Come on over to Bitten By Books and ask a question of the authors from Tesseracts Thirteen. Many of us will be there answering questions off and on throughout the day, evening and into tomorrow. There are numerous chances to win cool prizes, too.
I had two missed calls on my cell phone this morning. When I looked up the number, it had twelve digits. Apparently someone in Angola was trying to get a hold of me — and not the prison, either. Very strange.
I posted my review of The Inheritance by Simon Tolkien last night. Tolkien is the grandson of the author of Lord of the Rings, but he is writing crime novels in the PD James vein. I haven’t read his first book yet, but I was quite impressed by this one. I especially liked the British courtroom scenes. Tolkien is a barrister, so he knows whereof he writes.
Got a Kindle and a dollar? Tom Monteleone’s early story collection Rough Beasts and Other Mutations is just a buck.
I’m about halfway through Solar by Ian McEwan. The book took a surprising turn at this point, and it will be interesting to see the repercussions of the incident. McEwan is a fascinating story teller. He knows how to concentrate on mundane things and use them to build character and theme. A man aboard an airplane as it banks and banks and banks again in a holding pattern over Heathrow, for example, is a window on the different aspects of his life, past and present.
NCIS brings in another ghost from a character’s past. In this case, Gibbs’s ex-mother-in-law. This episode was the frankest look at the death of his wife and daughter to date. Handled very well, I thought.
It’s getting to the point on Lost where we start blowing things up, kicking butt and killing people in an episode I like to think of as Cooking with Keamy.
It’s amazing the characters from the past they can drag out and use in the flash-sideways stores. I did not expect to see Keamy in that delectable kitchen scene as he prepared eggs con gusto. Why did that scene remind me of something else–some other movie or show where a bad guy works his kitchen magic while terrorizing someone. Perhaps it will come to me.
OK, the actress who plays Claire has seriously had some acting lessons, especially when it comes to looking pure evil. Boy, when Kate told her she had Aaron–if looks could kill. Zoinks.
Poor Sayid. Even when he isn’t being yanked out of reality to a weird island or being messed with by Jacob he can’t get the girl, although this time it seems to be his own damned fault. His choice, at least. Hands up — who thinks he is a translator for an oil company? He had the scene scoped out the minute he arrived in the kitchen. Knew where every potential weapon was.
And he’s still saving his brother’s bacon (remember the chicken neck breaking scene from their childhood?). I’m sure there’s a logical reason why Jin was in the deep freeze. Probably he had his money and watches confiscated by customs and Keamy was less than happy to learn of this. Does memory serve me right in thinking that when Jin and Sun were at customs, the officer addressed Sun by her maiden name? Maybe they aren’t (yet) married in this reality.
The Oceanic Six continues to be scattered on the island. Jack and Hurley are still AWOL, as is Jin. Kate is back in the fold, Sayid’s evicted–but not quite. Not after circumstances changed. Awesome battle scene between the two of them, though. Someone elsewhere speculated that Dogen is not allowed to kill a candidate (whatever they are), which might explain the poison pill. Dogen probably figured he was sending Sayid to his death with the special dagger. Did the fact that Flocke (aka unLock, aka Lockness Monster) spoke before he was stabbed change anything? I was as surprised as anyone when Sayid plunged the knife in like that.
What if I told you that Flock prefaces most of his statements with “What if I told you…”? He’s not making any real claims, he’s phrasing things as hypotheticals. What if I told you that you could have anything in the world that you wanted?
The scene between Dogen and Sayid was very nice–the one where he admitted to causing his son’s death. The son we learned about last week at the piano competition. The significance of the baseball that we first saw several weeks ago–they sure aren’t making this stuff up as they go–or if they are they’re pretty clever.
And, boy, once Smokey was unleashed, what devastation. Once again the tribes are split into us vs. them, even though not everyone is on the side they are naturally aligned with (Kate: WTF am I doing here?)
Good stuff!
