Sailor Soldier of Love and Justice

I have done too much today. I am very tired.

I woke up early this morning to head to the farmer's market. I was in need of fresh spinach. It was obtained with only mild frustration. Why can't the market sell spinach by weight? How can I compare a bag vs a basket vs a different size bag? I had to eye it.

The market is much bigger than last year. There was a new pickle booth which was too crowded for me to check out. Also a wine booth. And alpaca yarn! But wow that yarn was expensive. I thought I could get some as a gift for a friend and then went "woah" at the prices.

While I was in the area, I browsed the used bookstore. I scored a copy of The People of Sparks. It's the sequel to City of Ember, which I enjoyed.

After that, I drove to a nearby park where I knew the county provided free compost. I filled three garbage bags worth.

From there I drove to the comic book store for Free Comic Books Day. I was dismayed because there was a three comic limit, but at least I had prepared so I knew what I wanted. I ended up getting the Captain America/Thor comic I REALLY wanted, plus Baltimore/Criminal Macabre and Civil war Adventure. The Mouse Guard comic I originally planned on getting was a reprint of a past issue I already owned. Which I guess makes sense if the goal is to get new readers instead of attracting the ones you already have. I had a hard time choosing my third one and ended up picking the civil war one because it looked so so lonely. It was the tallest stack in the store. Nobody loves history...

Captain America/Thor was just as delightful as I expected. It was both an ad for the Thor: the Mighty Avenger trade and a reward for all those that bought the comic in issues. It doesn't look like they plan on spinning it off into a series, but I hope someone at Marvel will give that creative team more work. They got ME to read super hero comics!

When I got home, I had a mild breakdown because I was doing so much stuff and ben had the audacity to ENJOY his weekend. He eventually came down and mowed the grass while I went out front and trimmed the TREES around the mailbox. The previous homeowners planted trees around the mailbox! What were they thinking!?

The neighbors were nice and let me borrow a hedge trimmer to tackle the branches. It actually wasn't that helpful, but it was quite nice of them. After about an hour of trimming and sawing, I got the trees in somewhat more respectable order and now the mailperson can actually get into our mailbox.

Then I went back into the yard and emptied all my mulch into my garden. And wanted to cry. Three huge garbage bags only filled 1/8 of the garden. I had to go back and get more... Thankfully ben was able to go with me this time and help. We stopped on the way to get sturdier bags so we could fill them even more. It started to drizzle as I was shopping, which didn't help my mental state, but the sun came back out soon enough. We ended up filling up 4 much bigger bags. They managed to fill the rest of the garden, just barely. Depending on how early I wake up tomorrow, I may go back and get more mulch while ben finishes sleeping.

We had burgers (well, I had nuggets) for dinner, so I went into a bit of a protein coma after dinner. I took a badly needed nap. Now I am awake and crave dessert. I am contemplating apples dipped in caramel. Then I think I will finish reading my comics. (The Captain America/Thor one was the only one I was in a rush to read.)

If I wasn't so tired, I'd ask ben to take me to the Thor movie tonight. *sigh* I was far too productive today.

I enjoyed the second Tiffany Aching book much more than the first. The story itself was much more complex.

However, if Tiffany does not get some sort of sense of humor, I am going to have to smack her. She is far too serious. Luckily she's around a lot of other interesting people like the nac mac feegle, Miss Level, and Oswald. (I guess I am using "people" in very loose terms here.)

The Hiver was an interesting villain. It wasn't bad, it was just very very needy. Though the Queen from the previous book was kinda needy too. I wonder if all the baddies in the books will follow this trend.

I had been looking forward to this book for quite some time because I had been told it was the best pirate fiction novel out there.

It was pretty good!

I enjoyed it quite a bit. The slow parts were a little bit too slow, but the action parts were all really fun and made up for the slow moments. The book had the feel of the first pirates of the caribbean movie. (Not the sequels though. Those were terrible.)

My favorite scene was when the pirate group was rowing through the florida everglades and encountered the whispering mushrooms that vomited up ghosts. Isn't that such a neat image? The jungle was trying to stop them from getting to the fountain of youth.

I would definitely recommend this book. Especially if you are a fan of the potc movies because I read that the fourth movie is based on this book. That makes a lot of sense to me because jack shandy was quite a bit like jack sparrow towards the end.

Not as good as I had hoped, but still somewhat interesting. I decided to read this book before my trip to Philly since Ben Franklin is THE MAN when it comes to historical Philadelphia stuff.

The best parts were Franklin's early years. When he was trying to figure out what he was doing with his life and his years setting up his print shop.

Once he starts settling down into politics, the book got extremely dull.

And the worst part is that the book is unfinished! I was expecting things to pick up once we got to the American revolution, but he never got around to writing that stuff. It fills me with madness.

I don't think I'd recommend this book to anyone unless they were writing a paper on Ben Franklin.

As the title implies, this was a collection of stories. They were written by Susanna Clarke, who had also written Strange and Norrell.

Whereas S&N were focused on the male sphere of magic, this book was more about the female sphere.

The first story, The Ladies of Grace Adieu, takes place directly in the S&N story. But in it Strange is a minor character. Personally, I didn't like this story much at all. It felt like it was something left on the editing room floor while making the novel. I later learned that it was the story that helped her get her book deal, so I guess its real problem was just that it was a very early work.

The story I liked best was Mrs Mabb. In it, a woman learns that her fiance has left her for the mysterious and wealthy Mrs Mabb. Every time she attempts to visit Mrs Mabb and her fiance, she becomes enchanted and ends up in strange places with tattered clothes and bloody feet. Rather than outwitting Mabb, like most fairy tale heroines, the woman uses brute force and persistence to get her man back. I won't spoil it, but I thought her solution was a lovely way to deal with an annoying thieving fairy.

I think the worst story in the collection was On Lickerish Hill, which was basically a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin. I didn't feel like Clarke made any real interesting changes to the original story to make this retelling worth it. Why bother?

I don't think I would suggest this collection to someone unless they were super super excited after finishing S&N. I think that would be the only person to really enjoy the whole collection. If you do come across Mrs Mabb though in another story collection, that one is worth a read.

It made me happy that I was reading this short story collection in October. It's the month of the mind the stories were written in, after all. October is the month of death and decay - A reoccurring theme in most of the stories.

I enjoy Bradbury as an author because he's really good at describing sensations. Hot dry Mexican tombs, soft firefly-filled evenings on the porch, damp chilly lake winds after the tourist season...

Overall, I enjoyed the collection. Of course there were some that stood out as better or worse than the others.

My favorites were:
- The Next in Line - About a tourist couple that visits a cemetery that exhumes the mummified remains of the deceased if their families cannot pay. Although I really hated the wife, the way her panic attacks were described were really fun to read.
- The Lake - A man revisits the lake where his childhood friend died. Was really bittersweet. Broke my heart a little.
- Uncle Einar - About a man who loses his ability to fly. I don't actually think this one was well written, but I liked the character Uncle Einer a lot.

Didn't like:
- The Dwarf - A dwarf is a regular customer at the carnival's hall of mirrors because he can make himself appear taller. The whole situation just made me feel sad and uncomfortable.
- The Small Assassin - A newborn baby tries to kill his parents. I'm going to have nightmares for years about this one.
- The Cistern - A woman fantasizes about a magical world in the sewers where dead lovers reunite. The whole thing seemed dull and uninspired. Though maybe you can blame that on the woman who seemed really vapid.

I had a hard time reading Little Brother because it was scary. It's set in a very not so distant future and centers around the loss of privacy and human rights after a terrorist attack. It's the sort of story that could happen tomorrow. And that's what made it scary. 1984 (who's Big Brother inspired the name of this book) didn't scare me at all because it seemed so distant and futuristic. (Even though I read it after the titular year.) This book felt immediate and far more real.

It was really tense too, so I often found myself exhausted after reading. And then all of that rapidly dropped away at the end in an intensely unsatisfying way. Doctorow is just awful at endings. This was a kid's story, so the ending was "If something bad happens, tell a grownup!"

LAME! Super lame!

I had been wound so tense by that story and the ending fizzled out so badly that I felt like I needed to punch something and get relief.

Tell a grownup.... Bah.

I read this book a long time ago in school. But because it was school, I waited until the last minute and then read the entire thing in under an hour. I liked what I remembered though, so I thought I should give it a second, more careful read this time.

This time around I figured out that a happy medium can also mean a cheerful psychic. I totally missed that as a kid.

Overall, I enjoyed the story. But I kept imagining Charles Wallace as Malo from Twilight Princess, which made the whole thing very very creepy.

The next volume in todd mccaffrey's "what if?" adventures on pern. In this story, it was, "what if firestone was explosive and it all exploded and there was none left on the entire planet?"

I will give him credit for one thing. His ability to tell a complex story has improved slightly. This book was less linear. And he was able to flow different plots together into one story. However characterization was still extremely weak. The bad guys were all extremely bad and the good guys were all extremely good. *yawn*

Overall, I would not recommend this book to anyone. Not even big fans of the series. It was a chore to get through with little to no excitement at all.

On the bright side, I can now return this book to the library and try to find something better. Suggestions?

This is the last Oz book I have free access to and the last one Baum wrote.

In it, Ozma and Dorothy go on an adventure to prevent a war on the outskirts of Oz. They kinda fail miserably, ending up a prisoner of one of the warring sides, and Glinda has to gather together a rescue group.

I think this story had potential, but the lack of tension was a serious problem. You'd think there would be a sense of urgency if there was a war about to start. Instead everyone set about as if they were on vacation. With a good hard rewrite, the story could have been really enjoyable. It has war! Witches! (Both good and bad.) Submerged cities! Mountain fortresses! Captured princesses! How did you manage to make all that so dull, Baum?

Well, now I will need to find another book to read. I couldn't possibly get by reading only three books at a time.