have the repeated phrases that are pretty much King's hallmark, but they're used in moderation and don't grate, as the ones in LS do from overuse.
I can't help but wonder if this is because much of the book was apparently written before King's terrible accident, but in any case, it makes for a far more readable and enjoyable book. King does an excellent job of building an atmosphere of mystery and menace around the contents of Shed B and of constructing the team of characters who work at the PSP Barracks.
Current Mood:  poorly
Tags: 50 book challenge, books, horror
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03:34 pm
[Link] | Ooh, it's jaelle_n_gilla 's birthday!
Have a good one!
Tags: birthdays
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12:10 pm
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More fun with brakes
I spoke too soon, it seems. Rob went out riding this morning and the brake went squidgy again. Bah!
In fairness, that may excuse the bike shop too - if they did the same thing we did, they may genuinely have thought they'd fixed it.
Naughty brake!
He's having another bash at sorting it out today. Fingers crossed.
Current Mood: grotty
Tags: fun with spanners, the intransigence of inanimate objects
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10:11 am
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Fun with brakes
While fettling his trike after last Sunday's ride, Rob found that one of the hydraulic disc brakes wasn't working properly. So on Monday I took the brakes into the bike shop for a service. They said they'd ring us when they were ready, after I told them we needed them back by Friday.
On Thursday we hadn't heard from them, so after I got home with the van and her new tyre I rang them and they said the brakes were fixed and ready. I collected them on my way to pick Rob up from work.
Yesterday afternoon, Rob refitted the brakes and found that the dodgy brake was still pulling all the way in to the handle and not actually braking. He was, to put it mildly, somewhat displeased. I phoned the bike shop to complain, but they insisted that it had been working properly in the shop. Rob found this exceedingly unlikely, although he conceded that they've worked on it in some way because the pads were no longer sticking as they had been.
So we spent the next several hours bleeding the brake in an effort to remove air bubbles as Rob though that was probably what was wrong. And now it works again ! Yay! And the bike shop has doubly lost a customer, because now we not only don't trust them any more, but we know how to do the job ourselves.
Current Mood:  tired
Tags: fun with spanners, trikes
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08:40 pm
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Book 9 for 2010
Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher 520 pages
More magical mayhem with Harry Dresden, the only wizard in the Chicago phone book. If I'm honest, at this point I'd probably read any book in this series, even if the most exciting thing to happen in it was Harry washing his socks, but this book delivers far more than that.
( Cut for spoilers )
Current Mood:  calm
Tags: 50 book challenge, books, fantasy, more than one wizard's called harry
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08:09 pm
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Van mended!
The van now has a new tyre - on the right hand front wheel. I apparently failed to spot a gigantic bulge in the old tyre, as did the Kwikfit man yesterday. Admittedly, I told him I thought it was the left one, but you'd think, having found nothing on that side, he might have had a quick peek at the other one. Apparently not.
Meanwhile, I have a cold. Again. Bah.
Current Mood: a bit crap
Tags: new tyres, poorliness, van
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04:42 pm
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Van still odd
So despite what the Kwikfit man said, the van was still wibbly tonight. Tomorrow she gets to spend some time with the Toyota dealer to see if they can sort her out.
That means I'll be toddling round town for the greater part of the day, I suppose. Oh dear - I hope I don't find myself being irressistably drawn into the Lush shop.... :-)
Current Mood:  bah!
Tags: van
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10:05 am
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Book 8 for 2010
The Book of Lost Things by John Connelly 348 pages
This book is basically a fairy story. But not the nice safe Disneyfied kind where everyone lives happily ever after and no one really gets hurt. No, this is the older, darker kind of fairy story, the kind where you need courage, virtue, quick wits and a healthy dose of luck to survive - and even that may not be enough.
As World War II begins, David is desolate after the death of his mother. Things aren't helped by his father's rapid remarriage and the birth of his new half-brother. David seeks escape through books, but one day that escape becomes entirely too literal and David finds himself in a strange new world where stories have a life of their own. This is for the most part, a nicely written book, in a style that's just reminiscent of "Once Upon A Time" stories without overdoing it, and David is a good protagonist - not a perfect paragon of a child, flawed and uncertain but doing his best anyway.
The author apparently spends a fair bit of time in the USA, which is unfortunately apparent from some of the inappropriate Americanisms that crop up in this book. There are a few minor things, like saying "closet"[1] and "drapes" where an English person would say "cupboard" and "curtains", which I've got used to in fan fiction in British settings from American writers, but hadn't expected to see from a published author. Worse than that, he describes David as feeling as if his hand and cheek had been brushed with poison ivy, which does not grow in England and never has. That's the sort of thing that the author should have checked, and failing that should have been picked up by an editor.
The other thing that irked me about the book is that it's 502 pages long, but only 348 pages of that is the actual novel - the rest is author's notes, describing the tales he's referred to in the text. Now, I don't object, on principle, to author's notes - they can be interesting and informative. But when the author's notes are nearly half as long as the book they refer to, it suggests to me that either the author doesn't think he's got his point across properly in the book itself, or he's entirely too pleased with his own cleverness and needs to get over himself.
Still, a good book, and worth reading.
[1] Even modern day British people rarely use the word, but in the 1930s and 40s it would have been even rarer - except for water closets, but those are a rather different thing :-)
Tags: 50 book challenge, books, fantasy
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09:58 am
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Van oddness
Yesterday when we driving home it felt as if one of the front wheels wasn't quite right at low speed - it felt wibbly, as if the tracking was off, or it wasn't balanced correctly. Took the van into Kwikfit this morning and the nice chap had a look at it and said there didn't seem to be anything wrong at all that he could see. Felt fine on the way home too. Most odd.
At least it didn't cost anything, but I'm wary now, in case something non-obvious has gone peculiar.
Current Mood:  puzzled
Tags: odd behaviour, van
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03:12 pm
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Tyre-some
Yesterday Rob planned to go out on the same 30 mile circuit he did last week, but came back after 10 miles, as his back tyre had developed an alarming bump and was starting to scrape against the mudguard.
He changed the tyre when he got home and today he went out and did the 30 mile loop and got a puncture in one of his front tyres on the way - not just a thorn, either, it was something that ripped thought the tyre, leaving threads of the canvas lining poking out. Rob said it deflated pretty much instantly.
The road under the railway bridge was still flooded and in fact was worse this week than last. This time he got off, changed his shoes and walked through, carrying the trike. Rob is six feet tall and the water came up to mid-thigh on him, barely avoiding getting his shorts wet. They're rowing shorts (cut long in the back and thus ideal for recumbenteering), so could probably cope with getting wet, but it still wouldn't have been fun.
( No fishing! )
I suggested, when he got home, that it might be just as well to change both front tyres and he agreed. The trike is being a tad un-cooperative though and so far we've had two inner tubes burst with ear-splitting bangs, which is not good for the nerves. Also he's found that his hydraulic disc brakes need servicing, so that's a trip to the bike shop for me next week. I am assisting by providing copious amounts of Tea.
Current Mood:  busy
Tags: cycling, excessive amounts of water, loud unexpected noises, rob, trike
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10:05 am
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Book 7 for 2010
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith 408 pages
I wasn't sure if I'd like this book. I do, but pinning down the specifics of what I like about it is quite difficult.
It has a first person narrator, which is something that always appeals to me - it seems, when done well, to pull me into the story more readily and give me a closer rapport with the main character. The main character in this case is Cassandra Mortmain, a seventeen year old girl, living in a run-down old castle with her eccentric, but mostly quite endearing family. The story is told through the medium of Cassandra's journal., which covers six months that bring substantial changes to everyone involved. I suppose it's basically a romance really, but it's also very character-focused, and even the minor characters are well-drawn and have their own individual quirks.
The author portrays the mindset of a seventeen year old very well (at least as far as I remember it!) and makes Cassandra a convincing and sympathetic narrator, even when she's behaving less than well. I suppose the characters are a bit sanitised - there are no really bad people in the book, even though some of them behave badly at times - but they all seem quite real nevertheless, and I think that's the thing I really like about the book - it's like reading about a group of friends that one hasn't seen for a while. The book is undoubtedly complete in itself, but it leaves you contemplating what the characters will do afterwards and hoping that they'll be happy, a sure sign of good writing, I think.
As an aside,I was led to wonder when reading this, if John Irving was a fan, as some elements in this book are very reminiscent of his later The Hotel New Hampshire, particularly an incident where a person in a fur coat is mistaken for a bear.
(Incidentally, my copy is a "Virago Classic" so another onr for trishtrash 's classic recommendations perhaps :-)).
Current Mood: calm
Tags: 50 book challenge, books, classics
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07:50 pm
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Two more for 100 Snapshots
( Construction and Last )
Tags: 100snapshots, construction, last
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08:18 pm
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Faunasphere
A new thing I've been playing with is an online game of the free variety called Faunasphere. You start off with a critter and it destroys pollution and collects things (and trades things with others if you like) and builds a little garden to live in and does quests and such. It also lays eggs which then produce more critters.
My first critter was a dear little Dr Seussian chap called a "Scooter" which is quite clearly a turtle. Therefore I named it "Myrtle". So of course when her first egg hatched, I named the littl'un "Snertle". I later acquired a horse egg (I don't think the game folk have an entirely firm grip on biology, somehow)which Snertle hatched...into another turtle, who is called "Hertle". Of course.
It's fairly silly, but rather fun. If you decide to have a go, I'm "ch63" over there. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and clean up some more pollution :-)
Current Mood:  turtle-y
Tags: games, silliness, turtles all the way down
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08:13 pm
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Seeds and wires
I visited the allotment again today, with the main object of adjusting the support wires for the apple trees which should be ready for collection soon.
I got that done - next job is to fix the canes that the trees will be trained along. - the plan is to train them as a Belgian Fence.
The compost has taken up the moisture nicely, so I planted a tray each of cauliflower, leek and spring onion seed and a pot of verbascum. And then I went home, because it was bloody cold.
Current Mood: busy
Current Music: The radcliffe and Maconie show on Radio 2
Tags: allotment, apple trees, seeds
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