Rockford gone wild

We sent Rockford out west this weekend to see his old buddy Don’s homestead. Yesterday, they went hiking. Rockford’s dad laughed when I told him that.

On a typical Saturday in high school, Rockford and Don might have played a round of golf, then retired to the house to watch a Cubs game and toss back a few dozen donuts. But now they’re having Adventures in the Great Outdoors.

They’re probably having Grape Nuts and wheatgrass smoothies for breakfast this morning. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

There are some more pictures in Don’s Flickr photostream.

"Never Let Me Go"

For some reason, I’d expected Kazuo Ishiguro’s "Never Let Me Go" to reduce me to a pile of tears. But I didn’t cloud over even once. Maybe I’ve become heartless.

The skeleton of the story was haunting (I dreamed about it last night), but I never connected with the narrator, and the writing style left me cold.

This is nit-picky, but the font was also weirdly distracting. One review I read said it made it feel more “handwritten.” I guess it did seem that way, but I didn’t like it.

"End of Story"

“End of Story” was sufficiently suspenseful, but I found the protagonist (a woman teaching a writing class at a prison) to be pretty annoying. She was terribly condescending toward the prisoners, and she acted pretty brainless much of the time, too. I suppose she had to be that way to drive the plot along, but she still got on my nerves.

I did love the last line of the book, though.