Good Bones and Simple Murders

Good Bones and Simple Murders by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Liked it... cannot say why, just liked :)

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500 words

 Wordle...

I learned about this game from my son during my hospital stay - early 2023.

After a few random games and losses, I thought about the method.

I was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's story - The Gold Bug - in which treasure hunters have to decipher an encrypted document. They come up with the idea to base it on the statistics of the frequency of letters in English words.
I found information that the top letters used in the English language are E, T, A, I, N, O, S.

I decided to start with the word P-R-I-C-E.

The New York Times advised that a better word would be S-T-A-L-E, but the English word still smelled somehow stale to me, I preferred to know the price.

I will explain the rules of the game -

You have to guess a 5-letter word in 6 attempts.

After each attempt, NYT marks in black the letters that do not appear in the target word, in yellow the letters that appear but in a different position, and in green - the letters that appear in the given position.

In the given example, the situation was dramatic, two attempts and not a single letter.

After three words I could see that I was doing badly, it put me in a sour mood - I became jazzy - and that was the point.

Statisctics - 105 games, 80% wins, longest winning streak - 26.

3rd January 2024 - simple like one-two-three..

Another friendly case...
The first 3 words gave me only two vowels. Fortunately, not many consonants fit into them, so I managed to find a BUDDY.

Statistics informed me that it was my 500th game... 

So I've been playing every day since the beginning of February last year.

It's hard to treat it as a time-filler, an average game takes me about 3 minutes.

I imposed strict rules on myself - I don't try to find answers on the internet, I play without breaks until I succeed or loose.

The longest winning streak - 287 - that's over 9 months.

I achieved that at the end of May, 94% wins, 14 games short of 95% and then a streak of 4 losses came.

Supposedly I still have 94% wins, but that's a big rounding off, now I'm about 50 wins short of 95%.

And today - July 30... 500 won games :)

Super!!

Death on the Trans-Siberian Express

Death on the Trans-Siberian Express by C.J. Farrington
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was very charmed with first chapters of the book, could not believe it was written by a non Russian with rather short experience living in Russia.
Siberian winter, hopelessness of woman's life in a small village in the middle of the forest.
Hopeless men expecting full service at home and spending all free time drinking "rocket fuel" in a local bar.
Among this a young woman working hard as a railway engineer which mostly means walking long kilometres checking railway switches and signals.
Free time she spends caring for neighbours and old family members and only then finds some space for cherishing her dreams about study and becoming a writer.
Then - the title obliges - threats, murder, blackmail, corruption, CRIME.
Very quickly I got completely lost among many characters and subplots and did not bother to track the sense of the story.
Only the climate remained with me.

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Family Sport

Last Friday in Melbourne leading daily paper Herald Sun one could notice this...

===

Rugby on water - it looks like this..

In a small pool, two 5-person teams fight without hesitation for the ball. The goal is to throw it into a basket similar to a basketball. In my opinion, it is not rugby, but rather basketball in kayaks, although sometimes it is fierce - see HERE.

What possessed me to write about this?

This amazing duo - our daughter-in-law and granddaughter - visited us yesterday.

This young company is clearly ageing me, so I'll go back 22 years.

Year 2002 - Sarah - our daughter-in-law - qualified to the Australian team for the Canoe-Polo World Championships in Essen - Germany.

It was for this occasion that I bought this T-shirt - it survived these 22 years better than I did.

The Australians won the bronze medal - Germany won, Poland - 17th place.

That same year I also had the opportunity to try this sport.

The occasion was our daughter's wedding - the daughter-in-law organised a match - Milewski Family vs. The Rest of the World.

The family team consisted of the Bride and Groom, Daughter-in-Law and Son and... me.

As expected, after a few minutes I fell into the water.

Here I will explain that kayaks are equipped with a protective skirt, so after capsizing, water does not flow into the kayak and the competitor can easily do an underwater somersault - CLICK.

Well, maybe not so easily - I couldn't twist out, which complicated matters a bit because to get out of the kayak underwater you had to unfasten the protective skirt and crawl out of the kayak upside down.

Anyway, I survived, I was replaced by a reserve player and I could calmly watch the rest of the game. The Rest of the World (Monash University team) won 7:2.

2 years later our daughter-in-law gave birth to a child, then three more and I thought the whole thing would remain in the realm of memories.

But no, last year Sarah felt the call of youth and resumed training, her daughter Matylda joined her. This year both qualified for the Australian national team for the world championships - the mother in the senior team, the daughter in the junior team.

In October they will go to the championships in Dequing - China - CLICK.

P.S.
Update - World Championships are over - 10 days of hard time - 9 hours of competition for 8 days,
Australian Women Team (Sarah) ended in 14th position,
Australian Women U21 Team (Matilda) in 7th position.

Here is an update of a T-shirt...

So Late in the Day

So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men by Claire Keegan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Three stories, if I had read them separately then probably my reaction would be lukewarm but read together they amused me a bit :)
So Late in a Day - what looks like a nice relation turns to be difficult to the woman due to parsimony of her partner but she got her revenge - agrees to marry him, runs him into expenses and then, on a wedding day, resigns.
The Long and Painful Death - a female writes has a first day of her creative holidays spoiled by a grumpy man, her revenge - she was planning to write a story based on A. Chekhov story - Fiancee.
In the original story there is a mention that a male character died of consumption.
She will work hard to make if a long and painful death.
Antarctica - a total change of a front. A woman living with a husband and children in a stable relation, realises that the time is running out, there is last chance for an extramarital adventure. She finds an amazingly proper person - handsome, well built, clever, witty, generous. Excellent sex. And then... he shows his true face - a pathological pervert.
So final message is: ladies beware - if you find a perfect man - there is danger behind a corner.

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Frankenstein

Frankenstein: The 1818 Text by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had problem with rating this book.
On one hand - reading was terribly tiresome, almost painful.
On the other hand - full respect to the author for attacking a very serious and more and more current problem.
Why was reading so painful - my guess is that 80% of the text is completely irrelevant to the story. I simply was not able to concentrate for such long time and few times realised that I missed some significant element.
Another point is that the author leaves a lot of blank spots -
Example - process of creating the creature is barely mentioned and takes less than 1 page. The creator abhors his creature and falls in state of unconsciousness. His friend takes care of him but nobody is interested what he left in his working room/laboratory.
As the result I read it again, this time more carefully and making note of each sentence which moved the story forward.
There were less than 50 pages worth reading, but they were worth to be read few times.
How could you dare to create a living creature not caring about its wellbeing and happiness?

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The Omega Factor

The Omega Factor by Steve Berry
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I found this book so tiresome that decided that the effort of reading is not worthy of reading the full story.
On one hand I feel respect to the author for digging into all these details and I envy him visiting such exciting places with the knowledge of their historical background, on the other hand - it did not compensate effort of reading quite messy and artificial story :(

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