Five Things I Read This Week
Image used under fair use. Source: Amazon
I'll be honest and say that I didn't have as much time to read recreationally this week as I would have wanted. I did manage to finish Sabriel, though, and I was pleased to discover that my rose-tinted spectacles hadn't completely slipped. Once the story really gets going, and we're in a position of already knowing a lot of the mechanics of the book, it's actually a really good read. I'm seriously looking forward to Lirael now, hopefully making for a more varied post next week!
The character of Sabriel really came through in a chapter set in a hotel room. She's convinced that her travelling companion has wasted no time in setting up with one of the maids at the inn, and tries to keep her wandering mind on the task at hand. The unspoken interaction between them does huge amounts to set up their growing relationship later on in the book, and it's really a clever piece of writing.
On to newer things, though! Sue forwarded an article to me that was very dear to my heart. I suffer from incredible travel-sickness, while travelling on trains, buses, as a passenger in cars, sometimes even while driving. There's no real 'cure' for it, as such, only ways to mitigate it. But this article, from IEEE Spectrum, suggests that a new wearable might be in production that will knock it on the head. Although it remains to be seen whether it's comparable to the acupressure bracelets I've used before, I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye on this one.
While researching things for Claws of the Chimera, I came across the headline "Germany had so much renewable energy on Sunday that it had to pay people to use electricity" and just had to read on. Albeit briefly, it seems that Germany's renewable energy sources generated enough clean electricity that they had a surplus, and customers were being paid to use it up.
Unfortunately, although it sounds like we already have the solution to energy problems of the future, what it actually means is a small step on the path to free, clean energy being readily available. Germany hopes to be there by 2050, and the UK has similar goals: 60% by 2030, with a possibility of 100% by 2050.
I can't look at articles like this without thinking of those images that suggest we could power the world with only a tiny amount of solar panels - too many pictures to add in this blog post, but here is another article that sums it up very well.
We own a campervan called Nina; she's a German volunteer fire-service vehicle that has been converted, and there's an entire website about her right here. We like to get away for weekends in her when we can, although it's really only this year that we've been able to start doing that. All of this is to say that this bit of humour from Daily Mash unfortunately hits a little close to home...!
Lastly... it was the Eurovision Song Contest last night. My Twitter feed exploded as everyone I know basically started commenting about everything in the best possible way, and it would be difficult to pick out any specifically brilliant tweets. But the UK's commentator, Graham Norton, gets quite a few pithy comments in, and Buzzfeed has handily done a list of the 21 best bits of commentary.
Have a good week!