Last Week's Friday Photo
5 hours ago
Yes, I'm back to scarf-making. This will likely be one I give away, since the yarn isn't particularly compelling, but at least it gave me a chance to give the Brown Berries Scarf pattern a try. You may recognize the yarn as the same kind I used for my sister's hybrid fingerless gloves/mittens. I've got a lot of it lying around. I haven't bought any yarn since March, which is kind of a personal record. I'm trying to use up, or at least put a dent in, my two crates' worth of yarn.
Last week I got back from a five-day trip to D.C. for the American Library Association's annual conference. This was my third conference in four months, something I'd not planned at the beginning of the year -- I'd only planned on going to one, the Public Library Association's, so three was kind of a surprise. It was a challenge, juggling conference programs with taking care of an assignment for my current summer school class on children's literature and squeezing in some sightseeing. My children's lit assignment was on picture books and because I wasn't able to complete it before I left for D.C., I ended up cramming my textbook and five hardback kids' books in my suitcase, taking up a good chunk of space and certainly weighing it down a lot more.
Because my employer was covering the middle three of the five nights I'd be in D.C., I spent the first and last nights at a hostel, save on lodging costs. It really was for the best, since I arrived late Thursday night and didn't get to the Hostelling International-Washington D.C., to
hostel at 11 p.m.; it would have been a shame to pay for a nice place for the night because I wouldn't have had time to appreciate it. I promptly left the next morning at 7:30 a.m. to move my stuff to my hotel, the well-appointed Hotel Lombardy in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood. It was lovely having a room to myself (with a king-size bed! Luxurious!); it, along with the room's hardwired Ethernet connection, really allowed me to buckle down and get my schoolwork done while I was there.I'd spent a summer in D.C. way back during my undergraduate years. Although I didn't really remember where stuff was, my familiarity with the metro system came back quickly, which was nice. I used it to ferry between where the bulk of the conference took place, the Washington Convention Center, my hotel and the few spots around the city I visited when I wasn't at either for the first two places.
I went to the Library of Congress twice, once for a program and another time for a reception. It was pretty awesome to get to wander its halls after it'd been closed to the public. I got to eat at a couple D.C. restaurants; probably my meal was the lobster roll I had at Founding Farmers, if only because that's the closest I'm ever going to get to having a proper lobster roll in Maine.Although most of the conference action took place at the convention center, events are actually spread out across the city at something crazy like 15 other hotels. But I got a chance to hear author John Grisham speak, which was enjoyable. He told us about how when he was growing up, his father worked in construction, so his family moved frequently. And the first they'd do at every town was connect with the local Baptist Church, library and Little League. You can tell a lot about a place from those three institutions alone, he said. Grisham gave us the skinny on how his writing career came to be, and then answered several question from the audience on things like authors he likes to read and his writing process.
Originally I'd been eager to hit some museums that I'd not yet gotten the chance to visit -- the International Spy Museum, the new Newseum -- but I was reminded while I was in D.C. that there are times when I am complete and utter misanthrope, and traveling is one of those times.
A heat wave weighed heavily on the region the entire time I was there -- it hit 100 the day I flew in, and three days later hit 99 -- which understandably sent the
scores of people already in the area flocking even more than they already were into the well-air-conditioned museums for relief from the heat. I ponied up $18 for entrance to the Spy Museum (I am currently reading Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda by Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, so it seemed a good fit) and found myself constantly buffeted by people and waiting in line to check out the displays on the walls. Because of that, I decided not to even bother with the Newseum. I'll just have to go in the dead of winter or something. It wasn't bad for my first ALA experience, although the torrid weather made it hard to enjoy simply walking around and enjoying D.C.'s stunning architecture. You always ended up at your destination depleted of energy; you just wanted to mop yourself off and sit down.
Will the weather at next year's ALA Annual be any better? It's going to be in New Orleans.
Since the lace-paneled blanket took me three months to finish, for my next project I was all about a quick knit. And aside from baby booties, which I'm not terribly keep on, baby hats are the fastest item I can think of to churn out. To that end, I opted for two designs: the Quick & Easy Baby Hat and the Simple Baby Hat. Thankfully, they are aptly described. These babies rolled out in quick session, allowing me to use up a lot of leftover yarn, which was a nice perk. My favorite of the bunch is the striped one, which let me use up my remaining bits of Creme yarn, which is a blend of wool and silk. It also allowed me to try out a new knitting technique, that of jogless stripes, which allows you to stack color bars without a overly noticeable discontinuity where they join.
I also had to consult CDC growth charts on infant head circumference measurements to verify the figures I was seeing in the knitting patterns were correct. Baby heads are surprisingly big! Almost all these hats are sized for premature babies. I think only the top left-hand one, and possibly the striped one, are big enough for a full-term baby. I was all set to make more, but decided I'd switch to another project, one requiring a big more time (although not as much time as the blanket). I am donating these to a hospital; Vannie will bring them with her to Brackenridge Hospital, which is in need of baby clothing, when she returns there at the end of the month for the start of her fourth year of medical school.
It's not a fact that I go around advertising anything -- genre snobbery is rife, and something I try to avoid -- but I'll admit I've read Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series and enjoyed them. You can't really even try to compare it with the Harry Potter series; they are in entirely different classes. But in the post-Death Hallows lull, I decided to give Twilight a try and found the series has occasional moments of enjoyability. Make fun all you want, but Stephenie does a credible job of making you fall in love with Edward in the first book -- the point you're kind of withering away for the duration of the second book, New Moon because Edward is absent for most of it. And though the heroine, Bella, may be sorely lacking in redeeming qualities at least Meyer makes an effort to transform her over the course of the four books into the most powerful (and least helpless) character.
That being said, Twilight has helped spawn a horrible beast: an overabundance of paranormal romance written for young adults. And with overabundance comes lots of chaff in the wheat. Lauren Kate's novel Fallen might have an arresting cover in the same way that Twilight does, but sadly, I found it to be the best part of the book. The story follows 17-year-old Luce as she enters a reform school, Sword & Cross, where she's been sent because a friend recently died under mysterious circumstances when with her. Upon entering the weird world of Sword & Cross, Luce is immediately fascinated with one classmate, the golden-haired Daniel, and pursued by another classmate, the flirtatious Cam. Conflict between Daniel and Luce, Luce and Cam, and Cam and Daniel ensues.
I wanted to like this book. I really did. But I just couldn't. One of my biggest pet peeves is female heroines who make stupid decisions. Bella did it -- ending up lost in a sketchy part of town, where she's beset by thugs only to be -- SURPRISE! -- rescued by Edward. Luce does the same. GIRLS ARE SMARTER THAN THIS. When Luce gets a note from Cam that a driver will pick her up and whisk her away from the school to meet him, she obediently hops into a car with a stranger to meet Cam -- someone she really barely knows. She ends up in a dive of a bar, and Cam proceeds to get into a brawl, something he seems to do with frequency for the fun of it. Charmer? More like reprobate. And then, of course -- SURPRISE! -- Daniel shows up to rescue her. GIRLS ARE MORE CAPABLE THAN THIS. Because of this, it's very hard to like Luce. Yes, she's hopelessly in love with Daniel. But when you think about it, why?? Daniel keeps going all hot and cold. The first time he meets her, he flips her off! I just don't understand the attraction.
**SPOILERS**
Okay, yes, I do. It's because they're eternal lovers, constantly reuniting and being separated by a cruel twist of fate. Because **I'M NOT KIDDING ABOUT SPOILERS** Daniel's a fallen angel. When you finally get to the "big reveal," it's not a reveal at all, given the prologue and title of the book. It's more the explanation you fashioned by the end of Chapter 1 that just needed confirmation. Luce's constant pining for Daniel wouldn't be so bad if we actually cared for both of them as characters. But we don't. We just want the tension between them to be resolved so you can move on and figure out what the weird shadows Luce keeps seeing means. It all leads up to what looks to be an epic battle between good and evil (yes, on the grounds of the reform school) over -- yes, this is rich -- Luce.
But do we care? If we don't care about Luce, it's hard to care about the looming war. Which is right where the book cuts off, just in time for the sequel.
That being said, Twilight has helped spawn a horrible beast: an overabundance of paranormal romance written for young adults. And with overabundance comes lots of chaff in the wheat. Lauren Kate's novel Fallen might have an arresting cover in the same way that Twilight does, but sadly, I found it to be the best part of the book. The story follows 17-year-old Luce as she enters a reform school, Sword & Cross, where she's been sent because a friend recently died under mysterious circumstances when with her. Upon entering the weird world of Sword & Cross, Luce is immediately fascinated with one classmate, the golden-haired Daniel, and pursued by another classmate, the flirtatious Cam. Conflict between Daniel and Luce, Luce and Cam, and Cam and Daniel ensues.I wanted to like this book. I really did. But I just couldn't. One of my biggest pet peeves is female heroines who make stupid decisions. Bella did it -- ending up lost in a sketchy part of town, where she's beset by thugs only to be -- SURPRISE! -- rescued by Edward. Luce does the same. GIRLS ARE SMARTER THAN THIS. When Luce gets a note from Cam that a driver will pick her up and whisk her away from the school to meet him, she obediently hops into a car with a stranger to meet Cam -- someone she really barely knows. She ends up in a dive of a bar, and Cam proceeds to get into a brawl, something he seems to do with frequency for the fun of it. Charmer? More like reprobate. And then, of course -- SURPRISE! -- Daniel shows up to rescue her.
**SPOILERS**
Okay, yes, I do. It's because they're eternal lovers, constantly reuniting and being separated by a cruel twist of fate. Because **I'M NOT KIDDING ABOUT SPOILERS** Daniel's a fallen angel. When you finally get to the "big reveal," it's not a reveal at all, given the prologue and title of the book. It's more the explanation you fashioned by the end of Chapter 1 that just needed confirmation. Luce's constant pining for Daniel wouldn't be so bad if we actually cared for both of them as characters. But we don't. We just want the tension between them to be resolved so you can move on and figure out what the weird shadows Luce keeps seeing means. It all leads up to what looks to be an epic battle between good and evil (yes, on the grounds of the reform school) over -- yes, this is rich -- Luce.
But do we care? If we don't care about Luce, it's hard to care about the looming war. Which is right where the book cuts off, just in time for the sequel.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. When An came down for the weekend, she'd requested we have a crawfish boil. As we have a large extended family, my mom had planned for a quite a feast. But one by one relatives began to drop out for different reasons until we had a much smaller number of people coming than we'd expected, which
meant that even prodigious eaters only put a middling dent in what was cooked up. And crawfish is one of those foods that requires so much effort for so little payoff. Still, those suckers are so delicious, and we get to eat them so rarely, that they're worth the pain.Needless to say, there was a lot of cooked crawfish left over. Not that that was a bad thing. My parents sent Van and me home with three bins' worth of unpeeled crawfish. (The picture is to give you an idea of the size of those plastic containers, left, and the amount of meat we managed to pry out, right.) After a long evening spent peeling all of them in one miserable go, my hands already cut up and stinging thanks to the weekend's peeling, we emerged with about three cups' worth of prime crawfish meat that we put to gooood use. I threw that crawfish into some jambalaya mix, along with half a pound of sausage and it made for a mighty tasty meal that served us well the next couple of days.
Earlier this month An came home to Houston for the weekend. We don't get to see her often so we loaded up the car and spent a day at the beach together.
I just finished (finally!) one of those interminable projects that seemed to have no end; the more progress I made, the further away the end-point seemed to be. In March, after having completed a Longhorn baby blanket for an expectant friend, I moved on to tackle a lace paneled baby blanket for an expectant co-worker. Initially, I decided to do this blanket two-stranded on Size 10 needles using Bernat Softee baby yarn. This decision, along with my irrational but consistent refusal to knit a swatch to check gauge, led to a lot of wasted time. Yes, this is my method. Egregious, but proven. I'd bought two skeins of the yarn, which seemed like plenty at the time, but I soon realized that if I was going to continue on with this plan, that this blanket was going to be the end of me -- more for the likes of an NBA player than a newborn baby. I don't know how afghan knitters do it.
Doggedly, I continued on. By the time my yarn ran out, I'd produced maybe half a blanket. I blindly thought I could salvage it with a nice border around the curling stockinette stitch edges. This proved a disaster. Neither the yarn I'd
chosen for the I-cord border nor the needle size I'd chosen to do it with was doing me any favors. Rather, it was making the blanket bunch up awkwardly and worse yet, the curling wasn't going away, either. Curses! This led to my frogging the majority of what I'd accomplished. Frogging was not easy; this yarn likes to cling to itself and I'd somehow done the edges with a selvedge stitch that didn't simply come undone but rather required painstaking untangling. High blood pressure ensued. Nevertheless, particularly once the spring semester ended, I was able to devote a lot more attention to this baby blanket. For the do-over, I switched to a single strand of the yarn on Size 6 needles. I incorporated a garter stitch border into the pattern along the way so it'd whip the stockinette edges in to submission. Three months from my starting this entire project, I finally was able to find off and block it. The dimensions were also much more baby-like: about 39 x 39 inches.
I'm just so glad it came together and that I could give my friend and co-worker this blanket something I was proud of. This is a blanket (can you see the repeated two-leaf pattern???) I can see myself doing again. I have learned my lesson, though, on how to go about it feasibly (and right at the start) the next time I do.
My friend Aliciah came to visit me last week and I tried my best to make sure she had a fun, memorable time exploring the area. It was her first time in Texas. In the process, I also got a chance to visit some places and do some things for the first time myself. All in all, a great way to end my semi-time-off, since my first summer school class begins this week.
Aliciah arrived Wednesday afternoon and after dropping her stuff off at the apartment, we hit the Alamo Drafthouse for a good meal while watching Iron Man 2. (I was quite pleased with the sequel. I was worried it'd be a let-down, a common trait of sequelitis, but the team of Favreau/Downey Jr./Theroux did not disappoint. I felt it was consistently funny and action-filled and lived up to its predecessor. I even quite enjoyed Scarlet Johanssen's role and appreciated how restrained she played her bombshell character until her memorable, big action-reveal near the end.)
That evening, we made our way to the Congress Avenue Bridge in hopes of seeing the nightly departure of the 1.5 million bats that live underneath it. Unfortunately bat-viewing is an inexact science. My understanding is that they come out around dusk, which was around 8:45 p.m., so we got there around 8:15 p.m. The bats decided to take us for chumps and didn't emerge until around 9:15 p.m. when the light was gone. The absence of light meant they were nearly impossible to see; you could only spot slight blurs of movement. Disappointed, we consoled ourselves with some bubble tea at Tapioca House.
Thursday, we set out for some tubing on the Guadalupe River. It'd rained for much of Wednesday and a check of the tubing outfitter I'd planned on using reported that there'd been some reporting in nearby New Braunfels. The Canyon Lake portion that we planned to tube, however, was fine. The outfitter we used, River Sports Tubes, may have an atrociously designed website, but I appreciated the fact they kept it up to date with status updates on the river.
Our tubing trip turned out to be a super-mellow float down the Horseshoe Loop, which purportedly takes 1-1/2 to 2 hours to complete but took us probably an hour. The water, which was at a nice, brisk temperature, moved so slowly Aliciah and tended to paddle at times. I wouldn't mind going back again this summer for the longer floating routes.
Afterward, we pressed on to San Antonio for the afternoon, where we got some yummy Mexican food for lunch at Casa Rio and walked along the Riverwalk. This of course necessitated some refreshments -- for Aliciah, it was gelato, and for me, it was a snow cone. We followed this with a meander through the double feature of Ripley's Believe It Or Not and Louis Tussaud's Wax Works.
All this walking necessitated some relaxation, which we did for much of Friday at Krause Springs in Spicewood,
about 45 minutes west of Austin. My sister has pointed out I have kind of an obsession with swimming holes. (My favorite one so far is Balmorhea in West Texas.) They're just so idyllic and pastoral! For dinner, we dug into some barbecue at the original, cash-only Salt Lick in Driftwood, followed by some ice cream at Amy's.
The day wound down with a fascinating ghost tour of Austin's Warehouse District, which is defined as the area south of Sixth Street, that ended at the stories Driskill Hotel. Our tour guide, Maverick, really impressed upon me how riveting a good storyteller can be and sometimes it's worth it to pay money for a tour. Maverick's task wasn't easy, either -- this past weekend was the ROT (Republic of Texas) Rally, a ginormous motorcycle rally that brings bikers from all over to Austin, so Maverick was competing the some constant roaring of Harleys as he led us around. Tickets are $20/person, and he earned it. His stories hit on everything from ghosts to serial killers to plain (but fascinating) Austin history. He even took us into specific spots inside the Driskill with eerie phenomena and stories attached to them.
Finally, on Saturday, Aliciah and I explored the University of Texas campus. The high that day was 94, and being out in the sun was a little rough; we were constantly stopping for water breaks. Nevertheless, we got to check out the Texas Memorial Museum, get a tour of the Harry Ransom Center as well as the UT Tower. In particular, I'm so glad I got to do the tower tour, since it would have been a shame to have spent all this time at UT without having never been to the top of the 27-floor structure. The view up there is great, and the tour guides were well-spoken and more than willing to share additional stories about UT and its history. The sweltering heat could only be rectified with some good Japanese food, which we found at Izumi in Austin's West Lake area.
And before we knew it, it was Sunday and time for Aliciah to return home. After stopping by the Kolache Factory for a couple of the delicious breakfast pastries that I'd introduced her to earlier in the week, I dropped Aliciah off at the airport and headed to work.
Aliciah arrived Wednesday afternoon and after dropping her stuff off at the apartment, we hit the Alamo Drafthouse for a good meal while watching Iron Man 2. (I was quite pleased with the sequel. I was worried it'd be a let-down, a common trait of sequelitis, but the team of Favreau/Downey Jr./Theroux did not disappoint. I felt it was consistently funny and action-filled and lived up to its predecessor. I even quite enjoyed Scarlet Johanssen's role and appreciated how restrained she played her bombshell character until her memorable, big action-reveal near the end.)
That evening, we made our way to the Congress Avenue Bridge in hopes of seeing the nightly departure of the 1.5 million bats that live underneath it. Unfortunately bat-viewing is an inexact science. My understanding is that they come out around dusk, which was around 8:45 p.m., so we got there around 8:15 p.m. The bats decided to take us for chumps and didn't emerge until around 9:15 p.m. when the light was gone. The absence of light meant they were nearly impossible to see; you could only spot slight blurs of movement. Disappointed, we consoled ourselves with some bubble tea at Tapioca House.Thursday, we set out for some tubing on the Guadalupe River. It'd rained for much of Wednesday and a check of the tubing outfitter I'd planned on using reported that there'd been some reporting in nearby New Braunfels. The Canyon Lake portion that we planned to tube, however, was fine. The outfitter we used, River Sports Tubes, may have an atrociously designed website, but I appreciated the fact they kept it up to date with status updates on the river.
Our tubing trip turned out to be a super-mellow float down the Horseshoe Loop, which purportedly takes 1-1/2 to 2 hours to complete but took us probably an hour. The water, which was at a nice, brisk temperature, moved so slowly Aliciah and tended to paddle at times. I wouldn't mind going back again this summer for the longer floating routes.Afterward, we pressed on to San Antonio for the afternoon, where we got some yummy Mexican food for lunch at Casa Rio and walked along the Riverwalk. This of course necessitated some refreshments -- for Aliciah, it was gelato, and for me, it was a snow cone. We followed this with a meander through the double feature of Ripley's Believe It Or Not and Louis Tussaud's Wax Works.
All this walking necessitated some relaxation, which we did for much of Friday at Krause Springs in Spicewood,
about 45 minutes west of Austin. My sister has pointed out I have kind of an obsession with swimming holes. (My favorite one so far is Balmorhea in West Texas.) They're just so idyllic and pastoral! For dinner, we dug into some barbecue at the original, cash-only Salt Lick in Driftwood, followed by some ice cream at Amy's. The day wound down with a fascinating ghost tour of Austin's Warehouse District, which is defined as the area south of Sixth Street, that ended at the stories Driskill Hotel. Our tour guide, Maverick, really impressed upon me how riveting a good storyteller can be and sometimes it's worth it to pay money for a tour. Maverick's task wasn't easy, either -- this past weekend was the ROT (Republic of Texas) Rally, a ginormous motorcycle rally that brings bikers from all over to Austin, so Maverick was competing the some constant roaring of Harleys as he led us around. Tickets are $20/person, and he earned it. His stories hit on everything from ghosts to serial killers to plain (but fascinating) Austin history. He even took us into specific spots inside the Driskill with eerie phenomena and stories attached to them.
Finally, on Saturday, Aliciah and I explored the University of Texas campus. The high that day was 94, and being out in the sun was a little rough; we were constantly stopping for water breaks. Nevertheless, we got to check out the Texas Memorial Museum, get a tour of the Harry Ransom Center as well as the UT Tower. In particular, I'm so glad I got to do the tower tour, since it would have been a shame to have spent all this time at UT without having never been to the top of the 27-floor structure. The view up there is great, and the tour guides were well-spoken and more than willing to share additional stories about UT and its history. The sweltering heat could only be rectified with some good Japanese food, which we found at Izumi in Austin's West Lake area.
And before we knew it, it was Sunday and time for Aliciah to return home. After stopping by the Kolache Factory for a couple of the delicious breakfast pastries that I'd introduced her to earlier in the week, I dropped Aliciah off at the airport and headed to work.
As a fan of audiobooks, I have to say my relatively modest familiarity with the genre has led me to believe that Jim Dale's work with the Harry Potter series probably sets the bar when it comes to quality of audiobook narration. It's a tricky thing because it requires excellent content that the narrator than elevates with her or her spoken rendition. I've listened to six of the seven Harry Potter books on audiobook and Jim Dale is freaking A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. He has a different voice for every character -- not an easy thing at all, given the size of J.K. Rowling's universe -- and brings such warmth and life to the story.
(Reading begins around 2:02.)
Since then, I've wondered who I'll come across to take that mantle next. I've heard good things about Davina Porter's work with Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series but haven't had a chance to listen to them because I've read most of the books multiple times, and they're beasts to read (in a good way), let alone listen to.
On a recommendation, I tried the Young James Bond series, narrated by Charlie Higson, and found that while Higson's excellent, the content of first installment (Silverfin) just didn't pull me in.
But now I've found the Skulduggery Pleasant series.
It's written by Irish author Derek Landy about a 13-year-old Irish girl, Stephanie Edgley, who finds herself befriended by a hard-boiled detective named Skulduggery Pleasant. Skulduggery happens to be a wizard stuck in a living skeleton's body. Together they solve mysteries that mainly have to do with saving the world from evil. The first book in the series came out in 2007. Landy's released three more since then. I've listened to the first two on audiobook and they are so entertaining. Narrator Rupert Degas infuses the text with excitement, personality and great humor. (Listen to an excerpt from the first book here.) While Landy's world may not be as complex as that of the Harry Potter saga, it's equally dark, violent and magic-filled. And -- I'm not gonna lie -- the accents lend the story an additional wallop of charm. Most of the characters are Irish, but Degas does a mean East London accent as well as Texan accent. I'm actually not sure how accurate the Texan accent is, but the psychopathic killer who sports it comes across hilariously because of Landy's writing and Degas' interpretation.
My favorite character is Skulduggery Pleasant, who has an extremely dry wit, which he uses to self-deprecate his hefty ego. You can get an idea of the way Degas plays Skulduggery in this great "interview" on the Skulduggery Pleasant site. That's the same voice that Skulduggery has in the audiobooks. I have no idea if the series has been picked up for a movie yet but I've been wracking my brain trying to mentally cast who might play Skulduggery. So far the best I could come up with is Daniel Craig (yes, of James Bond fame) because he can pull off a persona that's debonair and action-oriented and yet not afraid of humor at his own expense. (See his excellent movie, Layer Cake.)
That being said, I quite like Stephanie's character as well because she's no-nonsense and not afraid to take Skulduggery to task. I don't know enough 13-year-old actresses from across the pond, so I'd have no idea who I'd cast for her. Whatever the case, I'm really looking forward to enjoying installments out of this series.
Since then, I've wondered who I'll come across to take that mantle next. I've heard good things about Davina Porter's work with Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series but haven't had a chance to listen to them because I've read most of the books multiple times, and they're beasts to read (in a good way), let alone listen to.
On a recommendation, I tried the Young James Bond series, narrated by Charlie Higson, and found that while Higson's excellent, the content of first installment (Silverfin) just didn't pull me in. But now I've found the Skulduggery Pleasant series.
It's written by Irish author Derek Landy about a 13-year-old Irish girl, Stephanie Edgley, who finds herself befriended by a hard-boiled detective named Skulduggery Pleasant. Skulduggery happens to be a wizard stuck in a living skeleton's body. Together they solve mysteries that mainly have to do with saving the world from evil. The first book in the series came out in 2007. Landy's released three more since then. I've listened to the first two on audiobook and they are so entertaining. Narrator Rupert Degas infuses the text with excitement, personality and great humor. (Listen to an excerpt from the first book here.) While Landy's world may not be as complex as that of the Harry Potter saga, it's equally dark, violent and magic-filled. And -- I'm not gonna lie -- the accents lend the story an additional wallop of charm. Most of the characters are Irish, but Degas does a mean East London accent as well as Texan accent. I'm actually not sure how accurate the Texan accent is, but the psychopathic killer who sports it comes across hilariously because of Landy's writing and Degas' interpretation.
My favorite character is Skulduggery Pleasant, who has an extremely dry wit, which he uses to self-deprecate his hefty ego. You can get an idea of the way Degas plays Skulduggery in this great "interview" on the Skulduggery Pleasant site. That's the same voice that Skulduggery has in the audiobooks. I have no idea if the series has been picked up for a movie yet but I've been wracking my brain trying to mentally cast who might play Skulduggery. So far the best I could come up with is Daniel Craig (yes, of James Bond fame) because he can pull off a persona that's debonair and action-oriented and yet not afraid of humor at his own expense. (See his excellent movie, Layer Cake.)That being said, I quite like Stephanie's character as well because she's no-nonsense and not afraid to take Skulduggery to task. I don't know enough 13-year-old actresses from across the pond, so I'd have no idea who I'd cast for her. Whatever the case, I'm really looking forward to enjoying installments out of this series.
Last month, Vannie and I got to explore the small town of Wimberley, population 5,400. It's about 40 miles southwest of Austin. At the time, bluebonnets were busting out all over the place, so I wrongly assumed there'd be plenty on the way there. WRONG! The only place we saw bluebonnets were in brief, rare smatterings in small pockets on the side of the road. There were a few in front of the visitor's center, but that felt kind of like cheating.
Nevertheless, we had a lovely outing out there, climbing up the 200 steps to Old Baldy, eating lunch at Marco's Italian Restaurant (we'd originally wanted to try the Wimberley Cafe, but they wouldn't give us the time of day, so we walked out), and visiting the wonderful eccentric Old Oaks Ranch, which included a sculpture garden and yarn shop.
After stopping for a slushee at a Sonic (all road trips should end with one!) in Dripping Springs, we decided to hit St. Edwards University once back in Austin to get the obligatory bluebonnet shots since we'd not found any along the way to Wimberley. I don't know where I'll be this next year, so I wanted to get them while the going was still good. St. Edwards proved to be a perfect setting, with rolling fields of them inside the campus in front of its main building, safely and quietly tucked away from rushing traffic.
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