Waste of Time - MY NAME IS WILL

My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs and Shakespeare by Jess Winfield
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Apparently I can't give something zero stars.  This book is drivel.  It starts out promisingly enough, but never rises about mediocre before crash landing in a Port-O-Potty.  The modern day main character is a lying, cheating, drug-addled wannabe academic unashamedly wasting his parents money while putting forth zero effort in his life.  Yet he manages to find no less than sex with his stepmom, sex on a bus, a threesome AND an orgy - none of which involve his girlfriend.  In one book!  At the end, apparently some kind of metaphysical, time-traveling, wormhole-crashing collision mixes Shakespeare's English world with 1980-whatever Novato, CA.  Who cares.  (Also, this is the worst story that ever featured a renaissance faire.)

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Justin's Blog: Tomato Race!

Justin started a blog about our two new tomato plants!  They're both heirloom varieties.  Considering how many tomatoes we ate last summer, we could save a lot of money if these plants can keep up with us.

We have a balcony, so we bought over-the-railing planters and used plastic pots.  The tomato plants are growing like mad already... I hope we have enough space!  I know they need to grow upward, so we'll have to get some trellising soon.

Check out our progress (mine is winning!): http://tomatorace.blogspot.com/

Love in the Library: SHADES OF GREY

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Fantastic and mesmerizing bizarro-world filled with detail and minutia that bring it zinging to life.  Fforde is a genius, without question.  I get perhaps half of his literary references, and consider myself extremely lucky when I catch one.  I'm sure a scholar (or maybe my mom) would get even more from his work.  Can't wait for the rest of this series.

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Thoughts on Books : The White Tiger

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The grittiest, most revealing book I've read yet about India.  I'm fascinated by the place.  And especially this book, which I think has a striking foundation of truth wrapped in the fiction.  The idea of servitude, of a whole nation built on it, is the central tenet.  Crushing poverty, diabolical corruption, excess wealth... all just daily players in the game.  The book is very dark, but casually so.  As it's written in the form of a letter to the Chinese premiere, a treatise on entrepreneurship that the main character thinks a Communist leader needs, it has great satirical value as well.

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i really, really love the BBC. part one.

It's hard to admit that you love a TV show whose dastardly villain is an alien-robot-rolling-silver-trash-bin.  Ah, the Daleks.  And don't forget the cat people, who were also nurses in a fancy hospital and drove flying cars.  Or the giant spider lady.

After reading Matt's blog entry "Televisius Maximus", I plopped down on the couch to enjoy a few hours of Doctor Who.  The lead actor is changing, though he'll still be The Doctor, and I am not ready for it.  I have till Easter to cling to the past, and whatever episodes are left on In Demand.

Doctor Who is at once the best and worst TV show in the world.  It's full of nerdy sci-fi fun and snarky, witty one-liners.  The hero is zippy and tortured and unreachable.  It also has the production values of a Korean TV costume drama, and a magic screwdriver.  Well, a sonic screwdriver, technically.  And a spaceship time machine that looks like this:

People who love sci-fi are always looking for something crossover they can use to convince their friends that "these shows really are good, I promise!"  They found this in Firefly.  They will not find it in Doctor Who.  A non-believer, if you will, would not make it through an episode of this show (Exhibit A: my brother Shane).  

Instead of dying, the Doctor "regenerates" when the producers decide they need a change (or David Tennant abandons us, thanks a lot!).  The 11th version of the Doctor premieres in April.  It's a brilliant scheme, much like Bart Simpson being 8-years old forever.  The Doctor gets a new "companion" at a faster clip - a gal pal to bail out of trouble, though the relationships have always been exquisitely-strained platonic. (Almost, Rose. Almost.)  It's also given us spin-offs including Torchwood; an insanely soap-operatic, ass-kicking sci-fi romp featuring the best, most surprising gay characters ever on TV.

I love this show.  I even catch myself dressing like Doctor Who - trousers with Converse sneakers, plus my glasses.  (Real nerds should watch "The Vicar of Dibley" wedding special, in which the sidekick pal wears an exact replica of the 10th Doctor's outfit in her maid of honor duties.  Bonus: Richard Armitage as the anti-Gisbourne.)  The 10th Doctor was epic.  So was his hair.  But I have a feeling that 15 minutes into the Easter episode, I will be a spinning twist of fangirl frenzy, losing it every time the TARDIS is bigger inside than it looks.

PS: The new Doctor has kissing!  This is going to change everything!

Thoughts on Books: Queen of the Road

Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own by Doreen Orion

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I started out hating this woman.  But I think she kind of hated herself.  She was like a bad 'Sex and the City' paraody - she couldn't shut up about shoes and track suits and martinis.  I think people tend to tone themselves down in print, the make themselves look better than reality, which turned me off even more toward Ms. Orian.  But as the book progressed and she eased up, I liked her more and more.  By the end, she arcs into a character you can understand, and she's come to understand herself.

The idea of the trip she and her husband take - one year cross-country in a converted bus - is unique and fun.  The luxury outfitting they do to their rig is amazing.  I enjoyed this tale, as soon as Ms. Orian and I both got over her desperate materialism and hysterics.

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Snuggle Up - 11 Hours to Stay Home!

I'm a Discovery Channel junkie. Dirty jobs, Mythbusters, Deadliest Catch... and of course, Planet Earth. I've spent hours (days!) with them. And now, another reason to never leave the house: LIFE. This 11-part series premieres March 21. Watch the trailer, and you'll see what I'm talking about: LIFE on Discovery.

The videos are amazing.  The trailer made my a little teary-eyed, and the behind-the-scenes stuff is fascinating.  So many cute animals.  I especially love the little lizards, filmed so close-up they look like dinosaurs!

I took the SkiBus to Lake Tahoe on Saturday, and let me tell you - we needed this for the drive-home video.  I would have been mesmerized, happily snuggled into my seat.  Guess I'll have to wait till March 21!

 

Not So Much - THE ROAD TO OXIANA

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The things we are forced to do for book club. This classic travel book is the diary-style memoir of an Englishman crossing Persia and Afghanistan in 1933. He is witty and likable, also random, pompous and casually racist in that impossibly pre-WWII way. His observations are keen and his writing witty - I even laughed out loud twice. But the world he captures is ancient history, and thus seems irrelevant. The buildings no longer stand, the countries have disappeared, the cities and ethnicities have changed names a hundred times. The writing is wonderfully descriptive, yet I never had the slightest idea what he was on about. The book reads as a diary - meant for himself - with casual half-references to characters and places never elaborated. I kept picking it up, but always felt a temper tantrum simmering just below the surface. Bored, anxious and with that bratty 'this had better be over soon' feeling, I would not recommend this book. Mark Twain is all the classic I could ever want.

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