Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving

The first John Irving novel I tried to read was The World According to Garp.  I got to the point where someone (I don’t remember who) had an eye poked out and I stopped.   I didn’t try another John Irving novel for a long time, not until someone whose reading judgment I trust recommended A Prayer for Owen Meany.   I loved it.  (Someday I’m going to re-read it.)   A few years ago one of my reading groups chose A Widow for One Year as  the selection and I enjoyed it too.  I saw the movie Cider House Rules, but I never read the novel.   And that’s been about it for me as far as John Irving goes.

Castle’s Heat Wave

The other day in my post about Dollhouse, I talked about the creative marketing that the show was using, including having characters “tweet” updates that fit in with the plot and creating a complete corporate website for the evil Rossum Corporation.

Tips for Wait Staff

I eat at restaurants a lot. And I eat at a lot of nice restaurants. So I've encountered a lot of wait staff in my life.

I've been to St. Louis' most "venerated" restaurant, Tony's, multiple times and I have to say that, although I sometimes think the food is overpriced, the service has been outstanding each and every time. The wait staff there anticipates every need and yet I seldom notice that the wait staff even exists. Which is exactly as it should be. And I've had outstanding service at many other restaurants - both expensive and inexpensive. I rarely have downright bad service at a nice restaurant but, regularly, I'm amazed at how untrained the wait staff is at restaurants that are not cheap. They don't even know what I consider the basics.

What’s a Body to Do?

Fox has taken Dollhouse off the air during sweeps month ( a bad sign if you ask me) but the production folks have still been busy.   New character “Senator Daniel Perrin” has been twittering. 

The Happiest Place on Earth

Highlights of my trip to Walt Disney World:

And now .... A Disney Moment

Walt Disney voices Mickey Mouse:

My favorite ride at Disney World is the Star Tours ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios.  They just announced that it will be closing next year so they can install Star Tours II.   So I might need to ride the current Star Tours ride a few times this trip.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

I was prepared to dislike Wolf Hall, or at least be bored by it. Just between the two of us, Dorothy Dunnett ruined the 16th century for me. Oh sure, I pick up novels set during that time period, but I often end up putting them down before the end. And even if I finish them my conclusion is always: "That was just not as good as Dunnett".

Wolf Hall won the 2009 Mann Booker prize though so I thought maybe it was worth the risk. But I was doubtful. Does the world, I thought, really need yet another book about England in the 16th century? Does the world really need yet another novel involving Henry and Anne Boleyn? And even if the answer to both of those questions were "yes", I still wondered if the world needed a novel about, of all people, Thomas Cromwell?