The closer we get to November, the more political commercials we get. I heard one on the radio today for Sean Mahoney, running for congress.

Now, living where we are, it’s extremely common for us to get ads for other states — the station I was listening to covers VT, ME, NH, MA. Of course, the commercial didn’t say where the douchebag they were talking about was running for Congress, but as it turns out it’s NH. The commercial also never mentioned the word “Republican”, though that was telegraphed clearly enough. Why? Because the entire commercial was him going on and on about how awesome the new anti-Mexican Arizona law is and how he’ll protect us (lily white NH) from the invading hordes of Mexicans planning to race up from “the border” and, I dunno, rape and pillage or something.

I love how he called it “the border” and it was clear he meant the one down south, never once commenting on the fact that NH does actually have an international border of its own. But, you know, Canadians. No one cares about them.

It was one of the more offensive political ads I’ve heard recently. I’m sad that he’s not running in my district so I can vote against him! Jackass. Instead I probably get to vote against Charles Bass, a pro-choice Republican more liberal than half of the Democrats in Congress. Gah.

J says “I should find the cheapest place to live in the us and move there.”
J says “See how long it takes to be miserable. :)”
J says “Somehow Nashua is on this list I found…”
J says “Like, first on the list.”
J says “Well, then, that was the easiest plan I ever put into action! :)”

The Plot
Jeff Deck, feeling motivated by his recent college reunion to get out and do something, embarks on a months long journey across the country to correct ‘typos’: errors in punctuation, spelling and grammatical style which plague our signs, pamphlets and menus. The road trip ends up taking a turn he never saw coming.

My Thoughts
When you graduate from a college like the one I did, you know you’re expected to do great things. World-changing, exciting, inspiring things. This expectation is constantly reinforced by the glossy alumnae magazine sent to you several times a year featuring stories about the latest alumna astronaut, or author, or Secretary of State. At some point, you start to realize that most of the people being described as doing all this cool and exciting stuff are either your age or younger. That’s when the feelings of inadequacy really hit hard, and you question whether or not you’re really making the most out of your life.

So when the author arrives at his Dartmouth college reunion to find himself surrounded by budding surgeons and newly minted PhDs and millions of lawyers and non-profit do-gooders, I can completely understand his frame of mind when he looked at his own life and felt he had gone off course somewhere.

But what impressed me most was not so much that he then proceeded to come up with a plan by which he might measure up to those he considered to be doing more worthwhile things with their lives, but that he actually followed through with it. He saved his money, quit his job, and embarked on a three month long road trip around the country… correcting ‘typos’.

Now, this is an idea which, probably, had I ever had it, I would have dismissed as not grand enough. And really, deep down, I don’t think it’s very grand. But it’s interesting. It has a whimsy. It’s not without potential.

Is it an idea that can sustain a blog? Heck yeah. In fact, it seems ideally suited to blog form, where each entry can be a tale of an error corrected with pictures provided. Is it an idea that can sustain a book? Even after reading, I’m not so sure about that. In fact, quite a lot of the actual error correction was glossed over for the purposes of the narrative — during the trip upwards of 400 ‘typos’ were corrected, but we only hear details of a few dozen. Instead, there are lots of details about the road trip itself, little anecdotes (such as forgetting the tent poles) and lots of internal philosophizing on Deck’s part as he attempts to figure out why correcting these errors is worthwhile, and if it’s even morally right to try and do so.

I’m more tolerant of his metaphysical meanderings than I would be if I didn’t identify with him so strongly. The conclusions he reaches make sense to me. But I think the book would have been stronger had its direction been more clear. Is this a fun road-trip-slash-blog-project turned into a book, or is it a thoughtful opinion piece on how clarity in communication is at risk due to ignorance of spelling and grammar? It’s trying to be both and the end result is that both halves are weakened. There’s not enough anecdotal fun to support a whole book, and the opinion piece doesn’t take on the strength of a full blown essay with a proper amount of supporting evidence.

Another weak spot, for me, was the writing itself. Almost as soon as I began to read this book I had a sinking feeling. The writing was, in a word, uneven: flowing nicely along and then, abruptly, veering left into flower-ville there to get lost in its own cleverness. But I read on, because I’d committed to reading the book, and because in spite of our language incompatibility, I was enjoying the tale being told. I’d like to say the language problems improved or that it grew on me, but that would be a lie. The writing was, as I said, uneven. It never quite went over the cliff into unreadability, but it skirted the edge a few times before pulling back.

But in the end, what won me over was Deck himself (and his companions in what turned out to be literal crime). As mentioned before, I can really truly understand what motivated him to do this. And as I read, more interesting tidbits emerged to make the book even more engaging: his childhood in my own southern NH, the random shout-outs to places I’ve been (Molly’s) and local papers (Nashua Telegraph), and even down into Somerville where he was living at the time of the book (where I went to grad school). So though the book had many issues, on the whole I enjoyed reading it, and I’ll be interested to see if anything more comes of TEAL.

In Short
Though this isn’t the greatest tale ever told, the authors are relatable and the concept has a unique feel. For me, the book was made more interesting by the appearence of familiar places and institutions and elevated to likeability not by the writing, the style of which I did not 100% approve, but by the authors themselves, with whom I felt I had a lot in common.

The Plot
Zoey Zinevitch is an almost eleven year-old fifth grader who suffers from the condition of being not cool. She isn’t quite sure why, as she also isn’t entirely sure what makes one cool in the first place — she just knows that whatever it is, she doesn’t have it. But she has 186 days left to become cool before the 6th grade, or she knows she’ll never manage it in her life.

My Thoughts
I hadn’t read the description of this book very well before I read it, so I was a bit surprised by the young age of the protagonist. Somehow I had been expecting her to be 13ish, so 10 was a shock. After thinking about it, though, I think 10 was the right choice; solidly pre-pubescent, the author avoids having to deal much with body issues and hormones, and can keep the narrative focused without adding extra complications.

The story takes the form of a sort of diary/journal created by the main character Zoey. Zoey feels that she is not cool, but would like to become so, and that this needs to happen before the start of sixth grade or else she’ll be permanently slotted into her current classification in the school’s social structure. (Which is probably true.) She has only the vaguest of ideas as to how this might be accomplished, however, and seems to rest most of her hopes on just magically waking up one day and finding she’s been transformed.

And this is fine by me. Because in my experience, in most stories that involve girls trying to transform themselves, the results are one or more of the following: their best friend is hurt or alienated because they’re no longer okay to associate with, they start behaving in a fashion that makes them completely miserable, they become ‘friends’ with people who really don’t care about them at all, or they make a big giant fool of themselves in the end. Zoey avoids all of these pitfalls; there were no parts of the book that were agony to get through because I wanted to strangle someone. Instead, most of the incidents are just day to day things where the reader gets to know Zoey being herself.

The incident that stuck most with me was where Zoey and Venus find themselves sitting at the Bashleys’ table and end up in a discussion about their long-term science project. During the course of the conversation, Zoey and Venus misread the situation and begin to expound upon their genuine enthusiasm for frogs. The Bashleys, arbiters of cool who seemed perhaps mildly interested beforehand, are disgusted, and Zoey and Venus are taken off guard by this abrupt rejection. Their confusion was so realistic, and I almost wished that the book would have focused more on this subject: even at over 30, I’m still not sure how the cool kids became ‘cool’ and why they were the ones who got to determine what was a popular thing to do and what wasn’t. But somehow they were, and everyone knew it.

The book seems fairly complete in and of itself, which is a big change from what I’ve been reading lately which is almost all series. I would read a Zoey sequel, but I’m not sure there needs to be one.

In Short
The quest of teens and tweens in literature to make themselves popular or their constant angsting over dates to the prom never fails to offend me, because I personally view both of those goals as a waste of anyone’s time or energy. Zoey does not quite fall into that trap, because I don’t get the impression that her vision of ‘cool’ is automatically equal to ‘popular’, nor does she seem interested in compromising herself in some way to achieve it. Though some of the incidents in the book are unlikely enough to be absurd, overall this is an excellent and not ridiculously preachy story about learning to appreciate your own quirks. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this to any elementary school aged kid.

The Plot
Theodosia Throckmorton spends most of her days at London’s Museum of Legends and Antiquities, where her father is the head curator. In her time there, she’s discovered she has a talent which allows her to see the curses placed on the artifacts that arrive at the museum. Safely dispelling these threats consumes much of her time. When her mother returns from Egypt with an exceedingly curse laden shipment of newly discovered Egyptian items she finds out there are quite a few people with interest in these ancient magics and not all of them are nice.

My Thoughts
Though this series may have been mentioned to me before, I truly discovered it for the first time while standing in line at the bookstore vendor at the NH Library Association conference in May. There it was, lying on the table, looking very much like an adventure book with a female lead. Further perusal of the table revealed it wasn’t just a book, but a series, and unfortunately book 1 was not there for sale. Impulse buy thwarted!

The first book, Serpents of Chaos, was shortly acquired. The book introduces Theodosia Throckmorton, an intelligent girl with an unusual magical gift: not only can she sense and see curses that have been placed on people and objects, but she’s quite adept at figuring out how to remove them, as well. This is fortunate, because her father is the head curator at the Museum of Legends and Antiquities and her mother is an archaeologist. As a result, she finds herself constantly surrounded by objects infested with ancient Egyptian magic. Mostly hostile. And her parents haven’t the slightest idea.

During the course of the book, Theodosia finds that she isn’t the only person aware of the magical properties of these objects. We’re introduced to two warring factions — the evil Serpents of Chaos, and the seemingly good Brotherhood of the Chosen Keepers. I say seemingly because I just feel like in the end they’ll turn out to be evil too, or at least have an agenda that doesn’t quite mesh with hers.

In any case, the book itself was fine. The plot ended up a bit thin, mainly because of the need to introduce all of the characters — quite a bit of time was spent going back and forth between locations and providing information about what one expects will be the main settings of the series. Understandable, though perhaps not as seamlessly done as it could have been. And the settings themselves are marvelous; I love London, and the author did evoke a good feel for it as Theodosia walks (or is otherwise transported) from place to place.

Unfortunately, I didn’t come away with nearly as much engagement with the characters. The villains are as yet cardboard, and I still harbor too many suspicions of the Good Guy adults to feel safe to have any attachment to them. Theodosia’s two child companions, Sticky Will (Street Urchin and Thief with a Heart of Gold) and her brother Henry (Pesty Brother and Schoolboy) are not developed enough to transcend their stereotypical backgrounds. Mr. and Mrs. Throckmorton do not fare much better, being very uneven — they seem almost aggressively uninterested in anything Theo has to say to the point where it strains credulity; one would expect that most academics would at least be mildly interested in a child of their own who seemed so interested in their work. Theo’s grandmother showed some hints of promise, but she was not on camera enough to be certain. So that leaves Theo herself as the only person to receive enough depth to emerge from this book as a round character, one with motivations and interests which the reader has explored in detail. And perhaps that is enough, for a first book, but I rather wish it had been at least two.

On the other hand, the book was well-paced, and in spite of the constant scene shifts, the book manages to hang together as a whole, rather than feeling like several separate adventures shoved together. And it’s good enough for me to check out the second book, which should provide me with enough data to decide if I’m ultimately going to like the whole series or not.

In Short
Theodosia is interesting, smart and determined. It’s a shame that she couldn’t have a female child companion (by the end of the book it’s looking like her primary assistants will be two male children), or that the other female characters weren’t a bit more memorable or well developed, but one can’t have everything. This book mainly serves to set up what one assumes will be the central conflict of the series going forward and to introduce characters, but is not bad for all that. The idea is a good one and the pre-WWI British setting is a nice departure. This series has a good amount of potential to which it will hopefully live up.

Hikaru no Go
I caught up with this series after having not read it for a couple of years. The volumes are just coming out that slowly. I’ll reread it through again once the final few volumes are out — hopefully soon. It remains excellent. Go is a very complicated game, but it’s still a board game, and I’m still impressed at how dynamic the artwork and the story make it feel.

Fruits Basket
I started this series when it first came out, then started hoarding and waiting for it to be finished. I finally got around to acquiring the last few volumes over the winter. And then, a month or so ago, I realized I hadn’t read any Fruits Basket in FIVE YEARS. Holy cow. That was enough to get me going and I read through the whole series. I have quite a few thoughts on it as a whole which I plan to expound upon in another post.

Sookie Stackhouse
In spite of my continuing interest in fantasy and witches and dragons and even fairies, I’m not at all a fan of contemporary urban fantasy or supernatural romance. I make individual exceptions to this (why hello Harry Dresden) but they’re few and far between. After True Blood became so popular, I watched this book series go in and out of the library for months, and I resisted reading it because it wasn’t really my cup of tea. But I don’t know, somehow recently I got the urge to try it out. I think that came about when I found Charlaine Harris’s first series of books was about a mystery solving librarian. She couldn’t be all bad then, could she? I’ll have more to report when I’m further into the series, but so far they are far more light and fluffy than I imagined.

Aurora Teagarden
The aforementioned mystery solving librarian. Amazingly, the library also has the whole of this series — they are notoriously poor at having whole series, especially when the earlier volumes are older than about 10 years or so, but this one appears to have been an exception. Again, more to report after I finish it. I’m not impressed with the character as a librarian, but Harris’s writing seems to agree with me for the most part.

Encyclopedia Brown
I don’t know why but I have had a hankering after these books recently. I picked up a few of them at a used booksale a year ago and more and more of them have been making their way into our house since then. The character of Sally is remarkably progressive considering the first books were written in the early 60s. My question: Why does the bully constantly try to get Encyclopedia in trouble with the police? And why do the police believe him? Encyclopedia’s dad is THEIR BOSS. Does not compute.

After being burned out on games (other than Facebook) for a while, I’ve recently played quite a few.

Treasure Seekers 2
The kids from the original Treasure Seekers are adults now, but still having strange adventures. Tommy has vanished while on an expedition and it’s up to his sister Nelly to rescue him. I had grabbed this one back when I played the first one, and I see now #3 is out. The plot here in #2 is pretty darn thin; I rewatched the cut scenes at the beginning several times, but I still got lost — I don’t understand how we got from Nelly going to try and join Tommy to her deciding he was trapped in magical pictures. But trapped in magical pictures he was. The play itself was pretty standard stuff. Some relatively simple hidden object scenes combined with none-too-strenuous point and click adventure type puzzles. The game is also extremely short (4h of gameplay tops.) A very mediocre title from a mediocre franchise.

Enlightenus
A young writer is summoned to the home of her favorite novelist only to find herself transported to another world — a world from which the inspiration for all of his books came. This is yet another hidden object/puzzle game, but with an interesting twist — you’re given all of the objects and you have to find the place in the scene where they should go. This was actually very well done and there were only a few times when I couldn’t figure out where an item was supposed to be placed. I can’t say that the objects themselves made any more sense than those in typical hidden object games, but it was a refreshing change.

Dire Grove
The latest entry in the Mystery Case Files series, this one follows the most recent “Return to Ravenhearst”. Our intrepid Master Detective has finished with Ravenhearst and is on the road elsewhere when he runs into an empty car and what turns out to be a bunch of grad students who’ve embroiled themselves in a horror movie-esque scenario. As is the trend recently, the game play here is pretty short — there’s an achievement for finishing the game in under 6 hours, and if I hadn’t left it running a few times when I got distracted, I would have done that easily the very first time through. But aside from the shortness the game itself was very solid, just not quite as awesome as Return to Ravenhearst was.

Special Enquiry Detail
A new department has been formed at the police department. The detectives here will focus on high-profile and high stakes crimes. The first mystery they tackle is the murder of a wealthy businessman’s daughter. Was it the best friend? The ex-boyfriend? Perhaps just a random homeless person? The detectives will find out in this mostly hidden object game. The game itself was okay, not exactly break out awesome, though I could tell it was trying to create an atmosphere. Some kudos must be awarded for the effort put into the plot, but it would have been nice to see that made more game and less narrative — most scenes would be ‘talk to X’ and then ‘find all the objects’. Er. Ok, but wouldn’t it be nice if ‘talk to X’ actually gave me something to do other than click through some screens? I’ll be interested to see where this series goes if it gets another entry.

My Kingdom for the Princess
The Princess’s father is ill, but she has no way to get back to him! This cute little time management game didn’t have a lot of variety in its tasks, but it was engaging nevertheless. The game play is centered around clearing/creating a path along which the princess’s entourage can travel in her efforts to get back to her home kingdom. Each stage is timed, meaning that some thought must be given to the order in which tasks are completed. I found most stages to be cleared quite easily, but there were a handful that I had to replay to finish and one or two that were very tricky to get done at all. The game was about the right length for its amount of complexity; it ended while still feeling fresh and not repetatively dull.

Avenue Flo
Flo, the heroine of the Diner Dash series of games, is the main character in this point and click adventure game. I’m not a fan at all of games that are made in the Diner Dash mold; I find them stressful and unfun. This game is nothing like those Time Management games, being a pure game of graphical interactive fiction. Flo is tasked with rescuing her friend when a series of mishaps befalls the wedding said friend has been planning. The game itself breezed along quite well, and the puzzles/mini games were interesting without being frustrating to figure out. There was only one or two places where I had to go back to collect something I’d missed the first time through. The bulk of the game play was similar to the excellent Emerald City Confidential (though considerably less challenging), but with a half dozen or so minigames thrown in to keep things interesting. I really hope to see more games along these lines coming out.

Artist Colony
A generation ago, a pair of friends founded a lovely artistic retreat. Soon after, they were torn apart by a love triangle and the artist colony fell into disrepair. Now a new generation has arrived to fix it up again and perhaps to find out more about what happened in the past. The setting here is what sets the game apart from the other sim-adventure games that have come out in the past few years — the majority of those tend to be centered around tropical islands for some reason. Unfortunately, the game has some glaring weaknesses in the game mechanics which make it less fun than it could be. The main problem is that one is completely dependent about making money to advance the plot, and to make money one must sell artistic works that the colony residents have produced. But a person only appears to make offers on items every 2-3 minutes, and roughly 60% of the time the offer is ridiculous and must be rejected. So it’s very easy to get to a point in the game where one is simply letting the artists run around and amuse themselves while you wait and glance at the screen every little while to see how much money has been offered. This isn’t really very fun. In fact it’s quite dull. And there’s not really any good way around it; even accepting the ridiculous offers wouldn’t speed it up much.

Frontierville (Facebook)
From the people that brought you Farmville, now you can have a farm -and- an old west town. Honestly though, this game is much better than Farmville. Why? Because it’s gotten closer to the holy grail of a social Harvest Moon. You can build more buildings, you can acquire a family, you can deal with wild animals and so forth. There are expansions promised that will complicate the gameplay further and prevent stagnation. I have hopes for this one.

So, I have this automatic reaction to things that are overhyped — I instantly develop an aversion to seeing or reading them (this mostly applies to television, movies and books). Sometimes this can be avoided if I see/read/watch the thing before the hype attains mammoth proportions (as with Harry Potter).

Once in a while, even if something is promoted to the point of disgust, I’ll eventually think that maybe I should take a look at it, just so I can have an informed (and hopefully negative) opinion.

But everything I’ve heard about the Twilight series told me it was just so awful and ridiculous that it wasn’t even worth it to spend the 2 hours it would take to watch the movie.

So I haven’t read the books and I haven’t seen the movies. But I pretty much know the broad outlines of the plot, because a) it’s not exactly original and b) it’s been so pervasive it’s nearly impossible to avoid absorbing at least some partial knowledge of it.

Anyway, I found out they were adapting Twilight (and presumably the rest of the series) into a graphic novel. Why? Presumably to force everyone to buy it again so they can make more money. And if people want to buy it again, I can’t really blame them for taking advantage of the fact. I decided that we’d finally come to a format where the length of time it would take to read it was an amount of time I was willing to sacrifice out of my life.

My running commentary as I read [unfortunately, the book does not have page numbers].

And so.

Image 1: a partial face, female, her mouth open
Image 2: someone’s crotch

An auspicious beginning.

Ah, Bella the martyr. I have to leave, because mom needs her space, but I don’t want to go and I’m making a Big Sacrifice Here People. LOOK AT ME.

Wow, you bought me a truck dad? How nice of you. Too bad it’s old and I hate it here even though it was my idea. Sigh. *more passive-aggressive crap*. ADMIRE ME.

You’re so cool Bella, calling your dad Charlie. That’s a real mark of maturity.

If there’s “only” 357 students, why the hell do you need a map?

Ohnoes!! People are being nice to me! I better whine about this too.

Whatever Bella. Your name may be common now, but the names are hardly any more odd than yours would have been when you were born. (Aside: in tv shows, books and movies which star people my age, why are there hardly any characters named Jennifer? That is totally unrealistic.)

Soda at lunch? Calling Jamie Oliver! What kind of school sells giant bottles of soda at lunch?

OMG! How did you know to call me Bella?! Did you hear the 355 other students in the school calling me that or CAN YOU READ MINDS?!?!?!?! So creepy! And yet somehow, hot. PITY ME.

How dare you besmirch my martyrdom?

Is this supposed to be flirting?
I’m easy to read
No, you’re actually hard to read, I’m just awesome.

…the safety hazards that dancing presented? What?

You’d think someone hundreds of years old would be more mature than a whiny-ass teenager, but clearly not.

I’m tired of trying to stay away from you Bella.
Wow, Edward. 6 whole weeks! If the groundhog hadn’t seen his shadow, would you have managed even that long?

Strike a pose, Edward.

I’m annoyed this book has no page #s.

Look up vampires on the internet. Somehow the sites she found were far too heavy on the information and far too light on the slashy fanfiction.

In too deep? Dude, you’ve talked to him for like 5 minutes.

Ah, now we find Edward’s problem. Ha ha. How long have you been 17? What an awful curse. Forget turning sparkly in the sun, he has to be 17 forever.

How did Bella survive to age 16 if she is constantly needing to be rescued like this? She didn’t need to leave Phoenix because of her mom, she was probably thrown out for destroying too much of the city.

And now they’re in LUV. Awwww. Except Bella had to tell us, ’cause it sure as hell didn’t come through any other way.

And after all that, it’s only half the book! Work faster, Korean artist. Even though you don’t even own the copyright to your own drawings.

The Plot
After the death of her mother, Yeine is summoned to the capital of the world, the city of Sky where her grandfather rules. She finds herself installed as his heir — one of several who might inherit his position — and thrown into a situation where the politics only get murkier the more she finds out. She attempts to stay alive while she pursues her own agenda, to find out who murdered her mother.

My Thoughts
I’ve spent the past few days (weeks) trying to come up with a coherent sort of review. I know that I liked and enjoyed the book, but my thoughts beyond that are sort of a jumble, and I’m afraid as a result that this is unlikely to be a very flowing review. When I dislike a book it’s usually easy for me to pinpoint the main reasons why. But when I like a book, it tends to leave a more generalised impression of pleasure.

Good Idea:
The author didn’t feel the need to dumb anything down for the reader. There were no info-dumps: we learned about the world through organic revelations. By the end we’d learned just exactly enough to make this part of the trilogy make sense and very little more.

Bad Idea:
Though the ending clearly sets up the next book (and the excerpt obviously does the job even better than that) this book had enough of a satisfying conclusion that I’m not burning to read the next one. This is good since it doesn’t come out for months, but the lack of urgency might be a bad thing.

Good Idea:
The setting (what we’ve seen of it so far) is engaging. There are nations/countries/cultures where the differences are more than cosmetic and yet it feels that thought has been given to each so that it makes sense. I was not left with the nagging feeling that I’d better not think too hard about the fabric of this universe, lest it dissolve.

Good Idea:
All the way back to my early obsession with Greek and Roman mythology, I have always loved stories where the gods walk among humans and interact with them; where the gods have weaknesses and personality beyond ’supreme being’ or even just ‘vengeful dick’. This one hits all of those buttons and then some.

Not Sure:
There’s an undercurrent in the book about the fluidity of the gods: their appearences change depending on their whim or the situation, their sexuality is not tied to any sort of rigid code, and their morality certainly isn’t either. In the end, it seems like the one thing about them that is fixed is their gender. Which is neither good nor bad, but an interesting choice.

Good Idea:
The novel is told in the first person, as if Yeine, the main character, was explaining her experiences to another. This may be a first novel cliche, but it works here, and the ‘present’ asides were far less intrusive (and non-annoying) than I’ve seen in some stories (*coughPolgaracough*).

Bad Idea:
At certain points (to be spoiler-free and vague), I had trouble figuring out who was speaking and was forced to resort to the annoying practice of counting out lines of dialogue to keep track. This was a stylistic issue which could have been fixed by putting someone’s speech/thoughts into a different font face or style.

I don’t take to new fiction series and authors easily. On my bookshelves I have quite a few books I’ve purchased because the cover or the summary looked interesting, and yet I’ve never quite been able to bring myself to read. (I do the same thing with food and clothes.) I don’t have as much of a problem with non-fiction, oddly enough. Perhaps it’s less personal. It doesn’t touch the imagination as much. I don’t know. But the first hurdle has been achieved with this one: I read it and I enjoyed it. And more, while I was reading it, I was able to lose myself in the story to the point where I had no desire to stop reading.

What it hasn’t managed yet is to elevate itself to an obsession — either for the author or the world — and thus guarantee that I’ll immediately consume the next which comes out. But it’s pretty unusual for an author or a world to do that on a first outing; I’m about the same place here as I was with the first Harry Potter book, and that certainly turned the corner into something more. There’s potential here.

In Short
Once I was reading it, I was eager to keep reading. And I’m definitely interested to see the next book — there was a little preview of it in the end, and I found it intriguing. I can’t say I’ve been totally sucked in by the world yet, but I’m thinking that’s probably because we’ve actually seen very little of the world itself: this book was confined to a very small area with a couple of brief excursions. The second book promises to expand on that.

Last year the BBC broadcast a series called “Victorian Farm”, which featured people attempting to live life as it would have been lived on a Victorian era farm for a year. Unlike shows like Colonial House and Frontier House, the people involved are professionals — archaeologists and historians — so they go into it with enthusiasm that doesn’t die out the first time they’re expected to shovel cow patties.

In fact, they are refreshingly excited about the experience, and while it’s obvious that this is real and very difficult work, they seem to be enjoying themselves at it in a thoroughly geeky fashion. Plus, they are able to explain what they are doing to the viewer, and the emphasis here is on doing it the correct historical way, not improvising as a modern person thrown back in time.

Anyway, after Victorian Farm ended, I found out that the same people had been involved in an earlier series about a Stuart era Farm, called Tales from the Green Valley. It took me a whole year to manage to get hold of it, but I’ve finally been able to watch that one.

And so I’m very excited to find that they’ve commissioned a new series about an Edwardian Farm. 12 60-minute episodes this time, which will be grand. I’m guessing we won’t see it until the end of 2010 at the earliest, given the necessary time frames, but at least I know it’s coming!