i did.. i read all three of 'em in 10 days

the last one was the best.

Oh, i just finished this one, at the suggestion of my younger sister:



It was decent. Something befalls the Santa Claus character on what is essentially Xmas eve, and Death somehow winds up having to fill in for him. It wasn't fancyreading, but it was of an amusing/distracting flavour.

I liked that one. But I'm fond of Pratchett in general. My favorites are those involving the Ankh-Morpork city watch- the Discworld stuff has a few main groups of characters it follows and several one-offs. Those kinda have the detective fiction angle going as well at times, and I'd say Vimes probably has the most depth of any of the characters. Night Watch is probably the closest thing to dark of the whole series. But I digress.

Also, Good Omens, which is a collaboration with Neil Gaiman, is hilarious. And excellent.

Currently, this, fakehistory shizzle:

As a general indicator of where my brain sits, it mostly made me want to read more nonfiction stuff about ancient god traditions.

I do like the kind of fiction that lives where this one does though. It is aslo the first/only Pratchett book i have met so far.

It's not a bad one to start with. They are very readable out of order, seeing there's multiple disparate storylines, and you really don't have to know what happened in the last one with any of the characters to pick up rather quickly what's going on. The Watch, industrial revolution and Death ones I prefer to the Witches and Wizards, but that's just me. I think because of how they juxtapose the fantasy setting with distinctly non-high fantasy elements, even beyond the comedy/parody aspect. They account for a large portion of the more recent ones, and it's not a series that starts to get crappy the farther in you get, either. If anything, I'd say those are some of the better ones.

Nice. Sci fi noir.

A fine collection of historical accounts, sea stories, hoaxes, and good proper science from a respected writer on marine biology. His book on the giant squid is excellent, as well.

I wish I had a scanner as the patent drawings of the man-powered octopus are awesome and I've had no luck finding them on the intarwebs.

Just finished





and finishing

Finished it, hmm, I think I actually enjoyed the movie more. For once.

Book is much better than movie, but the movies follows as much as 2 hours would allow. I read the 2 sequels also. First one is the best of the 3.

just polished this off on vacation. ouch.

working on this now:



way more my speed.

I'll read them all eventually. I saw the movie before reading the book, so the book kinda just supplements details for the movie. I liked The Golden Compass (and its sequels) better.


Currently:



I believe the Paulo Coelho books can be found in English FWIW...

Started these while in the woods:

Awesome dictionary(my mom is flying in at the end of the month to see tallships so i figured i should brush up on me piratespeak):

Pretty pictures:

Proper nerdknowledge for the endtimes:

oh crap!

i recently took a trip down to the western shore of maryland-- and we stayed in a house with a really cool book which's name excapes me... but it was about the nautical basis of a lot of common phrases were.. shit.. i'll see if i can find it. it was a really cool read!

Started this one today and it is awesome:



Originally published in 1895. Is basically a compilation of how to do things like make ink or paint, or dynamite, or how to remove rust or mix up some snakeoil type remedies for most anything from toothaches to cancer(also, "A Sure Cure For Smallpox", "How To Remove A Tapeworm", and "Dropsy, A Cure For", amongst far more others than i can list).

So far almost every remedy involves at least some amount of opium, and most of the inks and other things i have read so far require either Prussian Blue and/or nitroglycerin.

Possibly the finest book ever published, actually.

And i still have like three hundred pages to go.

That is a proper Maplifiers endorsed book, right there.

This Excellent Piece Of Classic Literature has a quality recommendation on that:


Which, if I'm remembering correctly, involves eating 1- 1 1/2 cigarettes or drinking 1-2 oz. of kerosene. Feats that I'm sure will make you a hit at any bar. Shots? Okay, I'll take kerosene, please. And follow that up by eating a couple smokes.

The section on improvised hunting is also classic.

Finally finished the epilogue to the last Stieg Larsson book. Good ending. I hope they American remake the whole trilogy as films.