Poor customer service + Little-known state regulations + Honest company = Big fat check?!

Our neighborhood was built on solid rock; my understanding is that our lot was a swampy part of a farm that was drained (60's and 70's-era wetlands management, bay-bee!), and what they found under the muck was solid rock, but anyways, that means we don't have a basement, and we aren't hooked up to city gas, so even though we live in Vermont's equivalent of a major metropolitan area, our house has a big tank of #2 fuel oil for heating and a smaller tank of propane for the oven and range -- the previous owners had a propane-fueled heating stove that they used as an alternative to the fuel oil-powered baseboard heat, but they really wanted to take the stove with them, so we actually use very little propane.

So, at some point not too long ago, our propane provider began charging us a rental fee for the tank**. More recently, they were bought by Amerigas, and changed our account number... after they had sent out the yearly bill for the tank rental, so of course they misfiled our payment -- it was accepted and cashed, they just didn't credit our account -- and after I called and they admitted their mistake and said they would straighten it out, of course they didn't, and that's when we looked for a replacement and found Patterson Fuels, who are awesome.

Amerigas was then supposed to pick up their crappy old tank and go away, but of course they didn't get around to it for nearly a month***.  They were crazy-makers, but we were done with them.  Or so we thought, until we received this letter:

This is the most hilariously unexpected correspondence we've ever received.  I've blacked out the amounts, but let's just say that given how little propane we use, all our cooking fuel needs and tank rental fees for the time we were Blue Flame / Amerigas customers were effectively free. 


** This was when we should have started shopping around for another fuel provider, but for some reason we didn't. 

*** and when they finally did pick it up, they filled up Patterson Fuels' tank, which is a big no-no.  We complained to them about it, but I still don't have the full story on how that ended

The Heroes; Joe Abercrombie; 2011

The Heroes is a writing exercise gone incredibly well.  Abercrombie masterfully orchestrates the movements of a cast of dozens (even the minor characters were distinct enough that I never needed to refer to the character index) through a 3-day battle** in a highly satisfying way.  It's truly impressive and should be required reading for writers.

Just don't expect a particularly satisfying, central, overarching plot.  

I also found that there was no one I really cared about, in the sense that anyone and everyone could have died, and it wouldn't really make a difference to the events.  While one could argue that's the point the author is driving toward, it doesn't make for a great story.  There's a reason why the red wedding is so powerful. 


** plus some preface time to establish characters and epilogue time so that we come full circle


Note: published 11/15/2013, backdated to 10/27/13 when I finished the book.

No Highway; Nevil Shute; 1948

I was hooked by the opening paragraphs, and for two beautiful chapters, I loved No Highway for its portrayal of the workings of a research institution as it discovers and combats a captivating problem without any human antagonist or melodrama.

Then... the wheels come off in chapters 3 and 4**, as we follow Mr. Honey instead of Dr. Scott (Janet!  Brad!  Rocky!).  Oh, chapter 3 starts off promisingly and chapter 4 ends well, but in between we're treated to some of the worst-written scenes of internal drama -- the aging actress wondering if she's wasted her life being rich and famous instead of being a wife, the young stewardess thinking about how she'd be great with kids if and when she decides to leave the airline, the captain thinking about how his buddy would never have crashed a plane -- maybe it wasn't as cliche in 1948, but it's aged very badly.  

The rest of the novel follows this general pattern, in that the parts where we follow Scott are generally quite readable and the parts where we follow Honey are filled with tripe -- it would have been best to stick to Scott's POV entirely, I think.  I think there's a great story in here that could be well adapted to film, but given that the 1951 movie starts Jimmy Stewart as Honey... I'm frankly a little terrified to watch it.  Maybe a young Winifred Banks will be the deciding factor in favor of watching it, but for now, netflix appears to not have it.


** perhaps it would be more appropriate to say... the wheels are pulled up?

Leyland retired, Baker fired

With Leyland tired of being in the dugout and assuming Detroit doesn't want Dusty Baker to destroy their murderer's row of starting pitchers through letting them throw too many innings, that leaves  the immortal Bruce Bochy, he of the .500 career winning percentage, the active manager with the most wins (and tied with Terry Francona for most WS wins).

I kid, sort of, of course, because Bochy's seemingly unimpressive .500 career winning percentage is more a product of managing my beloved San Diego Padres for many years than any real ineptitude on Bochy's part.

Bochy started managing the Padres in 1995, and got to oversee the great Tony Gwynn's golden years.  While Gwynn was technically an active player in 00-01, he managed fewer than 200 plate appearances in those seasons.  Even in 1998 and 1999, Quilvio Veras posted a higher WAR than Gwynn. 

From 2000-2002, Phil Nevin and Ryan Klesko were Bochy's best position players by WAR, and Woody Williams and Brian Lawrence were the best pitchers. 

In 2003-2004, Mark Loretta was his best position player by WAR, and Peavy slowly established himself as the staff ace.

Bochy took over the Giants in 2007; this was Bonds' last year, Randy Winn was his 2nd best position player, and everyone already knew Zito's contract was an albatross.  What kind of masochist takes this job?  Someone who spent the previous 12 seasons managing the Padres, of course. 

In 2008, a 34 year-old Randy Winn was his best position player.

Despite neither Lincecum nor Cain reaching their 2009 peaks again, the Giants managed to win the 2010 and 2012 World Series with Buster Posey as the only position player who could crack the Yankees' starting lineup. 

If the '98 Padres had managed to sneak a WS win over the Yankees, Bochy might be the greatest manager of doing more with less of all time. 

Rules of Civility: A Novel; Amor Towles; 2011

Rules of Civility, turn turn turn, tell us the lesson that we should learn.‎

I thoroughly enjoyed the body of Rules of Civility, which takes its name from Washington's writing exercise.  I was thoroughly bored by the "Preface"; if a friend hadn't recommended the book, I might have put it down, but fortunately I started Chapter 1, and there the writing suddenly takes off, like stepping from the black-and-white Kansas of Katey's middle age to the Oz of her youth -- the problem was no "Over the Rainbow" to keep you going until you get to Oz.  

By the time I finished the "Epilogue", I disliked the "Preface" somewhat less, but I still feel that Towles is a little too cute about Val's identity**, it makes Tinker appear more important than I think he actually is***, and bookending the main story as a reminiscence is ultimately a tiresome device in the otherwise snappy story of Katherine Kontent in the late 30's New York.


** I kept waiting for Val to appear during the book, and minor spoilers, he does!  Even though I was waiting for it, I missed his name on the first time through, and was annoyed by the time I got to the end and positively identified him.  By contrast, I did like how on page 21 of the hardcover, we are given the following:

Tinker answered relying on the ellipses of the elite: He was from Massachussetts; he went to college in Providence; and he worked for a small firm on Wall Street -- that is, he was born in the Back Bay, attended Brown, and now worked at the bank that his grandfather founded.  Usually, this sort of deflection was so transparently disingenuous it was irksome, but with Tinker it was as if he was genuinely afraid that the shadow of an Ivy League degree might spoil the fun.

As someone who identifies with Nikki Muller's plight, I initially found this passage irksome, but Towles later turns these words around to good effect.

*** though, given Towles' proclivity for misdirection, perhaps we're supposed to get the idea that the novel is about Tinker and Katey, when really it's about Katey.  I'll have to think about that.

Note: posted 10/25/13; backdated to 10/9/13 when I finished the novel

Books I've read

I've been keeping track of all my leisure reading for a while.  Like, 20+ years.  It started out on paper, then was a text file for a long, long, time, then I considered putting it in a database and making a PHP project out of it for while, and finally it's a public Google spreadsheet.

Please note:

1. All dates of completion prior to 2004 are highly approximate -- that means I made them up.  All I recorded prior to 2004 was the order in which they were completed.  Also note that sometimes I'm reading two books at the same time, or avoiding reading one book (hello, Gargantua!) while completing several others.
   
2. I've also probably forgotten to record some books along the way, and been inconsistent about recording the reading of chapter books to the kids, largely because the reading often gets split between me and Sarahmac.  The books listed here that are noted as read to the kids were read entirely by me, I think.
   
3. Regarding my "ratings", this is a half-assed attempt to mark books I recall liking or stood out in some way (*), books I really liked (**), books I loved (***), books I hated (-), and Shadow Moon (--).  I spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether I needed a two-pronged rating to show the difference between books I liked on technical merits versus those I was merely fond of, or whether to add a "recommended" tag in addition to the rating, and instead simply spent an evening throwing stars on the spreadsheet.  I've likely mislabeled some books in there.
   
4. Regarding my notes on books, I've found that the same book can elicit vastly different responses from people who are equally well read (including myself at different times).  If you disagree with any of my opinions, that doesn't make either of us better or worse than the other, just different.  In many cases (and more regularly beginning in 2004), I've tried to express (often badly) why I liked or disliked a book.  Feel free to tell me why you (dis)agree.
   
5. Also, I'm much more forgiving of books that are shorter.  I don't think it's an attention deficient problem; more of an impatience with many writers who can't (or won't) hone their words to say what they want to say and be done with it (okay, maybe that's an attention deficit problem). 
   
   Gravity's Rainbow, for example, is a work that I would likely more greatly enjoy if the ghost of Ezra Pound had taken his blue pencil to it.  There are many wonderful passages in this novel, but too much of it is "other stuff" that marks time between the beautiful prose.   
   
6. Why so many SF/Fantasy books?  Because I took the Nebula Awards finalists list and started reading; not in any particular order.