Bearshorty's musings

( Winter Queen by Boris Akunin )

Why do students think I can help them at all with the final exam? It is a final exam – by definition I can’t critique your rough draft.

Grading papers – I do love it when a student tries hard all semester and clearly works at it and gets an “A” on the final paper. She will probably get a “B+” in the class but I’m proud of her that she got to that “A”.

( Bones S6E9 )

I also watched Barbara Walters special on Oprah since it was on and I’m in avoiding grading mode.

The book club selection for December is “The Winter Queen” by Boris Akunin. I read 50 pages already today. This book is certainly much better than I remembered. I read it a long time ago and while it was good enough that Papa gave an English version to Bear for a Christmas present, I remember I was not much impressed with it. I think this is because I really liked a later book in the series, which I read first. That book was in a slightly different style. This book is the first in the series so a lot of a set up of a character. I also didn’t like the ending of this too much originally. But as I’m older now so I think that actually makes a difference. And I’m really enjoying the humor in this book – a lot is in the language, so I’m not sure how that actually translates; but it is funny. My favorite humor bit so far is that Russian roulette being called American roulette by the characters with one character lamenting of why didn’t the Russians think of it first. The book is just more interesting on the second go even as I sort of remember who the main villain is. In Russian this book is called "Azazel" but I guess that is too sophisticated for American audiences.

Today was really cold and when I went for a walk in the evening I wore my fur winter coat for the first time. It is the warmest coat ever! And the fuzziest! In May/June, when my parents and I were in Minsk, Mama dragged me to the store and insisted that I buy a new fur coat. They are much cheaper there and my old winter coat was about ten years old and a bit shabby. I hate clothes shopping and spending money on clothes and shoes (give me books and travel any day) but my mother can be very insistent. So I bought one for myself. I found the one I liked. Mama did like a different one but it was my money so I insisted too. I am glad she made me buy it since it is so warm.

On my walk, I saw some Christmas lights already put up – very pretty. I need to try to take pictures of them to see how my new camera handles it. There was also a Christmas Nativity Play outside the local neighboring church. They used a real baby too and it was very cold. The baby was heavily swaddled.

( Dexter S5E11 )