Septimus Heap: Magyk Book One

About halfway into this fun kid's-lit book. It's similar to the HP series, but more focused on adventure and less on mystery, I think. Anyway, cute book if your kids have "wizard fever" - it's something to keep them entertained while (impatiently) waiting for July 16!

iRobot is the BOMB!

I love my Roomba. Really, truly, I do. It is fantastic and one of the best purchases I've ever made (right up there with TiVo). But of course I wished for something that would also mop my floors - maybe a Roomba with a swiffer attachment or something. Now iRobot (who makes Roomba) is making Scooba, a vacuum/mop system that sucks up dirt, squirts cleaning solution on the floor, scrubs it with a vacuum-type brush, and then sucks up the dirty cleaning fluid & squeegees the floor dry. It will be on sale in time for the 2005 holiday season, and I can't wait!!! With about 1000 sf of hard flooring in my home, this is going to be the coolest thing ever!

Name of the Rose

Meh. The story might be great, but so far it's pretty hard going. Umberto just goes off on these tangents where he babbles incessantly about stuff that seems to have nothing at all to do with the story. Seriously, do I need to read three pages of description of the entrance to the freakin' church? No. Just get to the mystery. He seems to do OK with dialogue, there's just not much of it. He'd be better off with less rambling descriptive crap and more dialogue that actually propels the story along.

In other words, the author seriously needs a decent editor.

Yay, Series of Unfortunate Events!!

Book 12 is coming out on October 18, 2005! Still no idea what the title will be, but Rugrat will be glad to know that the audio book should be available at the library before we make our trip to Disneyland at Halloween this year!

Finished two books today

First: The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. Interesting fictional story but with quite a bit of historical fact thrown in. Story centers around a policeman, who's stuck in the hospital after a nasty fall. While trying to keep from dying of boredom, he stumbles upon the mystery of Richard III, who supposedly killed his two young nephews in order to gain/keep the crown.
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Our story's protagonist hooks up with a researcher at the British Museum, and together they uncover all kinds of interesting factoids about Richard which make it clear to them that he did not, in fact, kill his nephews, and while he's been reviled for about four hundred years as a notorious murderer and callous blackguard, he was actually a very enlightened ruler and loving family man.


Second: Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. An unusual non-fiction book written entirely in comic strip format, about the author's childhood growing up in Iran, and all the political and social turmoil she was living through. Very touching in places. Also, a super-quick read.

Next up: The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco.