Reading yet again

I have finished the James Patterson book at last, in fact I have finished two of his books both in the same series.

I know how come I have managed to read two books so fast?

I think it's down to the fact that both books were written by Maxine Paetro 1st and then James then edits them and adds his bits to the story.

If I am wrong then the way the books with Maxine as the second author reads are totally different when the book is just written by James Patterson.

Any way the book that I have just read are 7th Heaven and 8th Confession both are credited as being written by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro, both were a good read in that the stories were good and the main characters world and lives changed during the course of the books.

Reading and Stuff

Just started to read yet another James Patterson book,in fact in the reading pile I have one more to read and it turns out to be the next one in the series of the book I am reading, which just shows how far I am in my reading or that James Patterson is writing and releasing the books far to quickly for me to keep up with, not sure which is the right answer to that one.

So I have to say with this current book I have found it much easier to read and that I find after only a short while that I am on page 141 of the book!

The story is good, and James Patterson's co-author is Maxine Paetro, who has co-author several books with James.

Now I did a bit of research and have found out that normally the 1st draft of the book is written by the co-author and then the final version by James, so I think it is noticeable that the books by different co-authors do read differently, well at least to me.

Is the book any good I think so, but until I have read the whole book I will not know.

The name of the book that I am reading is 7th Heaven and is part of the women's murder club series.

Cottage Pie

Go and try cottage pie made with sweet potatoes instead of them ordinary potatoes, I think you will be very surprised just how well it works.

As they say try something different at least once a year.

Read

I have just finished a book by a well known author that for me to read has been a bit of a struggle. Now normally when I read this authors work its an easy read and the book is great fun and I have a good time and it's a good story, I could also say that I felt that I had been entertained as well, which is the whole point for me of reading a book in the first place.

For some reason, with this particular book by this author that just did not happen, strange that.

The author is James Patterson, yes that bloke who seams to release a book a month or at least it feels like it, looking at the local book shop shelf.

The book that has caused all the problems for me is called You've been warned its also written by Howard Roughan now how much of the book did James write? not an easy question to answer, but I have read somewhere that James may have come up with some of the ideas and that the other guy writes it, then James edits and adds his bits to it. I don't know if that is true or not

I just did not get on with this book, I think in the end it took me more than a year to finish it, in fact I read a lot of other books instead of completing this one.

One of the problems for me, with this book is that the main character who is a young woman, I just did not like and early in the book I just wanted to shout out at her and tell her to grow up and stop acting like a (insert favorite nasty words here) I am, that's how under my skin she got to me.

So for me this book was not fun but for you out there your experience may be very different.

Perhaps what I should do is go as see if there are any reviews and see what others thought of the book, it may be that I am completely in the wrong and that its a great book it might also be that it really is not a great book, who knows?

If I do look at some reviews of this book I shall update this blog post and put some comments on what I found.

Empire CD

Brought a CD the other day, well that's not quite right in fact, I brought the CD about a month ago its just turned up as the CD was only (published? is that the right word,) today.

The CD is by an act called Super8&Tab who I think, are from Finland or somewhere in that area of the world.

Anyway the album that I brought is called Empire, and its their first album, but not their first lot of released tracks as they have been going for a few years.

Now I took a gamble that their album would be as good as their some of their individual tracks that they have released over the years.

I have to say that I don't think I have wasted my money, as I ordered the album early I got a signed copy, which is a first for me and I was surprised to get such a thing. The album is very good with a mix of tracks that are different yet the same if that makes sense.

Book reading

I have got through another book in the last few days, and this was a book that I did enjoy very much.

Its not a fiction book, its one of those books written for I suppose the man in the street or the woman in the street that want to know something more about a partcular science subject.

In this case its about the legacy of Charles Darwin and all his works, I did not know just how much other work Charles did, apart from his evolution work and the survival of the fittest.

This man did some really amazing work that appears to go unnoticed, and what is sad is that most of it he got very right far before anyone else and all that modern science technology appears to have done is filled in the fine detail using the science of DNA that he just did not have access to.

I liked the book that was all about what Charles knew and what we now know and sometime the extra information we have is one because we have ways of looking at a creatures DNA in ways and means that have only come about in the last 5 or so years.

The book is called Darwin's Island and its by Steve Jones, who writes in a very easy to read style and presents lots of facts that had men saying out loud, well I never! and stuff like that.

I know Charles Darwin is to some just the farther of Evolution, but after reading this book its clear that he was the farther of far far more, its sad that his other work is mostly known to scientist's as I am sure that if the general interested publish knew about his other work they would realise just how clever and forward thinking Charles Darwin was.

This is a great book for lifting the veil on some of the other work that Charles did and is well worth the read.

Last Night of the Proms

So its last night of the proms, this means that winter is now on its way, still its nice to see it in HD for the very first time.

Blood

Blood

I have just given my 116th pint or unit of blood, what shocked me was that my next donation is not until Feb 2011!

Blogger

Why does blogger take so long to start?

Sunrise

Sunrise just before 6am, winter is on its way in, wish I had the money to now fly to the southern hemisphere and get to enjoy the spring and summer.

Updates

The amount of updates that I now have to do to my two main websites the Dirk Maggs and James Follett ones due I think to the new cms software that I have installed to run both sites.


The other reason could also be because both Dirk and James appear to have gone quiet on new productions that I can report on.

Perhaps in the next few months there will be something to report on although you know what is going to happen.

Alone

Alone, do you like being alone?

I do sometimes and other times it does my head in.

Just wanted to record that fact here for myself.

The wall in a book

One thing that I sometimes have a hard getting over is when you read so far into a book at some point it becomes for whatever reason very hard to read, its a bit like the wall that marathon runners talk about, why this should happen to readers of books or just to me I just don't know, but the fact remains that there are books out there that for one reason or another have this wall, so far very few of the books with this wall have I failed to finish.

That's not to say that there are books that I have failed to complete, there are few and far between, some of the books are by authors that have had big hits.

Reading

I have read another book, it is one that I have been on the look out for for a few years now and its called Grouch & Me and its by Groucho Marx.

It was worth the wait to get the chance to read it, as he writes to some extent how I would expect him to speak, he has been dead quite a few years it was great to hear him again after all this time.

Was the book worth the wait?

Yes

Ipad

I think I have Ipad envy I could have brought one but instead brought a laptop, result is that I hardly use the laptop...

James Follett

I have some how or other found time to do some more work on the James Follett website, which is good as I really like they way it looks now, even if I say so myself.

One thing that I have noticed since rebuilding the website is that some of the pages in the website have for some reason or another different fonts on their pages, I don't know why they have ended up like this but they have.

So I am slowly going through every page of the website to make sure they have the same font, I have not worked out how to get the programme that drives the website to do this for me yet.

I have looked at the Official James Follett site and compared it to mine, both sites look very different and both have a different slant on the information provided and also how that information is presented, my site still goes into far greater detail, which I think is something you would expect from a fan site, and I cover all of James's work, where the official site just does a broad brush.

I think its a good thing to have 2 different sites on the one subject and even better that one of them is independent of James.

Dirk Maggs

The Dirk Maggs website has had some work done to it and the good news is that I have evidence that Dirk is still doing stuff, not radio but is till stuff, and that's all that counts right?

According to the credits list Dirk was the script writer for the video for Final Frontier by Iron Maiden.

I have seen the video and its good but the music is not to my taste a tall, but I do understand what the song was about and how the video had to relate to it all in all a good job. I think I read that the time allowed to do video was very short 4 weeks?

Reading

Have read some more books that I have not spoken about here yet, so here goes The first is by James Patterson and is called Run for your life, now as entertainment this book mostly worked for me, but and this is a big but, for me the end of the book and the bad guy did not work for the very simple reason that the bad guy suddenly changed the way they they though and acted, through most of the book the bad guy was always intelligent and acted in a methodical manner, then you get to the last few chapters and he starts acting like a completely different person.

Why?

May be the deadline for the book came to soon or the word count had to be kept to, I don't know all I know is that the book could have been so much more.

The other book the I have read cost me nothing as its an out of copyright book that I read on my Itouch.

The book is called The Ultimate Weapon and its by John W Campbell, who if you are into your science fiction and the golden age of science fiction was the editor of Astounding Science Fiction in the 40-60's he introduced to the world authors such as Asimov and Helien.

The book was written back in the early 1930's and it shows in how its written and the science in it, but as for something to read it was great.

Waverley Abbey

Had an idea while the weather was good, eg not rato have a look at Waverley Abbey the ruins of.

I thought that it would be nice a peaceful with very few people around how wrong was I? busy or what it would apear that of folks who appear to be on holiday here from Germany decided that Waverley was the place to have a picnic, and I can't say I blame them, as it is a nice place.

The end result is 50 or more people descending on Waverley Abbey so bang goes a quite peaceful place.

Sunflowers

For the first time in years we got given some seed in the Radio Times, so we planted them, a bit late but they have grown well and it looks like soon will will have some flowers soon if it warms up a bit, as you may or may not know at this time of year August it is supposed to be warm eg 20 centigrade with blue sky and sunshine.

What have we been having?

Cloud cloud rain cloud and cool sometimes as much as 10 centigrade cooler then it should be at this time of year.

Now I know that our UK weather s at best changeable, but I would just love some warm weather so I can chill-out in the garden, also so I can hear the great sounds of summer, like lawnmowers and strimmers you know that sort of thing you always seem to get when their is a nice day a head of you and so every man and his dog decide that the lawn needs mowing of some other job that requires you to make lots of noise just so your neighbours know that you are outside.