As a followup to my pre-beach post about summer reading, I wanted to say that I chose Under Heaven as my "yearly" novel and it served the prupose well, though the plot promises to achieve greatness early on, and doesn't quite live up to its potential. The problem here is that the story has fantasy at its heart and develops toward fitting climax, but then unravels without an equivalent resolution, much more like the ending from a historic fiction couched in realism. So much so that I had about 15 pages left when it was due back at the library, and I didn't bother to ask Brooklynne to renew it. I will never know what those last 15 pages held (and perhaps someone will tell me I should regret this) but I'm confident I had already passed the ending 50 pages before. That sounds harsh, but I did really like this book, I recommend it, and I think I'll read more of Gavriel's stuff. I'm just not the kind of reader that "needs" to slog to the end after taking as much satisfaction as possible from a story.

Here's another take on the book with a rationale for why it's ok for the story's ending to seem so unfitting.

Now Reading: The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them (totally nerdy, I know, but I can't help it.) 

Right now, the Travis family is in survival mode. We are just trying to make it to beach week, any way we can.

I'm especially looking forward to my annual novel. I really do love reading, but unlike others I know, I do not have time to read much, and what little time I have is usually spent reading for a class. Therefore, beach week is the only guaranteed time I have to enjoy a novel.

Around this time every year, I start to feel some pressure. My beach read better be a good one, because this is a one-time deal--no second chances until next summer. Thus, I have become a fan of the yearly NPR summer book lists. Each year in June, NPR puts out a series of recommendations by various booksellers and critics. Each list has a blurb about what makes the book a good read, along with an excerpt. Since our beach week is always at the beginning of June, right when these lists are published, I usually take my picks from a previous year (after all, a good book is timeless, right?). Here are the lists from 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.

I've been using these lists for the past 3 years and I haven't been disappointed yet.

This year, I may read City of Thieves (a 2007 selection), or Under Heaven (a 2010 pick). Have you read either of these? Do you have a favorite method for picking a good book? Other book recommendations?

Tomorrow I go back to work.

On a more positive note, I have been making progress on the house. We passed our electrical inspection and we're getting closer to actually moving in, but every step seems to take a major effort. This week's project is drywall, and the floors will be done this weekend.

I did take some time to read a little this Christmas. I was travelling alone, so I splurged on a book and read it on the plane. I settled on The Shadow of the Wind, which I would recommend despite a few R-rated scenes and general mushiness throughout. How's that for a book review?

Anywho, I'm tired from working at the house, and uninspired, so I'm going to bed. I'll try to get some Utah pictures from Brooklynne and post them this week. 

I've been meaning to post this for a couple days now, so it really isn't new news, but Lost is over. I was actually over Lost a long time ago. The series was great and I really loved it, but the plot seemed to lose its way after the 3rd season. to me the strength of the show was how the off-island relationships directed the on-island actions of the survivors/others/etc. peppered with a healthy dose of mind boggling weirdness. When the show became all about fighting each other and who's killing who and who hooking up with who, and the mysteries became more like mythology rather than fate, the whole thing started feeling like a chore to be completed rather than a delight to be anticipated.

There... I've said it. Now if you watched the finale and still don't know what's happening, here's a chart to help you along (courtesy of wildeggplant.com). According to that site, blue lines equal off-island relationships, green are on-island, red are blood or marriage relationships, and lines that are not labeled indicate a romantic or sexual relationship. Have fun untangling this mess, and then leave a comment about your thoughts on Lost's end.

I just finished reading Genesis, a science fiction novel by Bernard Beckett. I'm really drawn to sci-fi for some reason--it's one of my favorite genres for movies and TV--but I rarely like sci-fi books. I'm kind of a reading snob. I don't like bad writing, and I have a hard time lowering my standards even for simple pleasure reading. Most sci-fi fails to reach the bar.

Genesis, on the other hand, is very well written. The reader is basically listening in on a dissertation defense, which may sound rather boring, but it's not. The story moves along at a slow, but engaging clip until the last chapter, which suddenly becomes gripping. From the second or third chapter, I could guess the twist at the end, but the way it plays out is chilling in some strange way that I'm not sure I can easily explain.

The book wrestles with pinning down the essence of life, and how that essence is entertwined with sin and death. The final pages are fraught with irony, so it would make a great discussion piece... an all around great read. And at only 150 pages, you can finish it in only a few hours.

Bernard Beckett, I applaud you.

If you read Brooklynne's blog, you already know that I got a Wii for Christmas. No joke, my arms and back are sore.

But here's what I really love about the Wii right now: the Wiiware and Virtualconsole features.

When I got the Gamecube 7 years ago, I thought I was in heaven. But it turned out that it was very difficult to collect games to play on the system. Most of the titles were at least $40, if not $50 or $60, and I just wasn't ever in a position to drop that much cash on more than a few games over the years. Fastforward to this year and I wondered if it would be a long time before I would have a good mix of games to go with the new Wii.

However, I was happy to discover that with the Wii's built-in wireless, I could easily connect to the Nintendo website and download games any time of the day or night without leaving the comfort of my own couch. Granted, these games are not the full-blown blockbuster hits that most people think of in connection with the latest, most powerful gaming systems. But there is a good mix of classic titles from past systems as well as new, innovative games that might be too quirky or unorthodox to win the backing of the big budget developer studios.

And perhaps the best part of the whole thing is that these lightweight games only cost $5-15. If you stay on the cheap end of the spectrum, you can get 10 of these games for the price of one full-sized title. This mix of nostalgia and fresh ideas at bargan basement prices makes me even more excited about the Wii.

Sure, I'll still splash out for a few big games this year, but in between, you'll find me playing a lot of Wiiware and Virtualconsole games and having a blast.