Mindfulness Cards
Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 10:20 on 22 November 2015One of the Kickstarter projects I backed, back when I was backing regularly, was Cards for Mindfulness. They arrived last week, so I brought them up here to Portland with me for this week. I figured, if nothing else, they would be pretty to look at (I crack me up).
I opened the box this morning to check out the cards, and share them with the O's. The cards are oversized with a matte finish, not sealed. There are 6 cards in 8 categories, packed so that they were grouped into categories. I immediately sorted them into 6 groups of cards, each with 8 different categories in them, and pulled the first one off the top.
It was "There is always more."
The card is talking about boredom, and how even when you're bored, if you concentrate harder on the details, the boredom goes away.
Thing is, I'm very rarely bored.
I recall Scott saying when I was way younger, "Smart people never get bored, they're just in between doing two things."
I don't know if I'm able to just have enough to think about, or the modern cultural norm of having a phone to distract oneself, means I am not ever (or very, very rarely) bored.
I almost immediately gave up on this card. Until I talked to J-man about it. He commented that maybe during doing something, you have the realization that, "Damn, I'm bored." And maybe that moment is when this card is applicable.
So, this card didn't really apply today, but perhaps in the future, I'll have a moment of "I'm bored," and I can apply this mindfulness technique of looking more closely, there is always more.
Police
Book Notes Posted by kitt at 22:59 on 19 November 2015
Okay, this is the latest book (that would be book 10) in the Harry Hole series. Based on the ending, I feel this should be the last book in the series. I'm not the author, and I understand the lure of keeping a franchise alive, yet this one feels like a great place to end the series.
True to Nesbo's style of writing the Hole series (ha, I crack me up), there are a lot of twists and turns and deliberate wording causing misdirections. I was confused a bit with some of the characters, but figured them all out in the end. Unsurprising, this book was about THE POLICE, and had a large bit of house-cleaning in it (another reason why this could be the last book: a lot of the different plotlines are wrapped up, cleaned up, and squared away).
I really liked how a number of details from previous books wrap back around in this book. The details are still details, not major plot points. They are subtle enough to make this book stand on its own (without the Dresden repeating of everything), but stand out if you've read the previous book recently (like finished it about an hour before starting this one).
So, with this one, I've read five of the Harry Hole books. Given I've read the last three, and know much of the plot points of the previous ones from details gleaned from those last three books, I'm likely going to skip the rest of the Hole books.
Despite my luke-warm first book review, I have to say that I now recommend this series.
Update: Okay, yeah, going back to read the missing Hole books, two, three, four, six, and seven. Seven is being turned into a movie, and I know some of the deets from book 8 and 9, but I really like Nesbo's style of NOT HAVING THE FIRST GUESS BE THE RIGHT ONE. Everything is a twist and deception, which makes the books hard to follow and a surprise to read. I'm going to read the remaining five because of this.
Phantom
Book Notes kitt decided around 22:58 on 11 November 2015 to publish this:
Second to last of the currently published Harry Hole books, which is to say, book nine, and I read this one quickly. Not really sure I intended to read this one as much as I did, I avoided some of the conference this weekend to read it, but read it and read it fast, I did.
The ending, holy crap. Totally had me emotional and upset. I was glad there was another Harry Hole book to immediately begin reading. If I had had to wait a year for it to be published, I'm not sure I would have read the next one (yes, I would have read the next one).
This one has Harry returning from Hong Kong, this time to defend Oleg, Rakel’s son. Again, in Nesbo's style of using pronouns and just enough description to paint a picture in your head, playing with your prejudices and expectations to have you paint the wrong picture, only to have a clearer picture painted later providing a different interpretation, this book has a number of twists and turns and unexpected huh? moments.
Last book, Harry almost died. In that one, it seemed to be a lucky but plausible escape from death. In this one, Harry, surprise, almost dies, but ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh, no, it's not really a plausible escape from death. Just a clever plot twist that, okay, works.
I still very much enjoyed the book. The ending had me overwhelmed. Worth reading.
The Leopard
Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 22:57 on 8 November 2015, kitt created this:
This book is number eight in the Harry Hole series. As such, I really need to put links to the whole list at some point. After reading The Bat, book one of the series, I sought this book out from (you guessed it) the stack of books from Mom. I will finish that stack of books. Really.
This book starts out confusingly, from the perspective of the first victim of HEY NO SURPRISE a serial killer. It takes awhile to understand the particular method of death, mostly when it happens again. I wasn't particularly able to "see" this book the way I could see the previous one, given this one is back in Norway, and not Sydney (of course). There are a number of life path changes that happened as a result of the previous book in the series, which I hadn't read, so yeah, I was confused a bit.
This one has Harry in Hong Kong, using opium instead of alcohol to numb himself. Why he's there is the subject of the previous book, which is also the first Hole book to be turned into a movie, so I might have to read it at some point. He is convinced to return to Norway, works on the case, has a number of strange romantic twists (complete with confusing real-world "Is she interested? I can't tell" moments), and several "we caught the bad guy NO WAIT WE DIDN'T" endings. You know the actual ending only because you read the last page.
Nesbo is vague enough with his descriptions and his use of pronouns that you're never really sure who is who in the books. This is one that I'm uncertain could be translated into a movie for that reason. The ending was a little surprising to me because of the use of pronouns, and that, like real life, the first guess is not always the correct answer, so I have to say, I'll be reading the remaining books in this series pronto.
This series is recommended.