discworld, eh?

Quite a few of the folks on my blogroll seem to be fond of Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" books. To my everlasting shame, I've never actually gotten around to those.

I'm currently finishing up Stephen King's Dark Tower opus, but will be in need of another multi-volume saga when I'm finished. All you Pratchett fans--why is it imperative that I read those books? Give me your best one-sentence salespitch to reel me in.

do you bite your thumb at me, matey?

Anyone out there who's a.) handy with Photoshop, and b.) interested in getting in at the ground level of my groundbreaking "Romeo and Juliet" production?

To recap, I noted a while ago that nobody's ever done a buccaneer-themed version of Romeo and Juliet. Therefore, I came up with the concept of a Shakespeare adaptation featuring pirates and ninjas. Romeo is the son of a pirate, and Juliet is the daughter of a ninja. That's a recipe for high drama in my book.

"In fair Sarasota, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where Ninja blood makes Pirate hands unclean."

The fight scenes between the Montague pirate crew and the Capulet ninja clan will be like nothing ever seen on stage. We're talking flintlock pistols belching, shuriken flying, and cutlass clashing with katana.

To that end, I need a weathered-looking playbill that has a katana crossed with a cutlass. It should look like it was inked on parchment by some Elizabethan advertising guy working for the Globe. That would be awesome--and by awesome, I mean totally sweet.

Now, another question is...can we work in werewolves, too?

never had a doubt.

The sorting hat says that I belong in Ravenclaw!

<

Said Ravenclaw, "We'll teach those whose intelligence is surest."

Ravenclaw students tend to be clever, witty, intelligent, and knowledgeable.
Notable residents include Cho Chang and Padma Patil (objects of Harry and Ron's affections), and Luna Lovegood (daughter of The Quibbler magazine's editor).

Take the most scientific Harry Potter
Quiz ever created.

Get Sorted Now!

speed reading.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows showed up on my doorstep courtesy of amazon.com and USPS at 11:30am. I started reading the book at 12:00-ish, and I finished it (minus pauses for feeding the kids, doing dishes, changing diapers, etc.) at 7:00pm, all 759 pages of it. I think that's a new record for me.

Robin commented on her amazement at the fact that I can read a book of that page count in seven hours, especially one that's not written in my native language. Truth be told, it probably would have taken me twice as long to read it in German at this point.

do you kick kittens, too?

So yeah, we've ordered a copy of the last Harry Potter book. We pre-ordered it earlier this year, and Robin received an email notification from Amazon.com that our shipment would arrive on Saturday, which is the day of publication.

I like the books. They have their minor flaws, but on the whole, they're humorous, well-written, and imaginative. I'm looking forward to reading the final installment, and I have no intention of seeking out spoilers on the Intarwebz before Saturday. It seems that "spoiling the fun" has become a major sport, and there are lots of spoilers circulating online already, presumably originating with people who have received the book early by accident. (Some online retailer mistakenly shipped out a bunch of orders early.) Even the German newspaper I read online every day has a big headline about the "Harry Potter scandal", and their banner graphic breathlessly announces "Who Lives! Who dies! Who marries!", enticing folks to click on the story to learn more.

When the previous book came out, some people thought it to be great fun to drive to bookstores where kids were standing in line for the midnight release, and yell crucial plot information out of the window to spoil it for everyone standing in line. ("Snape kills Dumbledore!") People scanned the crucial page of the book, highlighted the critical information, and then posted it on discussion boards online, before the official release date of the book.

Now, some may think that the whole Harry Potter hubbub is ridiculous, and just a giant money making machine. Still, it's one thing to roll your eyes at the spectacle of midnight book launches and kids dressing up as wizards, and a different thing altogether to actively destroy the suspense and fun for those same kids. Sometimes I think that a significant portion of the population does not mature beyond high school age.

I'm not even reading reviews before Saturday, and I'm staying off the Internet for the most part, just so my fun isn't spoiled by some jackass with a scanner and an Internet account.

maybe there's hope for hollywood yet.

Here's the trailer for The Golden Compass, the movie based on the first book of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy.

It looks pretty awesome. Here's hoping that the final product does justice to the book. The trailer makes it look like the movie is not going to suck big rocks off the ground, which would be very nice.

Classical music geek question: identify the piece playing at the very beginning of the trailer, and its composer. First person to correctly respond wins...uhm...a pony. (Offer redeemable when I get my first massive royalties check for publishing something as brilliant as the aforementioned Pullman trilogy.)

the virtues of war.

One of my favorite novels of the last fifteen years or so is Steven Pressfield's "Gates of Fire", the tale of the Spartans at Thermopylae told from the perspective of a Spartan squire on the ground. I re-read that book about three times a year, and it's not only a great historical novel, but excellent prose period.

The other day, I was browsing around at Barnes & Noble when I came upon another one of Steven Pressfield's books. This one was called The Virtues of War, and the book jacket said it was a first-person account of Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian Empire. Since I'm a military history junkie, I had to crack it open to the first page and give it a glance.

Sometimes, I buy books just based on the quality and impact of the first page alone; this was one of them.

It starts thusly:

"I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life. The calling of arms, I have followed from boyhood. I have never sought another."

The book is an amazingly intense and intelligent reflection of Alexander's life from boyhood to the peak of his power, narrated by Alexander himself as related to a squire. All the battles--Gaugamela, Issus, Granicus, Hydaspes--are presented not in the detailed blood-and-guts style of Gates of Fire, but from the perspective of Alexander himself. The book is as much of a study in leadership as it is a tale of military conquest or memoir.

Anyway, those of you into military history (you know who you are), go to the bookstore and give this one a try.

empire falls, and other items.

So I decided to give James Russo's Empire Falls another shot, and I'm glad I did.

The first time I started it, my reaction was something along the lines of, "This book won a Pulitzer?" The prologue is a bit meandering, forty pages of gratuituous exposition and background of the little town's history, and it's a bit tough to chew through. I put the book aside ten pages out of that prologue, and didn't pick it up again for a few months.

The second time around, I was drawn into the story far more quickly, having trudged up the hill at the beginning already, so to speak. It's well-written, the characters are engaging, and while nobody gets killed with an Uzi, it's a good read all around if you don't mind reading about everyday small-town folk wrestling with their personal demons.

On the computer front, I seem to have exorcised the gremlins that had taken up residence. I formatted my hard drive and reinstalled XP, updated the system BIOS, and reset all BIOS values to conservative settings. Then I transplanted all the components into a new CoolerMaster case with much improved airflow, and now the whole rig runs fifty degrees cooler than before. So far, so good...three consecutive days without crashes or wonkiness. If it runs without burping until Friday, I'll pronounce it healed. (I may have sacrificed a chicken under the full moon to further that goal, but if anyone finds the black candles and the carcass in the trash outside, I'll disavow all knowledge and blame the dachshunds.)

We're currently getting the pad ready for munchkin #2, which is due to arrive any day now. Induction is scheduled for May 10th, but Robin thinks that #2 will beat her due date just like Quinn did. Bags are packed, at any rate..all that's left is a run to the liquor store for some anaesthetic and liquid stress reliever. (For daddy, of course.)

just in case...

For those of you who aren't aware of it: here's the online graphic novel version of L. Neil Smith's "The Probability Broach".