08.03.08, non-repeating

my weather sticker is wrong. the weather on my homepage is reporting a local temp of 62º. in actuality, it is at least 25º hotter than that. mayhaps the weather station has relocated to cooler climes. this is the weather station i have been counting on for my barometric pressure readings, and so now we can see those may all be off. i shall have to begin again with the entire study of barometry.

this book i am reading -- touchstone -- i am finally nearly done with it, and since i have spent so much time with it, i am going to miss the characters quite a bit, but what i won't miss is the pace. laurie king is generally a faster-paced writer, but this book was rather slow. good, but slow. part of the slowness was the natural tendency for life to run slower in the time period in which the story is set -- britain in 1926 -- but part of the slowness stems from a technique king employeed in this book. she told the story from many points of view, specifically telling & retelling particular pieces of the story from different p-o-v's, making one feel one was backtracking across the landscape. for every step forward, there was a step back, or if not back precisely, then sideways. it's a valid technique for sharing p-o-v, but it makes for a feeling of starting & stopping. the pace, as it were, is jerky. it is billed as a novel of suspense, but something is missing in the buildup. it is suspenseful when the plot is moving, but simply frustrating when it is not.

overall, though, i recommend it. and, now, i am going to finish it off.