Adrian

So....

There's now a book out called Fifty Shades of Chicken.

This amuses me greatly for some reason.

I'm beginning to wonder what sort of magic is used by romance novel writers. The stories are *so* formulatic, and yet they're pretty fun to read and do such a great business. There's got to be more to it than wish-fulfillment and escapism because you *know* that it's going to be a happy ending, so that takes away the tension of will-they-won't-they and the inevitable conclusion and pay-off.



This muing brought to you by the third book in a Mary Balogh Regency series. :-P

For the past few months, I've been slowly working my way through the stacks of books that I've accumulated over the years, but haven't read as well as the list I started when the stacks started threatening to go outside their containment area. :-P Some have been great, some not so much - which is to be expected, not everything can be the most awesomest book ever.

But one I had to put down today made me a little sad. It was an Angel tie-in (which I'm curious where I got it, since I don't generally buy them), and the premise was good. What made me sad was that I've read better fanfic.


On a plus side - last night's "Sherlock" episode, "Reichenbach Fall", was still one of the most powerful episodes of tv I've seen. Even though I originally watched it back in February (and even then knew what was going to happen because I know the story it's based on), it still hurt to watch it a second time.

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I actually have two - the opening lines of The Iliad and The Odyssey. And I think it's because of the way they sound, especially when you speak them.


Sing, O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles Peleus' son, the ruinous wrath that brought on the Achaians woes innumerable, and hurled down into Hades many strong souls of heroes, and gave their bodies to be a prey to dogs and all winged fowls; and so the counsel of Zeus wrought out its accomplishment from the day when first strife parted Atreides king of men and noble Achilles. (Lang)


Sing, O Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys, after he had sacked Troy’s sacred citadel. (Lattimore)

1. I'm beginning to hate the media and its repetitive sound-bites and what-not on the same stories. I want to be aware of what's going on in the world, not what's going on with Tiger Woods or that someone thinks that the Disney Princesses (and especially the newest one) are too thin or that a couple trying to get onto a reality show crashed a White House dinner. (To an extent, I wouldn't mind hearing about the last one, but more in the sense of security issues and stuff like that and not in "OMG! They crashed the party!!!!11!" *rolls eyes*)

2. How does it take my laptop battery about an hour/hour and a half to charge while I'm on it and doing stuff, yet my cellphone battery takes about three hours to charge and it's *turned off*?

3. The College School is doing their Scholastic book fair this week in the lobby outside of my building (even though the actual school is across the street - go figure). But it's fun being able to look out the door and see them. It reminds me of when I was that age and how much I loved taking the flyer home so I could order books and then being able to pick them up and look through the other books they had for sale. :-)

4. So there's this delivery guy that has us as one of his routine stops and he comes about every two weeks. Well, a couple stops ago, he came in and said that he had a delivery for some spaceships with flux capacitors. The other girl that was with me hesitated and I made some sort of off-hand comment and we joked around for a minute or two before I directed him to go downstairs to see where they wanted him to put the textbooks.

Since then, whenever he comes, he and I will repeat this conversation in some form before I send him downstairs. He came in today and we were doing it and having a pretty "in depth" conversation when a customer walked in, passed us, then turned and gave us a weird look. Then she went a little further and did it again, at which point I dissovled into giggles and we had a good laugh.

In a case of 'what were they thinking when they wrote this?', I came across this warning while reading a book summary on my work's general book catalogue. "Warning: Contains explicit male/male sex, men who love poetry, and unrestrained love letters."


And I've started working on a ficlet of an undetermined length for a "Eureka" idea I had. I'm not sure exactly where it's going or even what exactly I'm doing with it, but it's fun and it's helped alleviate some of the tedium at work.

So, part of the things on my mom's wish list are The Odyssey and The Iliad (and Cliff Notes for both). This amuses me to no end because 99% of the time, my mom read true crime, mysteries with a crime bent, and the like. I hope she likes them and I'm sure I'll be fielding a lot of questions, since she knows I've read them. (And flipping through them, I'm thinking I may reread them after I get through some more of my pile, since I did enjoy them when I had to read them for class.)

And just coming off of NaNo and starting a new fic yesterday, I've been thinking about books and how to start (and finish and everything in the middle of) one and I have to say I love how these two epics start.

First line of The Iliad: Sing, O Muse, of the accursed wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought unnumbered woes upon the Acheans.

First line of The Odyssey: Sing, O Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys, after he sacked Troy's sacred citadel.

******

And in watching tonight's episode of "The Mentalist", it hit me that in many ways, Patrick Jane is very much like Batman. Okay, granted, he's actually willing to work within the system and bide his time until he can exact his revenge on Red John (as opposed to Bruce Wayne/Batman's vigilante system). But the similarities are there, in my opinion.

You know, you don't see comments like this on books a whole lot:

"This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress did for his. It's that good!" - Eugene Peterson on The Shack.

libralyte and I had a good day today.

We went into town and had brunch at the diner. (Sorta/kinda brunch, at any rate. We ate at noon, but we ate breakfast foods.) After that, we walked around town some and even down around campus so she could look around (not that a whole lot has changed on campus).

We also watched the Masterpiece Theatre version of Jane Eyre - which I absolutely adore. While we were doing that, I started a knitting project so I can hopefully get a few things knitted that I've been meaning to for a quite a while.

After that, I took her up to the train station so she could go home. :-( But I'll see her in October (maybe even sooner if we're lucky) and I know I'll be talking to her between now and then.

This evening I watched two episodes of Doctor Who and Friday's SGA (notes on that will be posted in a moment).

Also - I know a while back at least one of you was talking about an audiobook (or iPod book or something like that) of John Barrowman's Anything Goes. Any idea where I can get that? I was thinking of listening to it while I knit.

And knowledge of any place that I could get .mp3/.avi/whatever audiobooks would be great.

While at work today, I decided to write down all the books that I've seen and want to read so I'll remember to read them. And, holy cow, I've got about 20 books on there. Granted, about five of them are for a series I'm reading, but still....

And I know I could read them on my breaks, but I decided that I really wanted to start working on the books that I have at home that I've been stockpiling over the years. And since I have (at a quick - and possibly not completely accurate - count) *120* at home that I want to read.... Okay, granted, a handful of them I've read before (quite a while ago) and I want to read again so I can figure out if I want to keep them or not.

While I don't have the admirable goal of reading 40 (or however) many books this year that some of you have, I would like to make a respectable dent in that pile before my "To Read" list gets to be too long. Especially since I have a tendency to amass books like some women do shoes. And I've realized that since I've started working in the bookstore, my "playing" field has completely opened up. Prior to this job, I was mostly a fiction and fantasy reader, every once in a while venturing into nonfiction if either absolutely necessary or the book looked *really* *really* interesting. But now that I'm surrounded by all sorts of books on a daily basis, that filter has fallen away and I'll pick up practically anything that looks interesting (as evidenced by the fact that about half of the books on my list are nonfiction).

The book I've taken in to read at work is C. A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. I guess I'm about halfway through and I really like it so far.

The one I'm reading at home is Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas. I just started it tonight and I'm about 30 pages in and like it a lot too.