Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Cute


Image hosted by TinyPic.com

CUTE! :-)

Photo taken at Greenwich Park. Squirrels are so damn cute. This one really seems to be enjoying his dinner!

Well, back after a slight absence! Not blogged out... just taking a rest and a change of pace :-) This is always a good thing! Doing the same ol in and out every day wears down my soul. Ah! And I haven't forgotten "Kingdom" It's still on going :-)

Been a nice long relaxing weekend here. Monday was a public holiday in the U.K but I also took of Today also. I have had a nice long relaxing four days doing not much of anything. I managed to read a whole novel in almost a day! I finished the last couple of chapters off this morning and started another. The book I was reading was by Harlan Coben

Image hosted by TinyPic.com

It's the story of a Doctor who gets shot twice in the chest. Upon waking up he learns his wife is dead and there is no trace of his baby girl. Some time later he gets a message telling him that he must pay a ransom if he wants to see his daughter alive again. It tells him not to contact the cops or do anything funny. There will be no second chance.

Harlan Coben is a very successful crime writer. I haven't read his work before, but I have heard many good things about them. I must say I wasn't very impressed. The prose comes across as very simplistic and cold. I don't feel the emotions that I should while reading it. Typical lines are "I stood at her grave feeling alone and sad." He just tells you in the simplest terms rather the showing you and making you feel something. One of my problems is that I am far too picky! I found many things that just made give a big "HUH?" because they made no sense or what not even explained at all.

OK, that's the bad points now on to the good points. He writes a good mystery. I was kept guessing all the way through and wanted to find out what was going on. He keeps the thrills and the spills and the action coming at a fast and constant pace. It pretty much never lets up.

I'm giving another of his novels a go called "Tell No One" and I am still not overly impressed. I would say he is simply average. If you want the equivalent of a movie block buster where you turn off your brain and just sit back and enjoy the noise and fury then his books are ideal for that. They make a nice change of pace. A bit of brain popcorn isn't a bad thing at all sometimes :-)

I'll be going off to Spain soon! I am very excited. I have a million things to do that I have not done. I always leave everything to the last moment. Awww it's just more exciting that way, isn't it? :-D

Martin - 2005

19 comments:

Cristina said...

Oh, that pic makes me smile :D Cute indeed!

Martin said...

Glad to provide a smile :-)

Welcome back! Glad you had a nice holidays!

- Martin

Anonymous said...

Cute squirrel! We have some agressive city squirrels here in Washington DC...a friend told me once that she was having lunch outside, she put her sandwich down and a squirrel just came up and grabbed it. When my sister and I wanted to get our dog all excited when we were kids we would say "ardilla!", which is Spanish for squirrel. Either that or "cartero!", which means mail carrier. That dog would get so bent out of shape! This is your Spanish lesson for today. ;>

Glad you had a relaxing few days off, yes taking a break from the same ol' same ol' is a good thing. Also there is absolutely nothing wrong with procrastinating!

Ubermensch said...

Owls? squirrels what next ??:)
That review came across well, shall see to dodge if it comes to that.

mermaid said...

Luna, I have been looking up at the sky. Now, I'll see this little one sitting on your beautiful moon.

. : A : . said...

You caught the squirrel at the right moment!

:-)

Good one.

Martin said...

MARIJOSE: Great to see you around! How is th moving going? :-)

Thanks, I liked the Spanish lesson. I like the word for seagull in Spanish "gavotte" but for quite awhile I got confused and mixed it with "albondigas" ( meatballs ) haha Ah well... it was funny at the time :-D

UBER: You forgot there has been a dog too!!! :-D Owls, squirrels, dogs... oh my!

MERMAID! Great to see you here too. Where has the mermaid been? I hope you have been swimming calm and safe waters!

:A: Thanks! Easy to get them. As you can see he is a fat squirrel :-D They are all very tame in the park and hang around while loads of tourists throw them nuts to eat. Not a bad life really haha

- Martin

Martin said...

PS: Should be Gaviota! Typo! :-)

Borya said...

Have a nice journey. We'll both have new impressions of Spain and its people to tell by the end of September!!! :)

Anonymous said...

Hey Martin, after much procrastinating we moved on Saturday. Everything went very well because I found that the trick to moving is to hire movers who will pack and unpack for you. It did not cost that much extra money and they were great. I asked them in the morning what I could do and the head guy said, "nothing ma'am, just relax and we'll take care of everything." :D So we even had time the next day to spend part of the afternoon at the pool.

There seems to be some silliness associated with the word albondigas...a friend of mine says the only sentence he could remember in Spanish is "albondigas, no te dije," which means "meatballs, didn't I tell you." I don't think that's even a coherent thought. I guess it sounds sillier with a couple of beers in you.

Just Me said...

When do you go to Spain & for how long? Am looking forward to your posts from there.

Cute squirrel...but we consider them nuisances here. Great pic.

Extempore said...

Martin, that's such beautiful pic!

Thanks for the review - A friend's been trying to get me to read Harlan Coben for a while now. Will tread with caution now. :)

Martin said...

BORYA: Thank you! I leave next week :-) Very exciting that it's so close now! You are going to Spain? Where do you go?

MARIJOSE: Now that's the way to move! Sounds stress free!

You are right, for some reason Albondigas seems a very funny word! :-)

JUST ME: I go on the 9th and return on the 16th :-) Will try to blog from Spain each day if I can do it! Hope so :-)

I think our squirrels are not so bold as the ones you get over there! :-o They pretty much stay away from people. Even the really tame ones like this just come only so far and no more.


EXTRMPORE@: Well a lot of people like Coben! You never know!

But It's not for me though. After trying a second one of his novels I have decided that I really don't like him :-)

- Martin

Anonymous said...

Very cute squirrel, I've noticed they are getting more active around my house. We've seen quite a few of them lately.

I always wait till last minute to get anything done, too. I hope you have a great trip :)

Martin said...

RONNY: Welcome to the procrastinator club! You will be sent a badge... when we get around to it :-D

Thank you, I'm glad it's next week! Looking forward to it :-)

- Martin

Acrix said...

I haven;t seen any squirrels around my place and the squirrel in ur photo indeed looks cute! Esp when they are feeding~ LEaving everything to last minute can be exciting but then it gona be killing more brain cells like wat i;m suffering now. I got a project due next week and gona work on it later! Suppose to have a month to do it but i leave it until now to do~

Borya said...

Martin,
didn't you receive my e-mail? Maybe I was using a wrong adress. Still waiting for the "go" at the moment but it could be around the weekend of the 24th and it'll be La Mancha. I surely will come back with some pics and would love it soooooo much if you could decide to open your own flickr account, man!!!

Gary LaPointe said...

Be sure to check out his Myron Bolitar Mysteries. I haven't read any of the non-Myron books so I can't compare. I liked the Myron ones though.,

Gary
http://garysaid.com/

Martin said...

BORYA: Yes! I have it! Sorry, I missed it among my yahoo junk! Have a great time in Spain!!!!!! :-) Hopefully it won't be too hot for us.

I'll sure bring back lots of photos also! :-)

GARY: Hi there, thanks for stopping by here!

I'm afraid I have given up on Mr Coben. I just don't like his writing so I won't be trying any more! Two was enough for me :-)

- Martin