August Ramblings: Of Boats and Books

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So, we opted to go on a CME cruise to Alaska, rather than our original plan to escape to Sitges. While I don't know when I'll do another cruise, I will say I understand how a certain population of people would love it.  It's not suited to the way we Codgers travel, though.  And, even though I didn't try "The Isaac" drink, I did do plenty of day drinking the day that our boat couldn't make our longest port day and we were on the boat at sea for the second day in a row.

Dani and I are the kinds of travelers who like to just meander until we find what we want to do. Boat life with all of it's "all aboard" times, eating schedules, reservations, and scripted activities just isn't the best fit. All total, we were only off the boat for about 22 hours--the day we couldn't make port in Skagway was a 12 hour off the boat day, which would have meant a total of about 34 hours off the boat. 

So you can see that missing that day was a let-down. In addition, that day was our most exciting excursion.  Instead, we spent a rainy, windy day at sea, drinking Vespers and other tasty things in the martini lounge before braving the windy deck to grab a slice of pizza and an ice cream cone.

Thankfully, a week after returning home, I no longer have boat-induced vertigo and I've shed the four or so pounds I picked up while eating things I normally don't eat.

I did have time to read. Before we left, I finished a book I anticipated greatly. NPR said it was awesome. As a Tremblay fan, however, I was frustrated by The Cabin at the End of the World. I have a lot of questions about this one, and the end was completely unsatisfying to me. 

I can see the moon was another book I'd waited a long time to purchase, wanting to be sure I could really devour it--and I did. This is a memoir of an aunt/niece relationship at the core, but it's also about the Satanic Panic and tales of Ritual Sexual Abuse from the late 1980s and early 1990s. If you're into non-fiction, especially non-fiction memoirs that give you lots of leads for further reading and research, pick this one up.

Draculas has been on my Kindle since March, and after the disappointment by Tremblay's newest, I wanted some Konrath--his writing is consistent, and the violence here is far more detached and more manageable. I'd love to see a sequel that deals more with the actual Dracula issue and less about blowing things up, but then again that's not why I read Konrath, necessarily.

Other recent reads include Dr. Vigilante which was a BookBub freebie that I finished just this morning. This was entertaining, but I literally kept hitting the button on my Kindle because I knew there had to be something missing at the end.  The book just stops.

My biggest recommendation out of my recent reads for fiction is Kelly J. Ford's Cottonmouths. I missed seeing Ford at the Arkansas Literary Festival back in April, sadly. The book really resonated with me in terms of small town Arkansas life and how a 20-something returning home might experience it. Lots of things there about teenaged girl crushes, too.

One book I pretty much ignored (when I wasn't dreaming that people here in town had managed to get their hands on a pirated copy and already read it) was my latest. I didn't reread it while gone, and because I was not going to pay for internet on the boat I didn't even nag my Advanced Reader Team. When I got home, I ordered a paperback proof and spent yesterday making adjustments to page number placement and fixing some rogue underlining and an extra indent or two.

Want to try your own Isaac?  I recommend the Vesper instead.