The Tube and Others

My wife and I took a break from our stuff to watch the season premier of "Alias". This season is touted as a return to the successful formula that made the first two seasons so great. I am not convinced that we are back where we need to be. It is true that the same characters fell back into the same tangled relationships established during the first three seasons. It is also true that Jennifer Garner kicks butt and wears skimpy outifts. But the formula is getting a little old. The fact that our heroine and her crew once again works for the biggest bad in the series stretches all credulity. And it took a whole hour before they brought Marshall back. What the series needs is Dr. House. Hugh Laurie could whack evil-doers with his cane.

I know you've been asking: "Uncle Patrick, I want to read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell but I don't want to work my way through 782 pages. I need to eat and sleep and stuff." Fear not! A young adult novel entitled Sorcery & Cecelia may be just the solution to your problem! I gave this book and its sequel The Grand Tour to my wife for Christmas and she gave them a big thumbs up. They are fantasy novels set in an alternative Georgian England similar to that of Jonathan Strange but involve young teenage girls instead of middle-aged curmudgeons.

I read The Complete Peanuts: 1953-1954 over the holidays. Several of the main characters, particularly Lucy, settle into their roles in the comic. Charlie Brown is slowly changing from a puckish goofball to the melancholiac we all know. Snoopy starts to talk. Pig-Pen is introduced. All-in-all a good two years for the strip. I am about a quarter of the way through Walter Isaacson's biography of Benjamin Franklin, which I can heartily recommend.

I can also highly recommend the Shaun of the Dead DVD. A little gory but very fun!