Once again, I stayed up too late doing nothing in particular (reading some websites, trying to figure out more WP stuff, playing UT2004, etc..) so I’m feeling extremely tired this morning. The other side affect of staying up so late is that I can remember some of my dreams from last night.

In the dream, I’m the captain of a commercial airliner (a Boeing 747, I think). We’re making a routine flight from somewhere to somewhere else when something goes extremely wrong. What exactly goes wrong, I can’t tell but I know that I’ve lost around half my passengers and an engine or two.

We make an emergency landing on an interstate or maybe on a turnpike and one of the wings (and one of the remaining engines) gets snapped off by a support column for an overpass and then we’re finally able to bring the plane to a stop.

The next thing I know my copilot and I are carrying some flat-bed like thing that I intrinsically know weighs around 1300 lbs. We carry through a couple of building hallways before meeting up with superior officers/crash investigators. They make some sort of joke, but I don’t laugh. Then we carry the flat up a slight incline, set it done, pause for a moment to remember those who died and then reach into a wall panel, pulling out some heavy duty computer cable, which then gets hooked into the flat.

That’s where I woke up, though I did have a fleeting sense that the flat thing was some how acting as a blackbox data/flight recorder device.

Note to self: No more late night tacos for dinner.

I just finished reading Mr. McKiernan’s Silver Wolf, Black Falcon and while I found it to be an enjoyable read; it was nearly as good as some of his other books (e.g. “The Eye of the Hunter“). The characters were not fleshed out as fully as had been done in previous books and in part that it likely because this book brings an end to the Mithgar saga. Alas, the book has a certain sense to it that Mr. McKiernan was tired of writing about the Mithgar world and wanted to move onto other projects. The ending in particular feels a bit rushed, but still if you’re a fan of Mr. McKiernan’s other works, then this is a good book for you to read. Overall, I give it: 3 out of 5 points.

Next up, I’ll be returning to the Egypt of early 1900’s by reading Elizabeth Peter’s He Shall Thunder In The Sky. However, since I won’t be stuck in some stupid hotel room for a week with nothing to do; I probably won’t get through this one quite as quickly as I did the last.

I finished reading Elizabeth Peter’s The Falcon at the Portal last night and while I did enjoy it; I’m finding that I like the newer books in this series less and less. The idea that Ms. Peters is the Editor of Emerson family’s personal papers and has assembled the books from the remains of Ameila’s journals and some manuscripts/letters written by Ramses & Nefret just isn’t working for me. It didn’t help that this story took a darker turn that most of the Ameila Peabody mysteries (e.g. not all of your favorite characters walked away unscathed at the end of this book). For having a darker end than I cared for and continuing this trend of assembling the story from the “incomplete and scattered papers” of the Emerson family; I’m only giving this book 3 out of 5 points.

Since I knew that I was getting a bit tired of a steady reading diet of mysteries; I didn’t bring the next Amelia Peadbody mystery with me. Instead, I’ll be reading Dennis L. McKiernan’s Silver Wolf, Black Falcon next. Since I’m stuck at the home office all week, I will most likely finish this one in the next couple of days.

Disney recently released an extremely cool toy that a friend of my, Bryon, has always wanted. It was a bit pricey, but AWelkin talked him into getting it. He did a review of it that got posted over at the Captain Toy website. After reading the review, I wish I had the money to get one. Ah well, you win some; you lose some.

I finished reading Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. the other night. I’ve been a bit busy, hence the delay in writing up my little review of the book.

First, there’s a couple of things that you should keep in mind about my opinion on this book:

  • My general reading interests keep me firmly planted in the fiction section, so this was quite unlike anything I’ve read
  • Prior to reading this book, I have had little to no direct exposure to Franken’s work.
  • I didn’t vote for Bush.
  • I don’t like the way the Bush administration has been handling things since they came into power.
  • I am not a lawyer or an election official but I still think the 2000 presidential election had some fishy things going on in it (particularly in Flordia).

Now that I’ve got those disclaimers out of the way, I can tell you that I greatly enjoyed this book and will definately be looking at borrowing the rest of Franken’s books (from friends or my local library). Franken’s sense of humor and sharp sarcasm really struck a chord with me. That I agreed with a lot of his points throughout the book, didn’t hurt either. One of the things that I really liked about the book was how well Franken (and his team of Havard students) documented all the quotes that Franken used, via footnotes at the bottom of the pages and in the bibliography at the end of the book. It really gave the book a feeeling of professionalism that frankly, I wasn’t expecting. From what I’d heard about the book via the media; I was expecting it to be more along the lines of drinking burnt coffee made with reused grinds rather than the smooth latte that it went down as. However, that is not to say that the book is without it’s faults.

When you turn the page to a new chapter, you can expect it to have little or no connection to the previous chapter; this makes for a very rough transition between chapters and reduces the readibility of the book. Also, at points Franken lowers himself to the level of the people he’s complaining about in the book (the Right) by resorting to childish namecalling. Generally, he does it after he’s just finished quoting somebody from the the Right do it and walked you through several paragraphs to show how wrong that person from the Right was. Sometimes it’s even funny when he does it; however overall, it’s not a technique that works for me. I’d rather have seen him stay above that sort of thing and instead just continue to use things that the Right have said to show their inconsistencies and stupidities.

Well, that’s all for now (my break’s over and I need to get back to work). I’ll be reading Elizabeth Peter’s The Falcon at the Portal next.