Our Town

The Washington Post's "Where We Live" for today spotlights our very own University Park.

Christina made it to 33...

Christina has a new post about her birthday weekend in Philly. Hopefully we'll take the pictures in soon, and I'll post some. I'm very happy that I was able to help put together a fun weekend -- Christina was initially somewhat skeptical just how great the City of Brotherly Love would be.



Independence Hall is my 19th World Heritage site, so I updated the list. UNESCO just added 24 more sites, so I fall further behind. Well, on a percentage basis, last time this year, I had visited 12 out of 730 (1.6%), and now I'm up to 19 out of 754 (2.5%). We'll add 1 or 2 in October on our honeymoon...

American Gods

I finished reading American Gods over the weekend. I'd have to say it's been my most disappointing Hugo read so far. Not that it was bad. Overall, it was enjoyable. But it didn't entirely work for me. It's an interesting premise...various immigrants to America bring their gods with them, then forget about them. The old gods grow weak without worship and are finally drawn into a battle with the "new gods" -- of television, of cars, of media... It's an interesting premise, but it drags in places. Such an interesting premise deserves more development, even if it's at the expense of the "flavor" of the tale Gaiman is presenting. It's a very ambitious work that doesn't, in the end, live up to its ambition. In retrospect, I'm somewhat surprised that it won for Best Novel, but then again, I didn't read any of the other nominees.

I have a number of other books piling up to read, so I probably won't pick up any more Hugos until the 2003 awards are announced at the end of the month.