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The end of the Harry Potter series may have gotten much more attention, but this year I’ve also been looking forward the final book in Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series. The book is called Confessor. I enjoyed the book overall, but there were a few problems.

One thing I hated was when Character A was trying to explain a concept to Character B that Character B either didn’t understand or didn’t believe. Sometimes it took pages of dialogue for Character B to come around. Usually some kind of analogy had to be used before Character B finally comes around. It happened a lot in previous books but it severely irked me in this one. I’m sure a lot of that had to do with me wanting to find out how the story was going to end.

Another thing that annoyed me was that Goodkind kept repeating a lot of the same ideas over and over again. Richard changed everything…the Order doesn’t value life…the Order is brutal…blah blah blah. I’ve read this way too many times. Just get to the end. I got bored reading Confessor many times, but I just had to put my head down and keep going.

Goodkind also kept putting charactesr in situations that I knew had to be resolved before the book could end. Examples are someone getting captured or something being stolen. I got annoyed every time someone ended up in one of these situations, because I knew I would have to read through a lot of pages of stuff that I didn’t really care about.

After reading these books for the past 7 years or so, it was sad to see it end. At the same time, I’m glad to have a resolution. I was very happy with the way that it ended. Getting there was only a slight pain.

• Dreamcatchers, Stephen King
• Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
• Summer of the Monkeys, Wilson Rawls
• The Hedge Knight, George R.R. Martin
• The Sworn Sword, George R.R. Martin
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
• Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Long Walk, Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy, Thom Hartmann
• A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare
• Confessor, Terry Goodkind

I finished watching season 3 of Deadwood yesterday. Season 3 was the final season. It was such a great show. I like westerns and I like historically based movies and TV shows. I wish Deadwood was still on. They’re supposed to be making 2 TV movies to resolve all the storylines, but it looks like that may never happen. Oh well. I’m happy for what we got.

Thanksgiving Break was pretty good this year. It was great seeing my family again. I got to finish reading the new Terry Goodkind book and begin another Stephen King book. I always got to watch the end of season 3 of Deadwood. I also undertook a major cleaning project here in Starkville. It took a lot a work, but I’m glad that I did it. I’m hoping that it can remain this clean…for a while at least. I wish I didn’t have to go back to work tomorrow.

I’ve been slowly working on Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson for the past couple of months. I really wanted to like it because of all the good things I’ve heard about it, but for me it was only okay. I guess the amount of time I spent on it should be an indication of how much I liked it. It took about 100 or so pages for me to and eventually I got to the point where I just wanted it to end. Maybe my next book will be better. Hopefully, it’ll be coming in the mail tomorrow.

• Dreamcatchers, Stephen King
• Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
• Summer of the Monkeys, Wilson Rawls
• The Hedge Knight, George R.R. Martin
• The Sworn Sword, George R.R. Martin
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
• Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Long Walk, Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy, Thom Hartmann
• A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare
• Confessor, Terry Goodkind

Yeah, I voted today. Mississippi is having elections for all the major state offices. There were some local elections too. Going down the ballot, there were some names I recognized from the ads I’ve been seeing/hearing. For the most part I was lost. I haven’t been keeping up with politics as much as I used to. After I left the polling place, I was listening to something on WMSV where they were listing all the candidates for the state offices. I didn’t recognize most of the names that I heard even though I had just seen them on the ballot just a few minutes earlier.

I’m just glad that I don’t have to listen to the ads on the radio anymore. I could always skip the commercials on TV. In one radio commercial, some guy is blasting his opponent’s record on education. He says “His record on education smells worse than your old hog pen” and then you hear hog noises. I am not making that up.

I got my second replacement copy of Halo 3 from Microsoft yesterday. The disc is looks excellent! No scratches! This weekend I’ll finally be playing Halo 3!

What did we do before DVRs? I’m so glad that we have DVRs now. I had heard people say that it changes the way you watch TV, but it really does. Say I’m watching a show like Heroes or LOST and they give you a brief glimpse of something mysterious and important. I can rewind it and watch that part over and over again even if I’m watching it live. I can actually pause and go to bathroom or to get something to eat and not worry about missing anything.

I hardly ever watch anything live. I’m usually watch shows a day or two after they are recorded. It’s good being able to skip through commercials. Who wants to sit through commercials? Sometimes I’ll wait until a show has already been on for a while before I start watching just to I can skip the commercials.

I don’t have to try to in front of the TV at certain times anymore. If I want to record something. I no longer have to worry about making sure that the VCR, TV, and DirecTV receiver are on the proper channel. I don’t have to worry about setting the proper time and channel. It was a big pain and I have up on trying to do all that. It’s all so easy now. I can record new episodes of shows that I like to watch or record reruns of old shows (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Press Your Luck, Tales from the Crypt, 227) just for nostalgia. I think one of these days I’m going to tell it to record 6 hours straight off one of these cable channels I’m interested in trying out.

The biggest problem I have is that both DVRs are about full. I guess we need to start watching stuff or burning them to DVDs. I’m not ready to start deleting unwatched stuff just yet.