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Recent reading
Sep. 15th, 2006 08:38 pmBooks
Smoke and Ashes, by Tanya Huff, short review posted on Amazon.com - third book in a series, category best described as "humorous (but not comedy) urban vampire fantasy."
A Play of Knaves by Margaret Frazer, third in her spinoff series about actor Joliffe, sometime friend and assistant to Sister Frevisse in Frazer's earlier series. I thought I had read that the person who used the pen name Margaret Frazer had died, but either I'm wrong, or they've found someone reasonably competent to take over the franchise. Since the author who was Frazer was also, supposedly, Monica Ferris, who write the needlework shop series, and there's another volume out in that series also, which I haven't seen yet, perhaps the same person is still alive. (From what I had gathered before, she was also Mary Monica Pulver, who wrote a short series about a cop who was in the SCA, in the late 80's. Who knows whether they really all were one person, or still were when one of them died, if any of them have? I'm not quite curious enough to go research the matter, only curious enough to check the quality of the next books, if any, in the series.)
A murder mystery I've already forgotten, from the library, which doesn't say much for it, does it? I cannot remember who or why or what, just that there was yet another murder mystery somewhere in there, and I read it, and I forgot it and I returned it to the library.
Hardscrabble Road by Jane Haddam, latest in her Gregor Demarkian series. The series has changed over the years - Father Tibor has become less interesting than he was, only a cardboard foil for Gregor, but I nonetheless continue to find the series interesting and reasonably adequately written. I haven't decided whether to write a full review of it yet. Of some possible interest to my usual flist: the gnomic utterances at the beginning of each section include quotes from Terry Pratchett - not normally the first author that that you'd pick in a word association game after Haddam's name came up.
Magazines
The October issue of Rider includes a review of Piaggio's new 3-wheel scooter - with 2 wheels in front, one in the rear. It looks very, very strange when it's leaning in a curve.
I had already read about the newly approved fully implantable "permanent" artificial heart from one of the heart failure web sites I regularly get news off of; this week, Time had it in their "Numbers" column, as in:
$250,000 for 5.2 months, of which I'll bet every single day was spent in a hospital?!?!?!? Not me, hon. If I get to that point, NO ARTIFICIAL HEARTS, you hear me? I am NOT interested in 5.2 months of that kind of "life."
Consumer Reports' October issue tests ultra-performance and luxury sports cars, with the Porsche 911 Carrera coming in with the top stats, although the price means they didn't pick it as a Best Buy. For about $87,000, you get a 3.8 liter engine that can do 0-60 in only 4.4 seconds and the quarter mile in 12.9 seconds; breaking from 60 mph is only 113 feet, and it gets 20 mpg over all. It does sound like fun, but then, for less than $10,000, my 0.65 liter engine gives me 0-60 in about 5.5 seconds - faster than half of the cars tested in the October category - and get 58 mpg overall; any of the larger bikes (like, say, the 1.2 liter engines) will do better time than the Porsche, with most of the 1100-1200 cc bikes getting 0-60 in under 4 seconds. I don't offhand have the braking distance stats for my bike, but I know it's in the moderate 2 digits - 60-something feet, I think.
More useful to most of CR's readers, and certainly interesting to read only a couple of days after I did my list of supermarkets, is their article rating about 50 supermarket chains. Much depends on what one is looking for, of course; as the cartoon posted on the bulletin board of almost every employee break room in the USA says, "Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two." - the winners for low prices are not the ones with the best variety of merchandise or the best service. Nonetheless, I think the ratings contain some details that would be interesting to people who go to the same market all the time, because there are some unexpected smaller regional chains out there that might well be worth a trip out of your usual rut.
Smoke and Ashes, by Tanya Huff, short review posted on Amazon.com - third book in a series, category best described as "humorous (but not comedy) urban vampire fantasy."
A Play of Knaves by Margaret Frazer, third in her spinoff series about actor Joliffe, sometime friend and assistant to Sister Frevisse in Frazer's earlier series. I thought I had read that the person who used the pen name Margaret Frazer had died, but either I'm wrong, or they've found someone reasonably competent to take over the franchise. Since the author who was Frazer was also, supposedly, Monica Ferris, who write the needlework shop series, and there's another volume out in that series also, which I haven't seen yet, perhaps the same person is still alive. (From what I had gathered before, she was also Mary Monica Pulver, who wrote a short series about a cop who was in the SCA, in the late 80's. Who knows whether they really all were one person, or still were when one of them died, if any of them have? I'm not quite curious enough to go research the matter, only curious enough to check the quality of the next books, if any, in the series.)
A murder mystery I've already forgotten, from the library, which doesn't say much for it, does it? I cannot remember who or why or what, just that there was yet another murder mystery somewhere in there, and I read it, and I forgot it and I returned it to the library.
Hardscrabble Road by Jane Haddam, latest in her Gregor Demarkian series. The series has changed over the years - Father Tibor has become less interesting than he was, only a cardboard foil for Gregor, but I nonetheless continue to find the series interesting and reasonably adequately written. I haven't decided whether to write a full review of it yet. Of some possible interest to my usual flist: the gnomic utterances at the beginning of each section include quotes from Terry Pratchett - not normally the first author that that you'd pick in a word association game after Haddam's name came up.
Magazines
The October issue of Rider includes a review of Piaggio's new 3-wheel scooter - with 2 wheels in front, one in the rear. It looks very, very strange when it's leaning in a curve.
I had already read about the newly approved fully implantable "permanent" artificial heart from one of the heart failure web sites I regularly get news off of; this week, Time had it in their "Numbers" column, as in:
$250,000 Cost of a fully implantable artificial heart approved last week by the FDA for use in up to 4,000 people with severe congestive heart failure.
2 lbs. Weight of the device, which makes it an option only for men and large women.
5.2 Average number of months the first 12 recipients survived with the device.
$250,000 for 5.2 months, of which I'll bet every single day was spent in a hospital?!?!?!? Not me, hon. If I get to that point, NO ARTIFICIAL HEARTS, you hear me? I am NOT interested in 5.2 months of that kind of "life."
Consumer Reports' October issue tests ultra-performance and luxury sports cars, with the Porsche 911 Carrera coming in with the top stats, although the price means they didn't pick it as a Best Buy. For about $87,000, you get a 3.8 liter engine that can do 0-60 in only 4.4 seconds and the quarter mile in 12.9 seconds; breaking from 60 mph is only 113 feet, and it gets 20 mpg over all. It does sound like fun, but then, for less than $10,000, my 0.65 liter engine gives me 0-60 in about 5.5 seconds - faster than half of the cars tested in the October category - and get 58 mpg overall; any of the larger bikes (like, say, the 1.2 liter engines) will do better time than the Porsche, with most of the 1100-1200 cc bikes getting 0-60 in under 4 seconds. I don't offhand have the braking distance stats for my bike, but I know it's in the moderate 2 digits - 60-something feet, I think.
More useful to most of CR's readers, and certainly interesting to read only a couple of days after I did my list of supermarkets, is their article rating about 50 supermarket chains. Much depends on what one is looking for, of course; as the cartoon posted on the bulletin board of almost every employee break room in the USA says, "Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two." - the winners for low prices are not the ones with the best variety of merchandise or the best service. Nonetheless, I think the ratings contain some details that would be interesting to people who go to the same market all the time, because there are some unexpected smaller regional chains out there that might well be worth a trip out of your usual rut.
