Notes from the road plus some other things

Last week was relaxing: I sat on the beach.  Read.  People watched.  Listened to the waves when they weren't being drowned out by real New Jersey housewives.  [Seriously, two women settled down way too close to my chair and umbrella and proceeded to discuss their plastic surgeries and their husbands and it was TMI.]  

Things I noticed while driving to/from the beach, or while at the beach:

• So many election placards.  Everywhere.  Do I forget between election cycles, or have the economy and widening rift between right and left generated more candidates and fiercer primaries?
• One "BATEMAN for Sheriff" sign along Ritchie Highway was defaced to read "BAT MAN for Sheriff".  :D  Who wouldn't want the Caped Crusader as their local crime fighter? 
• Kipke for Delegates...my first thought was how would he handle that with SPN? Except wait, Kipke isn't Kripke.  Nevermind.
• This week was Bike Week.  Motorcycles EVERYWHERE.  Which was fine (shiny! pretty!) when it wasn't irritating to watch motorcyclists ride up the shoulder or between cars in the back up on Rtes 404 & 50.  Yesterday's Darwin Award nominee:  the Harley rider without a helmet who was busy talking on his cell phone and driving with one hand.  :sigh: 
• As built up as Rehoboth is today in comparison to my childhood memories, it is nothing compared to the mess of Fenwick Island or Ocean City.  RB's "downtown" zoning must be much, much tighter, since it has avoided the high rise mess for the most part.  Always think high rises look...not quite right at the beach, like the architecture doesn't match the environment. Of course, the shopping/outlet mess out on Route 1 is pretty unattractive, but since I go to the beach for the beach rather than the shopping, I only notice that on my way in and out of town.

Syllable sadness:  in a NY-pubbed book, I noticed that the syllable break of "asshole" was wrong.  Unless suddenly the syllables have changed from ass-hole to as-shole.  (See p. 1059 of Demon Forged.)

Proper name spelling sadness:  Dear English-speakers/writers -- Colombia and Columbia are not interchangeable.  They are not even homonyms (the vowels in the second syllable are distinctly different).  Please stop using Columbia as the all-purpose spelling.  It's really not appropriate to use when referring to that South American country.

Someone in Austin, Texas, seems to want to talk to me, if the 12 missed calls are anything to judge by.  Except s/he never leaves a message, so it can't be that important.  I've reverse checked the number -- residential listing.  I'm almost curious enough to answer the next time.  Almost.

 A week late:  the men's US Open final was pretty good, despite the heinous TV coverage -- F-You very much, CBS and ESPN, for pushing the match to Monday (wouldn't want to mess with Sunday night must-see-TV) and then freaking abandoning it entirely for pregame schtick and Celebrity Bowling.  That failure is better dissected here, here, and here.  

Djokovic seems to have overcome his latent head-case tendencies.  He played an amazing match against Federer in the semis, only to run up against Nadal in the final.  He must have been absolutely gutted, but he managed to be incredibly charming in the trophy ceremony and in all the interviews I've seen.  Nadal was just en fuego, on a mission to win the major that was purported to be unwinnable for him because of his tendency to stand 12 feet behind the baseline and hit with such spin.  But as Pete Bodo put it, "Federer and Nadal may have inadvertently ruined any number of otherwise impressive men."  For awesome coverage, go check out Forty Deuce and Nadal News.

The picture to the left belongs to Getty Images, I think, and the picture to the right is mine, taken at the Nike kiosk at the US Open on Labor Day.  

SBD: a couple of books

Firstly, Josh Lanyon's A Vintage Affair.  The cover art is full of man-titty, but also kind of fits the story.  Well, but for the bowtie and tuxedo shirt, which never appear....okay, maybe not.  But, hey, there's a bottle of wine at least!

The blurb:

Somewhere in the cobwebbed cellar of the decrepit antebellum mansion known as Ballineen are the legendary Lee bottles -- and Austin Gillespie is there to find them. The last thing on his mind is a hot and heavy romance with handsome bad boy Jeff Brady. But Jeff has other ideas and, after one intoxicating night, so does Austin.

The only problem is they have different ideas. Jeff doesn’t believe in love at first sight, and even if he did, he’s buried more deeply in the closet than those famous missing bottles of vintage Madeira. Popping a cork or two is one thing. Popping the question? No way. No how.

Unless Austin is ready to give up on another dream, he’s going to have to figure out how to make sure the lights go on -- and stay on -- in Georgia. 

A pun about lights going out in Georgia.  How very original.  /sarcasm  

Having a narrator/hero who is a wine auctioneer is original -- forget doctors and cops!  Tasting wine for a living seems like it would be awesome...except for the whole spitting-it-out, which is just a waste IMO.  Anyway, Austin arrives in Georgia intent on cataloging the cellar at Ballineen and perhaps finding the Lee Madeira.  He's worried professionally because the boss's fiancee wants his job, and personally because he feels like he's not living up to his father's expectations.  Not long into the cataloging he finds a body in the cellar.  Given Lanyon's mystery writing history, I expected Austin to become involved in the sleuthing here, helping to figure out who the dead man was and why he was killed.  But the dead body didn't really serve much purpose, plot wise.  Readers are told who he is and then the mystery drops off the page.  We're told whodunnit at the very end in a lackluster way.

Much more time is spent on the one night interlude between Austin and Jeff, the closet case.  That doesn't sound sympathetic toward Jeff, intentionally so.  Actually, I was very sympathetic to him and how he handled the one night with Austin: he was honest about himself and how he dealt with living in a small, conservative community.  But he lost my sympathy through his behavior on Austin's return to Georgia; to avoid spoilers, I'll just say that he ignored Austin's opinions and objections, and there is a scene that skirts close to dubious consent for me.  His grovel at the end sort of softens me up and makes me think maybe the HFN will be an HEA eventually.

It felt like this book wasn't sure what it wanted to be: romance? mysery?  romantic suspense?  It read quickly and was a pleasant beach read (Hairball the Kindle on the beach!) but is not Lanyon's best work.  If you like Lanyon's voice, you'll probably enjoy it, but it isn't as memorable as the Adrien English mysteries.

Second, Meljean Brook's Demon Forged.  Am about half way through it.  Love her world building and the plotting.  What I'm realizing, though, is that I have little patience with internally driven separations.  Irena and Alejandro are In Love but have been separated for four hundred years.  Why? Because of pride and a Failure to Communicate.   When I say separated, I mean that they work together and see each other regularly...but they aren't lovers anymore and talk only of superficial things, the way you do with a colleague at the office rather than The Love of Your Life.  Which makes the failure to communicate even more frustrating for me.  Have I always felt this way?  I don't know.  Maybe.  Brook does a good job of showing why they are this way and it works with the plot, it's just frustrating for my reading tastes.  

Actually, now that I think about it, this was the same problem I had with the beginning of Ilona Andrews' Magic Bleeds, although it was slightly less frustrating there since the not talking only went on for three week and was grounded in characters/behaviors established in earlier books.

Um, also, the cover art for Demon Forged is very pretty, but the woman is missing something -- where are the tattoos?  I know, art department and marketing completely separate from writing.