After a late start, the hurricane season is off and racing, with a 1-2-3 punch of storms being named all within a day. The most serious of them, Bill, looks like it might be what is called a “fish storm,” staying out at sea and causing problems only for ships and animals with gills. Ana is a mess, but who’s to say that it won’t reassemble itself once it gets closer to the gulf? You just never know with these storms. One like Claudette probably wouldn’t do us a lot of harm here in the southeast Texas coast, since we’ve been so dry lately. Catch up on our annual rainfall in a matter of a day or two.
My new Storytellers Unplugged essay went live this morning: The Dog Days of Summer.
In an odd coincidence, there’s a fairly major hurricane in the novel I’m reading, which I didn’t expect. It’s The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second book by Swedish author Steig Larsson. As it turns out, Elizabeth Salander is in Grenada when a storm called Mathilda rages through, providing one of the island’s other residents with the cover for some nefarious activity. So far, this seems to be more a Salander novel than a Mikael Blomkvist book, though he has made a couple of brief appearances so far.
I got my new lenses on Saturday and am gradually growing accustomed to them. The long-distance prescription is only a little different than my previous specs, but the close-up prescription changed quite a bit. I had a mild headache after reading on Saturday morning, but nothing since.
I’m reading the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books to my wife. The most recent one is the first book I loaded onto my Kindle. Then we backed up to the beginning and read the first book and, last night, moved on to the second. The TV series is based primarily on the first book, but it is interesting to see how it was well and truly “adapted for the screen.” The screenwriters made some very wise decisions, and it could almost be a self-contained course in how to turn a book into a teleplay. In the book, Mma Ramotswe learns about the missing child by reading about it in the newspaper, a perfectly reasonable thing for a person to do, but not something that would play well on the screen. Instead, on the miniseries, she is driving into town when she encounters the search party. Much more vivid and cinematic. There are several other examples of story elements that were preserved but altered without losing the intent of the author.
I finished How I Became a Famous Novelist. A fun book that turned out much different than I expected it would, as the way he became “famous”–as opposed to simply being a bestseller–is something of a surprise. I also watched the second National Treasure movie (Nicholas Cage). Fun action movie where everything falls into place so easily that it’s almost not a challenge. Need to get into Buckingham Palace? No problem. Need to get into the Oval Office? Seduce an enthusiastic guy with just barely enough clearance and not enough brains to take you there. Need to “kidnap” the President of the US. Easy-peasy. Check your brain at the door.
We also watched 17 Again with Matthew Perry and Zac Efron. The adult-back-in-teen’s-body gag has been done over and over again, but this one had a neat twist–the guy’s kids are the same age that he becomes, so he has to deal with them as peers, which I haven’t seen in one of these movies before. Cute movie.
All sorts of drama on Big Brother this week, though they saved the best part for tomorrow. There was a huge outcry against Chima on the BB message boards, calling for her ouster, but I didn’t take them seriously. I don’t watch the live feeds and only looked at the message board that once to see what was going on in the back yard after the last HoH competition. But it seems like she went on a bit of a rampage, willfully disobeyed the rules, and even threatened to do some nasty things to other house guests, so she was kicked off the show, will not pass go, will not collect any fraction of $500,000 and doesn’t get to be in the jury house. I’ll bet things are a lot more peaceful in the place without her.
