Biking and Bookcrossing

Andrew and I decided to go out for a bike ride this morning. We haven’t been out since a particularly nice day in February. It seems that the nice weekends of late have been taken up with wedding stuff, so our bikes have languished in the shed for the last two months.

We drove up with the bikes to the Washington & Old Dominion trail (W&OD) in Vienna, and headed off to the south/east (for the first part of the trip, it’s mostly a gradual uphill — the benefit of going this way first is that on the way back, when we’re already getting tired, the way is mostly downhill). My original goal was to go at least 8 miles — that’s how far we went in February. We ended up going a total of 10 miles round-trip! This is a definite improvement over last year.

When we got back to our car, I bookcrossed one of my books at the caboose along the trail.
   

All the Pretty Horses

by Cormac McCarthy

I’m not sure why I picked this book up — it’s not my usual type of book; though I may have wondered if I should bother seeing the movie. I’m even less sure why I finished reading it. The writing style grated on my nerves the whole time. McCarthy doesn’t believe in proper punctuation (like putting quotes around what someone says), and while some (like the folks who choose the recipients of the National Book Award) might see this as an artistic choice adding to the flavor of the book, I found it distracting.

This is the story of John Grady who has been around horses on his parents’ ranch for his entire 16 years. Shortly after his grandfather dies, though, his parents split up officially, and his mother decides to sell the ranch to persue an acting career. John is not ready to leave the world of horses and ranches, so leaves with is horse and his best friend, and heads south into Mexico to see where their fortunes take them.

I had a difficult time figuring out when this story was taking place until I was about 75% finished. I did find that I cared about the characters, and wanted to know how the story ended, but I’m not sure it was worth the work it took to get there.

Gibbon’s Decline and Fall

by Sheri S. Tepper

The Decline and Fall Club (DFC) is a tight-knit group of diverse women who met and bonded in college. They vowed to never decline nor fall (based on the title of Gibbon’s book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire). Carolyn becomes a lawyer, Agnes a nun (as she had planned before entering college), Faye a sculptor (despite her killer voice), Jessamine a biologist, and Betty a wealthy wife running several charitable foundations. Then there was Sophy. The rest of the group was never quite sure how to take Sophy. They loved her dearly, but was always a bit of a mystery. They suspected that she was a Native American, and they knew she was stunningly beautiful. However, Sophy never liked her beauty, and even just a look from a man made her feel used. She was clearly confused and confounded by the way women were treated in society. At some point, as the DFC saw it, Sophy did decline and fall.

However, a few years later, when suicide cults were on the rise and hooded men chased young women from the streets, and odd sort of resistance started. The DFC couldn’t help but wonder if Sophy was somehow involved. Perhaps they were all involved in some way.

Once again Tepper gives us a well crafted, compelling story with great, strong female characters. She gets preachy in this novel, but I don’t care because I was so carried away by the characters.

America’s Dumbest Criminals

by Daniel Butler, Alan Ray & Leland Gregory

This is a collection of 200 stories of dumb criminals. It’s a bit like reading an extended version of News of the Weird. Fun, fast, but readily forgotten.

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging

by Louise Rennison

This book is written as snippets from Geogia Nicolson’s diary. Georgia is a 14-year-old in England struggling with a large nose, an insane cat (half domestic, half Scottish wild cat, by some estimates), and boys. It’s kind of like a Bridget Jone’s Diary for a younger crowd. I’ll bet Rennison is tired of hearing that, but I don’t mean it as a put down. I found this to be a fun read, and it brought back some of my high school memories…albeit, not all good memories, but it was still fun.

Ares Helping

I was trying to update my book journal. (The paper version, where I write more than my on-line version. sometimes I even give away the ending in my paper journal. For shame!)

Ares decided to help.

Out of Time

by James P. Hogan

Time is disappearing in New York City. The losses seem worst at airports, TV stations, and telephone switchboards. When a scientist from the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the time is being stolen by aliens in a parallel universe, the case of larceny falls to Joe Kopeksky from the NY Bureau of Criminal Investigation. He assembles an unlikely team of himself, his assistant, an engineer, a scientist and a priest to solve the case.

Fun, short book (really a novella). I was caught up in the mystery from chapter 2 on, wondering what physics-oddity Hogan had thought up for this story. I probably noticed a few things that a non-physicist may have had to wait for the exposition to catch on, but was still intrigued, and didn’t find the exposition overly annoying.

Artemis Fowl

by Eoin Colfer

Since Artemis Fowl’s father, Artemis I, disappeared at sea, his mother has not been playing with a full deck. Twelve-year-old Artemis II has taken it upon himself to attempt to replenish the Fowl fortune. His plan? Acquire fairy gold. However, the fairy he kidnaps just happens to be a member of the Lower Elements Police force (a LEPrecon).

I found I didn’t know who to root for. Artemis, while sympathetic because of the loss of his father (and subsequent loss of his mother), is portrayed as evil. Holly, the LEPrecon Artemis kidnaps, is sympathetic, but a bit of a flake. The LEPrecon forces sent in to deal with the situation ranged from likeable (Foaly) to hate-able (Cudgeon).

This was a fun, fluffy book, but I doubt I’ll be running out to find the second in the series.

Witch Hunt

A True Story of Social Hysteria and Abused Justice
by Kathryn Lyon

I’m done with true crime, unless a trusted friend specifically recommends something to me.

Witch Hunt chronicles injustices of the child welfare, police and justice departments in Wenatchee, Washington. Children suspected of being sexually abused were questioned for hours on end until the interviewer heard what he wanted. These interviews were never recorded, and any notes were destroyed, lest they contradict the final report. Suspects were interviewed by police, their requests for lawyers ignored, until they signed confessions. Many of the suspects were poor, mentally retarded, or illiterate. Prosecutors withheld relevant information from defending lawyers and filed new charges days before trials were to begin.

While the story itself sounds compelling, Lyon tells it in excruciating detail. The story should have been told in half the number of pages (or less). Just because an author has a bit of research, it doesn’t mean that it has to be included in the book — true crime authors, in my limited experience, need to learn the strength of summary over scene for parts of their story when summary will do the job just as well as a point-by-point account.

The Best American Science and Nature Writing (2003)

Edited by Richard Dawkins

This is a collection of articles published during 2002 on they topics of physics, astronomy, computer science, geology, environmental science, etc. Andrew had told me that previous editions were quite biology-heavy, but this one had several astronomy articles, so I started tithe this one.

The astronomy articles spanned quite a range of topics:

• “At Home in the Heavens” by Tim Appenzeller covered the state of the search for extra-solar planets
• “Astronomy’s New Stars” by Timothy Ferris discussed some of the contributions to astronomy by amateur astronomers
• “A New View of Our Universe” by Dennis Overbye talked about the state of cosmology and the concept of the multiverse
• “The Very Best Telescope” by William Speed Weed discussed a new optical interferometer

For the most part I enjoyed the articles in the book, even the non-astronomy ones :-). “What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie” by Gary Taubes sheds light on why the Atkins diet has been scorned by science funding agencies (pressure to promote the low-fat diet) and why it merits further study. “Memory Faults and Fixes” by Elizabeth F. Luftus discusses research into memory, reporting on research that shows how easy it is to alter humans’ memories.

There were a few articles I didn’t particularly enjoy, like “Terminal Ice” by Ian Frazier, which seemed to stretch out into forever. However, that’s to be expected in a large collection like this, and certainly I enjoyed more of the articles than not.