Good books

Have you ever read a book that you knew you should read, or that someone told you to read, but that you weren't really into?  I have.  It takes me a long time to read them.  I have to actually set aside time and break it into smaller pieces so it looks like a manageable task.

Sometimes those books get better as they go.  I finished the Skinjacker Trilogy by Neal Shusterman.  The first one was pretty fast, but the second and third really took a long time to get through.  I had to renew each one three times at the library in order to finish.  That's twelve weeks to read these Young Adult novels.  They ended up being good, but take a while to get into.

On the other hand, last week I picked up the new CJ Box novel, Force of Nature.  I absolutely love everything he writes.  His novels are brisk.  The action starts fast and there's tension on almost every page.  The characters are real and easy to connect to, and you get to know them by watching them talk and act in the book.  I finished it in six days.  Couldn't put it down.  Started acting like an idiot by failing to do much more important things with deadlines, but the book was just so good!

My next book is Sergeant Rex, about a military bomb-sniffing dog in Iraq.  I read the first two pages and my heart rate sped up.  Here's hoping it's one that makes me act like an idiot in planning my time.  I love those books.

Snow Canyon

Snow Canyon has red rocks on one side and white ones on the other.  Sometimes, it has both colors in the same rock.  It's really cool.

Now, I'm having a challenge with this post because the canyon is apparently inverted.  I took pictures with my new phone (Samsung Galaxy SII)'s camera.  It's 8 megapixels and gets much better shots than my old Blackberry.  And I haven't had this problem anywhere else, but these pictures all turned out upside down.  Even when I open them on the computer and rotate them 180 degrees and save them, they still show up with the top of the mountains pointing down.  And also my head points down.

There's really no other explanation for this.  Gravity inside Snow Canyon is reversed.  It's especially striking when you get to the natural amphitheater at the end of Whiterocks Trail.

And because gravity is all skeewampous, your legs are even more sore than normal the next day.  It can't be because you're out of shape.  It's got to be backwards gravity.