The Secret of the Villa Mimosa by Elizabeth Adler

I was at the library, and it was going to close in 5 minutes. I didn't have much time to pick out a book. I was in the mood for a Matlock like mystery. I ran looking for the mystery section, like what the other library had, but I didn't see a section marked mystery. I just grabbed this book off the shelf without thinking. I was in a rush.

I did a good job appeasing my Matlock mystery mood because this book was a bit like Matlock. Okay, Matlock is not the best show, and I am embarrassed to admit to liking it. What I like about Matlock however, is the humanity in it. The main characters have a personality, and when a murder takes place you get to know a lot about the victim and all the people he knew from their life. I get glimpses of people's lives and humanity. The modern shows on TV have no humanity or personality.

On the show CSI, they call the person murdered "vic." You don't even get to find out victim's name. They are "vic."You find out nothing about the person, and his life, or the people in his life. The main characters have the personality of a robot. You could replace the cast of some shows with data from Star Trek and no one would notice. I like Matlock because I miss humanity. So sue me.

What is bad about Matlock is that it can be predictable, rehearsed, and the plot is always contrived for everything to work out. The person Matlock defends is always innocent, and they always prove him so, just in the nick of time, by some silly unlikely clue.

This book was just like Matlock. It had a lot of humanity in it, and I was really into the main characters. I was really disappointed with the book, though. It was extremely predictable. I knew what was going to happen early on. It was also really unrealistic to the point of being annoying. It had too many contrived plot points. It worked out like a silly fairy tale. I am not five years old. It insulted my intelligence. The book had too many coincidences, that was off the wall ridiculous.

This book is written by a very cultured person. She has lived in England, Ireland, France, Brazil, etc. The main characters in the book were rich and beautiful, and ate fancy food at fancy places. Because the book was so insulting to my intelligence, it somehow felt cheap. But, there was so much culture in the book. In the end, reading this book feels like going to a very fancy restaurant and eating a hot dog.

Despite a part of me believing this book was not worth my time, I did enjoy the characters in this book and their personal stories. It satisfied my urge for he human filled mystery that I was searching for. It was just like Matlock.

If there was a moral to garner from reading this book, it was this: Don't fall for someone because they are hot, or good looking, or rich. They could be a sick evil bastard. Don't be taken in by their charm. Be on the lookout.

The Phantom of The Opera by Gaston Leroux

I watched two versions of the movie Phantom of The Opera. The endings of the two versions were so different, I was wondering which one was based on the book.

One version of the movie was from the 50s or around then, and the ending was actually supposed to be funny and people were laughing. That is so not the Phantom of the Opera. The ending of the book is really sad.

I read the book and it turns out the book and the modern movie made by Joel Schumacher and Andrew Lloyd Webber was extremely similar. It's amazing that they can fit a whole book, and all it's details in an 141 minute film. That's some sort of an amazing feat.

In some ways, I think that the minor changes the movie made that deviated from the book were good. Sometimes the book was over the top, and unbelievable. The movie took it down a notch, and actually improved upon the plot. Even so, the movie and the book are almost exactly alike.

Two things I didn't like about the book was that the author didn't "show scenes." If that makes any sense. If something happened in the book, Gaston would often explain it through dialogue between two characters. He would use a character to retell the story. It sounded lazy to me. It's easier to just use dialogue to explain drama than to actually take the time to use imagery to actually explain what happened.

What made that method worse is that the dialogue in this book is not too good. It sounded fake, like bad actors talking back and forth at times. The book having so much dialogue to explain the plot did not help it. The author did a bad job putting mental pictures in my mind. I had to rely on the movie sometimes to know what people and places looked like. Not that the author didn't describe things sometimes. But, it just wasn't enough for me.

Overall, the story of the Phantom of the Opera is very sad, and weird. You end up feeling sad for the evil villan. The book wasn't bad at all despite my critisisms. I liked an other book that Gaston Leroux wrote too. The Yellow Room. I read that book awhile ago, so I don't remember it much, other than that I really liked it.

Thinking in pictures by Temple Grandin

I met an autistic person a few weeks ago, and it occurred to me that I don't know too much about the disorder, other than what I learned from an episode of Law and Order.

I was curious about it, so when I saw a magazine article in Mental Floss about this book, I decided to find the book and read it. This book was written by an autistic person, who explained what it's like to be autistic.

I am getting old...26. Okay. Not so old, but I don't hear much that is new to me. I feel like I have heard it all sometimes. When I get into a conversation, I can sometimes swear I have had that same conversation 12 times before with 12 other people. Sometimes I feel like yawning and rolling my eyes at some conversations I hear.

That's why I appreciate this book. I really enjoyed learning a lot of new things that I never thought of before. Some things were truly new to me. Not just about autism, but just a lot of other things too. I learned about different ways of thinking and viewing the world. I really liked this book, and I recommend reading it.