I Thought This Was a Book Blog...

So where the heck are the book reviews lately, huh? I have actually been reading, just not so good at reviewing.

The situation has not been helped by my new computer crashing on me. Or our internet temporarily being non-wireless. It isn't really that bad. I could sit in this one particular spot in the apartment, hook up the cable from our modem and voila, internet again. And it seriously is temporary. Our router is in transit. But I've gotten kind of lazy about it. Because I want to sit wherever I want to sit and have connection to the internet.

Man, it really wasn't that long ago that the internet was like super new and super cool and I'd be willing to sit and watch a webpage take three minutes to load because of dial up. Even more recently, when I first went to college, the dorms were not wireless and so if you didn't set up your desks exactly right (which my roomies and I didn't), we had to switch who got to plug in the DSL cord to use internet.

Now the thought of using anything less than wireless is... shocking.

Anyhow, I just finally updated my reading list and never you fear. Book reviews are on their way. Soon to come are reviews of Sandman VII-IX, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Book Thief, and Heat Lightning.

How To Know Your Blog Is Cool

While I was out there was apparently a discussion on what makes book blogs worthwhile and what makes them lame. There are lots of people who wrote lots of interesting things about it, so all that I want to add is...

I know I'm cool.

Because I've started getting spam comments.

I never used to get them. But someone's decided that my blog is a great place to dump a bunch of random links. I don't want to add the dumb blogger visual verification and I am too technologically illiterate for the cooler options, so for now I'll just be deleting them by hand.

Holy Schmoly

Scrapbooking!
I have had a busy couple of weeks. Tonight is the first in probably two weeks I've sat down to do some serious writing/blogging. I got back from my vacay just in time to pack for a weekend scrapbooking retreat.

And we did some serious scrapbooking. And some serious movie watching. We watched a total range of movies, from Tropic Thunder to Twilight. Office Space to Love Story.

I did get some stuff done.
I've been so good about scrapbooking this year, I might even get... (wait for it) TOTALLY CAUGHT UP. Holy Schmoly.

Try not to get too excited for me. Seriously.

Back From Arizona

Arizona was grand. Compared to 30 degrees and lower here in the Minnesota, the sunshine sure felt nice. Hubby and I went to visit grandparents living in Green Valley, AZ and we decided we want to skip the whole career thing and go straight to being retired. As my grandma puts it, "the worst part is that you always forget what day it is." Because without the 9-5 routine, who cares when the weekend is? You just do what you want when you want. Have a craving for ice cream at 10am on a Monday? Go for it. Drive past a garage sale sign and have an itch to stop? Go get some bargains. Wanna shop all day in the tourist traps? Done. Sit up all night watching the stars? Hey, in Green Valley everyone has special lights to cut down the light pollution.

So we visited a mine (the large tire we're sitting on is from one of the enormous trucks they use in the mine), went horseback riding, hiked in the desert, ate Mexican food and drank Mexican beer. And bought Mexican trinkets.

Oh yeah, we visited Ruby, Arizona, population 1. It's a ghost town tucked away back on a very long, very windy, very dirt road. The kind of road where you tell yourself there better be something pretty darn cool at the end to make the trip worthwhile. Luckily it is just about the coolest thing we did all week.

Some things I learned about Arizona:
1. With fair skin, it is possible to turn the color of a lobster
2. Walking sticks are used not only for walking but for checking to make sure you don't step on a rattlesnake
3. Abandoned mines make great bat caves.
4. 70 degrees is long sleeve shirt and jacket weather
5. The desert is hot.
6. Cowboy hats are not just decoration. They are kind of a necessity to keep the sun out of one's eyes.

How about you? How was your week while I was gone?

Marketing FAIL

The Sci Fi channel will now become the SyFy channel.

Yes.

The SyFy channel.

There are no words.

Seriously.

I know that the Sci Fi channel has produced very little as of late that could be called science fiction. But really.

Really??

You couldn't come up with anything more clever than substituting different vowels? Did you all get together, have a little too much wine and decide around 2am that this was a smart idea? When you woke up in the morning with a hangover, that should have been your cue.

Oh sci-fi channel. You used to be cool.

On Why You Should Always Google Yourself On Occasion

I googled myself tonight and realized that I was an honorable mention in a writing contest I had entered a few months ago.

OMG, right?

Except... this should not have been news to me. The announcement of the winners was made several weeks ago, and I actually looked at the website back when the announcement was first made, to see if my name was mentioned anywhere.

I am apparently blind.

My name was there the whole time. I completely missed it. And I would not have realized about being an honorable mention if not for googling my name.

Wow. I feel really dumb. And really happy. Because I won a prize thingy!

So the moral of the story is to google your name.


Go ahead, google it. I'll wait. I'm basking in the glow of success.



Back already? So, what did you find?

The Name of the Wind

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
Rating: 4.5/5
Reason for Reading: Recommendation

The Name of the Wind is a book that somehow manages to incorporate some of the most infamous and overused cliques of fantasy writing while managing to be something so different that it doesn't read as fantasy at all.

Kvothe has led such a famous and heroic life he's become the stuff of legends during his own lifetime. Now in hiding as an innkeeper at an obscure village, it seems that he's left his old life behind. That is, until a Chronicler comes to town looking to write the story of Kvothe's life. Reluctantly, Kvothe agrees.

From his life among the traveling Edema Ruh to hardscrabble life on the streets after his parents are mysteriously mudered, to becoming the youngest student at the University, Kvothe's childhood (this book, one of a planned trilogy, follows Kvothe until he is in his mid-teens) is nothing if not eventful. From a young age, Kvothe knew that he was talented. At science, at acting, at playing the lute, and most of all, at magic.

The university that Kvothe attends is one that teaches magic, but it has as much in common with Harry Potter as Twilight does with I Am Legend. That is to say, as he struggles through classes, professors, bullies, and poverty, his world seems like one that may have very well existed, tucked away somewhere in the Middle Ages. By the time he enters the university, Kvothe is already proficient with sympathy magic, or binding together energies, but he longs to learn the power he once saw his possess. The power to name, and thus command the elements of nature. He wants to know the name of the wind.

A thoughtful, engaging book that doesn't really fit into the pattern of any other fantasy books I've read before, I recommend this one to fans of the genre. Although a lengthy read, the pages fly by.