We had gaming tonight, so I thought I’d take Chanti for a nice long walk today to wear her out. We walked about 4 miles, plus our mile-long walk this morning. She was pooped. :) By about two miles into the walk she’d sort of lost interest in trying to snuffle things and stuff and was just sort of going along doggedly. (Doggedly! Ahahahah! I’m so funny! o.o)
Between walking and gaming I finally took some time to read Robert Buettner’s coming-of-age war novel ORPHANAGE. ORPHANAGE was one of the five finalists in the 2002 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Colorado Gold Conference the year I entered and finaled with MANIFEST DESTINY. I read about five pages of ORPHANAGE at the conference–five pages that ended up being the second chapter of the book–and really truly thought it deserved to win. I knew when I read it that it would be published, and I really looked forward to seeing it in print. I’ve had it since October, and as I read it this evening I started thinking I was going to be awfully annoyed if people showed up for gaming before I had a chance to finish it, because I really didn’t want to put it down. :) (Fortunately, I finished before gaming.)
I enjoyed the book very much. I like military science fiction and this is very much in the vein of STARSHIP TROOPERS and THE FOREVER WAR. I thought it was tonally very much like those books, with a good story and characters, particularly the lead, Jason Wander, that I liked enough to hope to see more of in another book. Yeah. Really satisfying to lil’ ol’ me.
I didn’t bleach my hair today, btw. I realized after a while that what I was really unhappy with was not my hair, but rather the fact that I haven’t lost any weight this month, and as Jai said, unless I melt it and have to shave my head and lose a couple pounds that way, bleaching it probably isn’t going to help. :)
So what’d I do tonight? Ate a bunch of potato chips. Not because I was hungry, but because people were munching on things and I wanted to munch on things too. Not until after I’d eaten a bunch of potato chips did it occur to me that it would have been better to eat an apple. *sigh* Perhaps next week I’ll be clever enough to think of the apple early on.
miles to Rauros Falls: 96.5
LOL. Doesn’t it just figure? I do that re: the snacking, too.
Plus, I’ve noticed that no matter how short you cut your hair, it never helps you loose weight. And I’ve got a lot of hair. Really thick. And still! Weird. Is hair just weightless once it’s released from your head? *grin*
Hang in there. It’ll come off!
LOL. Doesn’t it just figure? I do that re: the snacking, too.
Plus, I’ve noticed that no matter how short you cut your hair, it never helps you loose weight. And I’ve got a lot of hair. Really thick. And still! Weird. Is hair just weightless once it’s released from your head? *grin*
Hang in there. It’ll come off!
I’m glad you liked it; every book has a target audience.
I’m not the target audience for a book like ORPHANAGE; I was much more *meh* about how many plot devices one can take directly from Heinlein and still have it be homage and not something more hackneyed.
I would, however, recommend _Old Man’s War_, if you liked Orphanage.