A picture

This is my favorite ultrasound picture because you can see his
 little legs crossed, a hand in the middle and on the right is his head.

It's a...

BOY!


- Please excuse my typos while I post from my iphone, using BlogPress of course.

Review: Regarding Ducks and Universes

Regarding Ducks and Universes by Neve Maslakovic

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I came across Regarding Ducks and Universes while skimming book titles on my Kindle. It was $1.99 and involved multiple universes, which is right there at top of my guilty pleasure plots list (along with time travel). I indulged.

Felix Sayers is a culinary writer living in the San Francisco of Universe A. His dream is to one day write a mystery novel. He gets side tracked when he realized that there is, in fact, another Felix Sayers in the other universe, Universe B. Who is this other Felix Sayers? What is his life like, and most importantly, has he already written the mystery novel that our main character has been dreaming about? Felix travels to the other universe to find out for himself, but finds that people in Universe B are looking for him too and believe that he actually played a roll in the link between the two Universes.

This is not a perfect book, but it's pretty good. Chances are, not many people you know will have read it, which gives you something interesting to talk about. It's not a long, time consuming read nor is it a "brain break" book. It's different. And it feels like it only has a touch of science fiction to it, even though it involves multiple universes.

The strength of this book is the setting and the plot. They're both crazy! There are two universes that are almost similar, but different. They both have a San Francisco, but only one universe still has a Golden Gate Bridge. The other universe had to replace their bridge after an earthquake. Only one universe can make sourdough bread, the ingredients to make it don't exist in the other. It's enough to read the whole book just to see the differences.

However, the main character is an Eeyore. By that, I mean he hardly acts and he doesn't really react, just like Eeyore in the Winnie the Pooh stories. It makes his character unbelievable. Many of the supporting characters have lots of individuality and nuances, which somewhat makes up for the lack of it in the main character. It feels like the author relates better to Bean, the woman Felix meets when he crosses into Universe B and a character that plays a major role in the book.

Reviews listed the lack of explanation as a weakness for Regarding Ducks and Universes. I think the author tries to explain the link between universes throughout the book by having supporting characters provide helpful analogies to Felix. At a certain point, I started skimming these analogies. Although I don't want a full on explanation of this universe stuff, I would prefer a little more clarification at the beginning and less analogies throughout. Really, the analogies could be replaced with character development for the main character, Felix.

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Television shows that made cry this week

It turns out that pregnancy hormones really do make you cry at silly things.

How to Train Your Dragon - The part where the dragon almost drowns and the Viking dad saves him. Did I mention this is a cartoon?

How I met your mother - The part where Barney gets bad news (Not gonna spoil that for anyone that watches!)

The Sing Off - Pretty much the whole time. Especially when the Mormons got kicked off. All of those groups are really talented.

Harry Potter - The ending. The nice, happy, pretty package ending.

3 pm on a Monday

Right about now, I should be 30 minutes into full on face-on-desk nap time, as I have been on any given day in the past few weeks. 

The funniest thing about office nap time? The automatic lights in my office. If I don't move for five minutes, they turn off.  When I sit up from my nap, they turn on. My assistants, who sit right by my office door, always know when I'm sleeping. The other day, after I sat up and heard the lights click on, one of them said, "Did you have a nice nap?" 

But today, no naps. I'm wide awake despite my three hour intermission from sleep last night. I may tell a different story after I finish with my training session in a few hours, but for now... Yes, I think I will plant those pansies and cook those fajitas when I get home. 

And I'm still drinking my one cup of chai tea for the day, thank you very much.