Cats, good books, AI, and religious walking in the city of Sofia
Dropping a recommendation for the visitors of Sofia – the Take a Cake bakery is my top choice of guilty pleasures. They have several shops around the city and no shortage of sweets.
I wish I could share a photo with the actual cupcakes I got for Saint Valentine but they didn’t last long enough. They are worthy and my blogging dedication could not overcome that.
Stephanie Plum is a young 30-ish old woman with no job and no future. She starts working as a headhunter and hunts for dangerous criminals who skipped bond, primarily relatives and beloved members of the community. She seems to be good at that. Dead bodies are flying everywhere for no clear reason.
There’s a saying that once a writer breaks through with a story, they’re expected to write the same story over and over until they die from old age. I sense a mild risk that Janet Evanovich does that. Book 2 is too close to Book 1 to deserve a separate review. It’s still enjoyable because Stephanie Plum is an enjoyable character and some of the supporting cast are also quite nice but it’s about hunting a guy named Kennie, and that summarizes it.
The names of each book in the series follow a naming convention of a number followed by some clickbait. Two Dough. Three Deadly. Four Whatever. Of course, Deadly is more interesting than Dough and without it, there would be no new post on the series. Ranked both with Five but objectively, Two is Four.
The villain in Three is Uncle Mo. Everyone loves Uncle Mo and will absolutely not assist the evil headhunter who tries to capture him. Uncle Mo is also the first male character that’s built with care. Why does everyone like Mo? Is he a fraud? I guess we’ll find out 🙂
In 1998, I had the privilege of studying under the old accounting professor Kosta Pergelov (may he rest in peace). He would love to sneak philosophy into his lectures. One of his proverbs stuck in my mind. He would stand in front of the full hall with about 100 students and slowly yell if you can imagine slow yelling:
Colleagues! The drop drills the stone not with force but with persistence.
I adopted that in my personal belief system. Perhaps it helped that Professor Pergelov would repeat the proverb every other lecture with his signature slow yelling.
Give the drops enough time and they’ll carve a path to the stars.
I’m not sure if I miss the snowy February from the past. Probably not.
5pm on a warm Sunday. I’m about to visit a book signing for a genre of books that almost ceased to exist in the late 90s. It’s in Lozenets, an expensive neighborhood located on a hill, in what looks like a residential building. There are no signs. I’m looking left and right. Am I at the right place? I see a door open and decide to get in. 10-15 meters after, there is another door that appears to be locked and a staircase leading downstairs to the right. I see bookshelves everywhere seemingly unattended. Perhaps I’m at the right place. Shall I keep going down to page 17? Or perhaps I should force the door (page 27)? In case I carry a little angry dog in my backpack, turn to 7.
This is the wiring style of gamebooks, and the new one is a 2nd edition of a rare book published in the 90s by Lubomir Nikolov, most copies of which have been lost or thrown away.
I kept walking down and found a large room, perhaps a bar, full of folks about my age. Why would anyone build such a large room 2-3 floors under a residential building?
I entered, got my book with an autograph, chatted with people, and it was fine.
The first game book published in Bulgaria was by the same author Lubomir Nikolov – Fire Desert. It started a genre and a community that inspired me to write and later to code. I’m not a very active member of this community but I buy the new books to support it and read some of them. If you want to try that but don’t speak Bulgarian, try Blood Sword.
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