very simple

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

I was glad to read in an interview today that Gillian Flynn is apparently a well-adjusted married mom, because after finishing this final book of hers (the second chronologically in order of writing, but third in my order of reading), I was getting a bit worried about the dark recesses of her soul. Her ability to get into the heads of thoroughly unlikeable people, who do thoroughly unlikeable (and unspeakable) things, is profound. Many people didn’t like this book because Libby, the narrator/main protagonist is such an unpleasant person, but she’s unpleasant because of the horrors that have been visited upon her, first by the person who murdered most of her family when she was a child, and then by the people who sought to take advantage of her story, and even those who cared for her but waited until it was too late to explain to her that she had to grow up at some point.

You can see the seeds of Gone Girl here, with the shifting narrations (Libby in the present day and her mother and brother in the past), but they’re a bit more straightforward in the sense that they’re true narratives from each of their perspectives.

In any event, if you liked her other books, I certainly recommend this one, and any future books Flynn may write.

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I realized the other day that I had a few albums of photos that I had never gotten around to uploading. Given the delay, and the interest in these photos largely to myself and no one else, I went through and plucked out just my favorites. Most are from the country, but they should all be fairly self explanatory. Really, I just like them because I think they’re pretty.

Just a few additional pics from my trip to Plymouth for Thanksgiving (I’ve already featured the rock earlier). Featuring Plymouth bay, the fake Mayflower, and thanksgiving kitsch as only the town where the pilgrims landed can do.

The Twelve by Justin Cronin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It took a little while for me to get back up to speed, and to re-familiarize myself with the wealth of characters (most are from the first book, but they’re now scattered to the four corners of the post-apocalyptic world and living amongst others, rather than all operating in one small group), but once it got going, I tore through this book almost as quickly as I tore through the first. A well-written meditation on many types of love, loss, what we will and won’t do to survive, what ‘survival’ even means, and sacrifice. Can’t wait for the third and final chapter!

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I’m sitting at the providence train station waiting for my train back to New York, after spending the thanksgiving holiday with my family in Plymouth. Lovely time, good food, and all the rest, but we couldn’t very well spend thanksgiving in Plymouth without going to see Plymouth Rock, now could we?

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

After being awed by Gone Girl, I decided to go back and pick up Gillian Flynn’s earlier books, which also had good reviews but certainly not the buzz surrounding the latest. I have to say, this was just as good. The twists were a little less…twisty, but they were still there, and once I finally sat down to read this (after a few false starts probably stemming from trying to read this immediately following Gone Girl), I ended up reading almost the entire book in one day.

Seriously. When I woke up this morning, I was on page 33. This is the first book in some time that actually caused me to not turn on the TV when I got home from work tonight, because I didn’t want any distractions while finishing the last few chapters.

Well done. One more Flynn book to go until she writes the next one!

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Slowly making my way through those pictures from labor day weekend. While I was up for the week, I saw in the local paper that it was time for the annual Columbia County Fair in Chatham. I distinctly remember going to this thing as a kid when my parents would drag us up to stay with friends, and thought it would be a good photo opportunity.

Let’s just say that it was a lot…smaller than I remembered from when I was 10 or 12. But the 4-H club is still going strong, and there were lots of farm animals, which always make for a good subject. And the most depressing midway ever. Seriously, I remember this being MUCH bigger when I was a kid.

A few months ago, I integrated a photo-selling service onto the site. Well, this morning, I got an email telling me that they were not only doubling and tiering their pricing structure, but that it was going to happen in less than 2 weeks, AND that we would both be forced to pre-pay for the prints before getting paid ourselves and that we would have to use PayPal or some service called stripe that I had never heard of. Oh, and the announcement email didn’t even have all the detail. It’s ‘coming soon’. Presumably some time between now and the change on October 10!

I liked fotomoto precisely because it didn’t require PayPal, which I avoid at all costs if it can be helped (sometimes it can’t, but I continue to use an “unverified” account in these circumstances because I will never, ever, give them access to my bank account information, so getting paid from PayPal would obviously turn into a giant headache).

I don’t have a problem, philosophically, with price increases or tiered pricing by themselves, but the short window is obviously a big issue, particularly for more active users who have done things like publish their price lists. It’s the timeframe (I’ll barely have enough time to get the code off my site this weekend before the deadline), and the forced use of a super-problematic service like PayPal that are forcing my hand.

Tonight, I ended up going to a work-related event at the Time Warner Center, part of which was held in the Allen Room overlooking (coincidence of coincidences) Columbus Circle. So here’s one more shot of Discovering Columbus, from the outside, at night. Pardon the reflections.

Thanks to a well-timed reminder from a friend the other day, I managed to snag a ticket for this weekend’s opening of Discovering Columbus. Artist Tatzu Nishi has done this with other monuments around the world, and here’s he’s created a living room set piece surrounding the statue of Christopher Columbus so that he becomes a really large coffee table display. Sure, it’s a little weird, but it gives people a rare opportunity to get up close to a piece of art (and views!) that is ordinarily out of reach at the top of a 70-foot pillar. It also serves as a preservation effort – once the exhibit is done, the scaffolding will remain so that the heavily worn marble statue can undergo its first restoration effort in over 20 years (why people continue to think that a soft, easily-worn stone like marble is a good medium for statues that spend all their time exposed to the elements escapes me, but the choice was made well-before the current decision-makers were born).

In any event, the photos are a bit repetitive, what with there being the one statue (and the 3 good views out the windows), but hopefully they’re enjoyable. I highly recommend visiting if you get the chance – it’s free, but you need to get a ticket to reserve a time slot for crowd-limitation purposes. The public art fund website appears to have crashed (or they forgot to pay their bill!), but tickets are also available on the third floor of the Time Warner Center.