Friday, April 27, 2007

Book Group: Saving Fish from Drowning - Amy Tan

As usual, Amy Tan kept me entertained, almost from cover to cover. I loved the voice of the narrator. She died at the beginning of the book so she spoke as a ghost who could see inside of all the characters, yet filtered everything through her own experience. Very fun and interesting.

The story is mostly set in Burma as a group of tourists who she was scheduled to lead on a sightseeing trip, turn up missing. Since she's a ghost, we get to know what's happening to all the characters during the entire story.

One thing bothered me. At the end, she did a 'where are they now' section. Not so interesting.

Other than that...two thumbs up.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Stephen Donaldson

I originally read this series when I was a teenager and remember being quite taken with them. In fact, they've moved with me for the last 25+ years. This time around, Lord Foul's Bane was a disappointment. Copycat ideas fron TLOTR. So I won't be reading the rest of the series.

This graphic of the cover is the same edition I have and it was publish in 1977.

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Spring Break

The kids' spring breaks were consecutive weeks at the end of March, so we took a vacation to Sunriver that overlapped on the weekend. Joel flew back to Spokane to ride with his friend Michael down to Sunriver.

Thursday, Pat and I took a nice long walk, had coffee, and visited the charming local library. Then, we had a beautiful day on the mountain on Friday. The sun was out and the snow was terrific for skiing (not so good for the snowboarders). Skiing on the Summit run was unbelievable...let 'er rip!!

Jill and Nathan flew in Friday evening and we took another long walk in the morning on Saturday. After attempting to visit Lava Lands (closed) we drove near Benham Falls and hiked the rest of the way there. On our return, we decided to off road it in the Lexus. It road so well, we could hardly tell we weren't on the main highway.

Sunday took us back to the mountain for another day of fun. About 5" of fresh powder greated us and the snowboarders were in heaven. We all upgraded to helmets and it was a good thing; I managed to use it during an accidental flip on the ice.

Joel and Michael had to make the long drive back to Spokane, so they left from the mountain, the rest of us had an enjoyable evening with a visit to the hot tub, and left early the next morning.

The rest of Jill's spring break was spent golfing and wedding planning. We also had a nice birthday dinner for my mom and congratulations to Jill and Nathan. Oops, forgot to take pics. All in all, a great vacation and the first time Pat and I took a week off without leaving town (ok, Sunriver doesn't really count).






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