01261: Book Updates While Tobie Sleeps

Well, I managed to drag myself to work last night. So yay me, right? Plus I completed my usual weekly reports and created a brand new scorecard template from scratch. Admittedly the thought of completing that new template had me pretty worried over the past few weeks since it involved a lot of different data points from different data sources - some of which I had not tried tapping before. But I admit I tend to worry too much over these things and in the end it turned out to be simpler than I had feared. My mother taught me that you need that sense of nervous dread to keep yourself on your toes. It doesn't make things any easier for sure, but at least I got the job done.

And as I compose this entire the clouds are randomly spitting out torrents of rain for some reason. I'm not sure what the weather has planned for us, but I'm just glad that I managed to avoid commuting home in the rain. It helps to be thankful for such little favors, right?

My current reading list has shifted from the last time that I had written about it. While my Kindle is still busy with A Clash of Kings, my Sietch book is now Ilustrado while my commuter book is The Sandman: Book of Dreams. And yes, that means that I finally finished reading all the books in the Star Wars: The New Jedi Order series and I can move on with that chapter of my life. Yay me.

Ilustrado is not the typical sort of book that I'd read. But it was written by a Filipino author and it managed to bag a few literary awards, so that got me curious enough to invest in a copy during one of those mad 20% nearly everything sales at Fully Booked. I've only just started reading the book today and despite its relative brevity compared to the other books in my reading queue, this one promises to be a bit of a challenge. Already the writing style is coming off as a tad pretentious for my tastes (maybe this is just the cynical writer in me speaking) and I'm wondering if the story will truly hook me in. Not to sound uneducated or less discerning in the book field, but sometimes I feel that a lot of the award-winning books are written for a completely different audience that excludes a greater majority of the population.

And that can't be a good thing for any writer - at least as far as I see things. Or maybe I just have very strong beliefs when it comes to writing - I tend to lean towards the side of the fence that supports greater usage of more common language in order to make it more understandable to more people. It's not dumbing down the book, mind you. It's more about keeping things grounded and more accessible to your readers. Or something like that.

In sharp contrast, A Clash of Kings is proving to be quite the delightful read and it's pretty difficult to put down despite length. I'm enjoying almost every bit of it, but I won't pretend that I don't enjoy the chapters focused on the likes of Tyrion and Arya more than the others. The narrative is definitely a great one, a story that I find myself enjoying a bit more than even The Lord of the Rings books for some reason.

Maybe I just like political intrigue a bit more than your general questing, as is typical in most fantasy books. Considering I am the kind of geek who was raised on the likes of Dune and the Star Trek TV shows, this may make more sense than expected. And A Song of Ice and Fire is definitely the sort of series that is just bubbling with insidious politicking and backstabbing that every bit of is is pretty enjoyable. I can't wait for the TV series to resume airing - they certainly have their work cut out for them in trying to bring this next book to life.

But this begs the question of when I'll actually get around to reading Haruki Murakami's 1Q84. It's a pretty epic book and having the massive hardbound edition isn't making it any easier to get started on it either. Part of me wants to first read George Orwell's 1984, given this is the book that inspired Murakami's story. But on the other hand, I also want to stand a decent chance of finishing the book before the year ends, and there isn't all that much time for that left, especially considering the other books that I'm reading at the same time.

That does lead me to one last question - whether I should try to schedule some vacation time over the holidays. The leave requests have begun and it looks like a lot of the folks in the department will be taking the week after Christmas as vacation time. I have than enough credits to do the same (and then some), but then there are all those other obligations to worry about. The curse of being raised with a strong sense of responsibility - not going to work still makes me feel guilty. Good grief.

Ah well, enough of this. Time to wake up Tobie. I have some baked corned beef hash in the oven toaster complete with some baked sunny side up eggs and some pandesal that I had picked up at the bakery.
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