Reviews

Game of Thrones is the epic miniseries adaptation of the George RR Martin Song of Ice and Fire novels.  It is indeed epic and it's even better than the books because it condenses all that is good in the books, and I've read the first two, and adds great performances, stunning sets, and since it's on HBO, boobs.  It more than met my expectations and it left me wanting more.  Thank goodness I bought it on an instant view channel on my Roku so I can watch it over and over again at my leisure. 

I highly recommend this one even if you're not into the fantasy genre. 

The only thing that handicaps this immensely enjoyable and highly readable book is the fact that there is so little that is known about the blue whale, the largest animal on earth. Mr. Bortolotti laments that fact early on and I lamented it as well as I tore through his book.  It's full of the history of how the blue whale was hunted to near extinction, the efforts to stop that hunting, and the state of how the blue whale is bouncing back, albeit very slowly.  I wanted more scientific and natural history info about the whales, their habitat, their mating habits, etc, but it's just not out there.  Hopefully if we let this huge animal make a complete comeback, at one time they estimate that over 300,000 blues were killed in the years leading up to WW2, we can study it more and learn all the things we don't know about now.

I remember life before ESPN.  Sports reporting was spotty and often given short shrift on local and national news shows.  That all changed when the first 24 hour channel devoted to nothing but sports hit the cable scene back in the late 1970's.  I remember the first time I saw ESPN was when I went to college.  I remember being transfixed as they showed sports like Australian rules football, minor league baseball, and other oddities.  I lapped up Sportscenter and wished that I could have been a part of the whole scene.  So when I saw that there was a oral history of the network I was excited and intrigued.  But when I finally got my hands on the book I was highly disappointed.  They focus too much on the business side of the network and not enough on the sports reporting and the on air personalities who made the channel a hit.  I read about a third of this one before I gave up in disgust.  Someday, maybe someone will do a better job of telling the story of ESPN.