Meredith > Recent Status Updates

Disc 13. Yet another instance of the sleeping editor and the author getting sidetracked. Not that the possibility of a secret society like the Knights Templar consisting of vampires isn't an interesting idea. But this story is 'the witch and the enchanted manuscript.' 'The witch, her vampire lover, and the secret vampire society' can wait until the sequel.

The reader finally meets "the master" from the book's title.

Disc 13. Yet another instance of the sleeping editor and the author getting sidetracked. Not that the possibility of a secret society like the Knights Templar consisting of vampires isn't an interesting idea. But this story is 'the witch and the enchanted manuscript.' The witch, her vampire lover, and the secret vampire society can wait until the sequel.

Disc 12.

With disc 11, the law of deminishing returns is beginning to kick in. The author just broke the first rule of creating a fantasy character, which is "Don't make your character be invincible." Diana isn't just a witch; she's apparently the most powerful witch who has ever existed.

Professor Woland (aka the devil) is doing his black magic performance at the Moscow theatre.

I'm on disc 9. Homecoming in France.

I'm on disc 8. The vampire has a private wine cellar at All Souls College at Oxford University. I want one, too.

"In close to a fifth of women, epidurals cause a big drop in blood pressure, which can cut off oxygen to your baby . . . for most everyone, having an epidural slows labor down." My doctor's office presents epidurals as totally safe and virtually risk free. WTH?

I'm on disc 7.

I'm on disc 6. This is basically Twilight for adults except Bella is a witch, Edward is a French vampire, and any werewolves making cameos are daemons. Still it is rather engrossing although a better editor could have tightened up the romance section of the plot, which drags at times. Yeah, you don't want to fall in love with someone outside your species, whatever. Get over it in less than 250 pages, will you.

I'm on disc 4. It's glaringly obvious in the way of Shakespearean romantic comedies that the antagonism between Diana and Matthew is going to result in their falling in love.

I'm on disc 3. If hordes of witches, vampires, and daemons want to get their hands on Ashmole 782, why don't they just go into the library and request it?

I'm on disc 2. It's intriguing so far. I would like to sit in the reading room of the Bodleian rare book library at Oxford University and have a vampire hit on me.

I decided to give this book a try despite its mixed reviews.

"The pharmaceutical industry has become the favorite whipping boy in discussions about the corrupting influence of money in medicine. They are a problem, certainly, but I want to be clear that they are far from the only problem. The larger truth is that creating new patients and making more diagnoses benefits an entire medical-industrial completex . . .." (p 156)

"There is a failure to distinguish between an epidemic of disease and an epidemic of diagnosis. There is the assumption that patients who do well, do well because of treatment, not because they were going to do well anyway. And there is the use of personal anecdote as a substitute for good hard facts." page 140

"How genetic testing will give you almost everything"

I'm on disc 12. The author is hunting for wild boar.

I'm on disc 10.

"Pregnancy is not a disease, but increasingly doctors are treating it like one." (p. 107)

"Ideally, a normal mammogram would be definitive. However, mammograms miss about one-quarter of cancers destined to appear during the following year . . . So a normal mammogram doesn't mean you won't get cancer in the next year, though it does mean you could reasonably expect that the risk is reduced by about three-quarters for that year, that is, until you get your next mammogram."

I'm on disc 9.

I'm on disc 8.

The debate over breast cancer screenings.

'It used to be assumed that all cancers relentlessly progressed. If they weren't treated, they would invariably grow, metastasize, and ultimately lead to death. But we are learning that this assumption is wrong.(p.53)' One more thing the medical industry never mentions.