One of my favorite books is Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code and I have been waiting years for Brown to put out his next great Robert Langdon novel. After reading The Lost Symbol, I am still waiting. Now I am not going to get into the details of the book here, you can read a synopsis at Amazon. Instead I am going to tell you the problems I had with the book and they don't all necessarily revolve around this book.

First, there was no way Brown could have topped Code. It would have been like hitting the literary lottery twice. He didn't. It just seems to me that Symbol was rushed and yet I know it wasn't. I know it took Brown six years to finish this book. I saw interviews where he drones on and on about all the research he had to do for Symbol. It is a shame it never made it into the book. Sure there is some detail but no where near the detail and undercurrent that floated through Code.

My second issue with the book has nothing to do with the book, it has to do with the Code movie and Tom Hanks. When I read Code I imagined the main character Robert Langdon to be an older Indiana Jones not Buffy from Bosom Buddies. And now when I read Landgon I can't get Tom Hanks funky hairdo out of my mind.

The Lost Symbol is just an average read for me. Nothing great. A little drawn out. Nothing like Code but more like all of his other works prior to the Code. Tobey summed it up best saying Symbol read more like a script than a book and I agree. If you are wanting to read excellent books that are script-like then pick up a few Brad Meltzer titles instead.

~ame

With our wonderful vacation being over and the weather more humid and hotter than ever, my mind keeps replaying all the time we spent in Duluth and the time I spent there as a child.

I thought of this book tonight while I mucked around in our own black pond: the pool. The poor pool went neglected this past winter and we have been playing catch up with it all summer long. As of today, no one has been in it until I climbed in to clean the sides and scoop up all the dead bodies leaves from the bottom. There could have been dead bodies in there for all I know. Lord knows there were enough dead beetles in the pool to warrant a statement of dead bodies. Beetles the size of tennis balls - I kid you not. Ew.

Thankfully Tobey has set the chlorine level to the 'peel your skin off' level and with my bleach sensitivity I am about ready to crawl out of my skin at any second. I am slathering myself with Aveeno lotion as I type this and tomorrow we will make the least liked child of the day crawl in the pool and clean the sides again.

Tobey says I didn't need to jump in the pool, that it could have been cleaned from the outside. But I wanted to use the pool-sucky thing and the best way to do that is to actually be in the pool. Who knew that 10 seconds into doing the sucky thing that the sucker would break. I pushed it around with my foot a bit but it was apparent that was not going to work at all. So tomorrow we need to go and buy yet another sucky thing, our third or fourth since we put the pool in. Pools and boats I tell ya, money pits my friends, money pits.

Anyway, back to the witch. When we moved to Duluth in the middle of my 5th grade year, the class was reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I had already missed most of the book and I can't recall a thing about the book other than the title and that it was a Newberry Award Winner. It seems our teacher, Mrs. Citro, loved her some Newberry books.

We went on to read one of my all time favorite children's book: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I loved that book so much I went on to read the entire series and have even read it to my children, back when they would still let me read to them. I have to thank Mrs. Citro for her gift of books to me. Of course by 5th grade I was reading, mainly Little House on the Prairie books but her selections seemed more grown up to me. More real. No more picture books, no sir.

Well it seems that lab puppies love Aveeno lotion - must be the oatmeal and since Daisy has licked most of the lotion off of me, I need to reapply. What are you still doing here, go read a book or better yet, read your kids a book. A Newberry one.

~ame

Last night I stayed up way too late. My back is really bothering me and nothing is giving me any relief so sleep is out of the question. I was flipping through the tv stations and there wasn't much on. It is amazing that we spend an outrageous amount of money for this HD tv cable thing and nothing is on. But I came across The Bridges of Madison County, although I have read the book I had never seen the movie since I am not a big Meryl Streep nor Clint Eastwood fan.

Begrudgingly I watched it. And it reminded me about a passage in the book that I just loved. So I got out my book and flipped through looking for that specific passage, which I couldn't find. By the end of the movie I was in tears and decided to turn the tv off and read the book again. Nevermind that I decided to reread the entire Harry Potter series and I have been stuck for weeks on book 5. Nevermind that I have sixteen books on my nightstand to read.

What makes this usual for me is I don't read romantic novels. Ever. The book was a gift from a friend and it was such a short read, I figured why not. I suppose I need to rethink all the things I don't like and try them. The other night I had scallops for the first time in my life because "I don't do seafood." They were pretty ok. The whole meal was just ok for Ohtobe and I, so I am sure that somewhere else the scallops might be really good. I will make it a point to order them again.

As for the plunge I mentioned in the last post. Good and bad news: good news is we prequalify for a loan, bad news is Steve's house doesn't qualify since it doesn't have a working kitchen. We have already found another house for even less and would like to get it but getting a realtor to call back is like pulling teeth. One would think in this market they would be calling us back pronto. Hopefully being patient will pay off.

~ame