Darkest Peru

No I haven't wedged in another holiday, I am sat on a train at Paddington waiting to go to Reading - no sign of a lost bear.

Decided to let the train take the strain today to get to my lunch meeting, so get a day off from the M25. Am in London tomorrow morning as well but will need to drive to Gatwick and get the train from there as I have another meeting near the office in the afternoon. Still, at least it means that I will be able to jump in the car and be back in time for the end of term treat - the much anticipated and eagerly awaited Toy Story 3. Not sure who is most excited, probably me!

On my way through St Pancras this morning I took a picture of the tallest model railway in the world - as featured on this morning's GMTV. If I was cleverer I would send the picture straight from phone to blog - maybe I'll attach it via flickr later. (By the way, St Pancras continues to be a good place for occasional celeb spotting - shared the Ebbsfleet flyer with Vic Reeves today!)

I am reading A Game of Thrones by George R R Martin at the moment and am gradually getting sucked into the story. Had the book sat on the shelves at home for 10+ years but only just picked it up. The last time I got really stuck into an epic fantasy saga was 15+ years ago when I read Tad Williams' Memory Sorrow and Thorn trilogy.

Two observations so far - firstly it's great knowing that if I really get stuck into it there are several thousand more pages to go (sometimes with an author I really like I have to ration them out for fear of discovering that I've read everything and have to wait for their next publication). The other thing is time - when I last got stuck into a dense saga like this I had the luxury of time. Now it is far more of a rare and precious commodity. Still, only three and a half weeks to holiday and I plan to pack a few books in my case.

Agent Coulson

Watching the second half of Iron Man on one of the movie channels, and noticed a couple of entertaining things. Firstly, one of the locations used in the movie was the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA (which we visited a few months ago) and secondly one of the characters was called Agent Coulson! A quick check on IMDB confirms this, and also that we can look forward to seeing this character in a number of forthcoming releases (Thor, Nick Fury and the Avengers) as well as this year's Iron Man 2. Might be reason enough for watching the films - mind you Iron Man wasn't bad for a superhero action movie.

I would have added some WD Concert Hall pictures to this post, but I am still trying to get back up to date with Flickr uploading, and I still have well over 1,000 of the California pictures to upload, so have got nowhere near LA just yet. Don't rate my chances of being up to date before we go on Independence and take a few hundred more.

Finished Superfreakonomics this week (excellent book - borrowed the first one from the on board library and read it when we were on the Legend cruise in 2006!) and also read Frankie Boyle's autobiography. Outrageous, disgusting, offensive, but also very very funny.

Cross about Cross?

Finished the most recent Alex Cross outing from James Patterson the other day. I actually found it not too bad, but having said that I suppose that my expectations were set pretty low by some of his recent novels. Once upon a time, many years ago, I picked up a second hand copy of Along Came A Spider in a second hand bookstore, and from then on I was hooked on the thrillers about Alex, the detective / psychologist battling against the bad people of Washington DC and often the rest of the US as well. I thoroughly enjoyed the series for quite some time, and would grab the hardback as soon as it came out, but in recent years the quality has gone rapidly downhill. Now I pick up the paperback when it is on special offer (which they always will be now that Patterson is well and truly in the quantity over quality game). I then read with trepidation, hoping that Patterson hasn't hammered too many more nails into his reputation. Then again, it's not clear how much he cares as no doubt he can rely on there being a huge number of mugs like me out there, willing to buy and buy and buy, hoping for a return to form one day.

The current book ends by giving us a sneak preview of the first few pages of the next one due out soon. Alarmingly, Kyle Craig seems to be back again - wheel out the old adversaries when ideas are thin on the ground ...

One other thing - renting out his name to other authors to help them up the publishing ladder is just not on! He can't have that much involvement in the books that show his name plus another on the cover - there just isn't time.