Month: July 2009

Categories
25 books reading reviews

25 Books, book 6, The Great Gatsby

I’ve owed you this review for a while. I finished this about… (checks) …over a month ago.

Before I get into the review proper, a few sentences about book choice. Part of the reason for “25 books” was to encourage me not only to read more but to read more widely. However what this initially seemed to mean was ploughing through long books I didn’t particularly enjoy. So I decided to add in a few books that were a) shorter (so I could catch up) and b) classics – which would hopefully mean they were enjoyable. The Great Gatsby was the first of these, look for Catcher in the Rye sometime before the end of the year (if I ever get that far).

Well this sort of worked. Certainly it’s a short book. Did I enjoy it? It was ok. Someone on Goodreads called it “The eh Gatsby” and I know what they mean. As a story it was ok. Some of the prose stood out as well put together. I think I can see why it’s hailed as the great American novel because I can see parallels between Gatsby as a character and the US as a country. However my literary appreciation skills are limited and so a book really has to get me with story and or characters. This didn’t, well not much. There’s a fairly interesting soap opera plot about affairs of rich people and the poor people who get caught up in the cross-fire. There’s some intrigue about who Gatsby is as a person and the truth when it comes turns out to be less than inspiring – which I think is the point. He also turns out to be less than sympathetic – well to me, to the narrator he apparently was. So I found that a little odd.

Put it this way, I’m glad I’ve read it because it’s a classic but I don’t think I’d go back to it in a hurry.

6/10 – a little so what? but at least it’s short.

Categories
lesamy

Lesamy Weeks 43 & 44 – Forest Gump Style

Lesamy Week 43

Weekly loss: -2kg (-4.4lb)
Total loss: 37.3kg (82.2lb or 5st 12lb)
To target: 30.6kg (67.5lb or 4st 11lb)
Current weight: 106.8kg (235lb or 16st 11lb)

Lesamy Week 44

Weekly loss: -1.7kg (-3.7lb)
Total loss: 35.6kg (78.5lb or 5st 8lb)
To target: 32.3kg (71.2lb or 5st 1lb)
Current weight: 108.5kg (239lb or 17st 1lb)

So clearly two not very good weeks.

And, in the words of the man in the title, that’s all I have to say about that.


Categories
reviews

Battlestar Galactica

I’ve just watched the finale of Battlestar Galactica, and whilst I’m probably not up to a proper review I did want to say something about it.

Earlier in the year I bought a box set with the mini-series and seasons 1-3 in and worked my way through it in a matter of weeks. I then started on season 4 – courtesy of my internet friends – but had had the final 3 or 4 episodes sitting on my harddrive for the last few months. I think part of me didn’t want to watch the end, and part of me had run out of patience with the increasingly convoluted plot and depressing storylines of season 4.

Anyway yesterday I finished all but the finale and today I watched that.

What a let-down. Not because I expected cast-iron consistency or wanted all those outstanding questions answered (“because of God’s plan” seemed to be the one-size-fits-all one anyway) but because I wanted something a bit more uplifting. Everyone seems to end up either dead or alone, or at the very least facing a life of hard work as a subsistence farmer with only their SO as company.

I’ll admit it’s been a tough weekend personally so I may be projecting my need for a happy ending but I found that, at best, a little flat.

One of my favourite Joss Whedon quotes comes from a commentary track where he’s discussing the liberties they took with consistency and reality etc and he says

“Some shows, X-Files for example, very much into the realism, the science behind whatever the horror is, explaining it, really justifying it in the world. We are so much more about the emotion resulting from
this. Not why there might actually be vampires, but how you might actually feel in high school if you had to fight them.”

BSG at its best let you experience what it would feel like to be a small band of refugees on the run from an enemy trying to wipe you out. All the technical stuff it always felt like it was grounded in how people relate to modern-day technology. So it felt real.

This ending didn’t feel real. Because I think that whilst there would be some spreading out if 38,000 people had a whole planet to share, I think there would be large groups wanting to stay close.

And despite the beauty of the African plains or whereever they were supposed to be, I reckon they’d never be so foolish as to throw away all their existing technology. “Never underestimate the desire for a clean slate,” says Adama. “Never underestimate a writer’s willingness to override the logical for the poetic, ” say I.

Still the series as a whole was excellent.

Categories
lesamy

Lesamy Week 42 – A Pause

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Even before the recent “plateau-ing” of my weight-loss (which is really an indication of my ambivalence about going further). As the reality of “loose skin” becomes more and more apparent – i.e. visible – I get more and more nervous about ending up with lots of it. The answer I think is to slow down, to give my body time to adjust to being 85lbs lighter than it was. Give the skin time to firm up and shrink back.

So I’ve being toying with the idea of a “pause” – stopping losing weight but maintaining what I’ve got for a while, probably several months. I was going to post a long discussion of the pros and cons but then I weighed myself and discovered that I’ve put weight on again, due probably to a fairly calorie-full weekend, itself due to mixed feelings over the whole loose skin issue.

So I’ve decided to do it. Or to plan to do it. And here’s the plan.

It’s week 42 and I weigh 16st 7lb. In 10 weeks it’ll be 1 year since I started and I should be under 16st by then. That seems to me a good point to start maintaining at. From then on I’ll aim to keep my weight under 16st but not really reduce it. How long? Well at least until Christmas and after that maybe a bit longer too.

In case anyone thinks this is the easy way out “pausing” is not giving up. Not when the whole point is to try to firm up what’s there. I’ll need to keep the exercise going – especially the sit-ups and so on – and I’ll need to still be watching what I eat. I’ll be allowed a little more but I won’t just be able to not care at all what and how much I eat. And I’ll need to do all that without the satisfaction of seeing those numbers steadily fall. I’ll also have to cope with people thinking I’ve quit when they won’t know the real reason.

But I think I can do that. I want to do that. As this weekend has reminded me I actually don’t really enjoy eating loads and loads any more, I get full and feel uncomfortable. And I’d much rather be a fit, but “fat” guy than a “slim” one covering up folds and folds of loose skin.

Weekly loss: -0.5kg (-1.1lb)
Total loss: 39.3kg (86.6lb or 6st 2lb)
To target: 28.6kg (63lb or 4st 7lb)
Current weight: 104.8kg (231lb or 16st 7lb)