Huffy Flounce

That sounds like a challenge...

Damn airport security and their lack of a sense of humour!!

Joke....... That's a joke, in case anyone is watching!

I have recently reread "The Hobbit" and "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Still working my way through Arthurian summaries.

And I just finished "Skin Game" the latest Dresden Files book before getting online.

I'd have to rank it up there with "White Knight", it was pretty awesome.

Reading the Dresden Files shortly after moving across from the cemetery where Harry's grave is located was pretty fucking cool.

One of the things I was looking forward to after quitting academia was getting time to read for pleasure again. Unfortunately, I overestimated how much time I would actually be able to devote to reading. I feel pulled in so many different directions in my spare time: TV and movies, video and board games, social life, internet stuff, digital drawing... it's still hard to make time for reading.

Anyway, it's kind of sad, but these are the things I read since June last year:
The Console Wars, Blake J. Harris
Schachnovelle, Stefan Zweig
The Most Dangerous Game, Richard Connell
StarCraft: Firstborn, Christie Golden
StarCraft: Shadow Hunters, Christie Golden
StarCraft: Twilight, Christie Golden

I'm currently reading PopLit, PopCult and The X-Files: A Critical Exploration by Jan Delasara. It was published in 2000 and written while Season 6 was still underway, so it could have been a different work had the author waited for the series to be over. Despite that, however, there's a lot of factual information I simply didn't know about, and some of the close readings are pretty convincing.

I like that the author goes for crossover appeal and aims to write for an audience beyond academia. Excerpt from the preface: "I set out to write a wide-based but focused, informative and understandable study of a popular television series, using the terminology of literary analysis sparingly, employing a modicum of close reading when required, and applying some selected, relevant theoretical constructs. [...] Generally, I try to use a common-language vocabulary in readable sentences not overburdened with academic jargon." While I recognize that this is probably done to make it more marketable, I do appreciate the move toward limiting the exclusiveness of the text. In a later section, the author explains that she recognizes the wide appeal of The X-Files across different types of educated viewers, many of whom can appreciate the cultural and aesthetic value of the series, but aren't necessarily initiated in the academic language and conventions often used in in-depth analyses of literary texts. The work aims to deliver this type of analysis to an educated, non-academic readership, and that's okay in my book.

I've read Schachnovelle and "The Most Dangerous Game." It's been thirteen years since I read the former and twenty-five since I read the latter. I read the Rogen/Goldberg intro for The Console Wars, and I also read the prologue. I read what I read in a Barnes & Noble. I would have read more, but Jubboiter came and claimed me.

I didn't even know there were StarCraft books. That's cool.

I mentioned on the previous page that I had started The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and NOS4A2. I finished them.

Here's what I've read since the post I made at the end of January:

De Quincey, Thomas. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Idiot. (rereading; at the halfway point)
Künsken, Derek. "Ghost Colors."
O'Connell, Jay. "Things Worth Knowing."
Various. The Best of Archie: Book One.
Vonnegut, Kurt. "2 B R 0 2 B." (reread)
Yamamoto, Tsunetomo. Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai. (reread, but using a different translation)

It's not much. Jubboiter's been sick and I haven't been able to go to the YMCA much as a result of it. She's finally better. We're getting to go again.

I've also been working with WWI miniatures, Jubbers and I have been drawing, and I've been editing a story. My concentration's a bit more spread out than it was a few months ago. I was also too tired to read anything but various comics under the Archie Comics umbrella while Jubboiter was sick. (I'm not counting The Best of Archie: Book One as part of that. I read that, but I also read a lot of other Archieverse stuff on top of it.)

The Swollen Goiter of God wrote:Jubbers and I have been drawing

Goiter convinced me to get matching "500 Things to Draw." We take turns picking one of the prompts, and then we both draw the chosen prompt. When we both finish (days or even a week later), we compare. We are 4 prompts in. It's been a lot of fun.

I can draw a dog. It's not a very good dog.

Dalty only draws bad dogs. Bad dogs!

Then he rubs their noses in it. They know what they did.

It was all that self licking. It made me jealous.

I don't read much lately that isn't for children or young adults, but smething I did read that was fantastic was The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore. It was cool seeing some of the original comics from the 1940s--knowing only stuff from the '70s I didn't realize how feminist it was--and to learn more about the creator's backstory. He was trained as a psychologist, and had a secret second wife--while he was still married to the first one--who took care of all of the family's children while wife #1 worked. Oh, and she happened to be the niece of Margaret Sanger. Pretty wild.

William Moulton Marston was, indeed, a pretty interesting figure. I read a little of The Secret History of Wonder Woman while in a Vintage Stock back in November. It was right next to Anjelica Huston's Watch Me. They were both too pricey to consider buying, but I think I'd still like to read them at some point.

I have a fair number of the earliest issues of Wonder Woman (along with All Star Comics #8 and Sensation Comics #1) as digital files. They're a trip.

The Swollen Goiter of God wrote:I didn't even know there were StarCraft books. That's cool.

Oh, yeah. There are quite a few, actually. I think I own (and have now read) most of the StarCraft novels that exist. The only one I know of that I haven't read is Heaven's Devils, but it sounds like it's more action-oriented, so I haven't given it a shot.

As far as I know, they're all considered canon. The three I listed above form a trilogy set in a period between the events of the StarCraft and StarCraft 2 games. I'm not sure to what extent this was planned by Blizzard, but some of the characters and concepts explored in the novels ended up getting tied into the story of StarCraft 2, which is pretty cool.

The Swollen Goiter of God wrote:I've read Schachnovelle and "The Most Dangerous Game." It's been thirteen years since I read the former and twenty-five since I read the latter.

I actually read Schachnovelle based on some comments you made about it a long time ago that just stuck with me. I bought a copy of it at one of those book auctions the WashU German Department does every year, but didn't have a chance to read it until a few months ago.

I read "The Most Dangerous Game" for my ninth-grade English class, but I had just moved to the U.S. and my English was still on a relatively basic level. I could understand what was happening and liked the story quite a bit, but at the time I didn't even understand the multiple meanings of the word "game" in the title. It had been such a long time since I first read it that I was approaching it without much recollection of the details, and I probably liked it more this time than I did back then. Have you read anything else by Richard Connell? I'm considering looking deeper into his short stories.

The Swollen Goiter of God wrote:I read the Rogen/Goldberg intro for The Console Wars, and I also read the prologue.

The Rogen/Goldberg intro is silly and cute, but it doesn't really represent the content of the book very well. I'm glad that you also got to read Harris' prologue because you may have left with the wrong impression otherwise (not that I don't give you more credit than that).

Mal Shot First wrote:Anyway, it's kind of sad, but these are the things I read since June last year:
The Console Wars, Blake J. Harris
Schachnovelle, Stefan Zweig
The Most Dangerous Game, Richard Connell
StarCraft: Firstborn, Christie Golden
StarCraft: Shadow Hunters, Christie Golden
StarCraft: Twilight, Christie Golden

I forgot to mention The Great Gatsby among the books I had read in that time span.

I'm moving on from the book about the X-Files to The Shining, or more precisely, the audiobook of The Shining. I've never read it, but I watched the movie several times. Not that I expect the two to be all that similar. The first three chapters have already been promising.

I am reading the new Canon books in the Star Wars universe. I've finished Rebel Dawn, Heir to the Jedi and Tarkin. Just got Lords of the Sith.

Aren't there new 'post-Jedi' ones out soon to lead into Ep VII?

I believe so, but from what I understand, they are young reader books. Amazon is calling them "upper middle grade novels".

Awwwww crap! Sad face. I was looking forward to those.

I just finished (via Audible) Die Känguru-Chroniken (The Kangaroo Chronicles), which is about a comedian in Berlin who ends up with a talking, Communist kangaroo for a roommate. It's very episodic, and I found it to be quite funny.

For example: (After the long wait one typically gets on phone calls) the jobless kangaroo is told by a bank representative on the phone that he should start thinking about his retirement savings. The kangaroo then switches his phone number to a 0-900 number at 69 cents a minute, with a lovely automated hold ("The next available kangaroo has been reserved for you. Please wait.") complete with elevator hold music and such. In this way, he accumulates retirement savings.

These days I am mostly just falling asleep. I used to enjoy the nightly read. (Sad face)

You need a new vacation. You always read a book or three while on vacation.

Funny you should say that....... and I have just the thing to read!

Finished The Shining about a week ago and started A Game of Thrones. Digging it so far.

The Haynes Manual for the Millennium Falcon.

The Secret History of Star Wars by Michael Kaminsky. Oh, George.......