The End of Everything - Megan Abbott
I don’t think I will make many people will be happy with my feelings about this book. There are pages and pages of raving reviews included with the book, but I must have missed something because I couldn’t wait for it to get to the end. The structure of the story reminded me of Nabokov’s Lolita, told from an outside observer’s point of view - like a neighbor left behind.
The story is written in the present tense by thirteen-year-old Lizzie Hood. Lizzie’s neighbor and best friend, Evie, vanishes, and the story centers on figuring out what has happened to her. Is she dead? Has she been raped, murdered, and dumped in the lake? Lizzie thinks she should know more intuitively. After all, she and Evie did everything together. They lived like sisters. There are numerous sexual innuendos in the story: Evie’s father flirts with Lizzie and Evie’s sister, Dusty. Lizzie’s mother is having sex with a local doctor. And then there is the mysterious man who may have spirited Evie away, fragmenting his own family in the process.
Telling tales in the present tense is difficult because, frankly, the reader is not there where Lizzie is telling the story. Abbott is certainly a skilled writer. A reviewer from the Los Angeles Times called the book a “psychological thriller and a freshly imagined coming-of-age story”. I’m good with the psychological and the coming-of-age, but I don’t see the ‘thriller’ component. Maybe because I really didn’t care what happened to the characters.
End of Everything - Megan Abbott
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Recovery Ventilators
Tight houses need mechanical ventilation. It's not a question. It's a fact. Houses used to rely on drafts and convective flows to circulate air. Making a house tight is great for a lot of issues including comfort, energy efficiency, and operating cost. BUT a tight house is not drafty by design. A mechanical system is required to circulate new air throughout the house and expel old air.
The second law of thermodynamics states that heat moves from places that are warmer to places that are cooler. And moisture moves from places that are wetter to places that are dryer. Heat and energy recovery ventilators (HRV/ERVs) guide the old air to an exchanger box. The heat from the warmer air stream is transferred through the exchanger to the cooler air stream without mixing! Moisture from the wetter air stream moves to the drier air stream - again without mixing.
The key to the effectiveness of this system is the distribution: the solution to pollution is distribution dilution. The most effective way to accomplish this is to duct the new air to all the rooms in the house. If the new air is simply added to the conditioned air ducting, there is no way of knowing how much new air is being delivered to each room. It may be only slightly better than natural convective ventilation.
There is a lot more to this, and I am concerned that many of these systems are being installed without adequate thought and care. For more information on HRV/ERV ventilation take a look at the Building America Solutions Center website.
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