2007 Book Log #1: The Keeper, by Sarah Langan

My first book of the year turned out to be entirely unplanned--an impulse purchase at Albertson's when I went down there yesterday to pick up various staples. The Keeper is apparently a debut horror/suspense novel, and the blurb made it sound halfway interesting, so I figured what the hell.

There are a lot of oft-used tropes in this book: the run-down New England town, the creepy abandoned locale where nobody wants to go, the townsfolk full of secrets and in many ways just not right, the crazy young woman who's wandering around the place and spooking everybody right out. But I'll say this for the book; it used these tropes in pretty decent ways, and at the end in ways I actually didn't expect. A couple of characters who start off fairly screwed up as part of the backstory actually get chances to redeem themselves, which was a bit of a refreshing switch for a horror novel. There were a few bits that dragged, most notably portions of long dialogue, but I think one can easily chalk these up to rough spots of style that Langan may well improve as she gets a few more novels under her belt.

All in all, not a half-bad little read. Three stars.

The best laid plans of cats and elves...

Whoops. I appear to have fallen off the face of LJ for the last week or so. Have I missed much?

To summarize the last several days: quite a bit of cold. Not much going on at work other than trying to gear up to take another stab at getting the Important Project finished up (in theory, we're supposed to take another stab at doing this tomorrow night). Highly entertaining belated birthday Wii-bowling for spazzkat on Saturday, with sksouth, mamishka, llachglin, kathrynt, baby Lillian, and our off-LJ friend Danny all coming over to enjoy playing with our shiny new Wii console system. A few flurries on Saturday, though no further accumulation in Kenmore. Many errands run today, including having to go down to MurkSouth to retrieve the big stone slab that unknown asshats decided to rip off the side of the porch and leave in front of the house next door, and encounters with the Full Triumvirate of Bothell Babies. (I had not before laid eyes upon little William, son of wrog and emmacrew. William was a cutie, and very interested in trying to a) eat my hair, and b) put his entire hand in my mouth.)

And tonight, according to weather.com, we're on for a Heavy Snow Warning. This was upgraded from Snow Advisory a little while ago, and it makes me just stunned. This will make our third major snow event so far this winter--and yeah, I know, the November storm wasn't technically in winter yet. It snowed. That counts in my book as winter. ;) Personally, I begin to think our Important Project is cursed. Every single time we've tried to get this thing finished up, the weather goes completely bonkers.

Place your bets on whether I get to head to work tomorrow!

Miles from last week: 13.2
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1686.9
Miles out of Rauros Falls: 377.9
Miles to Isengard: 106.1