Book Review

Star Wars
The Force Unleashed
by Sean Williams

A book based on a video game!  (I've not always had good experiences with this type of thing in the past, but in this case, it's a book based on a video game that I haven't actually played before.  Maybe that helped...)

Interesting book.  It's about Darth Vader's secret apprentice in the days before the Death Star is finished.  He travels the outer rim, sent on missions by Vader.  Then he has an accident, and retraces his steps.  (Spoilers redacted)

I thought it was an interesting book.  The main character's name throughout most of the book was "the apprentice".  He's got a shape shifting robot pal whose primary objective is to kill him in combat.  (Teaching him in the process.)  There is a ship pilot used as a foil to the main character.  They just wander the galaxy and think about their angst.  Then land and start fighting.

The main thrust of the book is the apprentice retraces his steps in the second half, and starts learning the results of his actions.  In the end, we all learned a valuable lesson.

It was a good book, and I see that the author wrote a book called "The Force Unleashed II", I'm guessing based on a second video game I never played.  I'd read it if I ever came across it, just based on this one...

Book report

Doctor Who 
More Short Trips
edited by Stephen Cole

This book is a collection of short Dr. Who stories (some very short) from the first Doctor to the eighth Doctor.  Each story had a different combination of Doctor and companion in some random adventure. I think they managed to get every Dr. Who companion in the book, with the corresponding Doctor for that companion.

Because it was a collection of short stories, it took me something like six weeks to read the thing.  I thought it was interesting.  They didn't compile the thing in any kind of chronological order, which is appropriate, really.  What they did do, however, is do a good job switching between very short, and slightly less short stories.

There were only a couple of weird stories, most of them were interesting in their own right.  I was a good book.

The last story was quite weird.  The story jumped back and forth in it's own timeline, it took about 12 pages to really figure out what in the world was going on.  I guess that's sort of appropriate as well, if you think about it...

Anyway, good book, may be out of print, found it at the University library a while back.

More to come...

Noel reading a book

Fritters

We had an apple in the house last night, I made low sugar apple fritters. Here are Tara's fritters, complete with ice cream. Pretty good.

I would try blueberry fritters, blackberry fritters, strawberry fritters, etc, but I might want to consider some sort of exercise program first...

Pasta

Adam made pasta at school today. He left it in a ziplock, by evening it was one single lump of dough again. He still wanted to cook and eat it, so I whipped out the pasta roller. He seemed impressed, not sure any other preschool kids got thinner noodles like Adam did...

Guest post by Emma

Two poems by Emma:

Cheetahs

See the yellow eyes
I can run the fastest
Such a blur to watch


Zebras

Black and white with hooves
Can not tell them all apart
See us eat the grass

I don't understand a word these kids say these days...

Chinese New Year celebration

Today Ruth's grade celebrated Chinese New Year.  I don't know what it is about the school gym, but I can never take a non-blurry picture in that place...

Ruth barely averted a wardrobe malfunction, Tara had to go help her readjust the skirt.  I did manage to get a video of one of the songs they sang.

After, we went back to the classroom so the kids could show us stuff they learned.  Ruth drew a dragon.

Happy (Chinese) New Year