The Lair

Some authors are just damn good. You know, regardless of writing an action novel, futuristic sci-fi or even turning their hand to comedy; the genius of the writer shines through. Others are more tied to a genre; consider the ludicrous thought of Tom Clancy writing a Discworld novel and you’ll see what I mean… Ludlum, for example, tried to get the comedic angle going with the Road to … series. (Road to Gandolfo and Road to Omaha). In much the same way, David Baldacci tried something different with The Christmas Train. Unfortunately, Ludlum probably did better at the genre change than Baldacci did… Christmas train didn’t work quite work for me.

From the beginning, there was no build up, no master criminal (a hallmark of Baldacci’s earlier stuff) and not a whole lot of tension in the novel for me. There was very little cleverness in this book (contrast with the number puzzle in Total Control for example). It was, in short, a nice book to be made into a movie showing in some random channel which rhymes with Ballpark; but not exactly the stuff that David Baldacci used to make a name for himself. Think of Robert Jordan attempting a cookery book? Yup, not to impugn RJ’s cookery skills (if he has any) or Baldacci’s ability to write well - but without the edge of action and a plot and something thing to figure out while reading the book; Christmas Train was more like a rerun of an episode of Friends. Intrinsically, not a bad thing. Except it’s just not Baldacci.

In other news, I feel increasingly like I’m in a B-movie called the Attack of the Feeping Creatures. My supervisor has unveiled grand plans for what I’m going to be doing in my *gasp* fourth year of research. Which is all well and good for him, except I have little intention of hanging around long enough to do what probably constitutes another large scale project. It’s all very well talking about how research interests me (because it does, really) but research at the expense of real life sounds silly, to say the least. Oh, and how about the client who introduced a few features (oh, they won’t take long, will they? What? You don’t have enough people to do what we want now? lalalalalalalala, I can’t hear you). Aargh, grr, snarl, I hate my job(s) etc.

So, my current long term career plan has been transmogrified into fighting off Ed for a place as the Pit peon. Ok, so maybe there is room for both Ed and yours truly to work as Pit peons. I hear the bennies include Elephant House Hawt Dawgs and (allegedly) chocolate muffins. I can live with that. Also, I am informed that Elephant House has made a come back with the hawt dawgs… and here I was thinking that they had gone out of business. But … again, second hand information, apparently the secret sauce doesn’t taste as good. I think the water quality of the Beira has gone down a bit, that might be a reason *evil grin*

Also, very randomly, w00tabix - the breakfast of naturally cheerful people. I just thought I’d share that awesome product idea with all my readers. Royalty free, even.