Grandpa Consiglio

quiet yet strong

meticulous family man

consummate signore

Review: The Martian

The Martian by Andy Weir
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the best books I've read in the last year or two. Extremely engaging. I was hesitant at first, thinking that I would be bored with the focus on only one character. However, that one character was really inspiring. Also I loved all the the science.

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Review: Leviathan Wakes

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a solid, enjoyable science fiction book that was recommended to me by a friend. While in the process of consuming it, I did not have the "Oh my gosh, I just love this" feeling, but it was pleasant enough that I have started reading the second book in the series.

First, I must admit that the setting was right up my alley. It is far enough in the future to have many aspects of everyday human life be very different than what we experience now. But it is not so far that you couldn't imagine things actually progressing in that direction. A lot of the action takes place on space ships or space stations, yet it is always described in ways that made me feel like I could fit right in.

Second, I did enjoy several of the main characters. They had some depth and surprises to them that kept me interested, despite the fact that they didn't always make the right decisions.

However, the small downside for me was that there were not quite enough characters. Or maybe just not enough factions involved to completely dazzle me. Don't get me wrong; as I mentioned, there were some surprises along the way. But the overall plot moved in a fairly predictable direction, with things ending pretty much the way I would have expected.

I really want to give this book only 4.5 stars, but this site doesn't allow for half-stars. It falls just short of what I'd consider a "top" rating because I don't think that I would read this book over and over again. However, I'm letting my rating sit at the full 5 level, since science fiction is my favorite genre and this is definitely a story I would recommend to a friend.

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Review: Great North Road

Great North Road by Peter F. Hamilton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book because it wasn't quite what I was expecting. It has a number of interesting characters and world details that entice me to read it again sometime in the future.

I'm familiar enough with Peter F. Hamilton to expect his science fiction to be based in an interesting setting and filled with lots and lots of characters. In fact, it was with a certain amount of dread that I avoided this book for awhile because I wasn't ready to dive into an epic story. After consuming several chapters, I began to realize that this particular book is not quite as expansive as some of his other tales, and I was pleasantly surprised at being able to jump into the narrative quickly.

Also, although this is set in the future with many familiar aspects of science fiction (space travel, colonization, DNA manipulation, miniature computer technology), the heart of the story is a murder mystery. That small twist on the theme kept me really intrigued through the first two-thirds of the book. Once the killer was revealed, I experienced a small let-down, but still enjoyed the rest since by that point I was invested in many of the characters and their stories.

The biggest 'problem' I had with this book has to do with the fact that I didn't actually read it; I listened to it in audio format. The reader did a good job overall with the narration and even a decent job with the character voices, however, he had a strong accent (Scottish maybe?) that made it hard for me to understand him from time to time. I found myself confused by names a few times and getting locations mixed up in my head. However, since the book was so long, rather than rewind and listen to a portion again, I would just let the story continue on and figure things out after a few more paragraphs. This is part of the reason I want to 'read' it again -- hopefully the next time I'll pick up on some details that I may have missed, especially since I know now where the action is headed.

One final plus for this particular story: it was nice to have a heroine with my first name.

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Review: Redshirts

Redshirts by John Scalzi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Basically this book is just average. It is averagely written, with average humor, average characters and average humor. I was hoping for something like the movie 'Galaxy Quest', but this didn't quite live up to that. It wasn't all completely bad, but I've forgotten most of the details already.

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Review: Year Zero

Year Zero by Rob Reid
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you like Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, then you'll like this book. It has that same, "people of Earth are silly and manage to avoid planetary destruction through inadvertent ineptitude" feel to it. There are a few key differences, first that the author is American, not British, so this story is set in New York and has a slightly different humor to it. Another difference from HHGG is that it was written recently, so it includes some very modern references that were refreshing. Finally, although the main characters are not heroes per se, they are also a bit more competent that their counterparts in HHGG, which means they actually end up using their wits a little more than blind luck to win out in the end.

Definitely a book I would recommend.

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Review: Old Man's War

Old Man's War by John Scalzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't have much to say about this book. It didn't really pull on me strongly in any one direction. I thought the writing was well-done and the story-telling was very well structured. The universe felt kind of "Star Trek" to me though -- you know, like a late 70's or early 80's TV show. Although there is a lot going on in the background, the focus was just on the main character and his small group of friends. And they had very little impact on the world at large. Furthermore, the "science" to this fictional story seemed a little too good to be true, while at the same time having just the right sort of limitations for an interesting drama. Not serious drama mind you; just a little bit of interesting drama.

In the end, I'll probably come back and read more of the series when I don't have anything else grabbing my attention, but it can wait.

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My Once-in-a-Lifetime Story

I recently had a busy weekend where I wanted to be in two places at the same time. I didn't finalize my plans until almost the last minute. I debated back and forth on my decision. But around 4:40pm on Saturday my gamble paid off big time.

Most of you know that I am a gamer and a geek. When I recently switched jobs and lost a lot of vacation time, I prioritized my trips for this year based on how much gaming time I could squeeze in. Therefore, my early April plan to attend PretzCon was important to me because it was a cheap, close trip I could take where I could play lots and lots of games. I actually pre-registered for this convention a full year ago had been looking forward to it for a long, long time.

The difficultly arose when I learned that Wil Wheaton was going to be here in Kansas City the very same weekend as PretzCon.

Although I'm not a big fan girl of many celebrities, Wil Wheaton is the one exception. Starting with my teenage adoration of his character Wesley Crusher on Star Trek Next Generation, continuing through my enjoyment of his blog and books like Just a Geek, my respect for him as a person peaked when he started the YouTube show Table Top where a group of geeky celebrities get together to play games. Obviously, this last bit really hits home for me. So even though I don't care or pay attention to other famous people, Wil Wheaton is the one whose schedule I pay attention to.

In fact, I have tried on a couple of occassions to see him at other conventions. But similary to Sheldon on Big Bang Theory, whenever I plan to attend a GenCon, Origins, or PAX, for some reason Wil has other plans or has to cancel at the last minute. On the other hand, those times when Wil's schedule has been confirmed for one of my favorite gaming conventions, I have usually been busy with family or work. So this recent conflict with PretzCon felt very typical to me -- the one time that Wil Wheaton will be visiting the city I live in is the same weekend that I had plans to be somewhere else.

In the end, I split the difference. I attended PretzCon for one day and then came back to Kansas City for the two days of Planet Comicon. Once I figured out that I was going to gamble on a chance at meeting my favorite geek personality, I decided to help out my local gaming convention, KantCon with manning the Gamer's Haven Library for board game check-outs. We also were handling the sale of raffle tickets at a chance to play a game with Wil himself.

Saturday morning, my friends and I woke up early (despite playing games until late the prior evening) to drive three hours from Omaha to Kansas City. We were all a little sad at leaving so soon, but everyone agreed that although PretzCon would be back again next year, there was no guarantee as to when Wil Wheaton might come back to Kansas. I rushed home, grabbed some lunch, dropped off the rental car, and practically raced to get to Planet Comicon in time for my scheduled shift to help out the Gamer's Haven Library that afternoon. Once there, I checked out the raffle box, and it looked like only a couple hundred tickets or so had been sold so far, so I bought a few ticket for myself just in case. As the day wore on, more and more tickets were being sold. We didn't realize this charity game had been advertised so well. Again, I debated on what to do and decided that I could spend the cash I had been saving for Wil's signature on these tickets instead. The proceeds were all donated to the Hero Initiative, so I figured even if I didn't win, it was for a good cause.

Let me cut out some of the boring details at this point -- my friend noticed that I was losing hope as the raffle box continued to fill with more and more tickets, so she purchased some more on my behalf. In the end, I had a total of 50 tickets out of a box that contained around 1,260. The drawing was scheduled for 4:30pm on Saturday and the game itself to start at 6pm. The rest of that evening is still kind of a blur.

Obviously, I won one of the precious five slots available to play a game with Wil Wheaton. The game we played was Space Cadets, a cooperative game where each player is a crewman with the responsibility of one or two stations of a starship. I manned the Helm, and Will Wheaton managed Engineering and the Jump drive. Although we as a group did succeed our mission, my terrible maneuvers did more damage to our ship than contact with the enemy. I was rightly embarrassed, but still had a great time.

So in the end, my gamble to leave one gaming convention in favor of another comic book convention, turned out to be the right choice. I even was able to personally give Wil a custom dice bag I made for him. It had the Enterprise D on the outside and the colors of the Wesley Crusher grey sweater on the inside. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of it.

Instead, I have Jon Hook and my friend DaNay to thank for the photographic evidence below. Enjoy!

Review: Existence

Existence by David Brin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked a lot of the science fiction in this book, but it felt much too abstract for me. In fact, it took me longer than usual to even get 'interested' in the story. Usually, with a new book, I'll dive right in and become engrossed with the characters within the first few chapters. With Existence, I don't think it was until around chapter 25 that I decided I would stick it out until the end. Up to that point, I was considering not reading the entire thing.

Part of the difficulty might be that I was listening to the audio format of this book. Based on what I heard, there are sections that are quoted chapters from some other book like an encyclopedia of sorts. It took a few chapters for me to figure this out and get used to the different perspectives. It also didn't help that these excerpts were often of an erudite nature and far too abstract to hold my attention. I kept yearning for the story to get back to the action.

Another problem was that there were too many characters introduced too quickly before I could really settle in with a particular point of view. And then the story spanned a length of time that necessitated old characters dying and thus the introduction of more new characters. In the end, there were a few narratives that I enjoyed, but nothing that really stood out.

I think overall the subject matter of this book is just too philosophical for my personal taste. I prefer to watch individuals or small groups go through a story arc, rather than humanity as a whole. Yet all this being said, it was a well written book and an interesting setting.

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Another Recipe

More of my favorite foods -- both to eat and to cook!

Rosemary Roasted Potatoes

• 1 1/2 lbs small red potatoes
• 1/8 c olive oil
• 3/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tbsp minced garlic (or 1 tsp garlic powder)
• 2 tbsp minced fresh rosemary leaves (or 2 tsp dry rosemary)

Preheat oven to 400. Cut potatoes in half or quarters and place in bowl with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic and rosemary; toss until well coated. Dump all onto a baking sheet and spread out into one layer. Roast in the over for at least 1 hour; turning at least twice to ensure even browning. Cook until crisp.

NOTE: When I don't have the fresh spices, I will use the substituted dry or powder ones, but they are definitely not as good. If you have time to plan ahead, make a special trip to the grocery store for your herbs -- it's worth it!

Some recipes

There are a few recipes that I make that people ask for the recipe over and over. Although I've tried to share these on a special recipe-sharing website, I don't think the interface is very friendly and so people keep asking me directly anyway. So now I've decided to start posting these on my blog so I'll have a permanent link I can share with anyone.

This first recipe actually came from one aunt who gave it to another aunt, who served it to me and now I continue to pass it along. Because I am lazy, I don't brown the butter, but just melt it into the sauce which works nearly as well. Also, because I love the sauce so much, I usually double or quadruple it for the same amount of asparagus.

Asparagus Andrea

• 2 lbs asparagus
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 400. Spray cookie sheet with Pam and place asparagus on it. Cook in oven for 12 to 15 minutes until tender. Brown butter, then add soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. Pour over asparagus before eating.


This next one I got from the Food network. The recipe calls for just cauliflower, but I usually make it with both broccoli and cauliflower.

Oven Roasted Broccoli and Cauliflower

• 1 lb cauliflower, cut into 1.5 inch flowerets
• 1 lb broccoli, cut into 1.5 inch flowerets
• 1/3 c extra-virgin olive oil
• 2.5 Tbsp lemon juice (or I use 1 Tbsp lemon and 1 Tbsp lime juice)
• 1.5 tsp chopped fresh rosemary (or I use .25 tsp basil)
• 1.25 tsp kosher salt
• .5 tsp fresh cracked pepper
• 1.5 tsp minced garlic (or .25 tsp granulated garlic)

Preheat oven to 375. In large bowl, combine everything except the garlic (if it is fresh). Toss to mix well and place in shallow roasting pan. Put pan in oven and stir every 10 minutes. Cook until tender and caramelized around the edges, about 30 to 35 minutes. Add the fresh garlic for the last 5 minutes.

KantCon 2012

I posted my few pictures of KantCon.  I'm still too exhausted to process it all, but it was a blast as usual.  I hope this small peek will display a little of that enjoyment.

Review: The Name of the Wind

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve been having a hard time figuring out how I want to review this book. In the end, I’m going to give it 4 of 5 stars because I did enjoy the story and plan to continue the series. However there is just something nagging at me ... something that doesn’t feel quite right about the book, but I can’t put my finger on it.

I didn’t start this one with a completely blank slate. I went into it knowing that it was a fantasy story, and I do have a prejudice against most of those in general. The first few paragraphs made me even more biased because of the overly poetic wording. I mean, there is only so much talk about different forms of silence and how it embodies a space that I can stomach before I want to get on with the story. I managed to get through that bit and found myself eventually drawn in by the characters and situation.

And I really did begin to enjoy the actual plot quite a bit. There is a lot of the typical author’s tricks of hinting at something larger, more ominous, but letting the reader know that it’s not going to be revealed until much later. However, it hasn’t felt too heavy-handed or distracting yet. There are enough other interesting things that are explained quickly enough that I feel willing to save some patience for the bigger elements. Yet at times, we delve into these poetic paragraphs that grate at me ever so slightly that I can’t embrace the book as a whole.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love descriptive words and a well written narrative that might have some poetic leanings. However, it’s like that favorite food that’s just been sprinkled with a little too much salt –- you know just how enjoyable it could be so that even the slightest deviation sours the experience for you even if it makes it better for someone else. I know that a lot of people really love this book. And I agree that it is a good book, but it just isn’t quite to my taste.

The other small detractor is the fact that I didn’t realize this was part of a trilogy until I was more than half-way through. I have been looking for self-contained novels to read of late so that I don’t get sucked into these never-ending stories, and here I find that I was duped yet again. The author has me sufficiently hooked that I will continue reading, but I’m going to do more research before I jump into another story.

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Movie Review: Prometheus

I watched Prometheus twice this weekend. I bought both tickets ahead of time, which is the first time I can remember gambling on a film like that. In this case, it did not pay off.

Long story short: I did not like this movie. Even if you view it completely separate from Alien, its story-linked predecessor, I feel that it did not succeed. Of course, if you try to link the two movies and compare them together you won't get very far because although they may be set in the same universe, they are not same genre nor scope. I read another review (by Faith Erin Hicks) that worded this difference quite well:

Alien is a taut, miniature movie focusing on a tiny fragment of working life in the future. In contrast, Prometheus is high-minded message SciFi, ruminating about life, the universe, everything.

Don't go into this movie expecting a horror film, or even an action film. It tries to be a mysterious drama, but it ends up answering all the wrong questions and left me as a viewer unsatisfied.

Another big problem I had with the story-line is that the characters consisted of supposed experienced scientists, who acted like they knew nothing of the scientific method. Several lines in the movie refer to quarantine procedure, but very little of what I would consider proper procedures were ever followed. And I don't even want to get started on the actual science behind DNA. The leaps that this tale were making were so absurd as to make me laugh out loud.

In the end, there were a couple of redeeming factors. One, Michael Fassbender continues to impress me with a performance was that truly entralling. Despite the questionable nature of the character he portrayed, he was the one of the few in the movie that I wanted to keep watching. The only other characters of note in my mind were Charlize Theron's company woman and Idris Elba's captain of the ship. All other actors, although some of them very qualified and respectable in their own rights, seemed to be delivering very flat or strained performances. The relationships between the characters didn't feel realistic and their reactions to the situation as presented were fairly ridiculous.

The second redeeming factor was the visuals. Not just the special effects, which were fantastic. But the composition and structure of many scenes was captivating.

Final rating: 4 out of 10.

Review: Mockingjay

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the end, this is just more of the same as "Hunger Games". Not a lot of surprises, but an enjoyable and easy read.

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Review: Catching Fire

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the end, this is just more of the same as "Hunger Games". Not a lot of surprises, but an enjoyable and easy read.

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Review: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book after watching the movie. Although both were enjoyable, I felt they were "shallow". The label of young-adult applies aptly to this book.

I think if I had read this when I was in grade school, I would be one of the many avid fans who consider Katniss a personal heroine. I know back then I really enjoyed stories of young people who had to go above and beyond the average person to help support themselves and their family, especially if that meant hunting and/or living in a forest. And my glee was even greater when the main character was a female -- a seemingly plain girl who was loved secretly or from afar. This books hits on all those notes.

However, I am older now and I appreciate stories with characters that make surprising choices and struggle on a more internal level to be a better person. Katniss felt pretty formulaic; never really surprising me. Furthermore, I predicted much of the story as a whole, even guessing where the twists and turns might come in.

Still, because it brought back some childhood memories of old favorites, I would recommend this highly to other young readers.

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Review: Coyote

Coyote by Allen Steele
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I think as long as an author has good grammar, decent sentence structure, and basic storytelling skills, I will give them the benefit of the doubt. I believe I will try hard to like a book but sometimes, it just doesn't work. At the end of Coyote, I found I just couldn't like it despite the fact that I held on until the end.

The most annoying problem was what I refer to ask "carrot dangling". Sometimes in a narrative there will be vague references and allusions to the past or the future so that the reader is curious enough to keep reading. For example, a character might briefly remember bits and pieces of some bad accident from their youth and the reader hangs on until the details and complete story are revealed over time. I often felt this technique come up in Coyote unnaturally, and it brought my focus out of the story instead to critique the writer explicitly. There are a couple of examples I will provide to demonstrate why this was so annoying.

The first example is a case where the story was following a young girl and her relationships to two different boys. The next chapter was an excerpt from the same person's diary, written in her old age, describing events like a flashback. For no apparent reason, the woman refers to her husband as "my current partner". So when does someone writing in their diary not use first names, especially of those people close to them? Furthermore, no where else in the book was the term "partner" used like that – is she married or not? Why would she bring it up like that? It felt like a direct poke at the reader – "you're not supposed to know which boy she picked yet, so you have to keep reading."

Another example in same vein – we are still reading a woman's journal as she describes events from her youth that haven't happened yet in the primary narrative. She makes a reference to an adventure she went on that "cost a person's life." Really? When you're writing in your diary, you wouldn't just say how you miss so-and-so because they died on your adventure?

These details were really jarring to me and made it hard to empathize with any of the characters. Another reason that it was hard to empathize is that the story never really focused on one character. I think that as the reader I was supposed to care about the group as a whole – their survival and ability to start a new colony – but the motivations of everyone where so disjointed that instead I just felt tossed from one individual struggle to the next. If there was an underlying thread that was supposed to tie all the independent actions together, I never found it.

This is one book I can't see myself ever reading again, and probably won't even try any of the author's other works.

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Pictures from Aruba

Finally processed most of the pictures I took from our trip a couple weeks ago. This is about one tenth of all of them. (I went a little camera crazy) Enjoy!

Aruba 2012

Review: Judas Unchained

Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Overall, I liked the series because it had the hard scifi feel I've been craving, however, certain themes fell a little short for me. Final score is 3 out of 5.

I finished the book awhile ago, so this review may be a little fuzzy on details from bad memory. (I was busy preparing and then experiencing a vacation in the Caribbean -- a good excuse!) The general take away I have from this story is a pleasant one. One of my primary drivers to read this in the first place was to find some serious hard science fiction and this definitely fit the bill. It was well-written and didn't fall into any tropes that I am familiar with. In other words, I was engaged and on my toes most of the time. However, there are a few areas that didn't work so well for me.

First, I felt overwhelmed with the number of protagonists and never really sympathized with any of them. The large cast and wide scope of the story felt a lot like the Song of Ice and Fire (George R. R. Martin) to me. However, with George, I perceived the world as being small at first and then growing bigger and bigger gradually. Peter, on the other hand, just plunged me in to this huge Commonwealth so quickly I had a hard time getting my bearings. (I will admit that some of this could be biased because I’ve read Ice and Fire more than once.) And this is my fuzzy memory talking here –- but the viewpoints from the Commonwealth didn’t seem truly first-person. Like I never really got the sense that I was getting inside anyone’s head. Thus, being an outsider, the events didn’t impact me that much.

(Minor spoilers here)
Second, several aspects of the technology were not explored to my personal satisfaction. The fact that humanity is basically immortal at this point should have changed our culture more drastically in my mind. Similarly, if humanity can create memory-storage chips that are built into our brains, wouldn’t we have a ton of other cybertech? Too many aspects of everyday life remained the same as what we experience today that at times, I almost forgot how far-future the story was supposed to be.

Those complaints aside, I did enjoy the series. I like it when alien species are presented as truly alien and not just a different human culture in costume. I like exploring the universe in space ships and using computers and technology to do amazing things. Once my ‘to read’ list empties out, I would even consider revisiting this story again.

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