Just Finished Reading John Grisham's The Brethren

Last month, Melissa and I went to a retreat in Ocklawaha, on the shores of Lake Weir not far from Ocala.  During it, one night after dinner, we got into a discussion with the others sitting at our table about the books we liked.  When I mentioned John Grisham, a renown author of many law-centered novels, the guy seated on my left suggested his two favorite titles: The Testament and The Brethren.  Having already read three of Grisham's books (The Pelican Brief, The Firm, and The Appeal) and being disappointed in that last one, I was anxious to get a little advance encouragement before taking on another of his works.  With that endorsement in mind, I just finished reading The Brethren.  As it turned out, my new-found friend was right: it was one of Grisham's best...at least with the limited number of his books that I've yet read...

The Brethren refers to the informal name given to a trio of ex-judges serving sentences in a low-security federal prison near Jacksonville, Florida.  They come up with a scam extorting money from various men across the country whom they have snared answering their fake ads in magazines for male pen pals.  Concurrently, a presidential campaign is on, and the CIA director, intent on having the country's military budget dramatically increased, has created a candidate out of an obscure Arizona congressman.  How these two subplots ultimately connect determines the flow and outcome of the story.  Grisham kept what could have been a lot of extraneous material and characters out of this novel and made it an easy and quiet suspenseful, enjoyable reading experience.  Naturally, you're going to have to read it for yourself to discover the details and its ending...

If you're inclined to believe in the invisible hand of forces behind the scenes in our politics manipulating politicians and public opinion with their cynical actions, then The Brethren is the book for you.  It was published in 2000, a full year before 9/11 and the "Truther" movement with its "false flag" accusations arising from that tragedy.  It also reaffirmed a sad truth of our times that I've learned from the mistakes of others: never express anything in a letter, the phone, or on the Internet that you aren't fully prepared for the entire world to know...privacy as we grew up expecting as an inalienable right is almost nonexistent anymore, regardless what the written law says...

Now I'm going to get hold of John Grisham's The Testament...well, after I read some other books by other authors, that is...

Preseason Football Rankings 'Rank'le Me

The college football season began this week, culminating today in the first full day of games.  Already there are preseason polls out, ranking not only the top 25 teams in the country but even the most likely prospects to win the Heisman Trophy as player of the year.  To me, these polls are ludicrous as the structure of college sports is very different from that of the pros.  Each year, the seniors leave school...as well as those underclassmen entering the NFL draft early...and the various schools have to essentially overhaul their teams.  Plus, the entering freshmen class of players adds another level of uncertainty to each school's outlook for the upcoming season.  Yet Ohio State is Number One without having played a single game...some media folks are making an issue of the "fact" that Alabama has dropped down to Number Three after several years of being ranked preseason as One or Two.  They have to be kidding...

Well, maybe the rankings do have a certain bearing on things as we go through our first weekend of college football.  Those who gamble on the games need to have something to go by as they lay their money down...even if they don't yet know how good or bad the teams are going to be this year.  If I were a betting man (and I'm not...but I'll leave that for a future blog post), I would wait a little bit into the season before I began to wager any serious money.  On the other hand, Vegas puts its own line out for the individual games...no need after all to follow some mythical rankings chart when no games have yet been played...

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "R" and "S" Mystery Novels

I've been a big fan of mystery writer Sue Grafton, whose claim to fame is her "alphabet mystery" series featuring California private investigator Kinsey Millhone and the titles of which have been published in alphabetical order, with just a couple of "letters" to go until completion.  I'm also going through it in alphabetical order, sometimes running across a book I've already read...but most of them are new reads.  This was the case with my latest: "R" is for Ricochet and "S" is for Silence, published in 2004 and 2005, respectively.  This is significant because Grafton has compressed Kinsey's ongoing sleuthing adventures to the point where the stories themselves are set in the late 1980s...and this can be important when dealing with such things in the stories as telephone access and computers...

Although I've enjoyed reading these books, I have to weigh in on the negative side about these last two.  In "R" is for Ricochet, the character of Kinsey Millhone is made passive and secondary by another character, a young woman named Reba who is the individual our private eye has been hired by Reba's father to guide through her initial stages of parole after imprisonment for embezzlement.  Reba seems to assume all of the spunky and intelligent aspects of Kinsey that I have come to admire...leaving the detective to spend most of the story "tagging along" or dealing with her 87-year old landlord's romantic situation or that of her own...quite separate from the main story line and presenting an annoying distraction for me, the reader.  As for "S" is for Silence, much of the story is presented as a 34-year flashback to a young woman's unsolved disappearance...no Kinsey in sight anywhere.  When she does occasionally make her presence known and finally figures out the case, her method and reasoning for finding the main culprit in the story is unexplained.  I was so frustrated by the ending to this book that I went on the Internet to read others' reactions...and found that many of them agreed with me...

If these last two books of Sue Grafton that I just read happened to be the first ones for me as well, I might have decided to abandon reading any more of her books.  As it is, however, I know that she is much more capable of producing a good result...after all, I've now gone all the way through book #19.  I'm looking forward to a better story with the next Millhone novel, which I discovered is titled "T" is for Trespass...

CNN Amends Debate Rules to Let Fiorina In

CNN has just recently amended its rules for which candidates qualified for its Republican presidential debate, which will take place on September 16.  Last month's Fox News main debate limited participants to ten while relegating the seven other "major" candidates to its secondary "happy hour" debate.  The criteria for who got in for the prime time debate was the average of several public opinion polls taken beforehand...fair enough, I suppose.  California former business executive Carly Fiorina finished low in those early polls...most likely due to lack of name recognition outside her home state...but performed very well in the debate provided for her and jumped markedly in the polls held afterward.  Unfortunately, most of the polls CNN used to determine their lineup for the upcoming debate were those done before those two Fox debates...so Fiorina once again didn't make their cut of ten.  Recognizing this flaw, one that essentially nullifies the performances of the candidates in the first debates, CNN slightly adjusted their rule to allow Fiorina in as the "eleventh" candidate.  But this is also, in my opinion, not enough...she has jumped in the polls far beyond any "eleventh" place and by no means should be regarded as an "extra" candidate.  The fault for her initial omission is with CNN for having placed too much weight on early polls.  Their excuse is that not enough more recent polls had been taken...that strikes me as being a bit disingenuous, especially when all I see when I watch cable news channels on TV is public opinion poll after public opinion poll...

Just Finished Reading Madeleine L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet

I've been reading, off and on, Madeleine L'Engle's science fiction series for children called the Time Quintet.  I just finished reading the third book, titled A Swiftly Tilting Planet.  In it, we once again find the Murray and O'Keefe families, featuring main characters Meg and Charles Wallace.  But several years have passed between books two and three, and Meg has just married her old friend Calvin O'Keefe while the precocious Charles Wallace has by now turned fifteen.  A new crisis presents itself at the story's beginning: a South American dictator has gotten hold of the atomic bomb and is threatening a nuclear holocaust if his near-impossible demands are not met.  Meg's father, a physicist who has direct access to the White House, tells the grim news to his family.  Meg's mother-in-law, who is present at this moment, places a charge on Charles Wallace to set things right...and presents him with a "rune"...which takes the form of a prayer to heaven to influence the various forces on earth to rescue the speaker during a dire crisis.  Charles Wallace, with Meg psychically tuning in through a process called "kything", then travels back through time with the help of a nifty unicorn and tries, by subtly entering the minds of different people (and with the help of that rune), to influence events enough to change the present and alleviate the nuclear crisis...

First of all, let me just say that I "get it": this is a children's story, and fantasy and implausibility are lathered on thick here.  That being said, I have to object to the idea expressed within it that there is such a thing as an evil ancestral line any more than there is a benevolent one.  But part of the project that Charles Wallace is engaged in is just with that in mind: change the line of descent to the present so that the genetic makeup of the current ruler in that South American country is "good" instead of "evil".  Maybe I'm making too much of this, but it bothered me nonetheless...

So now I've finished three of these books, with two more to go.  But wait, I just found out that the author had also written another series parallel to this one...a series featuring the O'Keefe family and the eventual children of Meg and Calvin.  Maybe I'll just wait a few more years, Lord willing, before I start on that one...

My August 2015 Running Report

Although I accumulated mileage during August, my running ultimately was unsatisfactory as at the end, I suffered an injury of sorts on my right foot between the arch and heel.  As such, I've missed five days running for the month, and this will continue substantially into September.  Instead, I have been riding my bicycle more...that is, when it isn't torrentially raining outside...and using my portable stepper exercising machine.  I plan to continue with these while my foot recovers, and add the use of my gym's elliptical cross-trainer.  As for August's total, I ran 259 miles...

Hopefully, this running layoff won't last too long...but I have to give myself time to heal...

My NFL Favorites in Each Division This 2015 Season

It's getting closer to the start of the National Football League regular season this year, with the opening game between Pittsburgh and New England on Thursday, September 10 less than two weeks away.  So, as I usually do this time of year, I'm going through each division and picking my favorite teams.  No, I'm not predicting which ones will win each division...I'm strictly going by personal preference.  And since I'm doing this blog basically as an ongoing writing exercise, I'll explain the reasons for my picks...

AMERICAN CONFERENCE

East Division: MIAMI DOLPHINS-The Dolphins have been my team of choice since 1968, their third season of existence in the then-American Football League and when I was eleven going on twelve.  I suffered through two sub-par, typical expansion team seasons...and then Don Shula came over from Baltimore to coach them.  They won two Super Bowls under his direction and appeared in five...but more incredibly, during Shula's 26-year tenure there, they had only two losing seasons.  His successor Jimmy Johnson enjoyed some moderate success in his four years there, but from 2004 through 2015 Miami has enjoyed only two winning seasons.  And their last playoff appearance was in 2008.  They've frustrated me to no end the last two years because in each one they were in an excellent position to make the playoffs...only to choke up instead.  Will they be any better this year?  Guess we'll find out before too long...

South Division: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS-Until 1977, I lived in South Florida.  But ever since the Jacksonville franchise came into existence I've lived the closest to that city.  I've always rooted for them unless they were playing Miami...although in recent years their mediocrity has made it often an exercise in futility.  If they finish higher than last, I'll be surprised.

North Division: BALTIMORE RAVENS-I've always admired the swarming defense of the Ravens...it reminds me of that of the Dolphins during their "No-Name Defense" era of early '70s  Super Bowl glory and the "Killer B's" of the 1982 season when they made another Super Bowl appearance.  I also feel a bit of gratitude to Baltimore for having been so kind as lose to Miami late in the 2007 regular season, giving them their only win and keeping them from going 0-16.  The Ravens are by far my favorite in this division.

West Division: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS-I can't root for Denver after it abandoned Tim Tebow right after he got them into the playoffs in 2011 for the first time in years.  I've always despised Oakland and feel neutral about Kansas City.  But I like the Chargers for their quarterback Phil Rivers.  Unfortunately, the management of this franchise has been remiss about retaining the talent around him.  Still, I'm going to pull for them when they're not playing a Florida team or the New York Giants...and I believe they have a good shot at making the playoffs this year.

NATIONAL CONFERENCE

East Division: NEW YORK GIANTS-When the Giants upset the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl capping the 2007 season...ruining the Dolphins' bitter divisional rivals' quest for a perfect record...I vowed to myself that I would begin to support them on a regular basis.  And, what do you know, they repeated the feat in 2011 against the same villains! Let's see, another four years have passed...do the Giants still have it in them? Probably not, but my gratitude hasn't diminished.  Besides, I admire their quarterback Eli Manning, and head coach Tom Coughlin has my respect going back to the Jaguars' old glory days when he led them into the playoffs soon after their inception into the league.

South Division: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS-This is a team that should have done much better last year than 2-14...so I have high expectations for them this time around, especially after getting what could eventually be a Hall of Fame quarterback in Jameis Winston.  But high hopes abound easily before the first game is played.  They're going to have to figure out ways to keep their composure in close games in order to pull some victories "out of the hat".  Fortunately, Winston has plenty of experience in this area and seems to be a natural leader on the field.  The Bucs have the potential to be the turnaround team of the year.  Of course, I root for them primarily for one reason: they are a Florida team...and for the first 18 years I lived in Gainesville, the nearest one to me...

North Division: GREEN BAY PACKERS-I like the Packers not only for their outstanding quarterback Aaron Rodgers, but also for their tremendous fans.  I especially like the custom at Packer home games for Green Bay players, upon scoring touchdowns for their team, to go jumping into the stadium to be mass-hugged by their supporters.  It's nice to root for a team with a great shot at the championship, and the Pack fills the bill here.

West Division: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS-I followed Seattle from time to time as they were first getting used to their then-new head coach Pete Carroll.  I was impressed by Carroll's exuberance and positive attitude.  This guy has a lot of fun out there coaching his team, and his expressiveness is infectious.  So when they won their first Super Bowl a couple of years ago, I was already all aboard with the Seahawks.  They have, I believe, what it takes to make a third consecutive Super Bowl appearance...if Green Bay or Dallas don't prevent them.

As for the teams I oppose the most, let's just say that I dislike, in order of intensity: New England, Buffalo, New York Jets, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Denver, Oakland, Houston, and Dallas...

Just Finished Reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Empire

Foundation and Empire is the second book  in the late science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.  Originally a part of the Foundation "trilogy" back in the 1950s, Asimov wrote two more books in it during the 1980s and then added two prequels. After his death in 1992, three other sci-fi writers wrote authorized Foundation novels as well...bringing the total so far as I know it to be ten books. I happen to possess all of these books.  Unfortunately, they are buried in the  deep recesses of my garage, which I desperately need to declutter and organize.  But even if one reads all of the Foundation books, in order to understand the full context of Asimov's futuristic imaginary universe it is necessary to go through the four "Robot" (or "Spacer") novels as well as the three-part Empire series.  This begins to become apparent toward the end of the Foundation series...and although I haven't as yet read the two prequel Foundation novels, I understand that this is true for them as well...

As for Foundation and Empire,  there is little I can tell any prospective  reader without giving away the first book in the series, also titled Foundation.  In very general terms, I will say that this second book deals with the Foundation...and with the Empire...as if that wasn't obviously self-evident.  But for more than half of the book, another element enters the story...and it is this part I found to be the most compelling...especially its chief antagonist and the sly manner in which Asimov wrote him into the story.   As for the first part, I did pick up an important theme expressed within it that I myself have learned over the course of my lifetime:  if you are working for an organization, individual, or cause and are so committed and excellent with the results of your efforts that you begin to be recognized for that excellence, then your biggest opposition...as well as your eventual downfall...most likely will come from among those for whom you are so diligently striving as they will begin to perceive you as a threat to themselves.  Sounds cynical, but it has been borne out with my own experiences time and time again, sad to say...

My Running Detoured by Foot Pain

Although I would like to train up to be able to run in the upcoming half-marathon races (even possibly marathons) this fall, I have developed a nagging pain in my right foot that may just derail any substantial running for a while.  I am looking for ways to get around this problem, which involves pain that only occurs at impact, neither existing at rest nor with simple muscular exertion.  So right now I'm working at alternative forms of exercise, including getting my old dilapidated cheap-o bicycle out of the shed and riding it around the neighborhood.  I also have a portable stepper exercise contraption that I can use as a "no-impact" exercise...not to mention that I can do modified push-ups using it that serve as an alternative to abdominal crunch exercises.  And then there is also the elliptical cross-trainer machine at my local 24/7 gym.  In any event, I have to give my foot enough time to heal while avoiding aggravating whatever problem currently exists.  I haven't given up on my race plans...well, at least not in a general sense: the upcoming October events may not be feasible for me, but toward the end of the year I see no reason not to resume competition...which for me, isn't against any other runners, but rather to simply finish with reasonable times...

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "P" and "Q" Mystery Novels

As I continue along with the so-called "Alphabet Mysteries" of writer Sue Grafton from "A" to "X" (her latest "letter"), I just finished reading a couple: "P" is for Peril and "Q" is for Quarry.  I was happy to discover that I hadn't read either before...sometimes I forget which books in the series I've already gone through...

In "P" is for Peril, protagonist private investigator Kinsey Millhone, a single mid-thirties California ex-cop, is hired to look into the disappearance of a woman's ex, a physician working at a senior care center.  There are all sorts of subplots involved, especially an ongoing Medicare fraud investigation at the center, the missing man's marital relationships, and his wayward daughter.  A second story in the book, intertwined with the main mystery, is Kinsey's new landlord for her office: a couple of brothers...and she has started to become romantic with the younger one.  But with them as well, a mysterious and sinister past is revealed.  Plenty of suspects to go around with this story.  I thought the ending was quite intriguing...

In "Q" is for Quarry, the panoply of suspicious characters continues as Kinsey is hired by an old police associate to team up with another ex-cop...this one retired...to investigate a cold (long unsolved) murder case: a 1969 "Jane Doe" killing involving a dumped unidentified young female corpse in a remote area.  Subplots in the story include the dire medical problems of Kinsey's police partners, as well as new information regarding her own clouded family past. At the conclusion of the book, it is revealed that author Sue Grafton had based her story on an actual cold case involving very similar circumstances...

Now I'm working on her next novel in the series, "R" is for Ricochet...

Light 2015 Atlantic Hurricane Season Entering Most Intense Phase

The 2015 Atlantic hurricane season, which has been predicted to be very light with few named storms due to cooler Atlantic waters, has so far vindicated the prognosticators.  Until just recently, there have been only three named storms, none of which have made much of an impact although two struck the U.S. mainland.  This past week, Danny followed the common Africa-to-West-Indies trans-Atlantic path, strengthening to hurricane level. But then, as it approached the Leeward Islands, it weakened and was sheared into nothing more than a rainy low pressure area.  Following Danny westward across the Atlantic, close to its path, is Erika, a much larger storm in area.  Although Erika is only a minimal tropical storm at this writing with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph, forecast models have it passing safely between two shear zones as it passes just north of the Leewards, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola and enters the warm waters of the Bahamas.  According to the current projected path, slow-moving Erika may be approaching the east coast of Florida as a minimal hurricane by this Sunday.  Still, right now there is a huge shear zone covering the eastern Gulf of Mexico and most of the Florida peninsula that, should it remain in place, would weaken Erika if the potential hurricane makes a Floridian landfall...

I'm not too concerned about Erika possibly hitting Gainesville in north-central Florida, especially as it looks right now as if it will only make it to weak hurricane status and then probably weaken again.  But the media will probably amplify the coverage, since the tropical storms this year have been too few and far between and Erika might be the first full-fledged Atlantic hurricane in 2015 to threaten the U.S. mainland (tropical storms Ana and Bill earlier hit the Carolinas and Texas, respectively)...

Stock Market's Ten-Minute Thousand-Point Plunge This Morning

Wall Street's Dow Jones Average shocked the news world this morning as it went into a ten-minute free fall, finally leveling at a thousand points lower and scaring the bejesus (or dickens...or choose your own epithet) out of everybody. This is after Friday's loss of 531 points and right on the heels of a massive selloff in the Chinese stock market.  The prices rose back up to around down a little more that 100 points...but over the course of the afternoon, the average has crept back downward...it's 350 points at this writing.  The White House laid much of the blame for this fall at the doors of Congress, which it claims is dragging its feet at passing important fiscal legislation.  But what seems to be powering it all to me is the bursting of China's financial bubble...and their government's reevaluation of their currency...

It is too early right now to see whether this drop in the stock market is only a temporary scare like those in 1987 and 2010...or the sign of a traumatic economic downturn, as in 2008.  But the market suddenly has MY attention...

Just Finished Reading John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men

When I was in the ninth grade, my English teacher assigned John Steinbeck's novel The Pearl as a required reading.  I did not like it at all...and since then 44 years have passed until I picked up another work of his.  As it turns out, the book I finally did choose, the short 1937 novel Of Mice and Men, is another Steinbeck story that is now commonly assigned in high school.  After reading it, though, I can understand why perhaps my English teachers may have passed up on it: the language is pretty rough in places and there are some areas in it with sexual material...not necessarily something that they were ready to deal with in high school in the early 1970s...at least not as a required book...

Of Mice and Men is about two young men: the smart but uneducated George, short in stature, and his traveling and working companion, the mentally challenged near-giant Lennie.  Lennie has a fondness for petting little furry creatures like mice, but he cannot seem to handle any for any length of time without accidentally killing them with his strength, which he chronically underestimates.  Ultimately, he wants for George and him to buy a small plot of land of their own where they can live off of it and he would get to tend the rabbits.   The two are migrant farm/ranch workers on their way to a new job at a ranch in California.  Once there, they encounter problems with a bully who not only feels challenged by Lennie's size and demeanor, but also is extremely jealous about his own attractive newlywed wife, whom the men working there regard as a flirtatious "tart".  You might imagine some scenarios for trouble...and you'd be right...but since I'm not going to give away the story, you're going to have to find out what happens for yourself!

The thing that struck me the most about Of Mice and Men was how Steinbeck moved the story and revealed the personalities of the characters with extensive dialogue, keeping the narration and introspection to a minimum.  That was pretty impressive.  Another thing he did involved misdirection...leading the reader to anticipate a climactic conflict in one direction while ultimately leading into a different one...an outcome that, having finished the story and looking backward at it, seemed completely reasonable.  Steinbeck also examined racial prejudice and injustice, as well as how everyone needs to have something to believe in and dream for...and how a good, feasible dream can spread like wildfire through a dispirited group of people and revitalize them.  But perhaps most of all, he spotlighted the plight in his times of the mentally disabled and how they, especially the ones who were poor, were often misunderstood and treated unfairly.  I sometimes wonder to myself just how much better off they are today...and how much more we need to do...

Get a copy of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men: it won't take you very long to read it and it will be worth your while.  And, besides, you won't have to impress some high school English teacher with a book report after you've finished...

Gainesville and Its Coffee Shops Swell Back Up With Students' Return

Well, this is the weekend that the population in Gainesville swells back up again with its transient University of Florida student population returning (as well as a few attending Santa Fe College).  It's time once again for me to reconfigure my routes through town, especially to and from work, that have me driving through pockets of heavy student presence.  Looks like I may be taking some detours east on Waldo and Williston Roads or west on I-75 to avoid not just the University of Florida traffic, but also that of the public schools, which are also beginning. Moreover, it will again be necessary for me to keep tabs on important events taking place on campus...not because I'm planning to attend them...but rather because I'm avoiding them and the traffic emanating therefrom.  And, of course, I might as well resign myself to the fact that, starting next week, I'm more likely than not to walk into any Starbucks and not find one empty seat left: that's too bad since going out and sitting somewhere in public tends to focus my thoughts and helps me with some of my personal academic goals...

Maybe it's finally time for me to just face reality and make the big break from Starbucks...and start going to McDonalds instead.  Since I only drink regular brewed coffee, anyway,  why not save some money and go somewhere that I know will provide not only free Internet access (actually, I rarely go online except at home or on my cellphone), but also plenty of empty seats to choose from while charging much less for their coffee?  McDonalds fulfills all of these criteria, and furthermore, it isn't generally considered "cool" enough by those hipster and yuppie types who like to camp out for hours in the more highbrow coffee shops, hopelessly clogging up all of the seating along with the myriad students who use them for study halls (nothing inherently wrong with studying there...I do the same). And since I'm a working-class kind of guy, why not hang out in a working-class place like a national fast food chain?  The only problem I have with McDonalds is that sometimes they act confused when I order coffee at any time other than during breakfast hours.  Still, more often than not I get my order right away and can go on to study, read, and write to my heart's content.  And what's more, McDonalds are just about everywhere...there's even one within easy walking distance of my workplace. Yes, I suppose it's just about time for a change in venue.  I just hope that McDonalds remains "uncool" in the minds of many, especially all those pesky students... 

Just Finished Reading Finders Keepers by Stephen King

Stephen King's latest novel Finders Keepers, which I just finished reading, is the middle book in his ongoing series that began with Mr. Mercedes.  In it, a celebrated writer by the name of John Rothstein (apparently a fictional amalgam of John Updike and Philip Roth) has gone into self-imposed isolation from the world for many years as he continues his writing...but without publishing any of his works.  This proves to be problematic as one of his most renown works, the "Runner" trilogy, and which features the young American anti-hero character of Jimmy Gold, seems to trail off in the final book with a marked sense of anti-climax...as if there were more to come in the series.  But if Rothstein had written any more books in the Runner series, he's not publishing.  Enter Morris Bellamy, a deeply disturbed man who has identified so closely with the Jimmy Gold character and is so disappointed at the ending of the third book that he feels compelled to find any new books for himself...eliciting an unwelcome encounter with Rothstein at his retreat.  I'll spare you the details except to say that the story does get around to connecting itself with the previous book, Mr. Mercedes...and that its unlikely trio of protagonists...Bill Hodges, Jerome Robinson, and Holly Gibney...once again team up to set things straight.  In the midst of their endeavors, King inserts some hints as to what direction the final book in this trilogy will take...

I enjoyed Finders Keepers and found it to be better than Mr. Mercedes...unusual for the second book in a trilogy.  But what I got the most out of it was the John Rothstein character...and the real-life writers of John Updike and Philip Roth.  So much that I'm now starting to read Exit Ghost, one of Roth's more recent books, and am working to get hold of the first book in Updike's celebrated Rabbit series.  Roth, by the way, is known probably the most for his stories Goodbye Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint...

So now I await Stephen King's final installment in this series.  In the process, he joins George R.R. Martin, Daniel Abraham and Brandon Sanderson in the "club" of authors whose ongoing series I've caught up with as I patiently anticipate what's up next...

Soccer: UEFA (European) Champions League Qualifying Playoffs Underway

International professional league soccer can be downright confusing at times.  At the same time that the various leagues are going on with their regular seasons, a parallel "league" is also taking place.  In Europe, the UEFA takes the 22 top finishers of the various European leagues from the previous season...and then adds 10 more teams to comprise the 32 that will begin group stage play in a few weeks.  Those 10 teams are now being determined through a series of playoff games.  Fox Sports and Spanish-speaking Galavision are showing several of them on their different channels.  On Galavision (Gainesville Cox Channel 89) I just saw the ending of one between Celtic (of Scotland) and Malmo (of Sweden) with the former prevailing.  Right now I'm viewing the second half between Valencia (of Spain) and Monaco on Fox Sports 1 (Channel 62)...Valencia currently leads 2-1...

Since I can't watch all the various European leagues in professional soccer, this Champions League gives me the opportunity to acquaint myself with teams that I normally would not be able to follow...especially those from Spain, France, and Italy.  Also, it's fun to see how well (or poorly) some of the English (Barclay's) Premier League teams fare against their European competition...

Just Finished Reading (Again) Isaac Asimov's Novel Foundation

Foundation, originally written in serial form in the 1940s and then revised and combined into a complete book in the 1950s, in turn is the first book in a series of science fiction novels (also named "Foundation") set more than ten thousand years into the future, when a galaxy-wide empire envisioned by author Isaac Asimov is going decadent and beginning to crumble.  On its capital planet of Trantor near the galaxy's center lives Hari Seldon, a "psychohistorian" by profession.  By using intricate mathematics and principles of psychology, sociology, and history, Seldon determines that the Empire will soon dissolve and a prolonged dark age, lasting many thousands of years, will pervade the galaxy.  But he has a plan to shorten that time span, and embarks on an elaborate scheme of projects and foreseen dilemmas (which he terms "Seldon Crises") to steer humanity back on a fast-track to reunite under a new (and hopefully improved) empire.  The story thus develops with Seldon explaining his ideas to mathematician-recruit Gaal Dornick as well as to his persecutors working for the Empire.  It then jumps ahead fifty years to another situation with other characters when a Seldon Crisis forces their hand and directs them onto a path toward Seldon's goals.  These leaps of time between stories, with subsequent new characters and an accompanying Seldon Crisis in each one, continues on throughout the book.  What happens in them I leave you, the reader, to discover for yourself...

I have read the opening novel Foundation a couple of times before, but I only read the core series of five novels in its entirety once.  It had a great ending, and I recently decided to go through it once more.  There are also a couple of prequel novels Asimov wrote for it, as well as three other "Foundation" books that others wrote after his death in 1992.  Maybe I'll get around to reading them, too, but for now I'm rereading the "five"...

Next in the series is Foundation and Empire...

Just Finished Reading A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

A Memory of Light, which was published in 2013, is the fourteenth and concluding book in Robert Jordan's fantasy series The Wheel of Time.  This last book, as well as the two preceding it, were written by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan's death...with careful attention given to the original author's vision and extensive notes.  In such a finale, I was naturally concerned at what was going to happen to all of the various characters introduced in the series...I instinctively knew that not all of them would survive.  Well, I found out...but don't worry...I'm not giving anything away.  And, of course, how the main struggle between the Dragon Reborn and the Dark One turned out is resolved as well...and in a curiously satisfactory way, too.  Yes, although plowing through these fourteen books amounted to a sometimes tedious, drawn-out project, I feel vindicated for my efforts by how it ended...

Now that I have finished reading the Wheel of Time series, I can go onto the Wiki website exclusively devoted to it.  A few months ago I had gone on it to collect a little background information about one of the characters and inadvertently read premature information about her demise.  Now, though, I'm done with the series and can go back to the Wheel of Time Wiki to fill in gaps in my memory of people, places, nations, and events...

If you're someone who likes reading involved, lengthy fantasy series with compelling characters (and the characters are what won me over), then by all means treat yourself to The Wheel of Time.  But it will take you a while to get through it, and there is an awful lot of information to absorb and try to keep up with.  Still, it easily beats just sitting for hours on-end channel-surfing the TV.  Engage your mind, I say...The Wheel of Time most definitely will accomplish that!

Theme Park Rides: My Personal Favorites

As I mentioned in yesterday's article about theme parks, I have my own personal list of favorite thrill rides, including a few on a more subdued level.  Some of them are roller coasters, some aren't, and some are water park rides.  I haven't exactly been a theme park junkie like some people who travel across the country and even abroad to visit and compare the various parks and rides.  My experience is confined to a few parks within driving range of Gainesville, Dolly Parton's Dollywood in eastern Tennessee, and that one roller coaster in Dania, near Fort Lauderdale. First, I'll rank the parks I've been to (including water parks):

1 Busch Gardens-Tampa
2 Universal Islands of Adventure-Orlando
3 Wild Adventures-Valdosta
4 Disney World Magic Kingdom-Orlando
5 Disney World Epcot Center-Orlando
6 Wild Waters-Silver Springs
7 Dollywood-Pigeon Forge, Tennessee
8 Cypress Gardens (now closed down)-Winter Haven, Florida
9 Universal Studios-Orlando
10 Disney MGM Studios-Orlando
11 Blizzard Beach (Disney World)-Orlando
                                                         
Actually, I've enjoyed all of the above theme parks and have my favorite rides in each of them.  Now, here are my eight all-time favorite rides I've been on:

1 POWER SURGE (Wild Adventures)
This ride superficially resembles a Ferris wheel, but the passengers, securely strapped and fastened in their seats, soon find themselves hurled up and spinning and toppling in different directions as the world around them becomes a chaotic blur.  This has to be one of the more terrifying rides to behold from the ground...it took me a while to muster up the courage to ride it.  And as no two rides are exactly alike, I've never gotten so accustomed to it that riding it hasn't disturbed me at least a little...perfect! Only one problem: since Wild Adventures switched its ownership, Power Surge was removed.  Sometimes it appears at county fairs...it was at the Alachua County Fair two years ago, but was out of service and unavailable.  I also rode it back in 2005 at Cypress Gardens, which has since closed down...

2-MONTU (Busch Gardens Tampa)
Montu is what I call the "Cadillac" of roller coasters, providing an extremely smooth, comfortable riding experience.  But like Power Surge, it can appear pretty imposing from the ground level.  Montu is a hanging steel coaster that undergoes several loops, which for me is a good thing.  When dealing with the "G's" that thrill rides place on passengers, inverting loops can alleviate the effects...I'm not supposed to ride anything that puts an overload of them on me. So Montu and Power Surge work quite well in that regard...

3-KUMBA (Busch Gardens Tampa)
Kumba is another looping steel coaster at Busch Gardens, this one where the passengers' feet are firmly resting on the floor within their compartments and not hanging out loosely.  To me, it has a great initial climb...and that dive soon after the apex is epic!  Visually, I prefer Kumba's lush green surroundings to Montu's sand...it is a bit more jolting, though.  Still, it has always been one of the two absolute requirements for me during a Busch Gardens visit....although I prefer Montu by far...

4-DUELING DRAGONS:FIRE (Islands of Adventure-Orlando)
Now known as Dragon Challenge and renamed for dragons appearing in the Harry Potter book The Goblet of Fire, Dueling Dragons features two separate coasters, Fire and Ice, dispatched simultaneously and often hurling themselves at each other like, well, dueling dragons! In one of these high-flying encounters, Fire would momentarily hover over Ice as the latter passed close underneath...giving a sensation of floating weightlessness that Ice didn't have.  I loved this coaster and always sought it out when visiting.  Unfortunately, it's buried at the back of the park and requires a trek to reach.

5-TORNADO (Wild Waters)
I'm not sure whether or not Wild Waters will remain in existence after its adjacent park of Silver Springs became a state park.  In any event, it has been several years since I've been there...it is the closest park to Gainesville that features "rides" and you can't beat the price.  My favorite water ride is here: the tubular Tornado, a ride that requires the participant to cross their hands over the chest and cross ankles...and remain lying still as they steeply slide down into the black tube's opening at the top.  The tube convolutes to where you're actually inverted at one point while blindly sliding within it before being twisted back around at the landing.  Wild Adventures has a similar ride at its own water park (or at least it did a few years ago).

6 AVIATOR (Wild Adventures)
I believe Aviator is still at Wild Adventures, and it is one of the first thrill rides I rode on to any extent. It is more of a panoramic-view ride, with passengers seated at spokes from the center and rising up high from the ground while rotating at a brisk speed in a counterclockwise direction.  I loved sitting high up there in the sky (hence the name "Aviator"), going around like that with such a view of everything beneath...I remarked that I could easily stay up there for hours with a good book in hand and a coffee, only coming back down for refills and bathroom breaks.  But alas, that's not how they run things in these theme parks!

7 SPACESHIP EARTH (Epcot Center)
I like a lot of things about Walt Disney World.  One thing that I DON'T like, though, is having to wait in endless lines to go on any of their rides...often even when I've made an advance "appointment" using their express system.  There is one important exception to this repeated frustration: Spaceship Earth, which is the "entrance" ride to Epcot Center, right underneath the giant golf ball.  You may be standing in a line at the start, but it is constantly loading with its conveyor belt system.  Soon enough, you're on a visual educational tour through the history of humanity's progress in the area of communications...and in the process you get to sit for several minutes in air-conditioned splendor (this can be important during the dog days of summer in central Florida). Spaceship Earth is not exactly a "thrill ride" per se, but it is one that anyone could ride...and as such everyone in your party can experience it and share their reactions...

8-THUNDERHEAD (Dollywood)
Thunderhead is the best wooden roller coaster I've ever been on.  No other has come as close to it for its smoothness...but I still have to place it on my list with an important caveat: I'll probably not ride it again due to the factor of the gravity pressure that rides of this genre inevitably place on the passenger, especially during the tight winding at the end.  But it was by far the best ride in the park (that Tennessee Tornado steel coaster was brutally harsh)...

Well, I think I'll just leave this list at "eight" and move on.  Truth be told, I don't feel any particular urge to go rushing out to any of these theme parks and relive my old experiences...my memory serves me pretty well. I also noticed that, with some of the more well-known rides, you can get on You-Tube and vicariously experience them through the cameras of other riders...                           

Theme Parks...and Me

A tragic event happened at the Cedar Point theme park near Sandusky, Ohio (on Lake Erie) yesterday: a man was struck and killed at the site of one of their roller coasters after his cellphone spilled out while riding it and he scaled a fence afterward and went into the underlying restricted area to find and retrieve it.   A lot of people lose stuff on theme park rides, usually coming out of their pockets.  I have always been careful when attending them to wear a fanny pack and stuff anything I didn't want to lose in it.  But going into an area where the coaster is going to be diving at high speed? Not very wise...

I used to be very averse to riding theme park rides of any kind...well, I WAS brave enough to ride Dumbo, It's a Small World, and If You Had Wings at Disney World back in 1973...and the Congo River Rapids at Busch Gardens in '86.  But I avoided the more serious ones until my own children were of age to ride them (which they boldly began to do)...and so I decided to "face the fear", as my son Will then liked to put it.  We started, in late 2002, going to Wild Adventures just southwest of Valdosta, Georgia, and in the next few years also visited Busch Gardens, Universal Studios of Orlando (both parks contained within), Walt Disney World (Epcot, Magic Kingdom, MGM Studios, and Blizzard Beach...we never got around to Animal Kingdom), Dollywood (in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee), and Wild Waters (a water park feeding from Silver Springs).   Will, Rebecca, and I would go on the more challenging rides while Melissa would gamely ride on those a little more subdued (like Ant Farm at Wild Adventures, ET Adventure at Universal, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney).  I got over my fears of inversion, extreme heights, and sudden changes in gravity during this time...and built up a list of personal favorite rides (maybe I'll write about them in some future post).  When I went down to visit my father in Hollywood, I stopped on a couple of occasions in Dania and rode South Florida's then only roller coaster: the wooden Dania Beach Hurricane off Stirling Road next to I-95 (it's since been dismantled and moved to another part of the country).  From 2002 through 2006, my family together regularly attended theme parks and I went on most of the rides...some many times (e.g. I've ridden Busch Garden's Montu 26 times and Kumba 22).  But since that time, the kids have grown up and Melissa isn't really a "thrill rides" kind of person...understandable: before 2002 I was downright phobic about them.  So I haven't been to any theme parks in the past few years.  Still, Melissa and I could still go to places like Universal and Disney that have lots to offer visitors besides the rides...

There are also a couple of factors that have diminished the quality of our theme park experiences.  One is the travel to and from the park site, usually on the Interstate and for around two hours on the average in each direction.  That can get to be tedious whether you're a driver or a passenger.  The other is the problem these parks have with long lines for their rides.  For a two-to-three minute roller coaster experience, it simply is not worth the aggravation to have to wait upwards to an hour or more to have the opportunity.  Once we stayed at one of Universal Studio's hotels for our vacation (July 2003) and as a side benefit each of us received an express pass for the many rides.  Now THAT was great, almost running through the express lines and getting to ride our favorites many times!  But that experience was also a bit more expensive, too...

I'd like to attend some of the better theme parks again with a more balanced approach: don't just concentrate on the rides, but take in all of what they have to offer.  Still, there are some rides I'm sure I couldn't resist going on again...unless of course that entails having to wait 1-2 hours in line beforehand...