50 Shades Darker

I finally finished 50 Shades Darker. I did not enjoy this one as much as the last. It was still good, just not as good. From here on out there will be spoilers.

Yeah, we get it. You're not hungry for food. Real clever, please get over it.

Now, I don't know how other girls would react in bad situations but as for me I know there's a time and place for discussing "us". Rushing away from the bad guy in the middle of the night not knowing if the bad guy had come to kill you or come to kill herself or if you're being followed, is neither the time nor the place to  ask, again, whether you're enough for him. First of all, at that very moment there are more important things to be thinking or talking about. Like survival. Like getting to a safe place. Like being quiet and letting him handle it. Second, he's a guy. Guys don't think like us. Yeah it's been nagging at the back of her mind and gnawing at her and she has to get it out, but to him that's the last thing on his mind. His mind is entirely filled with how to keep her safe. I doubt any guy would have the mental capacity or ability to even fathom why anyone would ask something so silly as "do you desire more than what I can give you" at a time like that.

Some of the sex has gotten repetitive. I'm glad the author started leading into it then switching to later that day. I mean not all of it was bad, just some of it was old. Like how many times a day can they do it before you start rolling your eyes and going "again"?

I was just waiting for the inappropriately early marriage proposal and here it came. I wonder that she was all surprised and annoyed her mom was asking if she was pregnant. Well, aren't most marriages that happen within the first 2 months of being together because of pregnancy?

The birthday party scenes were a little mashed together. Like there were a few different things that the author wanted to do but couldn't decide so she decided to throw them all together.

Now, by no means does any of this make it a bad book. And I especially liked that ending bit. Definitely makes me want to read the third one! We'll have to see how that one goes. This one took way longer, in part, because of my giant crochet project moving onto a step that I can't look away from the project, so I couldn't read and sew at the same time anymore. (btw, it's a blanket with cross-stitched butterflies on top, I'll post a picture when I'm done) I seem to be better at pointing out faults than pointing out goodness. So just assume the stuff I complained of is all the bad and everything else about it is good, mindless fun.

Crosswords- Closer to Completion

A few weeks ago someone at Victor's work gave him a box of newspapers the were going to recycle so we could use them as fire starter. So I went through and pulled out all the comics and puzzles. Cause, yeah, I read the comics online at Go Comics but they just don't have all the ones I'd like to read daily, so it's fun to read the ones from the paper when I get the chance. And also, while I do have some puzzle books it's fun to do the paper puzzles sometimes. Plus I'm actually discovering I like sodoku! *gasp*

Anyway, my point is, I've been doing alright at crosswords. I am awful at crosswords normally. I think the only crosswords I've ever fully finished have been the ones Star Wars Insider used to publish. But I've been doing pretty good lately. I haven't finished one but I've gotten closer. My big deal with crosswords is that a lot of the time the normal word that most people would think of fits cause it has the right number of words. You might even get lucky and have a crossing word with a letter that fits perfectly with this new word you thought of. ...and then later you find that what was actually the right word is some obscure word only about 2% of the population has ever even heard of. Well, moving on. I've gotten some of these things right from reading fiction. And I don't mean from knowledge of the universe itself, I mean for some of the non-fiction details. For people who say "bleh you should be reading something educational", well guess what? There's been a few times I've sat there smirking to myself going, "Thank you, Harry Potter!" or "Thank you, 50 Shades!" or "Thank you, Neopets!"  and etc. Cause without them I wouldn't have known these things. I didn't have to be in the real world for these things to sink into my memory. So they were fun to experience, and I learned something! Did it help me in the real world? Maybe not but I feel a lot better about myself for having gotten that crossword just a bit more finished.

And in other, slightly related news, I had started Sense and Sensibility as my night reading book but I decided that I was generally too tired at night to really enjoy it so I brought it downstairs to read during the day. (btw, expect me to simply compare book and movie when I get done reading it as I feel that a book that old and popular is impossible to truly review because I could not possibly say anything that has not been said a hundred times before) So last night I started reading National Geographic's Mysteries of the Ancient World. I'm only a few pages in but so far I really like it! It opens the imagination. I like the story telling way of writing it has. Like how the flashlights looked like torches, the guide had his hand up like he was making a carving, they stepped out into the cold winter day much like the ice age hunters might have, it was all very interesting. I can't wait to go to bed tonight so I can read some more!

The Robots of Dawn

So I finally finished reading The Robots of Dawn, by Isaac Asimov. The non-spoiler review is that it was boring, too drawn out, and had a stupid ending. Also there was a scene in which the bad guy good guy cheats on his wife. I almost stopped reading at that point but I had already trudged through 300-some pages so I was too far to just stop there. I am not inclined to try his other books. The rest of this will have spoilers.

I'd say a good 90% of it is straight dialogue. Which is boring. Everyone just talked and talked, and a lot of it was circular. No one wants to read about 3-4 pages of someone discussing which word to use in a situation and what meanings different people might ascribe to it. Boring! Anyway, if I took out all the meaningless stuff the book would be about 200 pages shorter at least. Finally after spending 400 pages over-thinking and over-talking everything it's like the author came to that point and realized "Hey, I talked myself into a corner here and have no way to end this book! So I'll throw in this lame-ass 'magic caused it' ending." Really. You go through 400 pages of detective stuff and talking out a solution to the mystery and then at the end everything that had happened in the book is pointless because magic made it happen. btw, I have no respect for someone who can stomach writing the "good guy" as someone who is flippant about cheating on his wife. I mean maybe I just got unlucky and this is his worst book. But he's presumably one of the top 3 best scifi authors. But I just don't see it. Maybe this sorta thing would entertain bored teenagers/young adults of the 50s or 60s, with its descriptions and dialogue. I can see how it would transport pre-tv and pre-internet people into another world. But this book was written in, I think, 1983 or something.

btw, Victor says I completely missed the point. He claims the point is that the robot who can magically read minds has to obey the three laws regardless. Bleh, really? That's what we wasted 400-some pages on? He could have made the same point with a short story, 12 pages tops. To me the point is that he started writing something, had no idea what he was doing or where he was going, threw together a sloppy story just to squeeze out one more paycheck book and every so often decided "no, no, that doesn't make sense so I'll throw this on there" and then after 400 pages decided "oh, crud. I've written so much and now I can't figure out how to talk my way out of this corner I've backed myself into through over-thinking everything and I'm sick of this, I'll just end it with magic and claim that was the point of all this." I mean, I get it. I even sympathize. It's really easy to over think what you write and find yourself without a solution. Magic's the easy way out. If I was sick of my own long and drawn out story and just wanted to end it I'd do the same thing. I'd tidy it up and even throw in a few things in earlier scenes to make magic a plausible solution. It's annoying that he wasted so many pages and so much of my time, but I do understand that part. However, I do not understand why he had to trash his main character. While the wife cheating did have a point it could have easily been done a different way. Such as, maybe he was too weak to eat at the table so she brought him soup in bed and waited till he was done eating so she could make sure he actually ate it all and then as soon as he finished eating she could have stood up to take the empty bowl and spoon when he said what he said, cause if she needed to hear what he said in his sleep it's real easy to do so without doing something horrid with his supposed "good guy".