julieland

A couple of years ago I decided that I’d give any novel 50 pages to grab me, and if I’m not hooked by then I can give it up. For audio, I suppose the equivalent is one hour of listening. One of the reasons I’m switching from LibraryThing to GoodReads is that GR let me create a new shelf - Can’t Finish. I want to keep track of those books that I have abandoned, and why.

Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult

My review
rating: 1 of 5 stars
I have read several Jodi Picoult books, and each one gives me the increasing sense of emotional manipulation. I listened to the first hour of this one, and can’t go any farther, because I haven’t seen any redeeming qualities in the two main characters, and she’s laid the foreshadowing on so heavily that we know they do terrible things. I don’t want to be jerked around for another fifteen hours of listening!!

View all my reviews.

It was late, I was tired, and I couldn’t stop looking at the thumb. He kept gesturing with it, and it reminded me of the pen that Dole keeps in his deformed hand.

Isn’t it a little strange-looking? It seems as long as any of his fingers, and when he turns it, it seems to have several knuckles. The more I stared at it, the weirder it looked. He did waggle it a lot. I could find only one other mention of it on the interweb today.

Most people didn’t notice it, because if you were watching a major network like NBC, their ribbon covered the bottom fifth of the screen. But on PBS and CSPAN, it was thumb city.

Is it disrespectful to wonder if he was hung up by his thumbs in ‘Nam? Or is that what an old arthritic thumb usually looks like?

I just realized I haven’t posted here in a month - probably because it’s become way too easy to post to Facebook from my usual sources. There I can repost a news item, and I don’t even have to come up with my own words to accompany it! Most of the time there is even a picture already attached. Now if I can only figure out how to feed one to the other . . .

Most recently, I pointed people toward Stephen Colbert’s Red Lending Menace - “It is our patriotic duty to go to the local libraries, check out all the books we can, and never return them.”

The birthday goodies just keep coming! (Thanks, Mom)

the first thing I did was download Rio and Girls on Film and played them on EXPERT

heh heh

It’s nice to see this recipe again! I recognized it immediately, and one glance at the author told me why - I’ve used Martha Rose Shulman’s Mediterranean Light cookbook for a long, long time. I have been making this salad for nearly twenty years! Navy beans work just fine, and I use olive oil in place of the yogurt.

Got an email from Mel Watt (my congressman) yesterday,

Dear 12^th District Constituent:
Election laws prohibit Congressmen from sending out unsolicited mailings and newsletters during the 90 days preceding an election (August 5 - November 4).

This news filled me with hope for the future! Ninety days until we start turning this country around . . .

Art students painted this square in Weilheim, Germany to replicate the painting that Kandinsky did of the square 99 years ago. Very cool! Read more about it here, on Yahoo

aerial view of the project

the original painting

It seems that everything I have watched in the week or so has featured an actor from the British Isles playing an American:

• Eddie Izzard AND Minnie Driver in “The Riches” - I’d seen plenty of ads for this show and assumed it was set in England or Ireland. Much to my surprise, it’s set in Louisiana.
• Natascha McElhone in “Californication” - she always seems to play an American
• Robert Pattinson in the Twilight previews
• James McAvoy AND Richard E Grant in Penelope
• Jack Davenport in “Swingtown”