Book Club: The Shadow of the Wind

I haven't written in quite a while, mostly because it's been very busy! Last week we had our July book club meeting. The book was "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafron. I really enjoyed the book, as did the other book club members. It's a global best-seller, and I've seen copies of it all over the place - my Isreali friend was reading a Hebrew copy in Barcelona, I saw it on my German friend's roommate's night stand, and it just keeps seeming to pop up, so I figured I'd better check it out.

Since the book is set in Barcelona, we decided to have our meeting at Jaleo, a Spanish restaurant in DC. That way we could enjoy sangria and tapas during the discussion. (And the food was great!)

The book is set in Barcelona just after the Spanish Civil War. The main character, a young boy, is brought to the cemetery of forgotten books, where he picks one to read and keep. He really enjoys the book and tries to track down further works by the author, only to find out that someone else has been searching for the books and burning every copy. The mystery plays out over many years and with a multitude of characters as the boy tries to figure out who's destroying the books and why.

The book was fun to read and kept you turning the pages. There were a number of themes I found very interesting.

I really liked the post-war aspect of the book. I think post-war literature and movies are really interesting and complicated of the pychological situation they put people in. After so much has happened, people need to come to grips with what people (and themselves) are capable of and figure out if and how they can return to normal life. (Sidenote: For a really interesting example of this, watch "The Murderers Are Among Us" - it was the first movie made in Germany after WWII.)

Of course, I loved the fact that it was set in Barcelona. After being there for the summer last year, lots of the street names and parts of town were familiar. The book even includes a map and a walking tour as an appendix!

I liked the theme of books being important. I think this is a fun thing I've seen once or twice before (like in "The Thirteenth Tale" by Dianne Setterfield) where a book glorifies how meaningful books can be. It's just gives it an interesting 'meta-story' feel.

The bildngsroman or coming-of-age aspect of the book was also interesting. When the book starts, the main character is about 10, and by the time it ends, he's 16 or 18 or so - basically grown up.

And the overall wealth of intriguing characters and unraveling mystery kept me turning pages.

Low Car Diet - Day 5

Time for another update on the Low Car Diet. Jeff and I used a Zipcar this weekend to head out to Baltimore County for his friends' wedding. Jeff was feeling very proud of his Zipcar-driver status and wore his new Zipcar shirt (or maybe he was just too lazy to do laundry...).

We picked up the car at home after work and kept it until Sunday when we got back to DC - and that was the tale of the weekend as far as transportation goes!

Jeff and Jen Shleigh!

Two of Jeff's best friends from High School just got married this weekend. The wedding was really nice - at Roop's Mill in semi-rural Maryland - about 30 min. from Baltimore, and the weather was perfect. Jeff was in the wedding - his first time being in a wedding - as a brides-man. Lots of dancing, lots of seeing old friends - it was a really fun wedding!

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Just saw Harry Potter and enjoyed the movie, as I knew I would. The juxtaposition of the life-and-death action with the tween-romance humor was a bit odd, but entertaining. The movie was dark, but that's true to the spirit of the book. Although it makes me think if you'd just seen the first movie and then skipped ahead to this one, it'd be almost unrecognizable as part of the same series. It's an interesting effect that mood of the series changes (grows up maybe?) over the course of the seven books. I thought the editing was well done and the movie was visually awesome, as usual. My cousin, Drew, says that the last book will be split into two movies - I think that's fine - more chance of getting in the details and extending the Harry Potter world for a bit longer.

Actually, thinking about how long the Harry Potter saga has been going on is pretty crazy - I distinctly remember a number of Harry-Potter-related milestones in my life.

I didn't immediately join the Harry Potter craze (the first book was released in 1997). I first read it on a plane ride when my Mom gave it to me, insisting I would like it. I think it was on a plane home from Germany after eleventh grade (July 2001). I know that I finished before getting off the plane, and was completely hooked from that point on. Lucky for me books 1-4 were already available, so I could read them all immediately. (The third was, and still is, my favorite.)

Since then, I've read the first book many times, including out-loud to Paul Colling while working at Marcus Cinemas - it was part of our research in creating promos for the release of the first movie. The movie actually came out during the Thanksgiving weekend of my senior year (Nov. 2001), and me, my mom, Paul, and his Mom, were all in London for the holiday. We saw it hours after arriving in London - at a theater in Piccadilly Circus.

The fifth book came out in June 2003 - I had just finished my freshman year at MIT and was living in Theta Xi for the summer.

The release of the sixth book posed a challenge for me, and I remember it well. It was released on July 16, 2005 - the summer I was living in a village in India. I was determined to get the book, though, so Pooja and I took a trip from the village into Pune, the nearest city. Though we had work to do the next day, I couldn't put it down, read all night, and was just finishing when Pooja woke up in the morning. Pooja, who had never read a Harry Potter book, was intrigued, bought the first book, and became an avid fan.

I also remember reading this particular book because it was just after I'd finished my year studying abroad in Cambridge. Though they hate to hear it (So many tourists, upon seeing the Colleges, exclaim "It's just like Harry Potter!"), all the gowns and old buildings, traditions and formal dinners, are very reminiscent of Cambridge. (Some scenes of the movie are filmed at Oxford University, actually.) I remember coming back from India and staying with Barney for a couple days in London. He gave me his theories on who R.A.B. might be (His theory was proven right when the sixth book came out), and we debated about whether or not Snape was really evil (I turned out to be right on that one). Thinking about Harry Potter is making me feel a bit of nostalgia for my year in England. (And is making me very jealous of Stephanie - who just visited Cambridge and went punting, and of Monica, who lives in England now!)

The seventh and final book came out on July 21, 2007. (Almost exactly two years ago!) It was during the summer when I was transitioning from full time work at Raytheon to begin the Masters program in Space Policy in DC. On Monday, July 23, I would be starting my two-week course on Space Weather at Boston University - a course intended to prepare me for my research job at George Washington University. On the morning of July 22, I flew into Boston and picked up the book in the airport. I remember being extremely paranoid about everyone around me. I was terrified someone would walk by and say, "Oh, I just finished that - can you believe XXX happened?!" or "How far are you - did you get to the part where XXX?" Or what if the people behind me on the plane had read it and they discussed it during take-off or landing, when I'd be imprisoned in my seat by that horrible seat-belt sign? So many disasterous possibilities.

Luckily crisis was averted on the plane, and no spoilers were revealed. Again, unable to put the book down for more than about 15 minutes at a time, I took a cab from the airport to the BU dorm where I'd be staying, and spent the next several hours reading. When I decided I needed sunlight, I went to a nearby Starbucks where I sat outside for another few hours until it started to get dark. Then it was back to the dorm for reading into the wee hours of the morning. Sure, I had red, baggy eyes for my first day of class - the proud and satisfied, red, baggy eyes of someone who'd finished the last Harry Potter book.

So I'm a fan of any effort to stretch out the Harry Potter experience a bit more - the last book is now two movies - great! I'm not asking for some sad, done-for-the-money book additions to the series (and besides, I have faith in J.K. that she'd never even consider it), but the movies have been well-done, and until they're all released, the Harry Potter saga continues. I can't wait!

Low Car Diet - Day 2

Day 2 of Jeff's and my Low Car Diet. I had a pretty normal day (transportation-wise) - walking to work, sharing a cab to the hill with some co-workers.

Jeff worked from home and avoided transportation all together until the evening. He had to get to Baltimore for a wedding rehearsal. This was his first time using zip car since we started. He picked it up around the corner from our house, and had it back just in time to meet his scheduled return time. Unfortunately, there were some people parked in the zipcar spot, but a quick call into the zipcar help line, and he was able to just leave it nearby instead.

So far, so good!

Dexter

Jeff and I just finished watching season two of Dexter the other day. It's been nominated for an Emmy for Best Drama Series and Michael Hall (Dexter) has been nominated for Best Actor in a drama.

It's an interesting show- the premise is that Dexter, the main character, works as a blood spatter analyst with the Miami Police Department by day, and by night, he's a serial killer - focusing on ridding the city of bad guys that fell through the system. The vigilantism reminded me slightly of Boondock Saints, except that in Dexter, his reason for killing is not because he wants to clean-up the city, it's just because he likes to kill people. Despite that, he's kind of the hero of the show - the one you're cheering for.

Definitely a different premise than I'd seen in the past. It keeps the show interesting and unpredictable. It's a bit creepy - maybe not the best show to watch just before bed - but still fun and sometimes even funny. Overall, I'd recommend checking it out - I'm excited to get started on Season 3!

Apollo 11 Launch - 40th Anniversary!

Forty years ago, today, was the launch of the Apollo 11 Mission - the one that eventually landed the first men on the moon.

You can actually re-live (or for people under 40, like me, live for the first time) the Apollo 11 mission at www.wechoosethemoon.com - the website tracks the mission in real time, showing where it was and playing the radio messages that occurred between mission control and the Apollo 11 capsule. It also has lots of other multimedia - pictures, videos, etc. Definitely check it out.

There are other random things, like this Louis Vitton ad celebrating the lunar landing.

And this ad for Omega watches - "The First and Only Watch Worn on the Moon."

There are also a million (it seems like) articles about Apollo 11. I enjoyed this one by a reporter from the New York Times. He covered the original Apollo 11 mission and describes it all step by step.

I thought this one in BBC was very interesting. It's about how they made the flight computers for the lunar lander - they put in the code by actually weaving wire to create the 1's and 0's. It gives you a bit of the sense of all the people involved in the effort.

There are also many, many articles that go on to ask, "What's next?" Which is a good question. Our current plan is to build new "Constellation System - made up of two new rockets and a new crew vehicle - Ares I, Ares V, and Orion. It will look more like the Mercury or Apollo vehicles, and not like the shuttle. We'd use those to go back to the Moon and eventually on to Mars.

However, Obama created the Augustine Commission whose job is to spend the summer reviewing all of NASA Human Spaceflight, so those plans could change. Should we go back to the Moon, or straight to Mars, or maybe to an asteroid? How quickly can/should we get there?

They're also looking at what to do with the International Space Station (ISS). After 12 years of construction, the football field sized ISS will be completed in 2010. Then, in 2016, the plan is to de-orbit it! Hopefully, there will be support for continuing participation until 2020 or later, so we have more time to actually use this amazing resource we spent so long building.

People never seemed to be that excited about the ISS, but I think it's one of the coolest things NASA has done. There are people LIVING IN SPACE! For months at a time! That's amazing! It's not just a quick trip out and back. It seems like there's so much you could learn from having a permanent outpost in space - to really understand what it's like to stay there. I think it will be exciting when people move off the Earth in bigger groups and start really living in space or on other celestial bodies - to me that's an important part of exploration, and this is the start!

Anyway, you'll probably hear more from me on space things in the next few days - this coming Monday, July 20, is the 40th anniversary of men landing on the moon!