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I wish it didn’t take me so agonizingly long to finish books. I’ve been working on my library copy of The Silmarillion for ages now… I’ll read a few pages once every couple of days, and I’m only just now about halfway though. I used to read much faster. Maybe I had more time in high school, or maybe, because the activity was encouraged or required then, time was made for me. In an event, I remember the first book it took me longer to read through: Dickens’ Great Expectations. I loved the book; it just took me forever to read for some reason, and it’s been like that ever since.

Both cars continue to hum along without a hitch. They both need cleaning, inside and out, though; they’re filthy. Between the mist that’s been hanging in the air the past few days, not washing away anything, but just causing grime to be stuck to the cars, and the bird population explosion in our yard over the past month or so (they seem to consider the cars worthy targets), the cars have just been in a bad way. I feel for the Minkevan particularly; it doesn’t live in the garage at the moment, so it just seems to stare longingly at the E34 in the garage every night, wishing it could be inside too. Needs some love. Thankfully, both cars engines are in good shape—they both recently had oil changes, the Minkevan with some good ol’ dino 5W-30, and the E34 got a new formula: I’m trying Castrol Syntec 5W-50 instead of the usual Mobil 1. The lifter tick at idle drives me up a wall, and it’s still present (albeit softer) after the oil change. I’m going to have to try some MMO, I do believe.

Or at least, such a claim was scrawled by Luke on a piece of paper now residing on the fridge. It’s amazing how literally he takes this stuff, how black-and-white it is for him. I tell him that the environment on the surface of Venus is like the inside of our oven, and I can just see the gears turning in his head as he works out the similarities between cooking foods in the oven here and what it must be like on Venus. It’s palpable.

Here are some of the latest Penelope-isms:

• A determined “No FANK you!” when a suggestion/command is unwelcome.
• Every morning she asks, “Dad, is it time for tasty breaktast?
• She loves to sit and watch TV with you, but she hates Pinky Dinky Doo.
• She loves to wear her headband, shoes, watches, any kind of accessory.

I finally found all our long-overdue library books after the move, returned them and was able to check out H.A. Rey’s Find the Constellations for Luke. We went through and it interested him, though he wasn’t exactly captivated by it. He’s getting a telescope for his birthday, so I foresee many stargazing nights ahead. I love that he loves the stars and constellations, by the way.

Finished reading the recently-published, excellent Children of Hùrin. Started the Silmarillion. Yes, I’m on a Tolkien kick.

Getting some water in the office kitchen a few minutes ago, I glanced over to the fridge. A magnet on the side caught my eye. It was advertising Burke Street Pizza, the restaurant we order our pizza from during office lunches and other functions.

My mind drifted to the last time I had takeout pizza. It was at Diane’s parents’ house during a tornado watch. Whenever there’s a watch we camp out over there, since our apartment doesn’t have a basement and Clemmons seems to be in the “line of fire” of many tornado-producing weather systems. The last time we were there was a couple of weeks ago. Diane’s parents had graciously ordered pizza for us, and we had eaten and put the kids to bed in the upstairs bedroom. Diane and her sister were downstairs watching TV, and I was upstairs at the kitchen table performing “guard duty” in case one of the kids decided to wander out of the bedroom. I had a glass of Coke to wash down the pizza, and there was a beautifully-illustrated copy of Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows sitting on the table in front of me. Diane’s dad read it to her and her siblings when they were little, and he bought a fresh copy so he could read it to Luke and Penelope as well. He had attempted to do just that downstairs earlier, before the kids went to bed, and at the time they played around the room with other toys, not paying his reading the slightest amount of attention. They’re just unable to follow it at this point in their lives.

I picked it up, though, there at the kitchen table, and dug in. I finished about three-quarters of it before Diane came upstairs and I had to make a quick run back to the apartment to gather a few things. During the time I was reading, however, I was completely absorbed by the book. There was something enchanting about it. I remembered watching the Disney animated version of the book when I was younger, and there was a familiarity there borne out of the obvious parallels with the book that made it seem very…cozy. Beyond that, though, the writing and illustrations themselves had a quality to them that felt like a comfortable easy chair. Maybe it was the “warm” British-ness of it all. Perhaps it was the lengthy descriptions of settings and meals. It could have been the general good nature of all the characters in the story. Most likely it was a fusion of all of those qualities.

Seeing the magnet on the fridge just brought back the sensations of the whole of that evening. And I definitely intend to finish the book.

I’m really angry right now. I just finished watching the trailers to the upcoming Narnia movie, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I’m beyond incensed at what they’ve done to the story in adapting it to the film. From the Wikipedia synopsis:

On their quest to find the Seven Lost Lords of Narnia the crew of the Dawn Treader come across several strange and exotic places. With the help of Lilliandil, the half-star, and Aslan, the great lion, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, and Caspian find themselves on their greatest adventure yet in order to save Narnia from a threatening green mist that has taken the form of the White Witch.

“Threatening green mist?” “Lilliandil?” What the heck? The first is nowhere to be found anywhere in the book, and Ramandu’s daughter (the half-star) doesn’t come onto the scene until the last chapter, and then only as a minor character (Caspian’s eventual bride). What the heck have they done to my story? VotDT is my favorite of the books (The Silver Chair and The Last Battle a close second and third) and this kind of plot alteration, nay, dumbing-down, is completely inexcusable. Of course I know why they have to do it; they have to shoehorn some kind of “doomsday” plot arc into a story that essentially amounts to a loose series of vignettes that illustrate various aspects of Lewis’ theology, but even so, it’s supremely disappointing. Do they not think people would sit through a more faithful adaptation of the book’s plot? Are we that stupid? Easily bored? I would hope not…

At this point I don’t even know if I’ll go see it. I mean, I will, but it’s got a heck of a deficit of anticipation to overcome at this point.

I love the library. Love, love, love it. I want my kids to know their local library inside and out (and possibly the county library too–any number of branches will do). Every time I visit I’m impressed with the fact that it’s like a home: Every wall has some kind of item or decoration on it; time and care have obviously gone into the place, like the schoolroom of a good elementary school teacher. Granted, much of it is chintzy and slightly tacky, but show me a home in America that doesn’t have at least one element of mismatched décor or some out-of-place looking heirloom on the mantlepiece. It makes the place seem lived-in, gives it a warmth, a patina that just draws me in. There aren’t many public projects I’d willing pay taxes to fund, but a well-kept public library is one of them.

I think a lot of my deep-seated attraction for the place stems from my many Saturday visits to the Durham County Public Library as a pre-teen. My mom was involved in the adult education program and was teaching a local man to read; their sessions were every Saturday morning. I tagged along and in the process, became very familiar with that place—the young adult non-fiction, the adult non-fiction, the reference area, the microfiche desk, the periodicals… I just loved being there, and I want my kids to feel a measure of that in relation to their local library.

Finally finishing up Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. It’s one of the best science-fiction books I’ve ever read—up there with Lewis and Herbert and Dick (I have yet to read Bradbury). The dialogue and characterizations are especially sharp and a real pleasure to read. I could make a long list of sci-fi franchises which have borrowed ideas and concepts from Asimov’s seminal work; indeed, the more I read the more I realize how the later sci-fi authors’ and directors’ main achievement was synthesizing ideas from works already published, not envisioning something new. I lose some respect for people like Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas when I learn how much they lifted from earlier work.

Without going into exhaustive detail about the general plot arc, one recent detail in the book has pleased me particularly. The names of Asimov’s characters in the book are never conventional given names like you would hear in real life. Salvor Hardin, Hober Mallow, and Ebling Mis are just a few (George Lucas mimicked this characteristic in the Star Wars universe). Recently Asimov introduced a new character: an intelligent, headstrong 14-year-old granddaughter of one of the book’s earlier heroes. Her name is Arcadia “Arkady” Darell. I can’t quite put my finger on the cause, but I love that first name: Arcadia. I told Diane about it and she loved it too. I think if we ever had another daughter “Arcadia” (or “Cady” for short, I suppose) would be on the short list for her name.