I've been trying not to buy so many books lately, and definitely not hardbacks. I bought a few paperbacks for vacation, but aside from those, I've been requesting the books I want to read from the library. For one thing, I don't have to be quite so selective--I can check out a book that I just might want to read, and if I don't like it, I don't feel like I have to finish it. Which, in this case, was a good thing.

I've been reading Ms. Hamilton's "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter" series since the beginning, and I've loved it. I loved the quirky alternate St. Louis she created, full of werewolves and zombies and vampires, and Anita, the PI/reanimator heroine.

I don't like to criticize writers because I know that it's a hard job, and it's easy to look at it from the outside, but I guess readers are also entitled to an opinion, and my opinion is that Ms. Hamilton's books are no longer fun. She also has another series just begun (A Kiss of Shadows was the first one), and when I read that one I couldn't help thinking that I was reading a soft-core porn novel, like Anne Rice's (writing as A. N. Roquelaure) Sleeping Beauty. Every incident was an excuse for the heroine to have sex with someone, anyone.

Narcissus in Chains is like that, too. Anita is presented with "tests" she must pass--all involving sex--and urges she simply can't control. I'm not a prude, and sex is part of life, but this book takes it to the extreme to the detriment of the plot. And I'm not really sure there is one. I'm about a third of the way through the book, and I think I'm going to give it up.

I hate that--I hate both to stop reading a book that I've started, and to give up on a series that I've loved. But after having skipped over a several page exhaustive description of Anita having sex in a shower with someone she just met, I think I've had enough. Interestingly, or perhaps predictably, most of the reader reviewers at the Amazon site felt the same way. In my opinion, there are two camps of horror fiction--one is the fun, sort of light, certainly occasionally gory but generally not full of itself kind, the kind the Anita Blake books used to be. The other is the "literary" camp embodied by Anne Rice, whose books I've never been able to get through. I want to be entertained, not feel like I'm doing research.

I bought a bunch of fruit over the weekend--green grapes, grapefruit, bananas, a canteloupe. I'm always nervous buying fruit; so many times it's bad, either not ripe, or too ripe, or tasteless or woody. Why is it that you almost never buy a bad vegetable?

It's almost impossible to get a bad carrot, say, or an unripe stalk of celery. Tomatoes, now . . . but tomatoes aren't vegetables, are they? They're fruit, too. I've bought dry, tasteless oranges and hard, woody peaches, and bananas that go from green to mushy overnight so many times that I'm very wary about fruit.

The last canteloupe that I bought was wonderful, just perfect. I haven't cut into the new one yet. I'm afraid to.

Bob and his family had been considering having Bob's dad moved to another hospital, but yesterday one of his brothers called someone he knows who works for a pacemaker company and asked, "If you had to have a cardiologist, who would you get?" He got a name, and they called the doctor's office and left a message that they would like to talk to him.

Shortly thereafter, Bob and his brother were out in the hall, and they saw a doctor walking down the hall toward them, and Bob reflexively looked at his nametag, and it was the doctor who had been recommended to them. So Bob stopped him, introduced himself, and asked if he would be willing to give them a second opinion on his father's case.

The doctor had time, and agreed, and spent a couple of hours going over Bob's dad's charts and records, and saw him, and when they asked him if he would take the case, he said he would. So they're staying at the same hospital, but they now have a new doctor. Who knows whether it will make a difference or not, but it does at least feel like we've made some progress, and made a decision rather than just letting events flow over us.

It feels like it's been months, but it's only been a week.