I've got a lot of what it takes to get along!

Look at this picture that just popped up on my dashboard.

Finally, all my hard work has payed off. Once these books sell out I'll be practically retired.

Now there's an oxymoron.

High-quality...wiki articles.

Angelique Kent, I am so disappointed in you.

Currently Reading Unseen Academicals.

I'm about 100-150 pages into it. Just wanted to say something about it so far.


Is it me, or is Glenda a little like Granny Weatherwax, only Pratchett is going in a different direction with her.

In the early witch novels, particularly Lords and Ladies, Granny knew everything. She wasn't the least bit "nice" about it, particularly to "wet hen" Magrat. Granny even conspired to get Magrat married to the King of Lancre. And in the end, she was able to get Magrat to do what she needed to do.

In Unseen Academicals, Glenda's friend Juliet isn't naive. She's just kind of an innocent child. Not really bright at all. Glenda is really protective of her, especially from her grabby friend Trev. Glenda keeps telling Juliet to keep her mind on their job, which is kitchen work. Glenda is utterly convinced that she's right up to a night where she gets a little tipsy and watches Juliet successfully model clothes. Suddenly she's wondering if she's just been holding Juliet back.

I guess I'll figure out where this is going as I read this book but I thought it made an interesting contrast.

Six of Three

No, I'm not talking about a Borg. The other day I saw a book in the library called "And Another Thing..." It's the sixth Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Book, only written by another author.


Since I read the other five books (and the two Dirk Gently novels) because Lita recommended them, let's see if I can recap them. This will be off the top of my head.




The first book is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Let me just say that I know that the radio programs were first but we're not going to consider them canon. Ok, nerds? Basically Arthur Dent is a normal guy who ends up being one of two survivors of the destruction of earth. A friend who is actually an alien rescues him and they end up on a stolen space ship that travels the galaxy. They join the president of the galaxy, a depressed robot, and the other surviving human and the book eventually becomes about the disappointing answer to the big questions about life. Throughout the book we get readings from a pda like device that tells us necessary and amusing exposition. There's no subplot about a feelings gun or a sore loser for the presidency. Which is for the best.

Author Douglas Adams must have had big problems with bureaucrats at the time because they are the villain that moves the plot along. The novel starts with Arthur's house getting bulldozed for unfair reasons, and then quickly parallels it with an alien race that bulldozes earth for very similar reasons. The Vogons disappear from the novel after Arthur and Ford escape them but they their decision to bulldoze the earth plays a big part in the end of the novel and the rest of the series.

This novel is very funny and you can see why it became a cult novel among nerds. (Again, forget the radio series.) All of the best bits of the 2005 movie were from the novel. (I actually liked the movie but where it goes wrong is when it tries to invent new stuff.) It's been a while since I read it so I'm not sure I can remember much beyond the best gags.


The second novel is Restaurant at the End of the Galaxy. Still pretty good, but not as good as the first one. The novel is picks up after the end of the first one and has the group going to a restaurant where the universe repeatedly ends. After some stuff happens the crew is split up and we get two plots for the rest of the novel. The first one involves the president of the galaxy and his human girlfriend trying to find the guy in charge of everything. Like the Ultimate Answer, it's a tad disappoining. Arthur and his alien friend Ford end crashing on a mysterious planet.

I remember liking this novel but it's a bit disjointed if I remember correctly. Not that there's anything wrong with an A-story and B-story, but it's now about two things instead of one. I can't even remember who the antagonists in the B-story were, and I may even be remembering stuff from the third novel and mixing it with this one. It still has some great stuff like the religion waiting for their messiah to the very last moment and the machine that humbles people.


The third novel, Life, The Universe, and Everything, is my favorite. It started strong with an irrelavent chapter about an immortal alien that wanted to insult the universe. Afterwards, it picked up where the second novel ends with Arthur and Ford escaping the backwards planet so they can hitchhike again. Then the novel becomes very disjointed with seemingly random chapters about pass characters. At one point we get a great chapter about Arthur escaping a vengeful creature and learning how to fly. In the end, the seemingly random chapters actually fit, which was real surprising.


The fourth novel of the trilogy is So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. Arthur is solo this time and he finds the earth mysteriously reconstructed. Most of the novel is spent on earth as he tries to figure out what's going on and he begins a romance with a woman hinted at in the first novel. I liked this novel even if it wasn't as strong as the others. One moment happens in the novel where Arthur and Fenchurch are flying around and Douglas Adams bluntly asks a question that was just floating in my mind. The novel ends with them hitching a ride and seeing Marvin the Paranoid Android for the last time in the novels. He's a great character so it was nice meeting him one last time.


The fifth novel is Mostly Harmless, and I just didn't like it. It dumps Fenchurch unceremoniously and gets off to a bad start. It brings back Ford and Trillian but it really shouldn't have. Douglas even tries to create another android but it's no Marvin. The novel isn't without it's moments, but it builds up to an ending that just doesn't work the way the third novel did. In fact, it tries to go out with a literal bang, but it just depressed me. Frankly, I'm willing to give the new novel a shot even if it wasn't written by Douglas.


So that's my brief take on the series. Third and the first are the best, second and fourth are worth reading, and meh on the fifth. Let's hope the new author doesn't screw up his chance to write a better ending to the series.

The Twenty-Fourth Day of Christmas...

I was looking forward to this day. When I started this thing I thought that if I ever got into trouble, I could list gifts that I've gotten most recently. Of course, it was best to save those towards the end of the month. Now here we are! Today's gift is a book that Lita sent me in 2002 after I got her a tshirt that 8-Bit Theater once sold. She sent me this book and its sequel because she recommended the series to me but I was having problems finding the first entry.

The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic are the first two entries in the Discworld series. This is a creation by author Terry Pratchett and he's written over thirty books. The Discworld is a flat world that lays on top of four elephants who all stand on top of a giant turtle that drifts through space. The first couple books were more spoofs of the fantasy genre that (I think) had become really popular in the eighties. Over several novels the Discworld changed into more of a satire of more modern setting, although still in a vaguely medieval setting.

The first two books are about a wizzard named Rincewind. The spelling of wizzard is intentional because he's lousy at everything except languages and running away. In the first book he's hired by the leader of the largest country on the Discworld to lead a tourist around. The tourist, Twoflower, is so rich that immediately a new industry is born and we follow the two through four seperate adventures. Twoflower also has a magic Luggage box which acts as a deus ex machina whenever needed.

I'd go into detail but I should really save that for another day. I intended to do the Discworld series for my Tork's Book Club feature which I rarely do. Hopefully one day I will.

Anyway, this is a great series and it's interesting to see the early books before fourth novel, where the series really took off. Also, I just read that there will be a mini-series next year that will combine the first two books. Neat! Can't wait until it reaches here on DVD.

Tork Book Club: Diamonds Are Forever

Hit it, Shirley Bassey!

I'm not a big fan of Diamonds Are Forever, the movie. Connery spent most of his screen time looking bored, and Tiffany Case wasn't the most likable Bond girl in the series. Blofeld goes out on a low note. At least Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd were fun to watch. So let's see how the fourth James novel is like. Here's my jumbled thoughts. Warning - thoughts more jumbled then usual.

Heh, almost forgot to mention the SPOILER ALERT!!!

The novel is about James Bond and his attempt to shut down a diamond smuggling gang. There's a pipeline from Africa to New York to Las Vegas and Bond beats up some people on the way. Blofeld doesn't make any appearances.

The book is more episodic then previous Bond novels. In the first and third novel, he basically goes somewhere to investigate or confront the villian. In Live and Let Die, Bond is on the run from Mr. Big, but this is the primary focus of the rest of that novel. Diamonds Are Forever is much more disjointed. For example, after Bond goes undercover, the gang tells him to go to the races to collect his money for smuggling diamonds. There's a couple chapters where Bond learns about horse racing at Saratoga and the latter chapter is about how Bond fixes the race to screw with his bosses. This is interesting but it has little to do with the rest of the book except to explain how crooked the gangsters are. Later Bond goes to Las Vegas. One of the gangsters are there, but the whole poin of the trip seems to be a chance to take a few shots at Las Vegas.

I have to say that this novel is disappoining. The villians, two brothers who run the "Spangled Mob", don't appear too often. I'm having trouble remembering much about them except that one was a hunchback and the other was really into westerns. Also, to stop the diamond smuggling, Bond basically has to travel from poin A to poin B and shoot the bad guys on the way. There's some obligatory pathos (some ally gets shot, Bond gets tortured) but I don't think there's enough payoff in the story.

There is some character stuff, and it's mostly between Bond and his American friend, Felix Leiter. Leiter was partially eaten by a shark two novels ago so now he's a member of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Leiter's job in the novel is to basically give Bond all the info he needs while in America. While it's nice to catch up on this character, I think too much time is spent on listening to Leiter talk about the gang and not enough time on Bond actually investigating the gang.

Tiffany is much better in the novel then she is in the movie. After reading the novel you can see what the film makers were going for, but they forgot to make her sympathetic. In the novel you can at least see why she acts the way she does. Still, I wish the novel gave a better reason for Bond falling in love with her. I'm willing to bet that the reason she won't be in the next novel (besides the obvious meta reason) is because Bond got bored after he was able to melt her heart. There isn't much else to their relationship besides having a few meals together.

Mr. Witt and Mr. Kidd make their appearances halfway through the novel to torture a guy who Bond paid to fix a race.* They're not as flamboyant as in the movies and they don't call each other Mister, but they're just as deadly. One thing I wish the novel could have had that the movie did have was them killing off several people as time went on. Still, they're far more memorable then the brothers who run the gang. At one poin they torture Bond by kicking him with football cleats. They spend most of the time wearing sacks over their heads, so their last moment in the book is suppose to be a surprise. (When Bond figures out who these guys are, he appears to be particularly boneheaded.)

* - (This part of the novel is bizarre, by the way. There's some stupid clinic where people wrap themselves in mud and fry in 'tombs' for 20 minutes at over 100 degrees. Was this suppose to be a weird nod to Dante?)

To give you an idea of how Ian Fleming constructs his villians, not only did we have the aforementioned hunchback, but one of these guys has a wart on his thumb-joint that he sucked. (The previous novel also had a thumb sucker and nail biter.)

The final villian of the piece is some guy who got introduced early on and then gets killed at the end of the novel. I can't remember if he appears in anywhere between those poins.

I think the novel would have been better if Bond wasn't moving around too often. I guess it's because of the pipeline that makes it necessary, but I would have rather had Bond do more learning about the gang and the pipeline and less time trying to get his money for his smuggling job. I also wish the novel would have told us more about Tiffany then she was gang-raped, she hates men as a result, and she's good at cards. The final-twist-head-bad-guy should be dropped because he wouldn't be missed, and the Spang Brothers should be more memorable.

I give this book a grade of "Wasted Potential." I give the movie a grade of "Waste of a Couple Million Dollars, but Mr. Wint and Mr. Kitt were Cool."






Currently Reading: State of Fear by Michael Crichton

Previous Read: Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming


Also, in case anybody cares, here's the DVD set I'm working on.

Currently Watching: Addams Family Volume One

Tork Book Club: Tomb Raider: The Man of Bronze

Ok, I wish I could start this with a stronger book. When I mentioned a "Tork's Book Club" back in January I imagined I would give my thoughts on the Discworld series among other books I've read. Sadly, my poor memory has forced me to put this off for a while. Now I'm going to discuss the book in question since I just finished reading it and it should be fresh in my mind.

I would just like to say that there are

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!

Ok, I don't need to poin this out, but Lara Croft is a video game character with big boobs. If you think I'm a perv for saying that, then I would poin out her hype during her early years. It was all about her breasts. It was very annoying since her first game was a genuine classic, and the second had it's moments, but the video game magazines all focused on her chest. The very people who now put her down are probably the same people who were drooling over her back in 1996.

Oh, and Lara is a British (former?) aristocrat who has Indiana Jones-like adventures. I would mention her backstory but they changed it from the first game to the fourth game to the movies. Her choice of weapon is two pistols.

This is the third of three novels. The first novel was written in an attempt to provide background from the time Lara "died" at the end of her fourth game and when she reappeared in the sixth game. The other two have no specific connection to the series. Each novel was written by a different SciFi author.

The plot of this last novel is much like the plot found in a video game. While the first novel had Lara travel with some Muslims and had many discussions about their culture, this novel sets up a plot where Lara finds some artifact and must go find three MacGuffins. Action persues. This novel differs from the last two in that it's written in the first person and much more violent.

The plot revolves around a sophisticated, mysterious "robot" that's made of bronze. It was once broken 10000 years ago into many pieces and is trying to reattach it's parts. The setup to this story has Lara meeting with an old friend at a secret hostpital after he survives an attack. The friend has a briefcase handcuffed to his arm. While at the secret hospital in Warsaw, mercenaries attack. This includes some very violent stuff, including the scene where Lara takes out one guard by stabbing him in the heart. It's rather nasty because she pretended to be on drugs to lure him to her legs and considered kissing him to silence his last breath. Later on a bomb goes off and sends shrapnel into a guy's head. The only time I can remember the other novels being this violent was the end of the second novel, and that was an accidental death involving the bends.

Anyway, Lara finally finds out what's in the briefcase. It's suppose to be a map to the other parts. Lara then meets the Bronze Man, who we find out is the inspiration for the myth of Osiris. Bronze has contacts all over the world and has united many religions just so he can find his missing parts. (In exchange, he offers his brain to catch many criminals.) In this case, he only needs his leg. An attack by a nemesis pushes Lara to go find the three pieces of the leg and to get revenge.

The video game plot is now set up. The next three sections of the book has Lara teaming up with an old friend and investigating where the next piece is. Stage two involves an old Russian friend and a cave. She learns about the mysterious radiation of the bronze parts (including a part with a charging mastadon) and it's effect on people. Stage three has them teaming up with a sea captain and fighting against zombies. Stage four has those three teaming up with an Aborigine woman while fighting giant spiders (ICK!), an giant alligator, and having an obligatory temple to raid. The final part of the novel is a face off between Lara and the villian behind everything and her nemesis.

We spend the novel inside Lara's head, and she's really the only character to get much characterization. She is often thinking her way out of situations, and her catchphrase is, "Ok, new strategy!" Lara's three companions are old friends which was probably done so the author didn't have to spend too much time establishing them. The nemesis doesn't make too many appearances either, and is just an arrogant bastard. The only character that isn't Lara that the book goes into details about isn't introduced until the last stage of the book.

The plot of the book is fast paced. The chapters are titled by the location that Lara is at. Lara and her friends never stay too long at one location.

If there's one thing I would remove from this book, it's the scene where Lara wakes up after being tranquilized. She finds herself in a cell wearing lingerie. It turns out that the big bad guy really likes women and had her dressed up so he can later seduce her. Lara says that she doesn't feel like anything happened, but I still object to a novel throwing in even a hint of rape. Tomb Raider is about escapist adventures and there's really no need for that kind of garbage. I really don't like it when rape is tossed in to make the reader hate the bad guy more, even if it's done for "realism." Female adventurers shouldn't have to put up with this crap, and since this is escapism there's no excuse for it. I would have removed the paragraph or two that this issue was brought up.

On a lighter note, I must poin out that in the Lara Croft universe, apparently James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, and Tarzan are real people. I think the author was being a little too cute when he mentioned that these families were blessed by the radiation of the bronze pieces.

Also, may I poin out that I hate spiders? This is the third thing connected to Tomb Raider that involved giant spiders. The second game had jumping tarantulas in the first level, and giant spiders in the next to last level. It took me several hours and liberal use of a grenade thrower to get through a fifteen minute area. The third game's final boss was a giant mutant man-spider. He was a little easier to face against but I still would rather jump in the lava then have him touch me. This novel has to big spiders and said that the spiders had webbing that looked like part of the jungle. I don't think I'll be going to any jungles anytime soon.

Anyway, I'll admit that the Tomb Raider novels are more junk food fun then anything, but I'll miss the series.





Currently Reading: Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming

Last Read: Tomb Raider Lara Croft: The Man of Bronze

Tork Book Club

When I was a kid I used to have quite a few books. Of course, they were mostly Little Golden Books. Those books had about 10-20 pages and were filled with mostly pictures. I also had quite a few books that came with records. I even had the record player shown in this cartoon. http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail128.html

I can't remember too much, but I do think some of my favorite books featured Disney characters. Books like that were more picture driven, so you didn't have to read as much stuff as you would for the Poky Little Puppy. I do remember not being a fan of that puppy because it didn't seem as fun or colorful as a Disney character would. I tended to stay away from more serious books and constantly read and reread comedic, "fun" books.

I did eventually read somewhat bigger books. Around the time we got a casette player, I could read 30-40 page books that were still heavy in pictures but followed a plot of a cartoon feature. Disney's "Mickey and the Beanstalk" comes to mind, as do a couple Winnie the Pooh books. I also had a couple books based on cartoon shows I saw as a kid, like the Get-a-Long Gang and a book based on Pac-Man.

Sadly, my reading of these books never carried in school beyond the third grade. By the time I reached the fourth grade, I was good at grammar and spelling but bad at literature. We only had to do short readings a night, and answer those kind of questions that are basically asking if you read or not, but, I never excelled at this. I would occasionally get Ds for the rest of my time at elementary school. I would often got bored of descriptions of backgrounds and skipped forward to conversations between characters. Eventually by the eighth grade I had figured out the system and was able to get all Bs in my literature classes, but I was just coasting at that poin.

That cost me when I went to high school. Except for one C in history, I got all Bs and As in the eighth grade, and I was punished for it by getting several honors classes in high school. I had a tough time in many classes that freshman year, but I really tanked in English 9. Like I said, I coasted through the eighth grade, so I had the hardest time reading whole chapters of a novel. I was so use to playing as much video games as I wanted so it took me a while to adjust. I received my first F at the end of the first quarter for English.

(The dumbest part was that on the first day, my teacher told us to get a notebook and keep track of everything, including vocabulary words. Somehow, I must have ignored this because I never thought about having a notebook until we had a quiz using all previous vocabulary words. It finally occured to me that I was suppose to be doing a better job as a student, and not just reading a chapter during my study period or lunch.)

At home, I wasn't doing any better. I rarely read novels. I had a few kid novels, but never read too many. One of my earliest (not for kids) novels was based on the first Batman movie. It took me forever to read it, and I remember reading the opening part about Batman's first appearance several times. The author would constantly repeat, "Welcome to Gotham City," and it wouldn't occur to me that he was trying to make some poin. By the end of the novel, I had already forgotten a lot of the stuff that happened.

"Batman stopped some random bad guys, then he killed the Joker somehow. A woman named Vicki Vale appeared at some poin. The end."

The books I ended up reading the most weren't really novels at all. I read the heck out of a book that gave synopses of the first twenty-four Superbowls. I also enjoyed a couple books that talked about various blunders that happened in the NFL and the NBA. A few more "books" were editions of "How To Beat Nintendo Games." They were cool, but not about characters or plots. I mostly stuck to video game magazines, which I was always bugging my parents to get for me.

So basically I ended up hating literature class. I was a much better student in math, and my SAT scores benefitted from my higher math scores. The only novels I liked during high school was The Inferno, which I loved, and Invisble Man, the only book in the ninth grade which led me to high quiz grades.

In college I got around this my only having two english classes, both of which were required. Looking back I wish I had taken a couple more, but at the time I was glad I could avoid such classes.

Anyway, it was a good internet friend of mine that finally got me to read some novels that weren't required by a teacher nor just a book full of video game cheats. I had just read the extremely boring "Fellowship of The Rings," a novel that took me eight months to read. I asked my friend to recommend some books and she emailed me a few. I read many of the books from the two series she recommended to me, and I was even able to catch up to her while she was 20 or so books into one of the series. I started reading more and more novels, including books that made her role her eyes.

So with that, I'll hopefully provide a few thoughts on some of the books I've read. Even if I don't, I'm glad that my reading skills have improved and that I'm still thinking about new series I could start.



Book I'm currently reading - "Now I Can Die In Peace" by Bill Simmons

Last Book Read - "A Hat Full of Sky" by Terry Pratchett