The book follows the interactions of recently divorced environmental lawyers Nick and Lena. Nick gets all of the lobsters from the local grocery stores and puts them in the mayor’s swimming pool as a protest. Lena volunteers to represent him at his hearing (they still like/love each other) and he is ordered to have a psych evaluation. He maneuvers his way into being released into Lena’s custody and is ordered to undergo community service at a local animal shelter. Nick discovers the fate of the cats and dogs that spend 30 days at the shelter (nighty night Fido) and it severly disturbs him. Nick pulls one more trick out of his sleeve at the end.

This is Stephen Evans first novel, and it’s a decent attempt. The problem is that he has built the dialogue (which is fun) and drama of the story around Nick and Lena, but we don’t get a chance to get to know them really. There’s a bit of a flashback to how they met and were married, but Nick’s quirkiness (he was diagnosed with a delusional disorder) seems much more annoying than endearing. It’s a quick book to read and I can’t help but think that another fifty to a hundred pages of character/relationship development would have been a helpful addition to the book.

I was not as bothered by some that Evans wrote the book after discovering the prevelance of animal euthanasia in the United States. He basically wrote the book to bring it to the public’s attention. I didn’t have a problem with the storyline, it was the way we were supposed to latch on to the protagonist without much/any reason to. Anyway, it was an enjoyable afternoon read, but won’t be one I’ll be encouraging others to be sure they pick up.

2.5 out of 5 stars

At or near the top of my bucket list since about 1995 has been to go see an Eagles concert with my dad. Well, a few months back I realized they were going to be in Atlanta shortly after Gabe was born, so I quick called my dad up and said, “Hey, you want to come out in May and meet Gabe and see the Eagles?” He said yes and I purchased tickets roughly 2 minutes later. Last night we took off for the new Verizon Wireless Amphiteatre in Atlanta and after finding our way through an unexpected detour because of traffic, we finally made it to the parking lot and took the shuttle over to the Amphitheatre. Now, it was just time to wait for them to start.

The Eagles are currently out touring in support of their new CD Long Road Out of Eden (available exclusively at Walmart) and they opened with their first single from that album, “How Long.” They pushed through a couple other new songs from LROOE and then a fantasticly haunting trumpet solo went on for a few minutes. As the sound slowly faded, there it was–the most distinct B-minor chord in musical history–”Hotel California.” The crowd, which had been going nuts since the lights darkened right before the concert started, went crazy. Glenn Frey dedicated “Lyin’ Eyes” to his first wife, also known as “Plaintiff.” They went through and nailed a bunch more classics and took a brief intermission.

After intermission they planted themselves on the front of the stage on stools a la Hell Freezes Over and went through a few more new songs. They started with their tight harmonies on the new “No More Walks in the Wood” and though I would have preferred “Seven Bridges Road” to highlight their vocal maneuvering, it was impressive nonetheless. They mixed in some old songs, some new ones, and some from both Don Henley and Joe Walsh’s solo careers. They ended with “Life in the Fast Lane” and then came out for two encores before the night was over.

It was amazing. These guys can still bring it. I couldn’t believe Joe Walsh’s fingers could still move that fast (or that he could remember the songs). I couldn’t believe Don Henley could still hit those notes. I couldn’t believe how well guitar player Steuart Smith fills Don Felder’s shoes. It was a blast. Dad and I sang along to all the songs (quietly to ourselves, unlike the folks behind us who were determined to hit every note that Don Henley did. It sounded like cats in heat). Best concert ever? I think so…I think I was just in disbelief that I was sitting there on the lawn with Dad listening to the Eagles play for 3 hours. If ever they should return, I will be there. With Renee, as she was incredibly jealous of us both. We tried not to rub it in too hard. Actually, we didn’t try hard at all. But she’s a good sport.

Oh, just an FYI. Running a marathon is also on my bucket list. I hope to get back on my running routine this week after a couple weeks off.

5 out of 5 stars

Setlist

• How Long
• Busy Being Fabulous
• Don’t Want to Hear
• Guilty of the Crime
• Hotel California
• Peaceful Easy Feeling
• I Can’t Tell You Why
• Witchy Woman
• Lyin’ Eyes
• Boys of Summer (Don Henley)
• In the City
• The Long Run

Intermission

• No More Walks in the Wood
• Waiting in the Weeds
• No More Cloudy Days
• Love Will Keep Us Alive
• Take It to the Limit
• Long Road Out of Eden
• Somebody
• Walk Away (Joe Walsh)
• One of These Nights
• Life’s Been Good (Joe Walsh)
• Dirty Laundry (Don Henley)
• Funk #49 (Joe Walsh)
• Heartache Tonight
• Life in the Fast Lane

Encore #1

• Rocky Mountain Way (Joe Walsh)
• All She Wants to Do Is Dance (Don Henley)

Encore #2

• Take It Easy
• Desperado

It is truly a sickness I have. I won’t walk out of a terrible movie in the theater, I don’t turn off a TV show I’ve never watched before until it’s done, I don’t fall asleep during movies, and I can’t go to bed if I’m enjoying a good book. I just HATE not knowing what comes next (I also NEVER read the ending before I’m done with the book–who does that?). So, after toiling through Don Quixote, it was a welcome relief to read a page turner like The Kite Runner.

The story is written from the perspective of Amir, an American immigrant from Afghanistan. While living in San Francisco in 2001, he receives a phone call that forces him to deal with his past. The story then unfolds on the streets of Kabul in 1975. Amir tells of his father, Baba, the rich, benevolent hulk of a man who is disappointed in his son’s relative weakness. Then there are Ali, the crippled Hazara servant who grew up with Baba and his hare-lipped son, Hassan.

Hassan and Amir are inseparable, even though there was a social stigma of a Pashtun socializing with a Hazara. The boys are around 12 years old and spend time doing the things 12 year old boys do. Reading stories, climbing trees and fighting kites take up most of their leisure time until the day of the kite fighting tournament. After competing in the tournament, both Amir and Hassan’s lives change forever when Amir betrays Hassan in a frighteningly cruel way. Shortly after this the Russians invade Afghanistan and Amir and Baba flee to America.

The story continues in America with Amir marrying and living a relatively normal life as an author until he receives that phone call from Pakistan in 2001. He goes to visit his father’s old friend who tells him of “a way to be good again.” Amir’s quest for redemption takes him to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan where through a couple of convenient twists of fate, redemption comes.

I am a sucker for redemption storylines. My favorite movies are Braveheart, Good Will Hunting, and Shawshank Redemption. The books I’d have to take on a deserted island: Les Miserables, The Lord of the Rings, and The Chronicles of Narnia. The Kite Runner is very well done, gives a great picture of what Afghanistan used to be like before it was thrust into the national news, as well as a disgusting picture of what it was during the Taliban’s rule. Some of the later coincidences may test the novel’s believability, but all in all, it was a great read.

4.5 out of 5 stars

I’ve also read other “Classic” literature. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe and truly enjoyed them. I decided it was time to exercise my brain a bit and make an intentional effort to plow through some of the most recommend classic novels of all time. Tops on a couple of lists I inspected, as well as a work that is listed as the earliest (or at least one of the foundational) novels written, the Spanish work Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miquel Cervantes. The book is actually two books written ten years apart and close to 1000 pages. Feeling optimistic, I checked out Don Quixote and The Brothers Karamazov. Should be able to polish those two off in a month before they were due back. Famous last words.

Don Quixote is a comedy. And I laughed along with it. The story follows the character Alonso Quixano, a middle-class landowner in rural Spain, who, due to his obsession with reading the books of knight errantry and chivalry of old, descends into madness and believes that he is actually Don Quixote de la Mancha, a knight errant. He makes up his true love (the Lady Dulcinea del Toboso) to whom he pledges his life and takes for himself a squire, the country bumpkin Sancho Panza.

Don Quixote (DQ) then sets off on a journey where every inn is a castle, every windmill a giant, and every person he meets a new adventure to investigate. Remarkably, the (presumably) sane squire Sancho goes along with everything that happens-partly because he is “not versed in the ways of knight errantry” and partly (mostly?) because DQ has promised him governorship of an isle for his faithfulness. When things do not turn out as they should, or others who recognize their insanity play jokes on them, it is chalked up to “enchanters.” Eventually, the Don and his squire return home, badly beaten and bruised from their adventures, and cared for by DQ’s niece, housekeeper, and the village priest and barber. This ends book one.

Between the 10 years that Cervantes wrote his two books, someone else wrote a sequel to the first Don Quixote story. Cervantes rips into him in his prologue, and makes both the original book and the unauthorized sequel part of the plot in his sequel to the first book. It makes for an interesting device, as the characters who DQ and Sancho meet on their second set of adventures have actually heard about them from the original story (you follow all that?).

So the second half of the story begins with DQ and Sancho recovering and planning their escape from DQ’s niece and housekeeper. After they get out they come upon all sorts of characters who have know who he is from the first book-and that he is a complete lunatic. They do all sorts of practical jokes on him…and this is where the story got kind of slow for me. You see, I’ve always loved to read. When I was 5 I would stay up at night with a flashlight and my mom would have to tell me to go to sleep. This is actually still what happens, except it’s a headlamp and my wife telling me to go to sleep. But around this point in the story, I actually began reading at night to fall asleep. It also led me to be well over a month overdue on returning the book. Reading became work as I attempted to overcome the giant in front of me (hey, if windmills can be giants, so can books).

Finally, however, the story picked back up when DQ and Sancho were taken in by a Duke and Duchess (who were big DQ and Sancho fans) and played all sorts of tricks on them. Sancho becomes (a quite excellent) governor of an isle-though only for a short time-and DQ waits for the disenchantment of his fair Lady, Dulcinea del Toboso. Eventually DQ is bested in a jousting match by a friend from home (though DQ was unaware), on which the conditions where to go home and give up knight errantry for a year. On the way home DQ and Sancho decide they shall become shepherds for the next year and shortly thereafter, the story ends.

This book is a comedy, and the dialog between DQ and Sancho, as well as these two characters and the normal people they come into contact with is extremely humorous. Cervantes also does a good job of character development while introducing several different episodes into the storyline (think of a serialized TV drama-each show is its own story, but the characters develop throughout, even though some plot lines do not reoccur at all after they are introduced and ended). Anyway, it was truly work to finish this book, but one well worth it. I need a break from the classics for a bit, but The Brothers K is next on the list.

4 out of 5 stars

I stumbled upon an intriguing website a few weeks back: LibraryThing.com. Basically, the website is social networking for book readers. After registering an account, you add all the books you own (or have ever read) into your catalog. Then LibraryThing can show you other users’ profiles who have the same books in their catalog. You can browse their catalog and see what they thought about the books you have read, or even get ideas for new books to read from like-minded readers. A pretty nifty concept that is extremely well done.

First, creating an account is free* and easy: to register all you need is a user name and password…they don’t even need an email address (though if you want to retrieve your password, you should add it to your profile). After registering you are ready to add books to your catalog. To do this, you just search for the title or author of the book, and LibraryThing searches Amazon.com’s website for the book in question. I have always found the book I’ve been looking for. Just in case, though, you can search more than 80 different libraries for the book, including the Library of Congress.

*Free membership is limited to 200 books, a lifetime unlimited membership is a mere $25.

After adding books to your catalog, you are ready to begin the addicting part: arranging them on the shelves. There are a plethora of options once a book is added, including changing the cover image to the one that you have, tagging the book with keywords to easily sort and search your collection, rating the books on a scale of 0-5, and entering a review of the book for others to see, or perhaps for your own recollection. The process can sometimes be tedious, but is also very addicting. In fact, I’m only writing about this now because LibraryThing.com is down for a couple hours for scheduled maintenance. I still have about 200 books to tag and organize.

Another feature LibraryThing offers is a range of different book suggestion options. They can look at what books you have and see what other people who liked those books also have (sorted by fiction or non-fiction, and including authors you have read or completely new ones). They also have an interesting suggester called the “Unsuggester”-this allows you to put in a book you hated and it will give a recommendation that it thinks you will love (or vice-versa, I suppose). There is also a handy feature to display random books from your library on your website or blog. Mine is located on the right of our website…clicking the book takes you to Amazon, clicking “my library” takes you to my catalog.

All in all, I think this service is a blast and I thought it entirely appropriate to break out a new category of posts, curiously named “Cheese.” These are reviews in which I rate certain products, companies, services, and ideas by giving them between 0-5 “cheese” based on usefulness, fun, mood and other arbitrary criteria. I am please to rate my inaugural review a solid 4.5 out of 5. Well done, LibraryThing.com

4.5 out of 5 stars

Anyway, not only is the interface very similar to Microsoft, but OpenOffice.org’s software will also load and save Microsoft files (*.doc, *.xls, *.ppt). It takes a little bit of adjustment to change the default file type to save as, but you can switch OO.org’s software to automatically save as Microsoft files instead of the open standard (that should be becoming more popular in the next few years or so). Several standard Word functions, such as Page Setup, Headers and Footers, and some others are located in other menu’s, so Writer does have a little bit of a learning curve. I did open several old Word files in Writer and they all looked identical to what they look like in Word. Writer is a great program.

Calc (OO.org’s Excel) also opened up several old Excel files flawlessly. Calculations all worked great and the formatting was the same. However, while reading more about Calc, I’ve seen several people report that complex Excel files involving graphs and charts have been all screwed up. The general consensus is that if you are a heavy Excel user Calc might not cut it, but for the general user, it’ll work just fine.

Now, Impress could handle any PowerPoint file with any slide transition I could through at it, but in a few cases of slide shows with outlines, the tab spacing was way off. Any other PowerPoint slide show ran just fine.

Now, it should be stated that using any of these programs to create new files will run great, and can be used in coordination with Microsoft Office, so you can still access all of your old files. In fact, I would strongly recommend OpenOffice.org to anyone looking for a fantastic free alternative to Microsoft Office. If you’re a student, it’ll be great. If you just use Word and Excel, take a shot at OpenOffice.org. However, if you do a lot of interoffice document work or are a heavy Excel user, you may be better off with Microsoft Office. Either way, it’s a free download, so why not give it a shot?

4 out of 5 stars