Criminals and Cows . . .

I just finished reading Dave Barry’s Tricky Business, the second novel from the award-winning newspaper humorist. It’s a good read, the 287 pages move along pretty swiftly as Barry pokes fun at overbearing moms, inane local newscrews and the various people haunting the gambling cruisers of south Miami.

Thumbs up.

I’ve also begun playing Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town for the Gameboy Advance. The game plays like a portable version of Animal Crossing, but with the economics of a farm that the entire Harvest Moon series of games provide. You just can’t go wrong with a game in which one of the feature bullet-points on the box is “Improved marriage system”.

The graphics are gorgeous, especially on the demure little portable screen, the music charming and the characters interesting in a chibi-anime superdeformed way. There’s no timelimit on your actions, so you can play at your own pace, which is a welcome change from previous versions of the game.

Four cows out of five.