Do Thy Research

It's always fun to make fun of Microsoft

2009-04-15T12:27:00.000-07:00

see more Political Pictures

Hilarity

2009-04-12T18:31:00.000-07:00

"Persons with Delicate Musical Sensibilities Strongly Cautioned." Heh. I love Dr. Boli's sense of humor.

Happy Easter

2009-04-12T06:31:00.001-07:00

He is risen indeed!

Baby's first bookshelf

2009-04-08T23:14:00.000-07:00

We received so many books at our baby shower that we quickly decided that the baby needed a bookshelf exclusively for baby books. These are the books that we got at the shower; we have been given a few more since then. Some are in English, some are in Spanish, and a few are bilingual. I am, as you might imagine, thrilled that my friends and family have made it so that my child will be born owning a stack of books taller than he or she is long and dearly hope that the baby grows up to love reading like I do. Books: best toys ever.

Despair

2009-03-31T22:56:00.001-07:00

Normally, I think that pretty much everything over at Despair.com is hilarious (for example, I love the calendar that I got for Christmas), but the new kleptocracy t-shirts inspired by the current political/economic situation are more depressing than funny.

BSG

2009-03-20T23:13:00.001-07:00

Farewell, Battlestar Galactica. You were a great show, I'm quite happy with how you ended, and I will miss you a lot now that you're over for good. Especially your music. Bear McCreary did a wonderful job as Battlestar's composer, and henceforth I shall follow his career — and his blog — with interest.

Cities to live in

2009-03-04T13:19:00.000-08:00

Via Sedenion, I saw this simple, eight-question quiz that purports to identify which cities would be ideal for the quiz taker to live in. Out of curiosity, partly because I'm anticipating moving soon, I took the quiz. Here are my results, which I found hilarious for a variety of reasons, including the fact that this quiz did a very good job of identifying several places I'd really like to live. The list contains somewhere I have lived and at least one city to which I have an actual chance of moving later this year...

Based on your answers, the top city for you is
Colorado Springs, CO

Other high-ranking cities:
2) Boise City-Nampa, ID
3) Salt Lake City, UT
4) Albuquerque, NM
5) Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ

March Madness

2009-03-04T13:08:00.000-08:00

I don't pay much attention to the NCAA basketball tournament (or college sports in general), but there are two other March Madness tournaments that I will be following this year: those at Deceiver and Go Fug Yourself, two very entertaining websites. I think that Deceiver's bracket — for the purpose of identifying the hypocrite of the year — is particularly great.

A new favorite blog

2009-02-28T20:52:00.000-08:00

I recently was introduced to the blog Geekdad by a friend, and I have really enjoyed reading it, especially as my baby's due date gets very close. Here is one of my all time favorite blog entries of theirs: Nerding up the nursery. Funnily enough, I had already been planning to do several of the things that they suggest to decorate the baby's room (when the baby gets his or her own room in a few months) before I ever read that post! Also, the same friend who introduced me to Geekdad gave us the same "stuffed animal" that is pictured at that link as a baby gift! My husband and I were delighted.

On Soda

2009-01-28T22:04:00.001-08:00

My vote for best soda ever goes to Thomas Kemper's Root Beer, with which I became acquainted over the course of my honeymoon last June. It is sweet, extremely foamy, and all around wonderful: the best of all possible Root Beers. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get it locally, although through the magic of the internet I may be able to discover if any place nearby sells it or if it can be obtained inexpensively online.

My husband, on the other hand, casts his vote for best soda ever for the original Dublin Dr. Pepper, which is, admittedly, a worthy drink as well. Unlike most sodas these days, both are made with cane sugar rather than corn syrup. The cane sugar really does make a difference in the flavor.

Cryptonomicon

2009-01-13T19:19:00.001-08:00

I just finished reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. This book is a fantastic read, and I liked it so much that it now is on my list of my favorite five works of fiction ever. It's a story partly set during the second world war and partly in the late 1990's, with action, adventure, intrigue, cryptography, cryptanalysis, Bletchley Park, Enigma, Tolkien references, languages, and many other wonderful things. Like treasure hunting. And mathematicians. Honestly, it's like Neal Stephenson sat down and wrote a novel especially for me. How could I not love this book?

Around the apartment, or how I spent my evening

2008-12-29T22:57:00.000-08:00

Cooking dinner (paprika chicken with egg noodles, green beans, french bread, and fruit salad).

Playing games (mathematical strategy games Hex and Nim) with my husband, using the hex map I got him for Christmas as the board for the former. I really like Hex, possibly more than I like Go, another fun game of strategy that I've learned to play in the last few months. A side benefit of marrying a mathematician is exposure to all sorts of games, especially strategy games, that I had never played before.

Convincing my husband to take a break from Nim to teach me how to understand binary so I could compute how to optimally play that particular game from any given starting position (by using binary to take the xor of the nimber). Concluding that binary is great. Taking the next logical step (logical for me, anyway) and learning how ASCII works and how to write ASCII out in binary (and figure out the binary forms faster by looking at the octal in an ASCII table) and proceeding to write numbers and words out in binary for fun. My husband is, at present, very amused by the discovery that I mentally categorize ASCII as some sort of system of runes. Hey, it's an alternate form of written notation! Just like Tolkien's Tengwar script is.

Talking to my mom (about baby things) and brother #1 (about baby stuff, how much more I'm enjoying the second trimester of pregnancy than the first trimester, marriage in general, and the end of the Broncos' 2008 season) on the phone.

Deciding that I wanted to make tapioca pudding, cooking it, and consuming it.

It was an excellent evening.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T19:57:00.001-08:00

Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone!

Assorted Interesting Links

2008-12-17T22:00:00.000-08:00

My links list in the sidebar is long enough that it is starting to annoy me, so I'm going to move all of them from the sidebar to this post (and add an occasional description) and link to this post from the sidebar. It will simplify things immensely around here. So, without further ado:

After Abortion

Alagaësia — The official website for Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle

Althouse

Anthony Horowitz — The official website of the author-screenwriter

Barcepundit

Barcepundit in English

The Bleat — A website of James Lileks, who is a very funny man

CCEL (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

Cliopatria

Confessions of a Community College Dean

Cooking for Engineers

The Cranky Professor — One of my absolute favorites

Darth Mojo

Day By Day

Did we do anything important today?

Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine

FIRE — A non-profit civil liberties organization

First Things

Garth Nix — The author's official website

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog — Sporadically updated and hilarious

The Harry Potter Lexicon

Historianess

iCal Share

InstaPundit

ISAE (Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals)

J.K. Rowling — Her official website

Jane Espenson — Official website of the BSG screenwriter

Jim Butcher — The internet authority on the author of The Dresden Files

Le Sabot Post-Moderne

The Leaky Cauldron

The Little Professor

Manolo's Shoe Blog MuggleNet

Narnia Fans

New Kid on the Hallway

NoIndoctrination.org

Normblog

Open Book

Orson Scott Card — The official website of one of science fiction's greats

Out Of The Woods Now — A thoughtful blog by a fellow lit enthusiast

Peeve Farm

Piled Higher and Deeper — A webcomic about grad school

Project Gutenberg

The Roving Theologian

ScrappleFace

Sedenion — A mathematician blogs about sundry topics

Shur'tugal — A fansite for Christopher Paolini's oeuvre

A Small Fish in a Big Pond

Steven D. Krause's Official Blog

Talk of Summertime — One of my most favorite blogs

Whatever — A blog by author John Scalzi

Whedonesque

The Wonder Cabinet — James A. Owen, author-illustrator par excellence

Wormtalk and Slugspeak — An Anglo-Saxonist and Tolkien enthusiast

XKCD — A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language

The snowier it gets, the happier I apparently am

2008-12-17T21:45:00.000-08:00

Seeing the phrase "Winter Storm Warning" in yellow or, better yet, bright red letters when I refresh my local weather forecast online brings joy into my heart. It makes me even happier when it pops up multiple times within a two week span. I am particularly happy about this latest winter storm warning because the storm that should hit tomorrow looks to involve well over half a foot of fluffy snow. I don't care if I have to go knock snow off my car or scrape ice off it later; I love this kind of weather. Unless the winter storm comes with a -20F wind chill during the day, that is, but it won't come with one of those this week.

Must read

2008-12-17T21:33:00.000-08:00

Dr. Boli is so funny, words fail me. Take a look at this advertisement of Dr. Boli's about ridding yourself of your excess carbon credits to see him at the top of his game. I was in hysterics even before I made it to the phrase "program of calculated arson."

A unique perspective on finals

2008-12-09T22:26:00.001-08:00

The Little Professor imagines what Vulcans would make of it all. Her vision of Spock and two others accidentally being beamed into the middle of a college campus during exam week is quite amusing.

An observation

2008-12-04T22:23:00.000-08:00

It's so much more satisfying to spend several hours reading books than to spend the equivalent number of hours reading about things related to politics and football on the internet. I have decided to make a concerted effort to do the former a whole lot more than I do the latter. Recently, I've noticed that I am (a) much happier and (b) considerably less pessimistic about the future of human civilization after reading a good book, especially when said book is a novel, than I am subsequent to several hours browsing websites, however interesting and informative those websites may be.

So, I have decided to spend less time surfing the web on My Precious and more time with the contents of my bookshelves. This sounds like a good plan.

Ender Wiggin Happiness

2008-11-23T00:49:00.000-08:00

Today, I finished the long-awaited Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card. I absolutely loved it. I had a huge smile on my face as I was reading the very last chapters, even though some of them almost made me cry. I know there are a lot of OSC fans among the readers of my blog, and those people desperately need to go read this book if they have yet to do so! (Note to friends who live nearby: yes, you may borrow my copy, and you should borrow A War of Gifts and First Meetings from me while you're at it.) Why do I think that people should run, not walk, to the bookstore (or library) to pick up a copy of this book NOW? One reason, among many, is that Ender in Exile resolves several plot threads that were left dangling at the conclusion of Shadow of the Giant and have been torturing readers for the past three years. Their resolution, I think, will make you very happy.

A final note: although the book centers around Ender, not Bean, Ender in Exile belongs more to the Shadow series than it does to the Ender's Game-Speaker for the Dead-Xenocide-Children of the Mind Quartet. I would recommend reading it after one has finished the Shadow books.

Okay, another note: I dearly love Ender. I have seriously thought about naming a child Andrew. One of several reasons for doing so would be so that I could nickname him Ender. (Yes, my husband is aware of this. And no, for those who are wondering, that's not what we're planning to call the baby, if I have a boy. Not this time, anyway.) I have also seriously thought about naming a child Julian, after another rather important and beloved OSC character, but that is less likely to occur even though as far as the Battleschoolers go, I have a slight preference for Julian Delphiki over Ender Wiggin.

General merriment

2008-10-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

A blog that has been amusing me immensely ever since my husband directed me to it about a week ago is Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine. I recommend it. Click here to learn about the enigmatic Dr. Boli.

An Art Quiz

2008-10-25T13:19:00.000-07:00

Here is how one quiz interprets my selections of pictures I most prefer. Here's the setup for that quiz: I was given a series of selections of three pictures and told to select the one from each group of three that I liked best. There weren't all that many rounds of pictures, and they represented a few types of paintings heavily and others hardly or not at all.

Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test...

Conscientious, Fulfilled, and Spiritual

14 Renaissance, 13 Islamic, 2 Ukiyo-e, -29 Cubist, -22 Abstract and 10 Impressionist!

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life. Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence affected literature, philosopy, religion, art, politics, science, and all other aspects of intellectual enquiry. Renaissance artists looked at the human aspect of life in their art. They did not reject religion but tended to look at it in it's purest form to create visions they thought depicted the ideals of religion. Painters of this time had their own style and created works based on morality, religion, and human nature. Many of the paintings depicted what they believed to be the corrupt nature of man.

People that like Renaissance paintings like things that are more challenging. They tend to have a high emotional stability. They also tend to be more concientious then average. They have a basic understanding of human nature and therefore are not easily surprised by anything that people may do. They enjoy life and enjoy living. They are very aware of their own mortality but do not dwell on the end but what they are doing in the present. They enjoy learning, but may tend to be a bit more closed minded to new ideas as they feel that the viewpoint they have has been well researched and considered. These people are more old fashioned and not quite as progressive. They enjoy the finer things in life like comfort, a good meal, and homelife. They tend to be more spiritual or religious by nature. They are open to new aesthetic experiences.

Take What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test at HelloQuizzy

Found via Out of the Woods Now.

Assorted thoughts/ranting about The Lord of the Rings

2008-10-16T22:40:00.000-07:00

As you might or might not have noticed from the All Consuming widget (or whatever it is) in the sidebar, I have been listening to The Lord of the Rings on audiobook, as read by Rob Inglis. It had been far too long since I had reread the series in its entirety, and I had already found Inglis's adaptation of The Hobbit quite enjoyable, so I borrowed the set of audiobooks* from the library and started listening.

I am a little over half of the way through The Two Towers at present and enjoying the narration immensely. Sam has just overheard Sméagol having conversations with himself as Frodo, Sam, and their prisoner-guide get close to Mordor.

As I listen, I am consistently struck with the thought, "This is so much better and more dramatic than what Peter Jackson did in the movies!" I read the books for the first time before the movies came out, and while I love the movies, there are a few things in his adaptation of Fellowship that annoy me, more than several in The Two Towers, and many in The Return of the King. For those who have read the books, the following list summarizes the greatest of my grievances: Glorfindel, the Theoden/Éomer storyline early in The Two Towers, Old Man Willow making an appearance in Fangorn, anything involving Faramir and the ring, anything involving Frodo in Osgiliath, Haldir at Helm's Deep, Aragorn hallucinating or having flashbacks about Arwen, Legolas performing ridiculous stunts, Gimli being relegated to mere comic relief, the manner of the demise of Saruman and Wormtongue, anything involving Aragorn and the palantir, Legolas and Gimli's drinking game in Edoras, Denethor as incompetent steward, Gondor being almost wholly unprepared for war with Mordor, Faramir's suicidal charge toward Osgiliath, the lack of resolution in the Éowyn storyline (theatrical cut), anything remotely involving Arwen and the Grey Havens, Arwen's life force being "tied to the ring," the sword Andúril being reforged two books too late, the occasion of the delivery of Andúril to Aragorn, the one ring not being destroyed the instant it meets the lava, and Hobbiton being all pristine and unscoured when the four hobbits get back to the Shire. What Peter Jackson did to Faramir and Denethor alone... for that, we wants to stick him with the pointy end of swordses, precious, and then, oh yes, my precious, order him tied with nassty elven rope and dropped unconscious among starving, stinking Mordor orcses.

That list turned out much longer than I expected. Moreover, I'm sure I'll think of more to add to it later. (UPDATE: I can't believe that I forgot to add the Frodo/Sam argument on the stairs of Cirith Ungol. I was especially unhappy about that departure from the books.)

Anyway, the recording is great. I like how Inglis puts the poetry to music. His Gollum voice is pretty good, too.

*Yes, the recordings are unabridged. I have this to say to any publisher who might dare to try to abridge The Lord of the Rings: burning at the stake is a far, far better end than the one that you deserve for committing such an atrocity.

Exciting book news

2008-10-16T21:51:00.001-07:00

The third volume of The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica comes out on October 21, and that occasion will cause much rejoicing chez moi. I love author-illustrator James A. Owen's quirky, biblophilic fantasy series,* and I can't wait to get my hands on The Indigo King. Here's a little video "book trailer" for it.

I just discovered that Jason Elam and Steve Yohn (authors of Monday Night Jihad, a really entertaining sports/counterterrorism thriller) are going to publish book two in that series on January 1, 2009. The new book is titled Blown Coverage. Excellent! Jason Elam, who is a former kicker for the Denver Broncos, the current kicker for the Atlanta Falcons, and the co-holder of the NFL record for longest field goal, is my favorite active player in the National Football League. He's held that distinction for a really long time; at the very least as long as Ed McCaffrey has been retired.

As of this week, there is a new Dresden Files title out — it's called The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle. If you've read anything by Jim Butcher, trust me, you'll like this. To make matters better, Jim is selling well enough as an author that a lot of public libraries have ordered this title, if the library system in my state is any indication. Don't let the fact that it's a graphic novel scare you away! If you have a bias against graphic novels, just think of it as a novella with many, many illustrations! Welcome to the Jungle is a prequel, taking place not too long before Storm Front (book 1), and it's very well done. Additionally, the Dresden Files are set in Chicago, and as one might expect with a title involving the word "jungle" and that city, there are several references in it to Upton Sinclair.

In other Butcher news, the second-to-last Codex Alera, Princeps' Fury, comes out in late November, a couple of weeks after Orson Scott Card's Ender in Exile. Yay! It has been a great summer and fall for most of my most favorite living authors. Many of these have produced or are soon to publish a new title for me to read and cherish: Butcher, Owen, Card, Elam & Yohn, Garth Nix, Eoin Colfer, John Scalzi, Christopher Paolini, Anthony Horowitz, John Flanagan, and others. Now, if only George R. R. Martin would get with the program and finish the next, long-overdue book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series already... same goes for Tamora Pierce and that Tortall book that was originally supposed to be published back in 2007.

*If you've read so much as a chapter in one of them, you know why I'm using the word bibliophilic. I seriously suspect that Mr. Owen has read every good book that could remotely be called fantasy that has ever been published. Interested parties: check out The Wonder Cabinet, Mr. Owen's blog.

A brief review of the new Inheritance book

2008-09-30T20:21:00.001-07:00

I finished Brisingr a few days ago, and here are my first impressions. I had re-read the first two books in the series right before delving into Brisingr, since I wanted them to be fresh in my mind as I devoured the new one.

Brisingr is definitely better than it's predecessor, Eldest, and probably better than the first book, Eragon. Christopher Paolini is maturing as a writer, and his protagonist has, in my mind, stopped coming off as pretentious and arrogant from time to time, something that got a little irksome toward the end of Eragon and in several parts of Eldest. Eragon has matured — he's less of a boy and more of a man. Finally.

The plot twist involving Eragon's family history? It was well executed, although I saw it coming. Reading between the lines, there was way too much ambiguity in certain statements by the red dragon's rider and the blue dragon toward the end of book 2 for things to have been the way Eragon assumed they were. (Side note: I love how fantasy books tend to reward close reading and re-reading!)

The development involving the objects called Eldunarí was great. Paolini dropped tantalizing hints all the way through the book but never revealed what was going on with them until close to the end. The payoff with that was quite satisfying. Speaking of hints dropped, I really want to know what the soldier Eragon overheard meant when he referenced Murtagh as publicly saying something that really incensed King Galbatorix in the chapter "Escape and Evasion." Quoth the soldier Derwood, "You heard what Morzan's spawn said well as I did." We never discover exactly what was said, even though Eragon wonders what it was repeatedly. Knowing Paolini, this will be hugely important in the fourth and final book in the Inheritance cycle.

In sum, I thought that this book was a satisfying read that still left many interesting plot threads open for resolution in the series's final installment. I give Brisingr five stars out of five. By the way, once you get to the end of the book, the title (the word for "fire" in the ancient language) makes sense on many levels.

A final note: I loved the shout-out to Doctor Who that appears about a fourth of a way through the book. Paolini admits the reference in the acknowledgements, so no, I'm not making this up! And because I am nothing if not helpful with book trivia, you can find the line in question in the middle of the chapter "Shadows of the Past" (on page 204 of the first edition American hardcover). Moreover, I shall quote it for you:

Arya signed a stop to the sentence she had been writing on the ground. Bending over, Eragon read, Adrift upon the sea of time, the lonely god wanders from shore to distant shore, upholding the laws of the stars above.

Bibliophilic happiness

2008-09-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, at long last, I will have a new Inheritance cycle book to read! It's been over three years since the last book in the series came out, and I am extremely excited for Brisingr. I predict that Christopher Paolini closes the book with a torturously climactic cliffhanger and plural important character deaths. It's the third book of a four book cycle, and given some of the twists he's thrown at us in the past, I figure this is pretty much inevitable.

NFL as coping mechanism

2008-09-19T21:03:00.001-07:00

I've followed the presidential campaigns closely in the last couple months. Seeing the sickeningly biased media and other attack machines in full gear sometimes gets me stressed, frustrated, and kind of depressed about the state of the American national political discourse.

Happily, however, I have found an activity to cheer me up enough to temporarily stop thinking about the election: when reading up on politics makes me feel unhappy, I head over to nfl.com, the ESPN AFC West blog, and similar websites and immerse myself in news about the NFL, most specifically about the Denver Broncos. I am also joyously celebrating the return of Gregg Easterbrook of TMQ (Tuesday Morning Quarterback). Of course, it helps that my favorite sports team unexpectedly started the season 2-0 by burning down the Oakland Raiders' house on Monday Night Football and then sticking it to the division rival Chargers in epically memorable fashion this past week. This year's Broncos, remarkably, are leading the league in offense while they're at it, and this week's TMQ even had something nice to say about the Broncos' head coach for what feels like the first time since before the 2006 draft.

In conclusion, taking a break and focusing on football = my election stress coping mechanism of choice. At the moment, anyway.

(For those who are curious, I'm voting for these people, and I'm genuinely happy and excited about the ticket, something that is a first for me in any election, not just presidential elections.)

Chocolate- & scifi-related hilarity

2008-08-25T19:41:00.000-07:00

This definitely qualifies as one of the more humorous things I've read online in the last couple weeks: "Selections from H.P. Lovecraft's Brief Tenure as a Whitman's Sampler Copywriter" from McSweeney's. It literally brought tears to my eyes. Via Sedenion.

Adding to the humor is that I've played the Lovecraftian fiction-themed board game Arkham Horror: Call of Cthulhu twice in the last month or so, thanks to friends.

Welcome to adjunct land

2008-08-25T17:51:00.000-07:00

(Note to those familiar with my trials and tribulations over the past three months in securing gainful employment: I finally have a job. It's a part-time job, so I'm still looking for more work, but what matters is that I will soon be drawing an actual paycheck. Hallelujah!)

After a break of not quite thirteen months, I'm back in the teaching game again. This time, however, I'm not a TA. I'm an adjunct instructor at a community college. New campus, new departmental policies, new textbook... many things are new in my first (non-babysitting) post-grad school job, even though I'm teaching Spanish once again. I think I will really like working for this employer. Sure, I'd love it if I were paid more or if the CC were to compensate me for the gas expended in my commute, but one can't have everything in life, and adjuncting pays significantly better than working in retail or at a restaurant. Plus, I'm actually using (some) knowledge accrued during my years toiling in graduate school, and I do get a few extra dollars and cents per hour because I possess a Master's degree.

Among the positives at my new job, I will be teaching in much nicer facilities than I did at the university. One of my classrooms is an amazing "smart" classroom and is superior to any similarly sized classroom I ever taught in or even saw at the aforementioned R1 university. Also, my superiors are letting me use the copy machine as much as I like. Why is this so wonderful, you ask? Well, it's great because they're not restricting me to the laughable two one-sided copies or one two-sided copy per student per week that I was granted during my TA days. Of course, there is so much actually useful online content for my textbook that I won't feel that I need to make very many copies in order to have a greater variety of interesting activities to do in class. Additionally, I'm going to have a lot more freedom and flexibility than I ever had as a TA. This is the first time I've had almost total control over a syllabus, for example, and I am enjoying this power thoroughly. Speaking of which, as I wrote mine, I found Kait's advice on the art of writing syllabi very helpful. Thanks, Kait!

On the subject of my search for one or two other part-time jobs, I'm trying to convince the public library system that they need to hire this particular multilingual bibliophile as a clerk or something to that effect.

I care about grammar

2008-08-12T22:34:00.000-07:00

Because I care about grammar and because things like spelling errors and misplaced and unnecessary apostrophes drive me to distraction, if I ever have children, I will likely buy them this book (or, alternatively, borrow it from the library) nearly as soon as they are literate. Their teachers and my sanity will thank me for doing so.

Sci-Fi hilarity

2008-07-21T20:05:00.000-07:00

One new blog that I've been reading frequently of late is that of Darth Mojo, who happens to have the very cool job of being a visual effects guy on Battlestar Galactica, and he does his job so well that he won an Emmy in the Special Visual Effects category for his work on BSG last year. BSG, as I should inform those who have never witnessed its greatness, is the best drama on television. Darth Mojo has also worked on visual effects for other fun works of science fiction such as Babylon 5 (which my husband and I are watching for the first time... we just finished season three, and that season was pretty spectacular). Anyway, Darth Mojo was in New York a while back and took a photograph of one of the funnier ads I've seen in a while. It involves Star Wars. It's hilarious.

For additional amusement, particularly if you are seriously into science fiction like we are, check out Darth Mojo's sci-fi dance mix, featuring rare, remixed themes and songs from or relating to Star Wars, Star Trek, The Prisoner, James Bond, Futurama, the old (1970's) Battlestar Galactica, Mission: Impossible, the (1960's) Batman, and several other sci-fi shows or movies.

Other entertaining sci-fi websites that I've been reading recently include io9 (a site whose motto is "Strung Out On Science Fiction") and Galactica Sitrep (a Galactica-centric site that is wonderful but which I should caution you not to visit unless you are completely caught up with the first half of the fourth season of Battlestar).

Ender

2008-07-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

Today, while searching my library's online catalog for my favorite authors, something I do every couple weeks (if not more often) just to see if the library has added any new titles of theirs, I made a most joyous discovery. Orson Scott Card has finally, finally finished a new novel to add to the Ender series!

This is the teaser Amazon.com gives for the new book, Ender in Exile:

Orson Scott Card returns to his best-selling series with a new Ender novel.
At the close of Ender's Game, Andrew Wiggin – called Ender by everyone – is told that he can no longer live on Earth, and he realizes that this is the truth. He has become far more than just a boy who won a game: he is the Savior of Earth, a hero, a military genius whose allegiance is sought by every nation of the newly shattered Earth Hegemony. He is offered the choice of living in isolation on Eros, at one of the Hegemony’s training facilities, but instead the twelve-year-old chooses to leave his home world and begin the long relativistic journey out to the colonies. With him went his sister Valentine, and the core of the artificial intelligence that would become Jane.
The story of those years has never been told… until now.

Ender in Exile will be published by Tor on November 11 of this year. HUZZAH! HUZZAH! HUZZAH! I am just about bursting with happiness. And desperately praying that the 384 pages of Ender in Exile will pick up and resolve several rather important plot threads that were left dangling at the end of Shadow of the Giant.

Caspian

2008-06-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

I've seen the new film version of Prince Caspian twice. I liked it better the second time I saw it than the first time. I think that's because I was thinking too much about book comparisons all throughout the first viewing. All in all, it's a good movie, although I think that its predecessor, The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, is better.

Assorted thoughts on Narnia books and movies

1. My favorite character of those who appear for a significant amount of time in more than one book? Hands down, it's Edmund. Incidentally, I love the way he has been played in the movies by Skandar Keynes.

2. My favorite character who appears for a significant amount of time in only one book? Shasta, closely followed by Aravis.

3. My favorite book? The Horse and His Boy.

4. The cover of The Magician's Nephew scared me when I was a child. I've been trying to find a picture of that cover on the internet but have been unsuccessful thus far. It was a drawing of Jadis gripping Polly's hair as Polly, Digory, and Jadis fall into The Wood between the Worlds, and it absolutely terrified me.

5. The original Pauline Baynes cover art for The Magician's Nephew is eerily similar to several covers of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. There are some similarities between Baynes's cover and the American PoA cover drawn by Mary GrandPré but a lot more with the Spanish and French cover art for the same Potter book.

An amusing note

2008-05-23T11:01:00.000-07:00

The following is definitely the most unique and most amusing note that anyone has included with a wedding gift for my fiancé and me thus far. This note arrived in the mail today in a package sent by one of my second cousins on my dad's side, who wrote, "Every home needs love, trust, understanding, and a pipe wrench. I'll do the pipe wrench, and you can do those other things." A pipe wrench and a drilling and driving set accompanied this invaluable piece of advice!

Public service announcement

2008-05-20T23:21:00.000-07:00

I'm changing my blogging handle from "the teaching assistant" to "Theta." Why? Well, for starters, I'm not a TA anymore! I'm also not in grad school anymore, for that matter! Theta, which forms part of my current blogging email address, was originally chosen because it was "The TA," minus the space. I also liked that it was the word for a Greek letter. So now that I'm done with grad school (for now, although perhaps not forever... I'm thinking about going to library school someday), the Theta in my email address and now my blogging name will just represent the Greek letter Theta, one of my favorite graphemes.*

*I'm a lit & languages geek. Of course I have favorite graphemes!

Booklust

2008-05-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

This new hardcover edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is gorgeous, and I think I'm going to need one. Look at the cover artwork up close: it's just beautiful. This is by far the best cover illustration for the first book in the Potter series that I've seen. Trust me, I've encountered a lot of them. It will be published on September 23, 2008.

For those who care, my next favorite cover of a Potter book #1 is this blue American mass market paperback. It looks a better in the flesh than it does in that picture, and yes, I do own a copy.

The Golden Compass

2008-05-10T11:38:00.000-07:00

I finally saw the cinematic adaptation of The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. I needed to take a study break, and I was able to borrow the dvd from someone I know, so I did. My observations:

It wasn't as anti-Christian (or anti-religious in general) as I expected. Of course, Pullman's pro-atheist agenda isn't nearly as obvious in the first book of His Dark Materials as it is in the second and third, where he gets really preachy.
Not knowing beforehand who was the secondary roles, I had a lot of moments of surprised recognition of prominent British thespians. For example, there was "Oh my goodness. Is that Derek Jacobi? What is he doing here?" That thought was followed three seconds later with "Christopher Lee! Christopher Lee and Derek Jacobi in the same scene!"
Having read the book, I felt seriously cheated by the ending and suspect that many readers of Pullman feel the same way. Lyra and Roger are NOT supposed to sail off into the arctic night in a hot air balloon at the close of the story, feeling optimistic about the future. I heard the music start to swell and thought: "the music, the tone of Lyra's voice, and the content of her speech to Roger is telling me that the screen is going to fade to black at any second and roll credits, and that is just not right. Come on, filmmakers, where's the heart-wrenching death of an innocent? Where's the moment of betrayal more shocking than Luke finding out that Vader is his father and all the literal and metaphorical fallout that the betrayal entails?" I was very displeased to find my prediction correct. The savage twist at the end of the book is absolutely essential to the story. This is not a case similar to the Shelob's Lair scene in the Lord of the Rings movies. In LotR, it worked to move it. Here, it doesn't. The betrayal and the bridge in the air belong at the end of the movie of The Golden Compass, not at the beginning of The Subtle Knife, should that film ever be made.
Dakota Blue Richards was a good choice to play Lyra. I'm very glad that an unknown was cast for this part.
The movie was way too short.
The soundtrack was underwhelming.
The CGI used to create the armored bears was impressive.
I enjoyed the movie, but it's not a dvd that I'd buy or a movie that I am likely to watch a second time, something that is strange because I usually feel differently about adaptations of fantasy books.

Hash browns

2008-05-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

This XKCD comic, entitled "Making Hash Browns," made me laugh a lot. The strangest things occur to the guy who draws XKCD...

See me type fast

2008-05-05T22:20:00.000-07:00

80 words

Speed test

Via Talk of Summertime. I can type faster than 80 wpm when I'm given real sentences to type, not just a list of random words.

Mail, mail everywhere

2008-05-05T21:46:00.001-07:00

One of the unexpected perks of getting married is that as the wedding date approaches, I get more real mail than junk mail. Okay, most of the mail is made up of response cards, but still... it's nice to open my mailbox every day and see many items that are not part of unsolicited mass mailings. I don't get all that much junk mail since I put my address on a no junk mail list as soon as I moved in to this place and I make an effort to get off retail stores' catalog rent lists, but some unwanted things still arrive in the mail, usually addressed to "[name of some previous resident of this apartment] or current resident." (The only unsolicited mass mailings that I really am happy to receive are Bed Bath & Beyond coupons and the weekly list of grocery store specials.)

The occasional appearance of a wedding-related package is great fun as well.

While we're on the subject of mail, I am really not happy about the latest hike in postage rates, which will take effect on May 12.

An odd assortment of library books

2008-05-03T20:19:00.000-07:00

Behold the books I currently have checked out from the public library. It's an odd combination. (All the voodoo ones are for a paper I'm writing on a novel by a famous Cuban author.) Here they are, alphabetized by title.

The best military science fiction of the 20th century
The code book: how to make it, break it, hack it, crack it by Simon Singh
The code book: the evolution of secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots, to quantum cryptography by Simon Singh
The Haitian vodou handbook: protocols for riding with the Lwa by Kenaz Filan
How to survive a robot uprising: tips on defending yourself against the coming rebellion by Daniel H. Wilson
Illegal beings: human clones and the law by Kerry Lynn Macintosh
Into the mainstream: conversations with Latin-American writers by Luis Harss
Magical realism: theory, history, community
The misenchanted sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Los pasos perdidos by Alejo Carpentier
Princess Academy by Shannon Hale
El reino de este mundo by Alejo Carpentier
Sacred arts of Haitian vodou
Sir Thursday by Garth Nix
A user's guide to the brain: perception, attention, and the four theaters of the brain by John J. Ratey
Le vodou haitien: reflet d'une societé bloqueé by Fridolin Saint-Louis
Vodou shaman: the Haitian way of healing and power by Ross Heaven
Why things break: understanding the world by the way it comes apart by Mark E. Eberhart

A remarkable anniversary

2008-05-02T00:39:00.000-07:00

MuggleNet was kind enough to remind me that today is ten years to the day from Voldemort's downfall, which took place on May 2, 1998. Let there be much rejoicing! Now where did I put all the butterbeer and chocolate frogs? I need them if I'm going to celebrate properly...

Random early morning thought

2008-04-26T04:37:00.000-07:00

I think that the Spanish verb soler is my new favorite word. This isn't the first time the thought has occurred to me; I just think that the last time it happened was over a year ago.

That is all for now.

On the subject of wedding invitations

2008-04-17T20:08:00.001-07:00

While preparing to send out wedding invitations in the mail, I discovered that only three letters of the alphabet are not represented as the initial letter of some guest's last name.

I realized this because the invitations were alphabetized. Yes, I alphabetized my wedding invitations, even though the order in which they were addressed was not alphabetical because I didn't have all the addresses or information about guests' titles at the time I needed to start writing out addresses. I alphabetize and categorize a lot of things. It irks me immensely when my books and dvds are out of order (which is, incidentally, yet another reason why the library system should hire me when I leave grad school at the end of this spring!). In the words of my best friend at her wedding reception: "I'm not obsessive compulsive. I'm detail oriented." I think that's my new favorite phrase.

A film of Sabriel?

2008-04-14T16:48:00.000-07:00

Garth Nix, author of Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen, among other books, says that the possibility of a film version of Sabriel is quite good. Not only that, but Mr. Nix would be co-writing the script! Sabriel is one of my favorite books, so I am understandably thrilled at the possibility of it being made into a movie with the author controlling a lot of the book-to-movie adaptation process. I would hate to see this magnificent book badly adapted, so I'm glad he'll be so involved if the project gets greenlighted.

Around the apartment building

2008-04-10T16:55:00.001-07:00

Last night, I was transferring wet clothes from a washer to a dryer in the basement of my building when I noticed that there is a small, circular, old metal drain in the floor stamped with the letters ASCO. This made me laugh. Why, you ask? Asco doesn't mean anything in English. In Spanish, however, the exclamation ¡qué asco! means gross! or disgusting! A drain in the floor can often merit such a comment, although this one wasn't since, happily, the management takes pretty good care of the building.

Out of the mouths of babes...

2008-04-08T18:39:00.000-07:00

This little video clip of a three-year-old summarizing Star Wars: A New Hope is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. Check it out!

XKCD hilarity

2008-04-03T22:10:00.000-07:00

This new XKCD comic made me laugh for several reasons. Number one, ranting about grammar and spelling is an activity dear to my heart. Number two, I enjoy the show in question. Number three, the actress mentioned is one of my favorites.

Meet My Precious 3.0

2008-04-02T03:15:00.000-07:00

As you'll recall, I name my gadgets. Computer-related gadgets, anyway. Not only do I name them, I make it so that they identify themselves with their proper names when connected to other devices.

My now-defunct digital camera is My Palantir.

I call my old third generation iPod Sweetness.

My little 2 GB USB drive is known as Messagehawk.

My much loved G4 PowerBook is My Precious. I have had this laptop since the summer of 2003! It definitely exceeded its expected life span, and it's still functional (although slower than it used to be), but the time finally came to upgrade. Technically, however, this laptop is My Precious 2.0. It had a predecessor, a G3 "Pismo" Powerbook, you know, one of the black ones that, when open, had an Apple logo that appeared to be upside down. My dad got it for me off eBay when I started college in 2001. My Precious 1.0 died an ugly and unexpected death in June 2003, when I was right in the middle of taking summer school geology and astronomy classes in the Black Hills in South Dakota. Fortunately, I wasn't working on any papers in "rocks for jocks" at the time.

Anyway, the point of this post is to introduce you to my newest technological toy, My Precious 3.o. It is a gorgeous new white MacBook with a 160 GB hard drive, 2 GB memory, superdrive (CD-RW + DVD-RW), and all sorts of other shiny features. I particularly enjoy the fact that it has much better speakers than the nearly five-year-old My Precious 2.0. Don't worry, I'm not going to abandon 2.0 — as it's still functional, I'll periodically use the application "Time Machine" to clone myself a copy of all the files on My Precious 3.0.

A second introduction is in order. When I got my new computer it came with a free Canon printer/scanner/copier, which obviously needs a name of its own. I've decided to call it Tavi after the character from the Codex Alera books.

My fiancé names his computers, too. His are mostly named after mathematicians, which is appropriate, because he is one. An interesting bit of trivia about us is that when we get married, the two of us we will have computers running a total of five different operating systems, if I remember correctly. Mac OSX (10.5), two versions of Linux, and two versions of Windows, I think. I'm responsible for OSX; the other, inferior, operating systems are on his machines.

Assorted things I've realized

2008-04-01T13:00:00.000-07:00

1. I like dead conquistadors. Reading and writing about them, I mean.

2. Caribbean literature post-José Martí is just not my thing. Arguably, Caribbean lit post-Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, who died two decades earlier in the 19th century than Martí did, is not my thing. And why is it that I typically enjoy reading stuff recently written by people from the rest of Latin America or in Spain so much more than current Caribbean authors?

3. Of all the main characters in the fantasy and science fiction books I've read, the person I'd most want to have my back in a tough situation is Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files. Speaking of The Dresden Files, the latest book in the series goes on sale today, April 1. Sméagol has a resserved copy of Small Favor waiting at Bordersss, oh yes, precious!

4. Currently, the dubious honor of "novel I've hated reading the most" is held by the Trilogía sucia de la Habana. It may well hold that spot for the rest of my lifetime. I cannot count the ways I hate that book. The only reason I kept reading after the first chapter was that I had to - it was assigned reading for a class. Henceforth, I shall endeavor to avoid the genre of "dirty realism" like I would hot pokers, nuclear waste, and avian flu.

5. The Codex Alera (by Jim Butcher) and Ranger's Apprentice (by John Flanagan) are two dangerously addictive series, especially the former.

New favorite quotes

2008-04-01T01:12:00.000-07:00

"Yeah, chocolate. Chocolate fends off all kinds of nasty stuff. And if you get hungry while warding off evil, you have a snack. It's multipurpose equipment."

— Harry Dresden, in Blood Rites

"'So we get a plan,' I said. 'Any suggestions?'

'Blow up the building,' Kincaid said without looking up. 'That works good for vampires. Then soak what's left in gasoline. Set it on fire. Then blow it all up again.'"

—Harry and the mercenary Kincaid, in Blood Rites

"'I call you to account, traitor!' Tavi thundered, and a nearby wall gave way beneath the shuddering earth and fell. 'I call you to the juris macto! And may the crows feast on the unjust!'"

— Tavi, in Captain's Fury

"All right, that's it! No more Mr. Nice Gaius!"

—Gaius Baltar, in "Six Degrees of Separation," Episode 7 of Battlestar Galactica Season 1

"'Ron, you know full well Harry and I were brought up by Muggles!' said Hermione. 'We didn’t hear stories like that when we were little, we heard "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Cinderella"—'

'What’s that, an illness?' asked Ron."

—Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"'What are you doing with all those books anyway?' Ron asked.

'Just trying to decide which ones to take with us,' said Hermione. 'When we're looking for the Horcruxes.'
'Oh, of course,' said Ron, clapping a hand to his forehead. 'I forgot we'll be hunting down Voldemort in a mobile library.'"

—Ron and Hermione, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

This had better be an April Fool's joke: Narnia edition

2008-03-31T21:57:00.001-07:00

What had better be a joke, exactly? THIS. Lindsey Lohan in Narnia.

I about had a heart attack when the news popped up in my RSS feed. It had better be a fake news story. If it's not a joke, I am going to be forced to boycott the film version of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and neither Walden Media nor I really want that to become necessary.

Happy Easter, everyone

2008-03-23T07:58:00.000-07:00

He is risen!

A holiday that really should be observed all year long

2008-03-04T16:46:00.000-08:00

Today is March 4, and I wish you all a happy National Grammar Day! Truly, this day of observance is a splendid idea. Via Devon.

C.S. Lewis's handwriting

2008-02-27T14:09:00.000-08:00

This is fascinating: to celebrate The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe recently being named the best children's book of all time in a recent poll, the publisher HarperCollins hired a graphologist to analyze Mr. Lewis's handwriting. The results are quite interesting — you should check out the article!

Records I could have done without setting

2008-02-18T14:02:00.001-08:00

This fall and winter have brought crazy amounts of snow and similar forms of precipitation (curse them, the freezing rainses and "wintry mix" — Sméagol is displeased) to my little university town, and today I set a new personal record for longest time spent scraping ice off my car so that I could actually see out through the windshield and front windows. There was so much ice on the car, the windows were looking almost opaque. Currently, having just come in from the cold feeling very numb and kind of sore, I am sitting on the couch trying to thaw myself out and fantasizing about having a garage someday. Time to go make hot chocolate...

Thoughts on spy stories

2008-02-13T16:54:00.000-08:00

There's something about the genre of espionage that has always attracted me. In hindsight, I think the first time I realized I had a thing for stories about spies was, oddly, due to Focus on the Family. They produce a radio show for kids called Adventures in Odyssey.* When I was in late elementary school and junior high, sometimes my siblings and I would listen to the show before bedtime or during long car trips. One particular two-episode story, "A Name, Not A Number," focused on Jason Whittaker, an ex-NSA agent who gets drawn back into the spy game to foil biological terrorist attack by a group called Red Scorpion. Not coincidentally, "A Name, Not a Number" was my favorite adventure in Odyssey of all time.

Recently, I've been watching Spooks, a BBC spy series that is marketed in the U.S. under the name MI-5. The agency in question, MI-5, is responsible for protecting Britain's interests at home and safeguarding the country in general. This means that the MI-5 operatives on the show don't make too many international trips, although they do get out of their London office frequently. In several respects, Spooks is the show that Fox's 24 wishes it could be, only minus the the real-time format. Moreover, Spooks manages to avoid feeling repetitive the way that the events at 24's agency CTU increasingly do. It also seems more realistic. Plus, the spies have British accents. I ask you, what's not to like about that?

I noticed an analogy that can be made between Spooks and another favorite spy drama of mine, ALIAS. The protagonists of each show work for a government agency. Spooks, as we've mentioned, centers around a group of top MI-5 agents. In the case of ALIAS, the protagonist, Sydney Bristow, is either working for the CIA or some U.S.-run black ops agency, depending on which season it is. Our protagonists and their home agency inevitably end up clashing repeatedly with at least one sister agency over the course of the series, and herein lies our analogy. MI-6 : MI-5 :: NSA : Sydney's agency. The rival agency proceeds to meddle in the affairs of our protagonists, leak information that foils their ops, be riddled with moles, get good agents killed, put on airs of superiority, and occasionally have operatives who engage in conspiracies against the state. Just about every time someone from the NSA shows up in ALIAS, the viewer immediately starts thinking "Nothing good can come of this," "Oh no, not those annoying people again," or both. This is true with MI-6 in Spooks as well — albeit with a few exceptions, such as when Harry Pearce (the head of MI-5) recruits a few former MI-6 officers to cross over to MI-5 during the third season.

*A little known fact outside the conservative Christian subculture in the U.S. (and to some degree within it) is that Focus on the Family produces some really good radio theater. For example, check out their adaptations of Les Misérables or any one of The Chronicles of Narnia, the latter of which is hosted by Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis's stepson.

Inheritance Cycle Happiness

2008-02-02T22:05:00.001-08:00

A few weeks ago, Christopher Paolini let it be known that the third book in the series — which is now to be a quartet rather than a trilogy, to which I respond "the more the merrier" — shall be called Brisingr. Interested parties will also want to know that the next adventures of Eragon shall be ours, oh yes my precious, ours to read on September 20 and that Amazon.com currently claims that the book is 704 pages long. It's got cool cover art, too. Yay. It's been a long wait for this book, so it's great to finally know when it will arrive! The previous volume in the Inheritance cycle came out barely a month after the sixth Harry Potter, way back in August 2005.

In other exciting book news, I was pleased to learn of the existence of a sixth Artemis Fowl book, The Time Paradox. It'll be out in July. Other books whose publication I eagerly await over the next year:
*The Final Warning: A Maximum Ride Novel by James Patterson - March 17
*Small Favor by Jim Butcher (Dresden Files #10) - April 1
*Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials novella #2) - April 22
*The Magician by Michael Scott (Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #2) - June 24
*Superior Saturday by Garth Nix (Keys to the Kingdom #6) - July 1
*Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show by Orson Scott Card and Edmund R. Schubert - August 5
*Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi - August 19
*Backup, a Dresdenverse novella with Thomas Raith as the protagonist, by Jim Butcher - October 31
*The currently untitled fifth Codex Alera, also by Jim Butcher - Decemberish (this is my new favorite fantasy series)

Who I'll be cheering for

2008-02-02T21:11:00.000-08:00

I love watching the NFL. Unfortunately, this year, my team — the Denver Broncos — didn't do as well as usual and missed the playoffs for the second straight year. The reason I bring up the subject of football is that, as you will have noticed, unless you've been hiding under a rock lately, Super Bowl XLII is tomorrow. This year, I'll be watching. Last year, I didn't pay quite so much attention to the NFL in the postseason for a couple reasons, the main one being that I was still kind of depressed about the very recent January 2007 murder of Darrent Williams, one of the Broncos' defensive backs, and didn't feel like watching a whole lot of football. But tomorrow, I'll be eagerly watching the Super Bowl and rooting against the New England Patriots. My reasons for hoping the Patriots lose are legion. I would have rooted against them even if it weren't for this season's spygate scandal.

On a related note, I feel old. Why? This year's Super Bowl is numbered XLII. It has been ten years since the Broncos, led by John Elway, had their first Super Bowl victory in Super Bowl XXXII, beating the defending champions — the Green Bay Packers (Ha! Take that, cheeseheads! No repeat for you!) — in San Diego. And then Denver repeated as victors the next year, Elway's final season, by beating the Atlanta Falcons into the turf in XXXIII. Good times, but I was in high school then! Other related note: man, I miss Elway. And Terrell Davis. He was a phenomenal running back. Ed McCaffrey, a wide receiver we in the Rockies all adored. The ever-silent offensive line. Shannon Sharpe, best tight end ever. Plus many other fantastic players who are now retired or approaching retirement. The list goes on.

Science fiction and big questions of life

2008-01-22T14:14:00.000-08:00

In a recent edition of Wired, Clive Thompson argues that science fiction is the last bastion of philosophical writing. It's an interesting and brief little article; you should read it! I tend to agree with his thesis that "big-idea novels are more likely to have an embossed foil dragon on the cover than a Booker Prize badge," although I'd say "science fiction and fantasy" rather than just "science fiction." Nearly four years of graduate education in a literature program in addition to my being a voracious reader since the moment I was first literate convince me of this. There are so many more big ideas in the novels of a John Scalzi, a J.K. Rowling, or an Orson Scott Card than there are in a Gabriel García Márquez or an Isabel Allende, whose work I've studied in detail.

For what it's worth

2008-01-16T16:05:00.000-08:00

I took a quiz on BSG characters and which one I'm most like.

Which Battlestar Galactica Character Are You?

Created by BuddyTV

Interesting. Not all that accurate, but still. Interesting. For what it's worth, if I were a character in the Battlestar Galactica universe, I think I would be from the colony of Gemenon. You know, because the Gemenese, unlike a lot of others, believe in the literal truth of the scriptures, their relevance to daily life, prayer, practicing one's faith, and so on.

The Academic Olympics

2008-01-11T20:37:00.000-08:00

The Little Professor suggests events for an Academic Olympics. They're very funny. I am currently competing in the Graduate Student Slalom ("Racing against the clock, competitors ski through seminars, oral and written exams, TAships, dissertation proposals, dissertations, and defenses. In years past, many competitors have wiped out along the route") ... very appropriate, since skiing is the only sport listed there that I've ever been remotely good at.

A book recommendation

2008-01-11T00:17:00.000-08:00

For those of you who enjoy fantasy or adventure stories, I strongly suggest you pick up a copy of Here, There Be Dragons by author-illustrator James A. Owen, a book that I finished late tonight and absolutely loved. It is a splendid, delightful little book. I grinned the whole way through it, I was having so much fun reading. I especially recommend Here, There Be Dragons to people who like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. I eagerly await reading its new sequel, The Search for the Red Dragon, which was published less than two weeks ago. We wants it, we needs it, we must have this book... methinks Sméagol will visit the bookstore again, yesss, precious...

Side note 1: those of you studying literature in some shape or form will be pleased to know that there is an immense quantity of intertextuality in this book to entertain you. Especially that involving fantasy authors throughout the ages.

Side note 2: Orson Scott Card loved the book as well and wrote a very nice cover blurb for it: "Is there anyone who wouldn't enjoy reading Here, There Be Dragons? If there is such a person, I haven't met him, and I doubt that I would like him if I did. I am only disappointed that, because this book is so new, I'll have to wait too long to read the sequels."

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T10:27:00.000-08:00

¡Feliz navidad y prospero el año nuevo!

December 2007 & a Do Thy Research tradition

2007-12-17T13:36:00.000-08:00

Seven projects down, two to go. Those numbers make me feel like I've actually accomplished something.

I doubt you'll hear from me much until the last two projects (research papers, both of them) are completed. In the meantime, I leave you with a poll. Often in the past, when I'm about to fly home for the holidays or for some other reason, I've asked you to help me decide what book I should read first on the plane. So, have at it! You have until the evening of Saturday, Dec. 22 to vote, since that's when I'll be packing. You may vote more than once, if you so choose.

(Much later: the poll's closed now, and its javascript just started doing something funny to the blog, so I've removed it.)

Works Cited

2007-12-13T01:19:00.001-08:00

Now that the most recent project (project #5 of 9) is finished and ready to print, it's time to take the 18 books I borrowed from the library for that research paper back. They won't all fit in my backpack! Multiple campus library trips, then.

December 2007

2007-12-13T00:02:00.000-08:00

Nine major projects/exams/papers of this semester's finals season.

Five down.

Four to go.

Reading the Ryanverse

2007-12-06T16:30:00.000-08:00

One of my friends wanted to know in what order I thought he should read Tom Clancy's books about Jack Ryan (and books featuring other characters first introduced in books about Jack Ryan). I know that at least several people reading this blog will be interested in my opinion, so here's my answer.

I recommend reading them either in order of publication or in order of the chronology within the series, but there is room for flexibility with Red Rabbit and Without Remorse. You could read Red Rabbit at any time after reading Patriot Games. You'll want to read Without Remorse at some point before you get to Rainbow Six, but aside from that it really doesn't matter with Without Remorse, since Jack isn't the protagonist or instrumental in setting up the book's premise.

I myself have yet to read The Bear and the Dragon or The Teeth of the Tiger - maybe I'll get to those over Christmas break - but it's safe to say you'll want to save those for the end. (UPDATE: I did get to those two books over break, and I liked the latter much better than the former.)

Chronology of publication
The Hunt for Red October (1984)
Patriot Games (1987)
The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988)
Clear and Present Danger (1989)
The Sum of All Fears (1991)
Without Remorse (1993)
Debt of Honor (1994)
Executive Orders (1996)
Rainbow Six (1998)
The Bear and the Dragon (2000)
Red Rabbit (2002)
The Teeth of the Tiger (2003)

Chronology of events within the series
Without Remorse
Patriot Games
Red Rabbit
The Hunt for Red October
The Cardinal of the Kremlin
Clear and Present Danger
The Sum of All Fears
Debt of Honor
Executive Orders
Rainbow Six
The Bear and the Dragon
The Teeth of the Tiger

Happy reading!

Strange translations

2007-12-04T20:57:00.000-08:00

For some reason, perhaps because it's late, I find this hilarious: edible wikipedia. Who knew?

Ups and downs

2007-12-04T20:13:00.001-08:00

The semester is close to over. But I'm facing the worst end-of-academic-term time crunch I've had in four years of grad school. Taking a course overload was such a bad idea. Remind me to never do that again.

One of my research papers is going well. With the others, however, there are some slight problems including but not limited to writer's block and lack of time. This is making me miss the brutal essay tests of final exams past, and I wouldn't have thought that possible.

The snow that is falling is pretty. But my car is currently frozen to the road and refuses to come unstuck. Every time a snowplow goes by, the situation deteriorates. Just how stuck is it? Well, the wheels don't turn. They can't turn. The most popular theory about why this is so involves ice meeting my car's undercarriage and brake pedals. Either that or Jadis, the White Witch, has made it to our world for a second time and my car did something to offend Her Imperial Majesty, Queen of Narnia, Chatelaine of Cair Paravel, and Empress of the Lone Islands, but apparently not anything offensive enough for her to bother turning the thing to stone. I'll grant you, the vehicle is about as useful as a stone at the present time.

Understandably, I'm not particularly happy right now. Or at least, I wasn't. It's amazing what the really good european milk chocolate my fiancé just gave me and the Prince Caspian trailer going online have been doing to improve my mood...

Very recent acquisitions

2007-12-01T13:17:00.000-08:00

I love the booksale that an organization supporting my local library branch has every month or so. There was one today. I went, I browsed, and I scored many books for under $10. Last month was even better: more books than I got today for under $5. Unfortunately for me, the science fiction/fantasy section was only 2/3 the size it normally is today, but life goes on. There will have to be more books there that interest me in a month or two! Here's a list of some of my new book friends from today and a month ago, roughly categorized:

Espionage/mysteries/thrillers
Tom Clancy (1): Patriot Games
Joseph Kanon (1): Los Alamos
John Le Carre (3): assorted novels of espionage
Robert Ludlum (2): assorted thrillers
Dorothy Sayers (5): assorted Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries

Historical fiction
Tracy Chevalier (1): Girl with a Pearl Earring
Patrick O'Brian (1): Master and Commander
Betty Vander Els (1): The Bombers' Moon - one of my favorite books to borrow again and again from the library when I was in junior high school

Science fiction/fantasy/alt history
Trudi Canavan (1): The Novice
Orson Scott Card (2): a couple books from the Alvin Maker series
Robin Hobb (1): Shaman's Crossing
James Patterson (1) Maximum Ride: School's Out — Forever, book 2 of the Maximum Ride trilogy
Anne Rice (1): Interview with the Vampire
Lemony Snicket (3): books 2-4 of A Series of Unfortunate Events
Harry Turtledove (1): Guns of the South

Nonfiction
Cathy Dunn MacRae (1): Presenting Young Adult Fantasy Fiction
Perry Moore (1): The Official Illustrated Movie Companion to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

There are probably five to ten more books that should be on this list whose titles I am forgetting at the moment. I feel like there were at least three Madeleine L'Engle and one or two Ursula LeGuin books among those acquired last month, for example; however, I forget which ones they were, since both of those authors are represented fairly well on my bookshelves.

Of the titles listed, the only books I bought that I had already read are the ones by James Patterson, Tom Clancy, and Betty Vander Els. It'll be fun to see how much I like all the new books! Not a bad haul for a price tag smaller than $15...

Thought of the day

2007-11-08T23:01:00.000-08:00

As I was studying vocabulary late this evening, I realized that I now know enough Kichwa vocabulary and grammar that I could come up with at least one good way of insulting a cylon. In Kichwa, I'd tell it to go toast something. (For those of you unfamiliar with Battlestar Galactica and cylons, suffice it to say that "toaster" is a pejorative term that humans have for cylons because the first model of cylon, to quote Gaius Baltar, looked like a "walking chrome toaster.") This was an unexpected side benefit of the culinary-themed vocabulary unit we've been going through in class and of learning how to make imperatives. I'm sure my fiancé, at the very least, will be amused.

Monday Night ... Jihad

2007-11-04T01:03:00.000-07:00

Jason Elam, my and every Denver Bronco fan's favorite kicker, will soon publish what what looks to be a very interesting novel, full of action, adventure, intrigue, international conflict, and professional football. It's got a great title, too: Monday Night Jihad. From DenverBroncos.com, here's some information regarding the book's premise:

After a tour of duty in Afghanistan, Riley Covington is living his dream as a professional linebacker when he comes face-to-face with a radical terrorist group on his own home turf.

Drawn into the nightmare around him, Riley returns to his former life as a member of a special ops team that crosses oceans in an attempt to stop the escalating attacks. But time is running out, and it soon becomes apparent that the terrorists are on the verge of achieving their goal: to strike at the very heart of America.

I definitely intend to read that. Interested parties can read more about the book in the Rocky Mountain News.

If Sybil Trelawney forecasted Apple's future...

2007-11-02T13:49:00.000-07:00

Those interested in gadgets and computers, whether or not they belong to the Cult of Mac as I do, may be interested in a list the folks at Wired cooked up of the 15 Dumbest Apple Predictions of All Time, predictions made by people who, to make an appropriate Harry Potter reference, were really channeling their inner Sybil Trelawney* when they made those statements. The list is self-described as "some of the most awesome flubs to be found in the futures that people have wished for Apple" and is accompanied by an amusing picture. Amusing to me, anyway.

*For those of you who have not read up through Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Sybil Trelawney is the not-particularly-gifted Divination teacher at Hogwarts. The number of accurate predictions or prophesies she is known to have made about the future can be counted on one hand.

When it rains, it pours

2007-11-02T02:00:00.000-07:00

On the science fiction & fantasy front, a number recent developments have made me very happy. I know that at least several of said developments will be of interest to a number of you, so I thought I'd type them out here. The rest of you can interpret the books mentioned as recommended reading!

Orson Scott Card just published another book involving Ender Wiggin, and, courtesy of the public library, I have read it! I think I'd classify this story more as a novella than a novel: it's a short little book. A War of Gifts is very different in tone than any of the other stories involving the Battleschool, but that's not a bad thing at all. I thought the book was excellent. Well done once again, Mr. Card. I salute you.

The seventh book in Anthony Horowitz's very, very entertaining Alex Rider series becomes available in America in about two weeks. It's already out in Britain and Australia. I am waiting impatiently to get my copy of Snakehead from the library and see what exactly SCORPIA wants this time with our favorite 14-year-old MI6 operative. Ok, so the only stuff the books about Alex have in the way of fantasy or science fiction is the occasional futuristic gadget that Smithers creates for Alex. Anyway. For those of you unfamiliar with these stories, Smithers is to Alex Rider as Q is to James Bond.

There's going to be another book in the Maximum Ride series! It shall be called The Final Warning. More in the way of human-avian hybrids flying around, endeavoring to avoid capture, and trying to save the world is always a cause for rejoicing.

Only five months to go until Harry Dresden, wisecracking wizard detective from Chicago, returns in Small Favor. I have found Jim Butcher and his Dresden Files the most helpful of any author or series for coping with with post-Potter withdrawal.

It was announced just the other day that there will be four, not merely three, books in Christopher Paolini's Inheritance cycle, and we now know the publication date for the as-yet-untitled third book about Eragon, the intrepid dragon rider from Alagaësia: September 23, 2008. Those of you who care can read more about this happy news at Shur'tugal.

As pertains science fiction and fantasy in other media...

"Battlestar Galactica: Razor" premieres on November 24!

"The Golden Compass" comes to theaters on December 7. I'll probably wait to watch it until Christmas break, though — it's going to be a very busy end-of-semester, and I'm not enough of a Philip Pullman fan to need to watch it opening weekend. (Again.)

And, finally, Joss Whedon (of "Angel," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and "Firefly" fame) has a new show in the works! It's called "Dollhouse," and Tim Minear (also heavily involved in "Firefly" and "Angel") will have a role in its creation as well. I was pleased to learn that once again, genres will be mixed in this new show of Joss's. I love hybridity of genres.

Recreational Reading Happiness

2007-10-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

It's been a long week with not enough sleep. Similar to the past few weeks in that respect, actually, and that partially explains why I haven't written anything here for a few weeks. I have got to stop burning the proverbial candle at both ends! Anyway, I read something over at Australian author Garth Nix's website that made me forget entirely about what a long week it's been and replaced my feelings of tiredness with a sense of euphoria. Mr. Nix announces:

I will be writing two more novels set in the Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre. They will be published by Allen & Unwin in Australia and by HarperCollins US and HarperCollins UK.

The first, probably out in 2010, will be Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen, which is the story of the young woman who eventually became Chlorr of the Mask. It takes place about 320 years before the events in Sabriel. The second is untitled, and is a sequel of sorts to Abhorsen, taking place several years later. It should be out in 2011. Both 2010 and 2011 seem like a long way away but no doubt will sneak up on me horribly when I least expect it. Sometimes I think time is a practitioner of the secret Welsh martial art of Llap-Goch.

Before those two Old Kingdom books I have to finish The Keys to the Kingdom (I'm nearly done with Superior Saturday, so just Lord Sunday after that) and there will also be a standalone science fiction novel, called A Confusion of Princes, which should be out in 2009.

Huzzah! The Old Kingdom series is among my top five favorite fantasy series ever. The others on the current list, for those who were wondering, are Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Protector of the Small quartet by Tamora Pierce. Suffice it to say, knowing that one of these series has books yet to come made my day.

Recent themes in my grad school experience

2007-09-29T16:47:00.001-07:00

If there is an overarching theme for what I'm working on in grad school this semester, it is getting in touch with my inner historian. The last several years have had much more to do with my inner literary critic, and I really enjoy this opportunity to do more purely historical and historiographical analysis. Playing with manuscripts now and then will be fun, too.

This summer, I still felt burnt-out from the events of the 2006-2007 academic school year (with an emphasis on fall 2006, when my life's - not just grad school's - theme was "I will survive" as I finished work on my M.A.). Summer's theme was pretty well illustrated by a song-and-dance routine from a television show I happen to like. You can watch it here, courtesy of youtube.

That song, titled "Going through the motions," appears in the episode "Once More, With Feeling" of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's sixth season.

Something old, something new

2007-09-22T13:52:00.001-07:00

An official trailer for the second season of the BBC's very entertaining new version of Robin Hood was just made available online ... and there was much rejoicing!

Science fiction goodness and surviving grad school

2007-09-19T13:07:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that I'm a fan of science fiction. In fact, science fiction (in books and on screen) is high on the list of the top ten things that have helped me deal with the Gehenna of stress that comes with grad school. One of my favorite scifi authors is John Scalzi. He writes in other genres too, but is best known for the novel Old Man's War, which won him the Campbell Award last year. Today, I discovered that he will publish a fourth book in the universe in which Old Man's War takes place. I was surprised by this news - I thought he was done writing about it after completing the trilogy made up by the aforementioned book, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony and penning a few short stories connected to it. Fortunately, my assumption was incorrect. Around May 2008, one will be able to pick up a shiny new copy of Zoe's Tale at the bookstore. Knowing that makes me happy.

While on the subject of that which makes my Ph.D. program in Spanish easier to endure, I present the current incarnation of the list referenced earlier. It is arranged alphabetically.

The top 10 list of that which helps the most with combatting stress in grad school

Chocolate
Family
Fantasy - in books and on screen (J.K. Rowling in particular)
Friends
Internet study breaks
InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship
God
My fiancé
Science fiction - in books and on screen (especially Orson Scott Card, John Scalzi, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica)
YA (young adult) literature

And then there was Caspian

2007-09-17T13:19:00.000-07:00

This little poster brightened my day.

Missing Madeleine L'Engle

2007-09-07T12:22:00.000-07:00

Madeleine L'Engle, one of my absolute favorite writers, died last night. She was 88 years old.

From a time spanning roughly sixth grade through the end of high school, I wanted to be Vicky Austin, the protagonist of Troubling a Star and several other books in L'Engle's Chronos series. For those of you not intimately familiar with L'Engle and her novels, the Chronos books are primarily about the Austin family, whereas the Kairos books are centered around the Murrays and O'Keefes. I always thought it cool that she named these series after two Greek words for time. There are a few characters who have significant roles in both Chronos and Kairos. (For those of you who like trivia, those are Adam Eddington, Canon Tallis, and Zachary Gray.) The Kairos series is likely the most familiar to the public in general, as it includes A Wrinkle in Time.

L'Engle was a prolific author, and my favorites of her books are Many Waters, Meet the Austins, The Young Unicorns, Dragons in the Waters, A Wrinkle in Time and, most of all, Troubling a Star. I'm not sure how many times I reread these books, but in the case of Many Waters and Troubling a Star, it had to have been more than ten times each. I reread novels that I love frequently, but it's unusual for me to do so more than five times. L'Engle is one of a few authors who has written at least five novels that I have reread many, many times over the years. Others among this select few include C.S. Lewis (The Space Trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia, Till We Have Faces), J.K. Rowling, Laura Ingalls Wilder (the Little House books), L.M. Montgomery (the Anne of Green Gables series), and Roald Dahl.

Polyglots have more fun

2007-09-05T21:42:00.000-07:00

When I was little, I dreamed of growing up and being a polyglot.

Sometime in early elementary school, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to be able to speak and think in more than one language when I grew up. I have no idea how that idea came to me - none of my friends or close relatives were bilingual, and where I went to school, the chance for exposure to foreign languages wouldn't happen until junior high school. Back in elementary school, I didn't know what "polyglot" meant. I didn't even know what "bilingual" signified until my dad told the joke about how if you know three languages you're trilingual, if you know two languages you're bilingual, and if you only know one, then you're an American. Now, I find myself in a Ph.D. program in Spanish, still working on the polyglot thing and having a wonderful time with it. I'm only fluent in two languages at present, but I hope to achieve fluency in one or more within the next several years. Here is the list of languages I have studied, in chronological order of when I began learning them.

1. English (my native language)
2. Spanish (fluent; I began studying it when I was 12)
3. Koine Greek (very rusty, reading knowledge only; I started it when I was 19)
4. French (intermediate speaking ability, decent reading knowledge; I started when I was 20)

Well, as the new school year begins, I get to add another language to the list. I'm starting language #5 this fall.*

For me, diving into a new language is always thrilling. It's hard to describe how it's thrilling; it just is. I am having a grand time memorizing new vocabulary words (yachachic = "teacher") and learning the most basic of verbs (cana = "to be"), and I can't wait to see where adjectives and adverbs can be placed in a sentence! Learning a new language is especially fun this time because there's an added challenge... no English cognates! The language in question isn't a romance language... it's not even indo-european.

Ñucaca quichuata yachacunimi.

That's Quichua for "I'm learning Quichua." Specifically, I'm learning an Ecuadorian dialect of Quichua (sometimes spelled "Kichwa"; also known as "Runa Shimi"). I've always wanted to learn a non indo-european language, and I'm thrilled that I have the opportunity to do so in grad school! It's times like these (read: learning a new language + taking a break from teaching) when grad school has its most fun moments - fun for me, anyway.

*After much deliberation, I decided that I shouldn't count Sindarin or Parseltongue.

What does "humanities" mean, anyway?

2007-09-03T20:36:00.000-07:00

Jorge Cham, who draws the wonderful online comic strip "Piled Higer & Deeper" (also known as "PhD"), finally added a token humanities graduate student to the cast of regularly appearing characters! One can view the introduction of the character in question here. His name is Gerard, and he studies German lit. Immediately following Gerard's introduction, the comic strip endeavors to explain how the social sciences are different from the humanities. This Ph.D. student in Spanish is very amused.

Battlestar Galactica!

2007-08-29T22:52:00.001-07:00

Because I know some of you are interested... here is some new footage from the upcoming BSG tv special known as Battlestar Galactica: Razor. It alludes to what the "razor" part of the title could mean.

What I've been up to lately

2007-08-21T22:56:00.000-07:00

As my father noted earlier this evening, things have been rather quiet around here. Here are several things among many that have gotten in the way of me taking the time to write anything here...

1. Visiting my future in-laws for a week or so
2. Traveling for half a week to attend the wedding of a friend from college
3. Moving (although that happened weeks ago, internet access is not yet set up at the new place)
4. Developing an addiction to Tom Clancy's novels involving espionage and political intrigue. This summer, I've read these novels (or listened to them as an unabridged* audiobook): The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, The Cardinal in the Kremlin, Clear and Present Danger, Red Rabbit, and Without Remorse. Most of the aforementioned books clock in at upwards of 700 pages, Tom Clancy likes his descriptions full of realism, and there are spies of one sort or another running around all over. That all translates to "I've been having a lot of fun reading lately!"
5. Discovering season one of the new Doctor Who. It's very entertaining.
6. Trying to plan my wedding
7. Thinking about how the Harry Potter saga came to its conclusion

*Abridged books are a sacrilege. We hates them, precious, like we hates the nasty hobbitses who stole our ring and the irritating mistakeses our introductory and intermediate Spanish students make with the verbs gustar and llamarse.

Chronicles of Narnia!

2007-07-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

I haven't been feeling well, so this news especially brightened my day:

News has just come out of Comic-Con 2007 that all seven of the Chronicles of Narnia will be filmed. They also added that from Prince Caspian onward, all of the films will be released in May of the following year [...] They did not, however, announce the order of release for the films. Currently, they've been releasing the films in the original order of the release of the books. That's a fantastic way to do it, and I'm glad they chose to do it in that way. If they opt to film the next six films as two trilogies of stories, then The Magician's Nephew might come before The Horse and His Boy.

Hat tip, NarniaFans. The Horse and His Boy is my favorite of the Chronicles, and I am extremely excited to see the adventures of Shasta & Aravis play out on the big screen.

Me llamo...

2007-07-25T22:25:00.000-07:00

Next time I teach introductory or beginning Spanish, one of the first homework assignments I'll give my students is to watch this very short video clip from Family Guy and provide both a written explanation of its significance and several ways one can properly say "My name is _____" in Spanish. I've never seen Family Guy, and I discovered this video while reading Peeve Farm, where there's a very interesting post on the subject of the irritating and incorrect thing that is "Me llamo es _____."

In case any of you are wondering, the correct thing to say is "Me llamo _____." (You insert your name in the blank.)

Hogwarts, the encyclopedia

2007-07-24T14:34:00.000-07:00

If you haven't finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yet or don't intend to read it, pay no attention to this post.

If - and only if - you have already read the seventh Harry Potter book in its entirety, read this article for some very, very exciting news and additional details about the world of Potter straight from the author! (Think "reprieve," for starters.)

HP7

2007-07-23T08:25:00.000-07:00

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Saturday! I loved it. It's my favorite of the seven books. I'll refrain for discussing things related to the plot here for a month, since I know some of the people who my blog haven't finished the book yet and might not for several weeks.

BBC miniseries goodness

2007-07-12T15:55:00.000-07:00

I never thought I'd say this.

I've found a bbc miniseries that I like better than the version of Pride & Prejudice starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, and we all know that I adore that and own the dvds. The miniseries that I have just seen and realized that I love even more is North & South. My sister has been dropping conspicuous hints that I need to watch it for months and months. I finally got the dvds from Netflix and sat down and watched it, partially because Richard Armitage, one of the leads in North & South, has a very important part on a new favorite show of mine, Robin Hood (a bbc show whose second season yours truly eagerly anticipates). Wow. North & South was truly, utterly great. There's no other way of describing it. My sister's long streak of being right about what I will really enjoy watching continues.

Now I'm craving British costume dramas in miniseries form. If there's one thing the bbc does well, it's their period pieces. A bunch of them just shot right to the top of my Netflix queue. One of those is Bleak House, which I've never seen before. I also feel a burning desire to re-watch Wives & Daughters.

BSG

2007-07-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

If you're a Battlestar Galactica fan, you will be pleased to know that a short teaser for the movie event known as "Razor" is now available for viewing online at scifi.com. Enjoy!

Two weeks

2007-07-07T21:14:00.001-07:00

Two weeks from now, I'll be finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I have waited eight years for this book, and now that its publication date is approaching, I feel almost scared to read the book even though I am so very excited about finally being able to do so. You see, after living with Harry as a friend for so long, I don't want his story to end. Whether or not Harry is alive when the final chapter of book 7 closes, his story will end. I will miss him and his wonderfully, masterfully told story terribly. Oh, the stories of his adventures will still be there, and I will still think about them and discuss them often. What makes me sad is the knowledge that there will be no more new tales to read.

One month!

2007-06-21T17:57:00.000-07:00

Only one more month remains until I get to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the book I've been longing to read for a third of my life. When I read my first Harry Potter book, I was sixteen years old and a junior in high school. Since then, I've gotten a high school diploma, a batchelor's degree, a master's degree, and engaged. Many things in my life have changed since the fateful day when my sister's best friend loaned us the first three Harry Potter books, but my love for Harry has remained constant and always will.

On the subject of wizards named Harry... when J.K. Rowling's seven part series comes to a close, a lot of us will probably be searching for books to help us deal with Potter withdrawal. I recommend The Dresden Files, a contemporary fantasy series by American author Jim Butcher about Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, the only wizard P.I. in Chicago. The first book of The Dresden Files is called Storm Front. Happy reading!

Addictive

2007-06-21T17:55:00.001-07:00

So, there's this website where you can look at a drawing and guess which movie it represents. It's kind of addictive. And quite good fun.

Just saying...

2007-06-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

The BBC/BBC America have put together an extremely entertaining television show in Robin Hood. The DVD set of the first season came out in the U.S. only a few weeks ago, and I've been watching it courtesy of Netflix. I love it, and I'm very excited that the show will be back for a second season later this year (although I suppose season two might not be shown in the U.S. until 2008).

Why should you seriously consider watching yet another version of the story of Robin of Locksley? Well, in short, because of the action, adventure, intrigue, bows, quivers, arrows, witty banter, twelfth century setting, Sherwood Forest, scruffy outlaws, evil sheriff, swords, quarterstaffs, heroic theme music, British accents... what's not to love?

Cuteness

2007-06-18T23:02:00.000-07:00

I don't think people would be altogether surprised if some day I were to have a son or daughter like this little six-year-old, who was chosen by Amazon.com as one of their ten "kid correspondents" to cover the publication of the last Harry Potter book. He can discuss the books he's read in an amount of detail that's quite amazing for his age... the link goes to a video of him talking about his favorite character and then going on various tangents about the books. It's adorable.

My feelings exactly

2007-06-13T23:02:00.001-07:00

"I go online sometimes, but everyone's spelling is really bad, and it's depressing."
— Tara, in episode 15 of the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

New W.O.M.B.A.T.

2007-06-13T22:58:00.000-07:00

The third and final W.O.M.B.A.T. test is online at long last at jkrowling.com! I recommend that all you potterphiles who plan to take it do so soon - usually, JKR only leaves a W.O.M.B.A.T. up for a couple days before it vanishes forever.

Harry Potter happiness

2007-06-08T23:02:00.000-07:00

Behold, more cover art for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, courtesy of MuggleNet's photo galleries! Excellent. I like this drawing for the deluxe edition a lot, although the cover for the normal hardback edition of the seventh book is quite nice as well. Interestingly, the deluxe edition features a dragon. Who wants to bet that the dragon is none other than a Norwegian Ridgeback named Norbert, illegally raised by Hagrid and last seen leaving Hogwarts for eastern Europe in book one?

Well, I'm off to get some sleep ... and probably dream about why, when, and where Harry, Ron, and Hermione could possibly be riding a dragon in Deathly Hallows.

(Once over at MuggleNet, click on the image to see it in higher resolution.)

Recent events

2007-05-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

While I was away from the blog over the last two and a half weeks... a lot of things happened.

1. The school year ended, and there was much rejoicing.
2. I got engaged!
3. Much recreational reading took place. Much reading for fun is still taking place.
4. My sister visited.
5. My roommate got married.
6. I started a summer job. Well, technically, two summer jobs. Together, they'll keep me busy for 25 to 30 hours a week for the next several weeks.

None of the above have been very conducive to spending time thinking about the blog.

Most notable among the books I've been reading is the series The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. It's a great series, although definitely not written for kids. The protagonist of the series, Harry Dresden, is a wisecracking wizard private investigator from Chicago. These books are very entertaining. I read the first one earlier this spring, and I've gone through the next six in the series over the last couple weeks. There are two more books that I have yet to read, and as far as I know the author isn't done with the series. Which is a very good thing.

Time Magazine spoofs Potter

2007-05-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

Click on over to The Leaky Cauldron's photo galleries for some absolutely hilarious spoofs of Harry Potter book covers done by Time. Much hilarity awaits you there. Hint: click on the image so you can actually see the pictures and titles on the covers well and read related amusing commentary. I think my favorite of those book covers is Harry Potter and the Pimping of his Ride. Additionally, the background of that drawing is a nice little homage to a scene from the movie of Prisoner of Azkaban.*

*Actually, I can find at least one obvious reference to particular scene in a movie for all of the spoofs, with the exception of the one in the top right hand corner. Yes, I'm an obsessive, obsessive Potter geek. And I'd like it to be July 21 already, please.