I became interested in Brandon Sanderson when I found out that he was finishing The Wheel of Time for Robert Jordan. I decided to start with his first book, Elantris.
Elantris was a city of magical people whose inhabitants were thought of as gods. Something has changed and now Elantrians are thought of as being cursed. It’s been 10 years since the fall of the city, and book focuses on 3 characters with related plot lines. The story takes place both inside and outside of Elantris.
One thing that attracted me to this book is that it’s a standalone story. It’s not one part of an epic series. Nice! As always with fantasy novels, it took a little while to get into. I think part of it had to do with learning a new universe. I was having a little trouble in my head figuring out how some of his terms should be pronounced and somebody else’s pronunciations might be different. I just had to make myself not worry about that and get on with the book. I also didn’t like the frequency in which Sanderson was throwing out new terms and not really explaining what they mean. There’s no glossary in the back to help clear things up. Eventually, everything was explained enough to understand what he was talking about. Once I started getting into the book, I really enjoyed it. I do remember thinking that there were a lot of surprising twists happening, but that’s okay. I found it interesting that there weren’t many battles. There was a great deal of intellectual maneuvering, but not much physical fighting. I’m pretty sure I’m going to read Sanderson’s Mistborn series when I get a chance.
F.Y.I. – There’s an Elantris glossary on Sanderson’s website. I wish I had known this when I was reading the book.
The Sword and Laser’s current book is Unshapely Things and I’m already reading it. I don’t think I had ever heard of elf punk until now.
Yeah, I’ve gotten hooked on Twitter too. I wasn’t really interested in it at first, but once I started I just couldn’t stop. My profile is here. I’ll probably put a widget in the sidebar one day. If you don’t know what Twitter is, then that might be a good thing.
In this dream I was driving to Brandon to visit John. Somehow I made a wrong turn and drove my car into a body of water. I escaped from the car and got out of the water. I soon realized that I had ended up in Vicksburg and that I had driven into the Mississippi River. It was pouring down rain and the river was flooding. I walked down a road trying to find a place where I could call for help. I finally came to a McDonald’s out in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by trees. It was small, cramped little place on the inside. There were many freaky-looking people there. I placed an order and then sat down at an empty table to wait for them to fix my food. Everybody was looking at me funny for some reason. Then I woke up.
I buy songs from iTunes every once in a while. Sometimes a band that I like will release songs exclusively on iTunes. Sometimes I’m at work and I get an urge to hear a song right away and iTunes seemed like the best option in that situation. Now I think I’m going to start using Amazon MP3 when I want to download a song if it’s available there. Why? Because it has no DRM. With iTunes I can only listen to it on one of the 5 computers that are authorized on my account. I don’t even have an iPod. If I get it from Amazon MP3, I can listen to it on any device I want to that plays MP3s. Also, I don’t really like the iTunes software. I REALLY don’t like it.
Amazon just came out with a new widget that you can put on your website that allows people to preview songs. The owner of the website gets a small percentage of each sale. I decided to try it out.
I bought a set of CUTCO knives last summer and I’m so glad that I did. I’ve never had good cutlery like this. They are so sharp. I get a little nervous about hurting myself sometimes because of how sharp they are. If I did accidentally cut something off, I’m sure it would be such a clean cut that it could easily be reattached. Just having the knives around makes me want to cook more. Hopefully in the near future I’ll get back in the habit of cooking on a regular basis (I’ve been saying that since last summer). Maybe I’ll get some forks and spoons next.
Back to my ever-growing reading list. This time I read The Appeal by John Grisham. This is another one of his legal thrillers. The man knows how to write legal thrillers, so I’m glad he’s back to what he does best. What is The Appeal about? A company with a factory in Mississippi has just had a huge verdict returned against them. They were dumping harmful chemicals into the ground and the people in the area started getting sick. They are going to be appeal the case before the Mississippi Supreme Court and the company wants to get a friendly justice elected to the court. I saw an interview where Grisham said that this is the most political book that he’s written. He makes a good argument for appointing state Supreme Court justices instead of electing them. He gets Mississippi, its people, and their attitudes right so the book felt very familiar. It’s a pretty good book and I enjoyed reading it.
It seems like I get a lot of emails at work that fall into the following catergories:
A is leaving for a new job. If you would like to make a contribution toward a gift…
B has had a death in the family. If you would like to contribute toward a plant…
We’re having a baby shower for C. If you like to buy a gift or contribute toward a group gift…
I like doing it for the most part. It’s a nice and thoughtful thing to do. I’m sure they would do the same for me. Of course it’s always optional, but I used to feel like I needed to contribute something for each one. However, it started to get on my nerves after a while especially when a bunch come up around the same time. Now I’m a little more selective about which ones I contribute to. Is that mean? If it’s someone I don’t know and never see I don’t usually make a contribution. It’s not as bad now as it was when I first started here, but I work with a lot of people so it still happens a lot.
I talked to my sister about this a few months ago and she has the same complaint about where she works. And she’s got a good 10 years on me in the work force. I think part of the reason I started to get annoyed is that I hardly ever carry cash on me and when I do it’s for a specific reason. I always have to go out of my way to get money each time I get one of those emails. Another part of it is that I’m tired of giving away money when there’s stuff that I want need to be doing with it. How selfish!
It’s been about a year and a half, but I remember being upset that I didn’t get the “free” portable DVD player that I was promised for signing up for DirecTV. Instead I got a crappy DVD player and then a second one. I didn’t think about calling in and complaining. I guess I just figured that DirecTV changed their deal sometime after I made the call to order service and something in the fine print gave them a right to do that. Every time I see portable DVD players in stores I kinda want one, but not enough to actually buy one myself.
Last week I got an interesting letter. There’s been a class-action lawsuit filed against DirecTV for not coming through on those portable DVD players. I had no idea. So there are others who got screwed like me. That must be why those two posts I made about the DirecTV gift received a lot of page views back then. It seems like a lot of people didn’t get DVD players at all. It’s great that I’ll finally be getting that portable DVD player. That’s all I want.
This letter about the lawsuit came on the same day that my DirecTV bill came. Is that a coincedence?
I upgraded to WordPress 2.5 when it came out in late March/early April or whenever. I liked it, but there were problems. I kept getting JavaScript errors and I would loose formatting when I edited certain pages.
When WordPress 2.5.1 came out a few weeks ago I immediately upgraded. This update is such a drastic improvement visually and I haven’t had any problems using it so far.
Of course, people that just come here to read the entries won’t see any difference. However, if you use WordPress on your site and haven’t upgraded to 2.5.1, don’t wait any longer.
Today, my roommate and friend John is leaving Starkville. He got a new job in Jackson and will be living in Brandon. His first day is on Monday. I’m glad that he’s starting on a career and that he’ll be getting out of Starkville, but I’m going to miss having him around. The good thing is that he’s not that far away and we’ll probably be able to meet up from time to time. Just reminiscing right now.
I became interested in Brandon Sanderson when I found out that he was finishing The Wheel of Time for Robert Jordan. I decided to start with his first book, Elantris.
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