Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger, is the story of a midwestern family trying to find meaning after tragedy.  Reuben Land is 11 years old when his older brother Davy is found guilty of killing two boys (for breaking and entering into their house and terrorizing their younger sister Swede), then escapes from prison.  The family (Reuben, Swede, and ( Read more... )

Incredibly overdue book reviews!
While traveling in Asia, I read:

Bossypants, by Tina Fey. If you enjoy Mean Girls and Tina Fey's style of humor, then yes, you should enjoy this. It's easy and funny. It's mostly autobiographical, and gives a lot of behind-the-scenes details of how 30 Rock came to be.  Light and funny.

Never Let Me Go, by Kasuo ( Read more... )

Because this year is apparently both the Year of Travel and the Year of the Dissertation, Nick and I are going to New Zealand and Australia for Thanksgiving/beginning of December.

Nick's been to NZ before (his brother lives in Christchurch, so his family went to visit 4ish years ago), but neither of us have been to Australia.
I know some of you ( Read more... )

(wrote this forever ago, apparently it never got posted! whoops ( Read more... )

Dear lj ( Read more... )

I finished series 3 of Doctor Who a little while ago.  There were a couple of great episodes within it, but overall... eh?

Martha as a full-time companion for Ten doesn't work for me.  I like that she's really smart, she's independent, and she definitely has potential, but the unrequited love thing kills it for me.  (Yes, the Doctor doesn't ( Read more... )

Nick and I watched Man on Wire last weekend.  It's a documentary about Phillipe Petit, the high-wire walker who walked between the Twin Towers in the seventies.  Petit is a textbook-enigmatic Frenchman: he speaks fast, gestures, has a great accent, and is charmingly enthusiastic.  It's easy to see how everyone else interviewed (pretty much ( Read more... )

I read Atmospheric Disturbances while flying to a conference at the beginning of the month.  It was alright, I guess: it's about a psychologist who suddenly believes his wife to have been replaced by an imposter, and that this event is related to one of his patients who thinks he works for a secret society that controls the weather.  It's kinda ( Read more... )

It is really good ( Read more... )

I'm on pseudo-spring break; there aren't undergrads around and I can't really collect new data, so it's like break!

( books )