Book Review: Shadow of the Giant

Shadow of the Giant is the final book in the Shadow Series by Orson Scott Card, although there is talk of another book being published in the future. I felt that it did a very good job of tying up the loose ends while continuing to hold my attention. New events kept unfolding throughout the entire book although I could see everything heading towards the finale. Like in all of his books, Card excellently relates the reader to the feelings and emotion of the characters, especially in the conclusion of this story. I've never cried while reading a book before, but this one probably brought me the closest. Not in a mushy or cheesy way though.

The story was very interesting as were all of the others in the series. While it is the final book in the series, the author left many things unfinished which I presume will be tied up in the forthcoming book Shadow in Flight. He left the hero's future as well as that of a newborn baby being raised by an enemy to the imagination of the reader for now at least. It's a very good read that sparks personal thought on government, war, and families. I give the book a 3 on a scale of 3.

Guessing Contest Prizes

I recently submitted a prediction of where I thought that my cousin, Bryan Gillespie, was going to get called to on his mission. I guessed Italy, and I was right. It wasn't the correct mission, but since nobody else guessed the correct mission either, I won by default with somebody else. Congratulations to Bryan, by the way.

Today as I returned from a long day in the salt mines, I checked the mail and there sat a large shoebox addressed to me. Promptly, I opened it and discovered that contained therein were a few prizes from the guessing game. Following, you will find a list detailing each item that I received:

1. A small Italian flag. Good old green, white, and red...Wasn't there a sub sandwich commercial about how those three colors make you hungry?....I don't remember what food chain it was though...

2. A box of Spaghetti. How did Aunt Yvonne know that Shanna and I were out of food? I'm still trying to figure that one out... And it was the good stuff too. It actually came in a box!! Wow!

3. A fork. Now, you may think, "A fork, huh? cool." But this is no ordinary fork. It's a spaghetti fork, which spins the spaghetti all up for me using an electric motor which is powered by two AAA batteries. So you all can see just how cool it actually is, here are a few videos of the fork in action...

Thank you Uncle Paul and Aunt Yvonne for the lovely prizes. And thank you Bryan, for getting called to Italy. That's awesome. I hope that you have a fun two years or so eating spaghetti with motorized forks. When you get home, you will be able to teach me a thing or two about how to correctly flip the switch in mid bite. (I had some trouble with the food falling off of the fork)

Random

JASON BRAAAAUUN!!!!

Book Review: Shadow Puppets

This book is the third in Orson Scott Card's Shadow Series which is a parallel series to the Ender's Game Series. The Shadow Series follows the events playing out on earth following the destruction of an alien civilization by a group of children trained up to be the greatest military minds alive. The main character of the series is Bean, a boy who's genes were illegally altered as an embryo resulting in unlimited brain growth. Along with this added brain power he also continues to grow physically.

This book continues the story of Bean after he has rescued other battle school graduates and friends from the evil influence of Achilles. However, with Achilles still in the world, Bean and his friend Petra are not safe. Shadow Puppets follows Bean and Petra as they try to find a way to get rid of Achilles, who has risen in power over China and many other nations. Many other battle school graduates also rise to the top of their home countries as tensions rise and war appears imminent. At the same time, Peter Wiggin, the Hegemon of the World and brother to the famous Ender Wiggin, seeks to use Achilles to accomplish his own purpose of uniting the world under a single governing body, the Hegemony.

Shadow Puppets definitely lived up to my expectations and kept my attention from start to finish. Although the pages were more commentary and dialog than actual action, you would think the story would be boring. The strategy discussed and story taking place, while being very detailed and deep, seemed so simple and easy to comprehend that I still felt very involved as a reader. I enjoyed reading pages on strategy and plans and then being filled in on how the plans worked with only a paragraph or a few sentences in the next chapter.

Bean is still as interesting as can be as he struggles to cope with his impending death and feelings for Petra. It is also interesting to see how Petra can manipulate him due to his admiration and love for her. Eventually this manipulation leads to one of the main story lines of the book.

One letdown was that I thought that Shadow Puppets was the last book in the series, when in fact it is the next to last book. As the story began to wind down, I realized that there were just too many loose ends to tie up in 30 pages or so. That kind of bummed me out. It's actually downright annoying when you expect something to finish and then it turns out that the story goes on. Kind of like when church is supposed to be over, but that one old guy in the ward is rambling on about something totally unrelated to the lesson and he just won't let up either because he doesn't know what time it is or he doesn't care what time it is. But you want to go home to catch the second half of the Suns game...

Overall, I highly recommend this book as well as the whole Ender and Bean series to anyone who enjoys reading but sometimes gets bogged down in the middle of a long book. The books are all about 300 pages and very easy reads. They are very entertaining. Anyone who enjoyed Ender's Game or Ender's Shadow will thoroughly enjoy this book as well.

Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Okay, so I was able to see the new Indiana Jones movie this week and I thought I would write a review on it. I'll try not to spoil any of the plot for those of you who haven't seen it. No guarantees though, so read at your own risk. Don't get mad if I let something slip.

First of all, I would like to say that I really enjoyed the movie. It is chalk full of classic Indiana Jones scenes and one liners. Of course Harrison Ford is older in the movie, but there is still a good selection of fight/action scenes. The movie also tied into some of the past movies very simply and it was fun to find little parts in the screenplay that were taken from one of the previous three movies or to see an object or character from an old movie. Again Jones is pitted against one of the world's most feared armies, this time it's the KGB or Russian Army.

Of all the movies, as you would expect, this one implemented the most computer animated effects. I found this both enhancing and distracting. I felt like the explosions, special effects, etc. were all very good using the computer animation, but I also thought they went a little bit overboard with it animating badgers, monkeys, and even some stunts which looked fake and distracted from or had no purpose in the story. The ants is one exception though. I thought that the ant scene was great, aside from the one that got squished...

The Crystal Skull also seemed to have many scenes which were a bit too unrealistic. I know that it's Indiana Jones and he does unrealistic things in all of his movies, but usually there aren't so many things in one movie. I'm sorry, but I don't think that even Indiana could survive a nuclear bomb explosion by crawling into a refrigerator...Although I had expected him to maneuver out of a few sticky situations (which he did) I didn't expect him to have to escape this many times while each time it seemed to get stickier.

Finally, of all the ancient artifacts that Indiana Jones has found, this movie has to be the weirdest. Every previous movie finds Jones seeking after some relic with supposed and real supernatural powers. The ark, grail, and stones were great and all seem a lot less supernatural after watching this movie. The story for the movie was way out there. I immensely enjoyed the searching for the treasure and the good guy bad guy story. I didn't enjoy how the story ended. The ending is just weird. I can't think of any other way to explain it. Again the computer graphics add to the oddity of the final scenes. I wish that they could have figured out something else that the skulls could have done. I was glad to see the bad lady get her eyeballs burned out (eerily similar to the man turning old in The Last Crusade and the man melting in Raiders of the Lost Ark) but aside from that, it was just weird. Those of you who have seen it can identify with me, right?

So, in summary, I recommend the movie for any Indiana Jones fans. Like I said before, I enjoyed the movie and wouldn't be disappointed if I spent money to see it (even 8 bones for a normal theater). And while I felt that the ending was weird, it was a classic Indiana Jones story with good action sequences and great acting. Very funny. Very entertaining. But weird.
Did I mention that Shia LaBeouf was great in the movie?,...well he was.

Flossing Tips for the Kiddies

Ok all you kiddies...Here's an unsubstantiated fact that I heard at work this week. This one comes form my boss Lynn. Apparently, humans live 3 years longer on average if they floss their teeth daily. I guess this means that while I will live to a ripe age of 75, Shanna will last until she's 83. I could floss daily and increase my expectancy to 78, but is three years really worth all of the time put into flossing?...3 minutes daily for my life. If I floss every day of my life for 50 years from today that's like 54750 minutes, 912.5 hours, 38 days, devoted to just flossing my teeth. Maybe I'll just put in a few all nighters and get those 38 days out of the way early on so I don't have to worry about it anymore.
Now, I'm not saying this "flossing fact" isn't true, I'm just saying that I don't think I believe it...unless you can show me some proof. But for now, I'm still a weekly flosser.

Ding and Dang....

Recently, Shanna and I went camping near Goblin Valley State Park in the Utah desert. Goblin Valley itself was very impressive and interesting. I can't say that I've seen anything like it before. There are so many goblins, it's hard to believe that it was all formed naturally. And actually, in my thinking, it wasn't all nature. There had to be some divine artist behind this beautiful valley. Very neat. Aside from Goblin Valley though, we did a lot of hiking in some canyons in the area. This was my favorite part of the trip.

Despite staying overnight only Thursday night, we hiked 3 canyons: Crack Canyon and Ding and Dang Canyons. Ding and Dang form a loop that connects two larger washes and features extremely narrow portions as well as impressive vertical walls on both sides. Especially in Dang Canyon(the canyon we descended through), there were a few very high vertical drops which we had to navigate. One or two were a little bit creepy, but all of them were really fun and exciting to climb down.

Crack Canyon was also mucho fantastico. While the climbing and hiking wasn't as challenging as Ding and Dang, there were a lot of fun portions. The best part of the hike was the huge crack towards the end of the canyon. Very narrow, it rises the entire height of the canyon walls. I would guess that it was only about 3-4 feet wide. Once inside of it, we could shimmy up and down pretty much at will. About 15 feet up (I would guess, because I didn't go that high) the walls close in and get very narrow. The cool thing was that you could look straight up and see the sky outside.

At night, we camped in a wash which is generaly not a smart idea. Another camper decided to point out the obvious to us as he was passing. We thought "duh!" but since the sky was clear and chance of rain was nil, we took our chances. We had some delicious boiled hot dogs for dinner and breakfast burritos boiled in ziplock bags for breakfast. The rest of the trip we ate granola bars and my personal favorite, Finding Nemo fruit snacks.

All of the pictures from the trip are located on my brother in law's(Bruce's) picture album website at: http://picasaweb.google.com/bruckie There are four albums. Each begins with "San Rafael Swell" and were posted on April 24th or 25th. Enjoy glancing through them.

Ticket to Ride

If you haven't played the board game Ticket to Ride, you're missing out. I played it for the first time tonight and realized how fun it is. A game of railroad construction, Ticket to Ride pits you against the other players to build routes between specific destinations. With only certain rails available to build on, you must race the other players to place your colored railroad cars in those designated positions before somebody else does. While it's a game requiring planning, board awareness, and strategy it's play is actually very simple and easy to pick up on. A great game for small groups even if some haven't played before. Games will become intense with experienced players and will bring out the worst in everyone. You may often find yourself building in order to "block" someone's route and cause a detour rather than complete your routes. The game play seems similar to Settler's of Catan only much simpler and less time consuming. I'd buy it myself but Amazon.com has just confirmed my suspicion that the cost is over 30 dollars($35) and after all of those Settlers of Catan expansion packs, I don't have much(any) money left in my game budget...