Books

I own very, very few physical books anymore. Three shelves total. One shelf is a pile of hardcover/art-type books, one is for paperbacks I loved too much to ever get rid of (and not available in ebook format), and one shelf is of books I bought before owning my Kindle and haven't read yet but figured I might one day if my Kindle dies and I have to wait for a replacement.

Yet again I'm having sleep issues, so last night I put off going to bed and trying to sleep by standing at the book case and looking over the titles. I spotted what had been my favorite book ever, The Weigher*, and took it to the computer to see if maybe there was an ebook version around. Sadly no.

So, I could read the physical one, right? I enjoy my ereader so much more, but for a reread of a book I loved, I could make an exception just once?

So I tried it. Oh my god, the type was so tiny! I could barely focus on the page! (And it was just normal book font, not especially tiny font used in big books.) What a sad discovery, I couldn't even get through a page before my eyes were hurting and watering.

I can read on the Kindle just fine, so I don't think it's a matter of needing reading glasses... Maybe if I stick with it I could just get used to it again? Though I guess I've been reading on ereaders for five years now, so I guess that's a lot of time for my eyes to go downhill.

* That cover image is AWFUL and not at all representative of the book. It was a book about intelligent cats. They could stand on their hind legs for short times, but were basically four-legged creatures, not werewolf-looking things!

Edit: And you know what's strange? Neither authors are around online. No facebook pages, personal sites, nothing. I wonder what happened to them? Did they die? Do they still write? The last thing I can find that Eric Vinicoff wrote was published in 1992, and I can't find anything published later than 1984 for Marcia Martin. I wonder what they do now? It's so odd when Google doesn't have an answer for something. Everything Martin wrote was co-authored with Vinicoff. I wonder if they were a couple? I wish I knew!

Night at the Museum 3

I don't review many movies, mostly because I don't watch that many. I've always enjoyed the first Night at the Museum movie though, and the second one wasn't bad, so I figured I'd catch the third.

Wow. There were plot holds big enough for a dinosaur skeleton to walk through, the human characters were just so painfully stupid and generally outright awful people, and nothing in the plot made sense... Yet all the museum characters sort of semi-saved the movie. It was great seeing them again, and I've always loved the idea of things coming to life at night.

Through the movie, I kept saying "Well, maybe the next one will be better". This is the third one, and it made a good deal of profit, so there'd be a fourth one, right? Wrong! Sadly they're stopping at three! Arg! So it made all the goodbye scenes with the characters feel all the sadder.

Adding to the sorrow was that this was Robin Williams's last movie, and he just seemed so happy, loving, and enjoying life in it. And the scene where his character was saying goodbye? So hard to watch. I'm getting choked up now just typing this and thinking about it.

I wish this had been a much better movie, for many reasons. There's room in the plot for a Night at the Museum 4 if they change their mind. I really hope they do.