Absolute Friends...

John LeCarre's fans, and I am one, must find the depression quotient in his recent novels rather bothersome. "Absolute Friends" was about the futility of it all really, and it bore the cynical signs of aging of a talent. Not that the subject matter is not believable, but the story is unrelenting, full of propaganda, and all in all quite sad. I thought "A Perfect Spy" was very sad as well, but it was a much better book from the standpoint of writing and readability. I did like the protagonist of "Absolute Friends", and I could almost identify with him. He was a global nomad, a man whose enculturation was not his nationality, an Englishman with an Asian soul and a good heart. His end and that of his friend were semi-self induced, but the whole milieu of the story makes the end inevitable.

Crazy Potter Fans...

Oh yes, they are already "reviewing" Harry Potter 7 at AMAZON! Some interesting and some kooky ideas and thoughts here, some almost incomprehensible. Makes for a bit of fun though. These books have had a huge influence on reading. Being so well written as well; that's a bonus. May J.K. Rowling power on and give us the apex of her work yet.

It's been a long...long....time!

Here I finally am again. Serger did send me back to a sewing world. The online sewing world has grown by leaps and bounds. The sewing machine world has moved on to electronic and now computerized...but for sewing I prefer the old-fashioned heavy worker sewing machines. Mine has lasted now for 28.5 years. And the new serger is not something that replaces a sewing machine; it does the edging and can do lots more than I will never use it for. I mean, how many times do you have to serge on some fake pearl trim?! This site is for all the sewists out there...yes, that's really the new name. I guess sewer=sewer...not good.

In the world of Booxter, I finished up the datebase of electronic books, printed the report and am now able to add them as they come. I love a good organization coup.

Fall is upon us, so it's a good time for reading, sewing, knitting and just vegging out by the old tele. I am trying to read John Lecarre's Absolute Friends. Tough getting into that. Have purchased Ayelet Waldman's first "baby-crime" book, Nursery Crimes and that's up next. For deep winter I am saving A Salty Piece of Land from Jimmy Buffet, and the last Charles Portis novel I own. Unfortunately, if Portis doesn't publish soon that's all there is.

Harry Potter 6 was excellent. I prefer the somewhat dark yet magisterial affect Harry has in the latest tome. Snape - WHAT HAVE YOU DONE??!! Well, I theorize that Snape is following orders and that Dumbledore (why does Gandolf come to mind?!) is not finished. Nuff' said.

WinFS...here it is

I don't know much about the innards or the eye impact of WinFS to the user, but the beta is out, and according to Microsoft and the team who released this, it is going to revolutionize our file management. So read all about it! Oh, and you can SEE and hear all about it here in some very interesting video.

Harry Bosch...and Booxter

One reason I am not blogging as much is that I have acquired the program Booxter. I wanted to catalog (in a very simple way) my ebooks. After using Books, which is free, I have wanted to get a program that would allow simple easy listings alpha by author, title and sort for years, etc. Booxter is the one program that fills all my needs. It is well worth the fee. I paid up and have listed all my ebooks, except the contents of a large CD I have of Classics. Theses have two indices already - author and title, so I didn't see a reason to duplicate that work. The program is able to give me the simple listing I want - much in the format of an Excel printout, and if I feel the need Booxter can also take images of book jackets, get info from several online sites - AMAZON, several international library databases, and take ISBN info by scanning. So it is quite flexible. I have no need for all the information Booxter can handle, and if I wanted to catalog long lists of other books I would rather there were an LCMARC format for home use out there. I do find the NOTES field most useful; you print only the fields you want.

At the same time I have purchased a few more books, and have been immersed in the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly. My goodness...what a good writer Mr. Connelly is. The books follow a certain formula, as is the norm in a genre series. We are not disappointed in Harry. I like the character, I like his introverted personality and I cannot believe there hasn't been a series of movies from these books.