I did nothing today but read, eat and watch television. I'm watching "Where Eagles Dare" right now, which is one of my favorite war movies. How can you miss with gorgeous scenery, an Alistair McLean storyline and both Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood. This movie has the usual McLean twists and turns and is an absolutely wonderful movie. You never know who is who till the end.

I also read two mysteries, first "The Prioress' Tale" by Margaret Frazer. I picked up both this Frazer book and the one I read yesterday while I was in Seattle last fall and forgot I had them. This is another excellent story by Frazer showing a bit of the medieval life in a convent. It goes into the good and evil that existed (and still exists) in their view of God and the religious life. It's a sad commentary on the fact that often a convent was the only option to women who didn't want to become part of a business transaction in which they were only wanted for their money and/or by men they wanted nothing to do with. Sister Frevisse has a difficult time in this book but manages to solve a murder and save the convent from being used for ambitious people.

The second book was "Murder on Usher's Planet" by Atanielle Annyn Noel. This is a humorous play on Poe's "The House of Usher" and is set in on the planet of the Sharde as they are about to be welcomed into the Empire. Gwen and Garamond Gray, second cousins, gate crash a party put on by Sir Roderick Usher for various artists and actors, to look for a purloined document that could be used by the separatists. It's a fun book though a little over the top at times, even for a mystery/science fiction book.

Other than that I lounged and enjoyed myself. This is a good Memorial Day. To be able to sit in my home in peace and be a couch potato is one of things wars were fought for and I salute the people that gave me the right to sit here. I don't mean that satirically either. Speeches are made about how men fought and died for liberty and freedom and that's true. But what liberty and freedom mean is that I can sit in my home, where I have chosen to live, and read books that I want to read and no one has the right say I can't read what I want or live where I want and that is real freedom. I'm relaxed but not ready to go back to work tomorrow.

I was putting the books on my Books Read page and realized that I had read another science fiction book several weeks ago and it wasn't there. It must have been on a day I didn't do a journal entry and I forgot about it. It the "The Fifth Elephant" by Terry Pratchett. Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork police department is volunteered to attend the crowning of the dwarf king. To do this he has to deal with his own police force which includes dwarves, zombies, trolls, werewolves and etc. It's a wonderful satire on political correctness and true diversity, none of our pale, and often, made up diversity. The interactions between the different species are wonderful.