One Saturday when Chris and I were on our way home from the town dump, he turned on the car radio.
Chris and I don’t have similar taste in music at all. I’m more indie/folk obscure band, while Chris leans more toward noisy man Seattle rock. As a matter of fact, since I’ve known him, I’ve actually become less interested in radio and music. It’s not that he disapproves; he’s always been willing to accompany me to any concert, even when he hasn’t heard of the band. (As he remarked once, dourly, “Sometimes it’s better to be surprised.”)
But because our musical tastes don’t overlap, I just haven’t had as much time as I used to have to devote to music. So usually when we’re in the car together, we either listen to comedy CDs or Chris lets me station surf.
This time when Chris turned on the radio, he heard a song he liked and immediately began singing. Unlike me, Chris actually knows the lyrics to songs.
“Well I had a million dollars but I’d spend it all, if I could find that heina and that sancho that she’d found, well I’d pop a cap in sancho and I’d slap her down…” he warbled.
I interrupted. “What kind of song is this? What the hell–Is this about domestic abuse?”
Chris kept singing. He nodded at me, which I interpreted as meaning I could keep talking but that he wasn’t available to respond just yet.
“Why’s he beating up women?” I demanded.
Chris came to a break. “It’s about how his girlfriend cheats on him with his friend,” he explained quickly.
He kept singing. “Tell sanchito that if he knows what’s good for him, he best go run and hide, Daddy’s got a new .45, and I won’t think twice, to stick that barrel straight down sancho’s throat, believe me when I say that I got something for his punk-ass…”
“Good lord,” I said. “So he just shoots his friend?!?”
The song ended. “Good song,” Chris remarked approvingly. “Sublime really was a great band.”
Chris punched a few of my preset radio channels, landing on…yes, another Sublime song.
“Another one!” he yelled. He broke into song.
“I don’t cry when my dog runs away, I don’t get angry at the bills I have to pay, I don’t get angry when my Mom smokes pot…”
“That’s because he has no friends left,” I said sourly.
by Lois McMaster Bujold
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Miles graduates from the Barrayaran Imperial Military Academy, and receives his first assignment, which quickly spirals off, in that Vorkosigan way, into galactic war.
Another terrific book. These books cheer me up, even when, say, I come home to 15 flies buzzing around my kitchen.
by Lois McMaster Bujold
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Leo Graf, Engineer, arrives on the Cay Habitat to teach quaddies - humans with an extra set of arms where their legs should be - and finds himself engineering their escape.
This is a cute book, and a pre-pre-precursor to the Miles Vorkosigan books. I found this a little light in plot and the predictable romantic ending a bit grating, though. And a picture of the quaddies would help; I have a hard time imagining what they’d look like.
by Judith Viorst, illustrated by Ray Cruz
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Alexander has a bad day.
I have no idea why I bought this book. Usually I don’t buy picture books unless I’ve already read and enjoyed them. I picked this one up recently, thinking it might cheer me up after my own terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, but boy, this is a depressing story.
The summary of the story in the inner flap of the book is actually far more interesting than the actual story. Alexander has a bad day. And then he goes to sleep. Ho hum. I don’t know why this is so popular, but I never really enjoyed picture books as a child, and as an adult, I only like funny ones.
by Donald E. Westlake
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Dortmunder and his friends embark on a surefire robbery, complicated by their neighborhood bar becoming the target of mobsters.
Another amusing mystery featuring the pessimistic Dortmunder and his hapless cronies. These mysteries involve no blood or deaths, but lots of laughs. That being said, the very last page was kind of weird and I think I might have missed something. But if I had more money, the Dortmunder series would be the next ones I collect.
by Lois McMaster Bujold
ONE LINE SUMMARY: After Miles Vorkosigan fails the Barrayaran Imperial Military Service exam, he visits his grandmother on Beta Colony and finds himself in space and the owner of the Dendarii Mercenaries.
I’d forgotten how terrific these books are! This is funny and well-written, and the plot swoops you along. Miles is one of the few characters I’ve “met” who I wish I could meet in real life.
I was in the middle of a pleasant, albeit bland, dream featuring the characters from Veronica Mars, when I was jolted awake by the sound of Mina barking.
Mina had already woken us up 2 hours earlier, when Chris had taken her and the perplexed but willing boys outside. Mina had pooped, and we had hoped that would be the end of it.
One minute I was watching Wallace try to find a job, and the next minute Chris was springing up from bed.
“It’s a fire!” he yelled, and dashed downstairs.
Now that I think about it, in broad daylight, it occurs to me to wonder why he abandoned me to my fate if there was indeed a fire. But at the time, half-groggy with sleep, my main thought was, “How did he smell the smoke?”
Chris has a terrible and almost nonexistent sense of smell, and rarely does he smell something I can’t. I sniffed the air experimentally. I didn’t detect any smoke, but my nose was all blocked up.
I heard Chris open the door to the dog room. I got out of bed and staggered downstairs. Should I be collecting our valuables? Helping him with the dogs? Chris sounded quite calm in the dog room. As a matter of fact, he almost sounded like…he was giving them treats.
I decided to go to the bathroom while I waited for Chris to emerge. I heard him shutting down my computer, and I wondered wildly if my computer was the cause of the smoke. Then I looked at the smoke alarm on the ceiling between the bathroom and the dog room. It was suspiciously silent.
Chris came out of the dog room, carefully shutting the door behind him. I looked up from the toilet seat and asked plaintively, “Is there a fire or not?”
Chris looked embarrassed. “I guess you didn’t hear me. I was mumbling to myself when I came down the stairs that the smoke alarms would have gone off if there’d been a fire.”
“Why did you shut off my computer?”
“I thought the noise might be bothering the dogs.”
I puzzled over this. Finally, I asked, “So why did you think there was a fire? Were you having a dream?”
“I thought I saw smoke along the roof line.”
“You mean a roof in your dream?”
“No, no, I mean the ceiling…when I got up, my eyes were all scrunched and I thought I saw smoke around the ceiling.”
Chris washed his hands.
“I guess it was just smoke boogers in my eyes,” he said, and we went back to bed.
by Lois McMaster Bujold
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Cordelia Naismith from Beta Colony and Aral Vorkosigan from Barrayar fall in love and become parents while dealing with political intrigue and bloody murders.
Well, you try summing this up in one sentence! This book contains Shards of Honor and Barrayar. I decided to re-read the entire series, and thoroughly enjoyed this, but am now sad because I just read on the author’s website that she doesn’t know “when or if” she will write another Vorkosigan story. :(
by Gail Carson Levine
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Princess Addie must overcome her timidity to search for a cure to the disease that has struck her sister, Princess Meryl.
This book was okay. Nothing terrible about it, but nothing to make me seek out the rest of the author’s books. The characters never felt real and were a little annoying.
by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Temple Grandin, who is autistic, writes about being able to better understand animals through autism.
This took a long time (”long” being about two weeks) for me to get through. Despite all the chapters and subchapter headings, I found this book to be poorly organized, and a strange mix of scientific studies and “evidence” that consisted of one person or animal the author knows.
There are some interesting ideas and stories in this book, but it took me a lot of forced focusing and slogging through confusing bits before I got to them.
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