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Saturday

A pretty ordinary day, really. I finished reading The Last Kashmiri Rose by Barbara Cleverly, but despite a promising start and some nice detail, I can’t claim to have quite enjoyed the book. Characters act in ways that aren’t always believable — for the time period of the British Raj, but also just for human beings — and the ending solves the mystery in what’s maybe the least interesting of the most predictable ways. Though maybe we’re at a point in mystery novels at which not confounding your expectations itself counts as a twist? Either way, I found the book ultimately a disappointment.

Moving on the Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, just for a complete change of pace.

I also finished watching Fringe, finally. I’ve had the fifth season saved up since it first aired this fall, and I’ve been watching an episode (occasionally two) every evening this week. It’s not a perfect ending, for a show that was never perfect — started out as pretty lousy, actually, before figuring out how to frequently be terrific — but a satisfying one all the same.

I wish I could say the same for Insidious, which I watched last night. It was a lot less scary than I expected, and doesn’t have a whole lot going for it beyond scares.

Finally, this evening I had dinner out with my parents. I had frog legs for the first time — also unimpressive, but maybe more from the way they were prepared — and a decent if unremarkable duck confit. Then my parents went off to see Mary Chapin Carpenter and Marc Cohn in concert and I came home (to watch Fringe and walk the dog). My mom’s a long-time fan of Carpenter, and I bought her tickets this past Mother’s Day.

And that was Saturday, with a little bit of Friday tossed in.

Thursday

Well clearly Mother Nature reads my weblog, because no sooner had I started complaining about the weather than the temperature dropped about twenty degrees and the humidity just went away. It was almost what I’d call chilly this morning, and this evening may be the first time in the weeks since my old air conditioner broke and was replaced that I haven’t had it on in my room. I wouldn’t expect it to last — temperatures are predicted to reach into the mid-80s again over the weekend — but it was kind of nice walking to work and thinking, maybe I need a jacket, instead of, maybe I need a towel or cold shower.

Things are going reasonably well at work at the moment, though I am nonetheless indescribably glad that tomorrow is Friday.

At least tomorrow’s Thursday

The week continues on a fairly even but uninteresting keel. I had a launch meeting today for one of my books, which I recently put into production, and that went reasonably well.

Beyond that, there isn’t much of anything to report, and I’m writing this in part just to break up the blog a little bit between songs of the day.

I am a little sick of the weather. I’m not quite ready for fall, not the way I think I felt last year, but I am thoroughly sick of the humidity.

Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city

It’s been an exceptionally hot week, with temperatures in the 80s and 90s, and the humidity in the don’t-go-outside-if-you-can-help-it range. There’s hope that will break tonight, with some thunderstorms, but that remains to be seen or felt.

This morning, I took my car in for its yearly inspection. The mechanic estimated I drive only about 1000 miles a year. Which may be generous, actually, and only be so high thanks to the work trip I took to Maryland this past fall.

It was a fairly unexciting week otherwise. Lots of work, lots of sweaty commutes. On Friday, I finished reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell, which I thoroughly enjoyed. There are a lot of beautiful passages the book, but this, from fairly early on, might be my favorite:

Creation never ceased on the sixth evening, it occurs to the young man. Creation unfolds around us, despite us, and through us, at the speed of days and nights, and we like to call it “love.”

Reviewing an earlier post, I see it took me about three weeks to finish the novel, which is a little dispiriting. It’s long, but not ridiculously so, just shy of 500 pages in paperback. I’ve actually only read 20 books in total since the start of the year, 14 if you exclude comic book collections. By contrast, I’ve watched 43 movies. (And that doesn’t include things like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which I spent a good chunk of Friday afternoon re-watching.) I don’t regret the movies, but I do often wish I was a quicker reader, or that I gave more time to it. This evening, I started Barbara Cleverly’s The Last Kashmiri Rose, so we’ll see how that goes.

Of course, this evening I also watched another movie, the extremely odd, extremely violent Suspiria. It’s very strange, and often aggressively so, and while I can see a lot to admire about it, I’m not sure it’s my cup of tea. Scott Tobias of the AV Club wrote of the movie:

Atmosphere and style dominate his thinking to such a degree that Argento…can be forgiven for his inattention to niggling concerns like acting or storytelling.

And that’s the week it’s been. No writing group tomorrow, so maybe I’ll get some more reading done. Maybe I’ll get some writing done.