Okay. Okay. I know. I have not been blogging much this winter. And I am sure you all miss me terribly. I know some of you are especially missing my Formula 1 race reports (mom). I think the moment has passed for Australia, but stay tuned for Formula 1 action next weekend from Malaysia.
In the meantime, readers who know me well will know why I think this is hilarious:
Go Charlotte go!
Pompeii - 2008
So I am reading this book called Pompeii by Robert Harris. I am about halfway through it, and I really like it.
But, I can’t help wonder about something. Harris is spending a lot of time fleshing out all the characters and building up these mysterious connections between them, and I keep thinking, “what difference does it make, the volcano is going to erupt any time now and they will all die.”
I know, not terribly cheery, but it’s hard not to do that when you know how the story ends before you even start reading.
I have been listening to The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson on my iPod. It really is very good. I highly recommend it.
However, I do have a small problem with it. I had this problem with the first book in the trilogy too. The characters, all of them with their unpronounceable names are constantly drinking coffee. At all hours of the day and night. It’s amazing. Of course, they seem to be up at all hours of the night too. Probably because of all the coffee they are drinking all the time.
The problem is, now I want to drink coffee at all hours of the day or night, and this is a really bad idea. If I have coffee in the afternoon I will be up all night. Then I will be tired, and I will drink too much coffee the next day. Do you see a pattern here?
I have found myself purchasing a lot of coffee and coffee-flavored beverages. Some of them are decaffeinated. Maybe that will do the trick. I hope so because I am only about a third of the way through this book, and there is still one more to go in the series. I may never sleep again.
I have almost finished reading this. I know, I know, I am late to the party. And I am not even really reading it. I am listening to the audio book.
I tried to read it once before and I couldn’t get interested in it. All those Swedish names were getting tangled up in my head and I couldn’t figure out how to pronounce them. I also couldn’t just skip over them. It was very distracting. So, I gave up and returned the book to the library. This was probably a couple years ago.
Since then the book has been recommended to me at least three times. So I decided to try it again, and I have to say, with somebody else pronouncing all those tricky names, it is a really good story.
But now I have a conundrum. I can’t decide if I can put this on the list of books I have read this year, since I didn’t really read it. Decisions, decisions….
First of all I have this one:
The 3G model in graphite. It looks fabulous. I need to get a case for it, but when I went to Target they didn’t have any for the new generation yet, so I am waiting patiently. And in the meantime, I just won’t take it out of the house.
I love that the picture on the screen changes every time you sleep it.
I love that nobody can tell what you are reading. I discovered that the trashy NASCAR Harlequin romances I like are available for Kindle. So now I can read them in public and nobody will know. They will all think I am reading War and Peace or something Very Important like that. Except of course that I just told all of you that I read trashy NASCAR Harlequin romances. Hmmm, that may have been an error in strategy.
It does not have a touch screen like my iPod touch. This is going to take some getting used to. I keep trying to scroll down by running my finger up the screen instead of pushing the button to turn the page. Oops.
So far I have just downloaded books that are free or nearly free. At the moment I have:
I am sure I will be downloading plenty of NASCAR Harlequins and vampire novels – er, I mean Important Works of Literature in the near future. This is so much fun.
It was a super-early Christmas present from Tom. Wow. I am so excited. So excited, in fact, that I am far too busy playing with my Kindle and reading my new electronic version of Dracula to post anything witty or entertaining here.
Yay.
They are making a movie of One for the Money by Janet Evanovich. It’s true! Here is a link.
As you can see, there isn’t a ton of information yet. It’s early days.
There are fifteen of these books in print right now, and Sizzling Sixteen is set to hit bookstores this summer. Oooh I can’t wait. I can’t wait for the book. The movie is not really doing anything for me.
To be fair, I am never happy when somebody makes a movie based on one of my favorite books. I refused to see The Time Traveler’s Wife because I love that book so much, and I knew the movie could never measure up. So, I am not approaching this movie with a fair and unbiased point of view. In addition to that, I am unhappy with their casting decisions. They cast Katherine Heigl as Stephanie, Jason O’Mara as Morelli and Daniel Sunjata as Ranger.
Jason O’Mara seems okay to me. Daniel Sunjata might be okay as Ranger too, but I hate hate hate the idea of Katherine Heigl as Stephanie. She is so not like Stephanie. This is not going to work. Here are some photos:
Katherine Heigl is so not Stephanie
O’Mara (Morelli) and Sunjata (Ranger)
Now I realize there is no way to please everybody, and casting was always going to be a challenge. The problem they face is the fact that there are already 15 books out there in the Stephanie Plum series, not including the “Between the Numbers” books. I have read all 15 of them, some of them more than once. I already have a very clear picture in my head of what all the characters look like. And these guys are not measuring up.
Maybe I’m just grumpy today, I don’t know. But I don’t think I will be going to see this movie.
The C-Man recently tried to read Dracula. I had forgotten about that. For some reason it came up tonight at dinner. Here is his review:
Dracula is an old-school scary vampire. Not like those Twilight vampires. Dracula has a cape to protect himself in an attack. The Twilight vampires are just worried their hair will get messed up.
Do you know why I stopped reading Dracula mom? That scene where the guy walked in a room and those women attacked him. It freaked my guts out.
Dracula is smart mom. In Batman and Robin vs. Dracula he changed his name to Alucard. Pretty clever huh?
Do you know the best way to kill a vampire? Take some garlic, put a stake through it, light it on fire and throw it at him.
I love this kid.
Three months from today I will probably be telling you all about this movie:
I can’t wait. I still don’t understand why these movies have such power over me. And I don’t understand how anybody who watches these movies thinks Bella should choose Edward over Jacob. Of course I also don’t understand why either of them thinks Bella is worth the effort, but that’s just me.
How is it that Stephanie Meyer could write novels for young women and create a protagonist as wimpy as Bella? I’m just asking.
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In other news Meyer will be releasing a new novel written from the point of view of Bree Tanner, a minor character in the novel Eclipse. You can read all about it here.
