Kamas Kirian > Recent Status Updates

Couldn’t stand the narrator anymore, had to give it up.

Just started chapter 2 and I don't know if I can continue. The story seems fine so far, what there is of it. It's the narrator, Mary Sarah, that is bothering me. She has a pronounced lisp. Every T or D, especially at the end of a word, ends up sounding like 'th', and so do a few others. And every S is elongated.

I keep having to stop listening because I become frustrated with the storytelling.

Egads! I remember there being a big change in football practices in the early to mid 80s because players were collapsing from heat stroke/exhaustion, but I don't remember specific cases. IIRC one of the MN Vikings players died in the 90s as well. From this book it looks like Pat Dye should have been indicted for manslaughter over Greg Pratt's death.

Not a great first impression. JJ Green doesn't have a great voice for narration in my opinion. I'm thinking no decent military person would give up a hand picked spot just because a friend asked.

The book seems a little dated now, after the events of the last few years. One of the characters laments all the bloggers coming up with conspiracy theories, and that he only gets his information from real news sources like the Washington Post. Which in this day and age comes across as either naive or extreme political virtue signalling.

I do not like the computer noises added for effect.

I made it through Eureka! and had to take a break.

What I'm finding is that the classic tales everyone knows are excellent, but the less known tales are somewhat blah. Still, I'm looking forward to more stories because a few of the more obscure tales are worth it.

"street performers playing gay roles might be accused of appropriation. But at the time it was important for main stream actors, familiar faces, to bring issues of equality to middle America."

Chapter 22 has a section in which he talks about how the liberal west coast has to show the conservative folks in middle America their out of touch views on issues. I'll have to go back and get the exact quote.

So far I'm kinda just 'meh' on this. Perhaps it's just my original impression that this was geared more for teens/young adults, but the rather extensive use of foul language is kinda turning me off. I'm also a little unclear on Murderbot's history, as well as the rest of the crew, and the actual mission. For those that didn't read the previous novels it seems a little "inside baseball" right now.

I get the impression that quite a bit of New Age beliefs

First experience with the Sam Reilly stories. Overall not bad. It's been well paced and kept me interested. There are way too many coincidences though, it seems a little forced at times. And the geography makes no sense to me. I'm familiar with the areas talked about: North Shore MN, northwestern ND-where I grew up) and it throws me out of the story at times when he describes things that just aren't right.

there are times that I'm a little thrown by the shifting perspective of 1st/3rd person.

Carroll, my favorite Jets coach, uses meditation and positive thinking. He’s still on board with anthropogenic climate change though. It really makes me question his views. And especially the, You can’t argue with the science” statement. Science is all about arguing with what we think we know about something.

The beginning of the audiobook wasn't all that impressive. Introduction and first couple of chapters sounded more like an infomercial with all the talk about ordering Test X from Company Y. Then it got better, until Chap 4 when he started going off about Climate Change, the IPCC, etc. Willing to buy into environmental factors being a problem, but only for so far.

specifically on page 67: "First of all, the peasantry clung to Catholicism, with its debilitating irrationalities, its superstitions, its hostility to progress in thought, and the brake on inventiveness and adaptability it was seen to impose on people."

one thing that bothered me was a very anti-catholic description of someone. I'm not sure if it was the author's views, or the views of the person he was writing about. It kind of threw me for a loop, especially as it is ambiguous regarding whose opinion it is.

I understand there's lots of confusion after a major natural disaster. I can't help but wonder if he went out of his way to make law enforcement officers look as bad as he could though. Of all the major characters, there's only two I remotely care about: Jason and Jessica. I'm starting to get a vibe of Death Is Lighter Than A Feather here, with too many characters that just don't make any impression, let alone good.

finally getting to the earthquake, but he's still introducing new characters that I assume will be main ones. I'm not sure if this is typical of his novels, as all my previous experience with his works have been short stories, but I find it rather irritating.

Not sure what the point of the rather explicit sex scene was at the end of chapter 4. I hope their done introducing main characters and get onto the main part of the story though.

So far I'm not all that impressed. It starts off with a foreword about how prescient he was when writing this, as if natural disasters in general are hard to predict. Then in the book it talks about how the difference between the '97 Red River flood in Fargo and Grand Forks was about the tax rate related to flood works. GF had a dike in place that was overtopped. Fargo had to build temporary dikes. 2009 was higher.

Opening credits (Part 2): Of those things he shared climate change is a problem, but is natural, there's no evidence of AGW except at some very localized ways. Species loss is a problem, but would take more political will than any politician alive could ever muster. Famine and water scarcity are overwhelmingly political issues created by idiotic government policies.

Opening credits (part 1). Not impressed so far. He starts out by trying to compare the bronze age collapse to our current times and asks if another collapse could happen. Well, Duh! Collapses have happened over and over again throughout the world. He talks about the areas threatening our current interconnected world civilization such as climate change, famine, water scarcity and species loss.

So far I am liking it. Sakakawea (ND spelling) just showed up at Fort Mandan, so we're in the thick of the ND winter now. Too bad we don't know exactly where the real fort was. The area is about the last unflooded part of the Missouri River, from Garrison Dam to Bismarck, about 50 miles.

"...reputed to be enormously wealthy, although they lived simply, kept only a few servants..."

My, oh my! What contradictions in description.

My parents brought my old Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books down when they visited last week. I figured they'd be good for my daughter to read, but I decided to reminisce first and check them out myself since it's been about 40 years since I read them.

I need to put this one away for awhile. I feel like I've missed too much of what has happened since the first book. If I get a chance to collect the others on sale I will, but right now it just seems like I'm missing a whole lot of back story.

-abandoned for now.

About a quarter of the way through and it's still mostly set up of the world and characters. As of yet there isn't much of a mystery, just a hint at who she wants to investigate and why. I do like the three main characters so far.

decided to start at the beginning of the series before going back to A Perfect Blood.