Well, that's over. I pray that the hurricane isn't as dire on the rest of it's path as has been predicted. There will be a lot of damage and flooding but hopefully nothing monstrous. We were on the edge of it here with winds of 60+ mph and you try sleeping in the top corner room of the house during that. From 12:30 to 3:00 it sounded like an invading force roaring down the street. It had shadow trees blowing across two of my walls, disappearing momentarily when the power went out, coming back to dance around my room again. For 2 1/2 hours I listened to tree branches bounce off our roof and slam into the front and back yards. Just when I might be falling asleep there would be a reverberating bang from across the street. Then a huge gust of wind would smash into the windows by my head causing them to rattle and creak. Seriously, I've never liked sleeping through wind storms. You know the kind of surreal thing? Through it all the cicadas never stopped chirring.
This was similar to Isabel only the majority of that happened during the day. That time I watched a movie and did my Spanish homework. A 10 foot dead limb fell off a tree in the backyard and skewered the deck. It sounded remarkably like a javelin. We had to get a neighbor to help us break it up. We live up a hill so we have an incredibly remote chance of flooding but the neighborhood further north was underwater. People were out of their homes for months.
There are six or seven large branches that have come down this time but nothing a little effort and a handsaw won't take care of. Our cars are plastered with wet leaves but there's no damage. Except the inside door handle that broke on my car yesterday but that has nothing to do with anything except old age.
I read Boris Akunin's Murder on the Leviathan. It was all right; a very quick read. It was something of a homage to Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie so the format was a little stale but it was interesting. Each chapter was from the point of view of different characters. An entire household is coldly murdered in Paris and the evidence leads the leading inspector to suspect a group of first-class travelers on the ship Leviathan. As such, he gathers them all together in one of the salons so he can keep an eye on them throughout the cruise East. The group consists of a bunch of stereotypes. You have the pompous British Indologist, the eccentric Englishman, the honorable inscrutable Japanese, the boring doctor and his dull wife, etc. Erast Fandorin, the protagonist of this series, never has a chapter from his perspective. He is only seen from outside and while this can be a good tactic it doesn't quite work here. The other characters have their little national quirks and they show their bigotry towards members of other countries and consequently come off as being rather snobbish/spiteful but Fandorin is basically perfect except for his slight stutter. This is annoying and worst of all, boring. The Japanese is the only other character who manages to not seem incredibly petty but I noticed that Akunin is a translator of Japanese so I assume he has more respect for that nationality. Of course, the Japanese man praises the Russian Fandorin for being above the rest of the cast and being able to better appreciate Eastern sensibilities and having the ability to think more clearly. Ew. Fandorin was much more interesting in the first book where his sterling qualities were set against his naivete and enthusiasm. I'll read other books in this series but I really hope he goes back to first person and sticks to countries he knows.
Now I'm almost finished reading A Case of Two Cities by Qiu Xiaolong. I like this author and the other books in the series about chief inspector Chen but this book is basically about a land deal corruption case, and even with a couple of murders and a scene change to the U.S. thrown in, that's very difficult to make interesting. However, it has it's moments and it has been a good book to read during a storm. The one thing I find really funny is that when the Chinese Writer's delegation goes on their tour across America they only eat Chinese.
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