A Goodreads Review

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I finished The Long Earth yesterday, and went to Amazon after to see what others thought, and in many respects I agreed; The Long Earth has an incredibly novel premise, but a storyline that in the end, doesn't really go anywhere (no pun intended).

The book essentially offers a thought exercise of what would happen if relatively unlimited inter-planetary (or more correctly, inter-dimensional) travel were available to the masses on Earth. What would people do? Would there be a mass exodus? Would people try to exploit this travel for their own gain or exploiting others? How would it affect the economy of Earth and the people who remained? What would remain valuable and what wouldn't? Would governments remain intact? So many questions and fascinating to think about.

Unfortunately, the storyline that is the vehicle for this premise is not quite as strong. I won't go into it much as it would spoil things, but I felt rather unfulfilled at the end. I was sure that this coming terror would have been much more metaphysical and not so...meh.  Although they definitely concluded the book in a manner that foreshadows a sequel.

All in all, I would still highly recommend this just to change the way you think, if only a little. =)

oh...and I really want a t-shirt that says "Don't worry! On another Earth it already happened" like Joshua.

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Visit to Grandma's

We decided to make our trip up to Ventura yesterday to visit Grandma.  It's been more than a month since our last visit but we finally had a weekend with both of us not working so made the trek.  The traffic on the 5 was much worse than usual. We reached Santa Monica and saw how nasty the 405 was looking and decided to take the PCH to have a slightly more scenic trip.  Unfortunately, I think everyone else had the same idea.  So our total travel time ended up being 5 and a half hours(!) compared to our usual three. Ah well, at least there were nice views.

Grandma is doing very well.  She's almost back to her original weight before last year's surgery and was eating very well for the two meals we had with her.  Of course, the trout today was "tasteless" to her (but she still ate the whole thing!). And we enjoyed the coconut-banana cream pie for dessert.

The finch bird feeder was empty already so we re-filled the sock with Nyjer seed for the finches.  There has only been one bird that eats the suet so far, a Black-Headed Grosbeak, but he hasn't been back recently. I think maybe we should look into getting a shepherd's hook so we can hang some more formal bird-feeders and place it so some of the other residents can see it as well.

UPDATE: As I typed this, the Grosbeak came back! Tried to take a picture but all we had was my phone and as soon as we approached, off he flew.  I think his ears must have been burning.

The kindle is also updated with a few new library books.  We got...
- The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard about a failed journey to the South Pole in early 1900s.
- Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (i hear the book was better than the movie)
- The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (I know you said this was weird, penny, but so many good reviews!)

And of course, we brought over a few Dick Francis novels for her as well.