I spent 3 exciting hours in the waiting room of a Nissan service center today. I had my truck in for its 60,000 mile sevice (a major service - and yes, my Xterra is only 2.5 years old).
I was the first one to the service center, which includes my beating out everyone who works there. I got my choice of seats. The seats in the waiting room are placed in an L-shape, with a table at the junction of the l and _ portions. One of the seats next to that table is one I picked (there is another table, at the end of one of the arms, just for reference).
Each woman that came in sat as close to me as possible. One lady came in and sat on my right side (the table was on my left). The next woman sat on the left (so our knees were touching. The 3rd woman came in and sat down next to the one I was touching knees with. There were 4-5 other seats available, but they had to cozy up to me.
To make matters worse, the woman on my left was a gum snapper (and she couldn't chew with her mouth closed to save her life). She was also playing some sort of game so there were buzzes and beeps coming from the game and grunts and groans accentuating her every move. Apparently she won a game because then there was a shrill musical interlude that she refused to shut off the sound to.
The lady that sat next to the knee toucher, asked if anyone minded if she turned on the TV. Nope, fine, go ahead. She turned it on loud enough that they could hear it in the sales room (I know, the ladies room is out there) then proceded to pick out some magazines and read. Fortunately, the woman to my right was quiet and fairly non-intrusive.
Those were short-lived interuptions to my reading because they were only in for short services. The rest of the patrons that rotated in and out were men who kept a respectful 1 chair between each person (the waiting room was never so full as to need to sit side by side with anyone). They were also quiet - except the one guy who was a newspaper snapper; each page turned required a snapping of the paper - all in all, much easier on my concentration while I was getting thru the riveting ending to my book!
Which leads me to reccommending a series for anyone who is into fantasy: Steven Erikson's The Malazan Book of the Fallen series. The first Book, Gardens of the Moon, was good enough for me to buy the second book, but it wasn't anything really special (IMO). But, Deadhouse Gates (book 2 - link gives sample pages of the book) and Memories of Ice (book 3, which I completed today) were incredible. This guy can write and can get you to join the family of characters. But, be warned, these are not stories that end "and they lived happily ever after" - many powerful and favorite characters are killed off. There are also a few (very few, after all, this is a very dark series of never-ending war and rebellion) laugh-out-loud moments.
I see by the website that I am woefully behind on the series, but I have book 4, House of Chains, so I will be starting on that this weekend.
I'm always looking for new fantasy books, but I refuse to get sucked into another 20-book series. Are these stand-alone books, or do you need to read each one in order in order to get the storyline?
Posted by: TJ | November 24, 2006 at 07:42 PM
Reading the first one would be nice, just to get the background. The second and third one follow different people, on different continents, so they can stand alone (and no, you really don't have/<> to read the first one.
However, there are a few places that people mentioned are now on another continent, so you might be wondering who "Fiddler" is and what he has to do anything if you decide to go straight to the 3rd book (he is in books 1 and 2). However, those parts don't really have anything to do with the plot-line, so are unimportant on the whole.
The funny part, is if you start with Book 3, the Epilogue is a great intro to Book 2, so you can actually switch the order and not lose a thing.
Posted by: bogie | November 25, 2006 at 06:37 AM
Thanks. I'll have to check it out then.
Posted by: TJ | November 26, 2006 at 12:47 AM