A catch-all
This was a good enough read… it passed the time on the train quickly, at any rate, and it fits really well into that Crichton space of dinosaurs, science, and adventure.
Like Crichton, sometimes the explication is a little painful, but overall the pace is really good, and it keeps you sitting in your seat perhaps a little longer than you would have, after the train’s pulled into the station.
Fox’s new show this fall, Vanished, seems to take a little page from good old Tommy boy… the cell tower network that piggy backs on the existing networks, but outside of them, seems like an updated version of the W.A.S.T.E. renegade postal system from The Crying of Lot 49 
Interesting, at any rate. Even if I’m only watching it out of the corner of my eye while making sure Sane Magazine gets out Monday evenings.
I don’t know why I’ve put off reading any of his books for so long… I know I was very tempted to pick up Amsterdam and even this one, Saturday a number of times… but never did.
Like I was afraid I was going to be allergic to it. Or maybe it was that Booker thing… Or maybe his picture had always frightened me (true, sort of… I hadn’t really thought of it until I wrote that just now—I suppose his jacket picture does scare me a bit… go figure).
But I’ve done it. And my face hasn’t swollen like a potato. Nor have my breathing passages been cut off. No hives. Nothing.
And damn, what a great writer. Saturday was an excellent read… stuck in this neurosurgeon’s head you feel slightly claustrophobic, and I couldn’t help but feel the urge to look forward with a sense of dread… just from reading the jacket you knew something bad was going to happen, and it seemed to loom just around the corner, and you were stuck in his head, wanting to scream out, “Hey! Man! Look out! Don’t… umm… listen, just go pick up your wife at the office and go out for dinner or something!” But you can’t, because it’s a book, and you’re not actually in anyone’s head, nor are you capable of warning them.
And Mr. McEwan keeps up the pace throughout the book, navigates through the tricky uneven cobblestones of the narrative he’s come up with without missing a beat… it’s a great, engaging read.
Jackie MacMullan has written an excellent article for the Globe (why do I always mistype this the first time as Glove?) today.
A great read, and hopefully her colleagues can keep a copy of this article around their writing space, as a prime example of how to write a sports article. She’s struck a perfect balance between reporting on and connecting with her subjects, and I think her editors and herself should hear about it from everyone… her contacts at the bottom of the article, and her boss’ can be found here (well, sort of, I suppose… it gets to them eventually).
All right, it’s not so much a bad B&B (nice location, nice enough place, nice views), but bad owners.
And by bad I guess I mean only for myself and Lorraine and Dylan, because, according to TripAdvisor reviewers, they are absolute saints who have provided their own spit for people arriving with slightly parched throats.
The male half of the ownership’s complex about himself (Napoleonic, in a way, since he’s short, and thinks he’s able to carry having a portrait done of himself on a horse with his hand in his jacket), so perhaps he’d even give it a shot. Especially if he reads this here, because he seems like a vindictive little guy… the most compelling case I can think of is the mysterious review that appeared a few days before I got my act together that just *happened* to bump Lorraine’s negative review from the front page for the B&B which mentioned, apropos of nothing, that that particular guest “*loves* H&J and their B&B because it allows his brother to watch sports because H carries his TV all the way upstairs for them! Wow! Oh, and he loves it because they don’t allow screaming babies… oh, how screaming babies ruin stays in a B&B, don’t you think? Oh man, they’re awful, and I’m so glad no one has mentioned them in any of the previous reviews, but let’s just point out the obvious: babies suck.” So either Napoleon, we’ll call him, for lack of a better name, has been ranting to his guests about his awful experience of allowing a guest who was very upfront about the fact that they had a baby into the B&B and they got complaints (though from what, I have no idea, once the owners took their dog away Dylan was down in 45 minutes, tops), or this guest just really loves getting away from babies by staying at B&Bs.
But here’s the facts: this guy, who did kick us out for having a baby (which I mentioned a couple of times in emails to him), he was incredibly rude to my wife during the process of kicking us out, and then the guy has abused my credit card that we used to book the place, and been misleading to the point of slanderous online (their B&B is “an inapropriate [sic] choice for less than considerate, loud & disruptive guests, regardless of their capacity for demonstrations of malice” … err, what? Dylan was loudest when your bloody dog was in the room! ‘lo?). You’re in the hospitality industry, you know? Oh, you didn’t? Wait, you did? You just forgot? Because obviously we’re undesirables or something.
And I don’t know what to do about it any more. I’m sick of fighting him, and I hope to f**k he comes back in the next life as a… well, I was going to say something small, let’s hope he comes back as barley straw. Maybe someone can make use of him.
Eh. I can’t bring myself to have much more of a reaction to this book.
Some bits were funny. But the funny parts were quickly defused by some writing or scene or another that made you go, “Eh?”
The manufactured love between the two main characters (caricatures?) seemed forced, possibly because, and I’m so excited to use this, the characters really had no emotional depth. And I know whereof I speak, seeing as God Coffee will never be successfully sold due to a similar issue. 🙂
Not going to be on the lookout for any more Bill Fitzhugh books for a while, at any rate.