What Season Is it?

Oh yes...it's baseball season! My favorite time of the year!
Yes...my boys have sucked so far but it's a long season and we're a young team so I have faith that we'll pick things up.

I've already been to one exhibition game and I have tickets for the home opener plus some tickets for next month and on my birthday.

I'm excited....there is nothing like seeing and hearing a baseball game!

Jane Eyre

I decided to read Jane Eyre again because it had been years since the last time and the movie was set to come out and I wanted to refresh my drink.
Little did I know that it would be a limited film release and the closest theater so far is in Atlanta. This is not a road trip I would feel comfortable explaining to others.
So...I wait...
In the meantime, I thoroughly enjoyed the book the second time around!
My next door neighbor, whose patio is adjacent to mine, and I read it at the same time and we sat on out on our patios with just a wooden fence between us, contemplating the douchey-ness of St. John.
I tweeted this and Sheila O'Malley tweeted back that he always reminded her of her first boyfriend.
After a few tweets back and forth, we determined that St. John is a high functioning Christian psychopath....or at least that's what I said.

I remember reading something about a controversy in the Bronte family. Now, I can't remember where I read this and doing a quick Google search turned up nothing.
I don't want to speculate because my memory fails me.

I never really appreciated the beauty of Jane Eyre and the characters that Bronte created. I feel like she knew a St. John and a Rochester. As Sheila mentioned, they are so specific. I don't know if you can make up a subtle psychopath like St. John and especially when she rarely left her tiny town during her short life.

Jane Eyre and in turn Charlotte Bronte were quite the feminists. I love this line which holds true and should be true for anyone, even today:
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will."

World Without End by Ken Follett

Ken Follett screwed up. This should have been titled Book Without End.
This is seriously one big ass tome. I mean good LORD...it just kept going and going and going.
It's a damn good thing it was so interesting.
This is a sequel of sorts to Pillars of Earth (which I haven't read).

From Amazon: World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own. This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroad of new ideas--about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice.

To be honest, reading this book was a mistake. I was looking for Fall of Giants by Follett on www.booklending.com and accidentally clicked on this one and requested to borrow it. I figured what the hell and read it.

I'm pretty glad I did. Follett is a freaking beast when it comes to his research....of course he could be making all of this up and I'd never know. It just sounds good to me.
He puts his characters through the proverbial wringer. Just when I thought the good guys were finally catching a break, he'd hit them with some new horrible calamity.
I was exhausted by the end of it and needed to read some horrible vampire fiction to "cleanse my palate".
But this book is one of those that you can totally lose yourself in. Just dive right in, the water is nice!

Run At Destruction by Lynda Drews

I borrowed this book via Kindle Lending from a friend who actually worked with the man accused of killing his wife.
No one he worked with knew about his past until this book came out.
Sheer curiosity made me read this book but I have to say the author did a pretty good job for a novice writer.

From Amazon: Runner and longtime Green Bay, Wis. resident Drews revisits the mid-1980s death of her close friend and fellow runner, popular high school teacher Pam Bulik. She chronicles the small community's response to Pam's death, suspicions of suicide that rang false, and the subsequent naming of Pam's husband, Bob Bulik, as the primary suspect. Events, including Bob's alleged affair, drag readers through the gruesome and tawdry details, some difficult to read (especially in descriptions of the victim).

I hate to nitpick (no, I don't) but the author uses character names way too much in dialogue. This is just uncomfortable and unnatural. Even though this is supposed to be a true story, normal people just don't speak that way. Like "DeAnna, I don't know why you never blog anymore"
"Well, Joe Schmo, I just lost my blogging mojo. You understand, don't you, Joe Schmo?"
"DeAnna, you should blog more often. Especially, DeAnna, because you read all the time."
You get the picture, I'm sure.
I do like the way the author kept us guessing. I honestly didn't know if the husband was going to get away with it or not. At times it seemed like he didn't have a legal leg to stand on and at others it seemed like everyone was totally buying his ridiculous story.

I was disappointed with the author, Lynda Drews, because back in 1984, she was completely certain of Bob Bulik's guilt but now, in the present day, she seems to back off her opinion a little.
She seemed to be buying his ridiculous story 25 years later.

It was obvious she researched the hell out of this story and then also wrote from the heart.

I'm not a big true crime fan but I found this one fascinating.

Merry Christmas

Today I got a very useful gift, an Apple wireless keyboard that I can use with my iPhone.
This means I can blog a lot more while I'm at home.
I use to blog more often at work but lately I'm just too distracted.

Also, it's been a really bad month and I'm sure whoever might still be reading this doesn't want to hear about bad crap all the time.

I've read so many books on the Kindle since I acquired it that I just can't keep up with reviews.
I do have to mention a good paranormal series I've been reading called Greywalker by Kat Richardson. I highly recommend this series.
I exchanged gifts with my best friend, Lon, and we both gave each other Amazon gift cards. I immediately went home and bought the 4th book in the Greywalker series.

One of the good things I did was subscribe to Netflix. I'm loving the ability to stream movies and TV shows on my iPhone.
I started watching 30 Rock and immediately got hooked.
I also ordered the Last of the Summer Wine DVDs. They don't have all 37 years of the show but they had more than I expected.

I hope I blog more in the New Year. I read all the time and should write more about what I'm reading. We'll see how that goes!

Happy Holidays to you and yours!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Socializing Media

I started tweeting when I knew I was going to stay during Hurricane Ike.
I sent a few tweets during that terrible time but Twitter was new and I mostly just forgot about it.
I picked it up in a big way some time later and I really enjoy it. I have ADD issues and having to read and write only 140 characters at a time really enables that behavior for me.

Twitter allows me to have dialogues with people I admire whether it be celebrities, friends or local businesses and other entities.
I'm not here trying to sell Twitter to you because I know a lot of people think it's silly but I believe it can be quite powerful.
I realized recently that I get a lot of my news coverage from Twitter. I follow several news outlets and journalists and I find myself checking the tweets first when I hear a rumor of a story.
It's great for following sports and as I found recently, it's great for making new friends who love sports....especially baseball!

In September, I got involved in the Astros Social Media Nights and made some new friends. We then started this AstrosTweeps thing where a bunch of us go out to support different Astros-related events and mainly just to hang out together and have fun.
We're a mixed bag of people; different races, genders and ages.

Last night we all met at a restaurant in midtown Houston for a radio show featuring a player. We were fortunate enough to get to meet pitcher Bud Norris while he was patiently posing for pictures with us.
I also got to meet a local sport talk show host that I admire. I can't believe I had the nerve to tug on his sleeve and introduce myself. I'm just not that kind of girl, no matter what people say!

After the radio show, we all walked down to a nearby bar and had a few drinks and just talked and laughed. It was just so simple. A bunch of people enjoying each others company.
It happened on Twitter.
Amazing, right?

A Milestone

My beautiful, BEAUTIFUL friend, Sheila, is celebrating eight years of blogging.
I said this in her comments and I truly mean it:
The entire world is a better place because of her AND her blog.