se71

The Love Of A Good Woman - Alice Munro

Book 30 in my 52 books in 52 weeks in 2008

I'm a bit behind in my reviews. This always means that the reviews I write are shorter, as it only takes a few weeks for the details to fade, and the character's names too, especially on shorter books that were quick reads. This is exaggerated a lot when it comes to collections of short stories, like this one. I can remember reading the book, and liking the stories, but without leafing through it, or looking it up on the internet, I cannot actually remember one of the stories from it.

So, my review would be something along the lines of "great stories about real life from one of the most popular short story writers alive today". That's a bit lame, I know. Sorry.

I am now certain to fail in my challenge, which is a shame. i've tried this past month to read a bit at my desk at lunchtimes, and managed a few chapters. It's difficult though.

Cycling to work is great, and on the days I do not cycle, my new office is only sensibly reached by car. So no public transport and no time to read.

I am ploughing slowly through a large fantasy novel at home, which I aim to finish before the end of the year. About a chapter a night before I go to sleep.

Nevertheless, here are the two books I completed in November

No Time For Goodbye by Linwood Barclay
Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The Barclay novel is a thriller, and not that bad, considering it is a Richard and Judy bookclub book. High literature it is not, but it was easy to read at my desk

Coraline I read to my daughter as a bedtime story. It worked well like that, and we both enjoyed it, and are now looking forward to the release of the film adaptation next year. Once again though, I struggle to see just what it is about Gaiman that people love.

How much do you like a particular album in your collection?

Surprisingly, it might be less than you think.

First of all, you have to rate all the songs individually. I've decided to use the most basic system included in Apple's iTunes, which allows you to give the track a number of stars, between one and five. Five is the best.

I've made up some simple rules to make it easy and quick to assign the star rating:

three stars

This is where I start. The vast majority of songs in my collection, ones which I neither like nor dislike, get three stars.

one star

There are surprisingly few of these in my collection, but there are some. These are songs that if you were relaxing in a warm bath, and they came on the radio, you would get out, and walk across a cold bathroom floor just to turn off.

five star

These are songs that when you hear them, you get a 'stop the clocks' moment, where you can't work, or concentrate on anything else. You just have to stop everything and listen.

two and four star.

One and five star songs are very easy to classify. Twos and fours are more tricky, but still fairly easy. A two will be slightly annoying and you might skip it on the iPod, but wouldn't walk across a room to switch it off. A four has moments of beauty, maybe a tiny hook you love in the chorus, but the whole thing doesn't hold together enough to make it a five.

Now, fire up your favourite music player, load an album. I'd advise only to try this with albums where you can identify each and every song by listening to only a few seconds of the intro. If you don't know the album that well, how can you fairly rate it. Now quickly flick through giving each song a star rating according to the criteria above. Just how much do you like it?

I was very surprised to find that whole albums that I own and have listened to over decades sometimes do not have any songs that get more than a three star rating. Hardly any albums get more than a single five star. Some albums get several 2 stars and nothing over a three, and I thought I liked them.

The point to all this?

My ever increasing collection of music, and my ever decreasing time, means I have to pare out the deadwood, and, as I think I've mentioned before, stop listening to crap. There are more subtleties to this [*], but broadly speaking, if an album doesn't have a few four or five star songs, should it even be in my song rotation at all.

[*] a whole album of three star songs may work well as background music while you're working, or jogging, or driving in your car. A five star song may need to be rationed so that you do not become bored with it, or it may make you feel really emotional due to associations, and so you also only play it at special times. In fact, and album of three and four star songs is probably the best compromise.

Marginally better than last month, I finished one solitary book in October 2008

The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain De Botton

It was quite good, though not as good as a half hour skim read I had a few years back suggested it might be.

The review of the film, not the stage musical.

I got dragged (though not kicking and screaming, I like Abba a lot) to the cinema to see this last night. I was quite interested to see what this would be like, quite apprehensive about it, and was pleased and disappointed in equal measure.

Lets start with the positive. The singing was really pretty good. It is first and foremost a musical, so if you do not get the music right, you're in real trouble. The only fly in that particular ointment was Pierce Brosnan - listening to him was tough going. The musical numbers themselves were well coreographed, hardly ever boring, and worth watching. The premise of the story, of a young woman inviting three men to her wedding to try and discover which one is her father is also interesting, and the Greek island setting is also beautiful and well used. Also, the three main actresses are very good.

But.

The songs are shoehorned into this story like a size 10 foot into a size 4 sandle. They have only managed to get a few toes of meaning to poke through the strap of plot. Err, hmm, that analogy doesn't really work does it. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the plot progresses a little, and then it's time for a song, and in many cases, the one chosen is hardly anything to do with the plot at all. "The winner takes it all" was the worst - no idea at all why Meryl Streep would want to sing that to Brosnan at that point. Some almost work, and some have had a few words changed to make them a little more appropriate, but all in all, I found it very jarring. A musical normally has songs written especially for a story, and move that story along. Here, the story just stops, they sing a song, and then it goes on again. I did laugh though at how they named Harry after a line in "Our Last Summer", even though they got flower power about 20 years too late.

I know every Abba song very well indeed - maybe if you know them less well you can let some of this detail wash over you? Maybe I should just lighten up a bit?

My other objection is just that this is completely a girls film. There are no guns or aliens, only a very perfunctory car chase, but plenty of bumbling males, sisters doing it for themselves, tissues and issues, and hearts on sleeves. You get the picture.

Verdict: women will like it, fans of Abba will like it if they just listen to the excellent music, and women fans of Abba will love it.

So I've completed my first full calendar month of commuting to work by bicycle.

"How has it been Robert?" you ask.

Well, it's been pretty good actually.

Temperature:
At the start of the month, I was cycling in shorts and short-sleeved jersey. Very quickly discovered I needed an undershirt, especially in the mornings, and also long sleeves, and then a warm shower-proof jacket, and ginally, running tights over my shorts. So now I'm in full autumn gear. Even wearing fingerless gloves is a bit on the chilly side, and my feet were cold this morning too. i don't really mind what the temperature is when I'm cycling, just as long as I'm dressed appropriately.

Funnily enough, when it was warmer, I'd get home in the evening feeling parched and drain a can of Fosters lager in about 5 minutes. I kept that up for a few weeks, but lately I'm not that thirsty at all, so I've given the lager up.

Rain:
I've only managed to get properly soaked about 3 or 4 times. I haven't got any mudguards, so if the road is very wet, I get wet anyway from the spray even if it isn't actually raining. I honestly don't mind cycling in the rain. It's just annoying getting my clothes dry again, and putting on damp clothes to cycle home.

Sunshine:
I had to buy some lights for my bike. I leave home at ~6.55am, and by the end of the month, this time is before when the sun comes up. It's not so dark that I can't see where I'm going, but I need to be seen by car drivers. I just have a front and rear light on in blinking mode. I cycle towards the east in the morning, andtowards the west in the evening. This is a bit problematic at about 5.30pm at the moment, as I'm going straight into the setting sun and cars behind me are blinded and have difficulty seeing me. In a couple of weeks, this won't be a problem any more - it'll be dark. i will have to buy a proper light I think for the front, as some of my commute is along a country road withno street lighting and quite a few deep potholes.

Wind:
More than hills. More than rain. Cycling into the wind is what I hate most. Prevailing winds seem to be westerlys. So I get a bit of a push to work, and have to struggle home. It would be nicer the other way round I think. My times to work are about 5 minutes faster than those home, though traffic also plays a big part in that difference. (Record for coming in is now just over 43 minutes, done today, 2/10/08)

Route:
I take the same route every day. If I leave at 6:55am, I never get stopped at the level crossing in Datchet. Five minutes later, and I do. So I leave at 6:55am. It's more difficult to leave the office at a set time, so occasionally a train is blocking traffic in Datchet on the way back. If this is the case, then I go round by Eton instead. This adds only about 0.5km to the journey.

My route is mostly flat, only briefly made interesting by a climb over a railway line, and over the M25 and M4 motorways, and in the mornings, up past Windsor Castle. This suits my bike well.

Fitness:
I'm riding my Specialized Langster exclusively now, in fixed gear mode. Having only one gear, and not being able to stop pedalling, is great discipline, and I'm positive that my legs are far stronger now than they have been since Ironman France. I am still easing myself into things, not pushing all out. Even so, my times are generally getting faster and I'm feeling less tired afterwards and recovering more quickly too. In fact, I find the whole experience less tiring than my London commute
on the Brompton was. My plan is to continue like this until at least Christmas (that's if my contract gets renewed of course). Ironman Austria is not until July, and there will be plenty of time in the spring to increase my endurance.

An unfortunate side effect seems to be that I feel less interested in other training, especially swimming. I'm only managing about one 30 minute run a week on top of the cycling. Again, I don't think this is a problem at this stage. Once my body is fully used to the commute, I will factor the other exercising into my schedule.

Enjoyment:
Not getting bored yet. Feel very virtuous. On Sundays, even if I've had a ride in the morning on my Ridley, I'm itching for Monday morning so I can get on the Langster again - it's a great bike.

Oh dear.

Cycling every day to work, tired in the evenings, and only managing a few pages a day of the four books I currently have on the go. Make that five books.

October isn't looking much better.

No books finished this month.

Watched the first episode of "Fringe", the new SF series from the US. It was just like an episode of "X-files".

No Mulder or Scully, but a pair of not dissimilar stars - nerdy genius male, emotional but resourceful female. Obviously some kind of relationship will build between this couple.

Mysterious happenings that seem to be outside normal science. Very familiar look and feel - did they use similar locations?

I'm not saying it's a bad thing to be like another successful series, but somehow this first episode, even though it reportedly cost $10M to make, didn't really grab me that much. Where did they spend that money?

Hopefully it will get better as we get used to the characters.

Update:
In 5 episodes, it probably got worse. Each episode has so much kooky 'science' it makes me want to throw stuff at the TV. I think there is an underlying story arc that has a lot of promise, to do with some bald dude observing everything, but I'm not sure I have the patience to go on.

I've been putting it off, savouring the anticipation. Of course I've seen the novels on the bookshelves, over the last 10 years or so gradually building up into a formidable series. At first, I didn't really know anything about them - George R.R. Martin wasn't that well known to me (I read a science fiction anthology in about 1988 called "Wild Cards" that he edited and provided a couple of the stories for). But the mythos has grown, and everyone who knows anything about fantasy tells me these are the BEST books ever written. So far four are published, and the fans are impatient for the rest. Looking at the author's website it seems I may indeed have a chance of catching up with him before he finishes writing.

So this weekend I gave in to temptation and started "A Game of Thrones", the first part of what may well be seven novels in the Song of Ice and Fire series. At about 1000 pages each, that's a lot of reading.

I'm only about two chapters in, and already I'm enjoying it immensely.

I popped down to the local bike shop (Stowes of Windsor) and they helpfully flipped the wheel of my Langster over for me.

I'm now riding a fixie !!

I've only ridden back from the shop so far, and my practice over the last few weeks seems to have paid off as I didn't find it too bad. Time will tell, when I head off to the normal rush hour traffic on Monday morning.

It's fun though, I can't wait :-)

DSC03868
Originally uploaded by se71

For the rest of my current contract, or at least while it's in it's current location, I'm cycling to work every day. No more trains!


It's about 13 miles each way, and is quite flat, so rather than ruin my Ridley triathlon bike, I thought I'd use the money saved from Southwest Trains and get a new steed.


Fixed wheel bikes are all the rage, and have a lot to be said for them. My new bike, pictured above, is a Specialized Langster, which can run as either a fixed, or a single speed, depending on which way round you put the rear wheel. For those not in the know, the difference is that riding as single speed means that you are able to free-wheel, whereas with fixed, you have to pedal all the time, and pedalling backwards would mean actually riding backwards. Fixed wheel bikes are what those Olympic gold medallists ride in the velodrome.


It has only one gear in either configuration, so you will struggle up steep hills, and have legs like a spin-dryer going back down them. But there are many advantages. On the flat, the gearing is such that you have a cadence (leg revolutions per minute)
higher than you would probably pick on a geared bike. Spinning at 90-100 revolutions per minute is supposed to be good for triathlon training and I think I'm in that range for most of my commute. Having no gears means less maintenance and a lighter bike. I've also noticed that my bike is a LOT quieter than I'm used to.


I'm sticking to single speed for a week or two to get used to the gearing, and I'm thinking seriously about switching across to fixed soon. The disadvantages to fixed are that it's challenging to stop especially in emergency situations, and it's not possible to rest at all y free-wheeling. That latter point is also an advantage, in that you get a much better workout on your cycle trip.


I'm on my second day cycling so far, and am really enjoying the simplicity of this bike. It's also for some reason much smoother over the bumps than the Ridley. I'm trying to pretend I'm on a fixed wheel, pedalling all the time, which is especially hard down hills, coming up to traffic lights, and clipping my left foot in on the move. I have the old fashioned clips and am cycling with trainers, but I will probably change this to a different style of pedal once I work out what I want.


Definitely recommend the experience so far.

This was my last good chance for a while to get some reading done. I'm now commuting to work by bike, and have lost up to 10 hours forced reading time a week. I will have to try and read more in the evenings and weekends to try and make amends for that.

Quake was as depraved a read as I can remember, sort of fun like a slasher movie, but disappointing in it's lack of plot, and I think I won't read any more of Laymon's books now.

Ravenheart was marvellous, part three of the Rigante series which I started only a few months ago. Stormrider, the fourth and final part of this series was really good, but got bogged down near the end with too much military detail. I also feel that it was a set-up for another part, which sadly we'll never now see.

Mystic River is a standard thriller, which tries to be something more, and doesn't quite make it.

Finally for August, a nice short read in the Booker Prize winner Disgrace. Set in turn of the century South Africa, it's a story of one man's fall from grace, and an allegory for the state of the whole country; I didn't like it that much, mostly because I couldn't understand anyone's motives, but also because of the way it just stopped when there was much to resolve.

31 Quake by Richard Laymon
32 Ravenheart by David Gemmell
33 Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
34 Stormrider by David Gemmell
35 Disgrace by J.M. Coetze

I've just been doing book reviews here recently, and mostly these are for my benefit. I haven't stopped having ideas for other bits and bobs, but kinda lost the mojo to write them up due to a complete lack of apparent readership.

But, I'm bored, so here's my idea for today.

In an office, you need to print things occasionally. For me, it's usually just one or two pages (etickets for flights, timesheets, invoices etc). The nearest printer may be right across the room, or only a few steps away. When you click "Print" on the computer there is a bit of processing, then the page gets sent across the network, and the printer wakes up and eventually spits out the page you want.

What you don't want is to walk over to the printer, and then have to wait there ages for the page to come out. You also don't want private information coming out too quickdy so that it can be intercepted by another party before you can reach it. You want to get there just as it's ejected.

So for every desk/office/network/computer/printer configuration, there is a PPP (perfect printer position) which means that the length of time it takes you to walk over to the printer, is exactly the same time as the time it takes for the page to get printed.

Why bring this up today? My desk at my new office is at the exact perfect PPP :-)

Only 3 books this month. The Kingsolver was recommended by a friend, and I loved the first 2/3 a lot - really worthwhile. It waned a bit after that, but was a very good read overall. Steinbeck I've had on my list forever, and it was good to finally tackle this giant - a very interesting and well written book. Alice Munro is on pretty depressing form, always good with her short stories, but it would be nice if she would lighten up occasionally.

August might be better, two weeks on the beach to read, but what to take? If I take War And Peace, I'll probably not finish it. Decisions, Decisions.

28 The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
29 Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck
30 The Love Of A Good Woman by Alice Munro