Land of 1,000 Words

It's older than dirt

nobody@vox.com(iRead) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 10:35:39 -0700

A few weeks ago the QotD asked us about the oldest book on our shelf. At the time I said it was my copy of the "Little House on the Prairie" series from the 70s. However, last night I was looking at some of the books in our computer room when I discovered we had books older than that. In fact, one is even older than my 91 year-old grandmother.

We have a copy of Winnie the Pooh from 1956 that my mom & uncle got for Christmas that year:

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And a copy of Rinkitink in Oz which has a copyright from 1916:

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I don't know if this copy is actually 92 years old but I couldn't find anything that said it isn't and the condition it's in certainly seems to indicate it's that old.

On a completely unrelated note, Firefox is trying to set a Guinness World Record as the most downloaded software in 24 hours. Go pledge to download Firefox 3 on June 17th here.

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QotD: The Oldest Book on the Shelf

nobody@vox.com(iRead) — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:38:13 -0700

What's the oldest book you own?
Submitted by Lies.

Little House Starter Set - (Little House on the Prairie / Farmer Boy / Little House in the Big Woods

Laura Ingalls Wilder

That would be my copy of "The Little House on the Prairie" series. (Not the copies pictured.) They were printed in 1971 but are reprints of the 1953 printing. I think we got them used from our local library since they have stickers with "FPK" on them. One of them is missing the front cover (including the page that says "don't buy this book if the cover is missing") and three of them have pages falling out. I am missing one of the books in the series so I should really get around to finding a copy of it one of these days. Good series though; one of my favorites as a kid.

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Culture QotD: What I'm Reading Now...

nobody@vox.com(iRead) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:51:37 -0800

Book, magazine, catalog, nutritional information, billboard, website, newspaper... What are you currently reading and would you recommend it to others?

I'm actually reading two books right now. (Well, technically 3 but I haven't picked one up since Christmas.)

London: The Novel

First up, London by Edward Rutherfurd. This is the third "saga" book I've read by him and so far (I'm only 300+ pages in and not quite up to 1300 AD yet) I'm enjoying it. The book is about the history of London from when Julius Caesar came to sometime in the mid to late 20th century. The paperback edition I have is just under 1200 pages long so if you want to read it (and I do recommend it if you enjoy historical fiction, London, English history, etc.) make sure you have plenty of time.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Next up is Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay. This book has been on my list of books to read ever since I started watching "Dexter" the show (2 weeks ago). They had a copy in the campus bookstore so I picked it up when I was in there yesterday. I'm only 3 (4?) chapters in but again, I'm enjoying it. The place I stopped last night is probably a quarter of the way through the first episode of the show. Having watched the show before reading the book it's nice to see things more clearly in my head while I'm reading it. I've heard the show kind of veered off from the books at some point so it'll be interesting to see when and where that happens.

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Awed Ninja Kiosk

nobody@vox.com(iRead) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 21:52:49 -0800

Over winter break I read An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (which I loved). I read it for the math aspect (don't worry, the main plot is non-math related) but, as I was reading it, I became intrigued by the anagramming the main character does. To kill time between classes today I decided to see what my name was anagrammed (the title of this post) and came across the Internet Anagram Server. On the site they have the Anagram Hall of Fame where words or phrases are anagrammed and the anagram describes, or is connected to, the word or phrase. Here are some of my favorites:

Clint Eastwood = Old West Action
Evangelist = Evil's Agent
The Meaning of Life = The fine game of nil
Tom Cruise = So I'm Cuter
Mother-in-law = Woman Hitler
Snooze Alarms = Alas! No More Z's
A Decimal Point = I'm a Dot in Place
The Earthquakes = That Queer Shake
Salman Rushdie = Read, Shun Islam
Eleven plus two = Twelve plus one
The Titanic disaster = Death, it starts in ice
Claustrophobia = Car, ship, loo - tabu
The astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus = Space motion: our Earth circles Sun, no?
Actor Silvester Stallone = Very cool talentless star
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution = Soul of vital, narrow, chosen heredity
Great Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa' = or Versed Italian man's 'La Gioconda'
'The Simpson' cartoons = Spastic Homer, snot son...
The President of the United States of America George Walker Bush = A gangster from the White House undertakes debate-free politics
William Henry Gates = Get a share in my will!
Quote by Oscar Wilde:
There is only one thing worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about. = Wilde died broken, beaten 'n' total nut. Hate being sunk in that rotten gaol. Shh, gay is taboo.
Why shouldn't America go re-elect President Clinton in Ninety-Six? = He has a prime or cunning tendency to wildly solicit Internet sex.
George Bush = He bugs Gore
"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Neil A. Armstrong = A thin man ran; makes a large stride; left planet, pins flag on moon! On to Mars!

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Book review: "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman

nobody@vox.com(iRead) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:34:02 -0800

The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure

William Goldman

Even though the book has been around for 35 years and the movie for 21 (and at one point I was watching the movie close to once a month), before these past few weeks I had never actually read The Princess Bride. And now, looking back, I think the movie version is still my favorite. Don't get me wrong, the book was good but I think the story just works better as a movie (it helped that William Goldman wrote both the book and the screenplay for the movie).

If you've seen the movie but never read the book (or vice versa), the two are very similar. Since William Goldman wrote both, he knew what he could change in the book to still make the movie work - which is a lot better than having some stranger come in and write a horrible screenplay based on a good book. In the movie we get little snippets of what the characters were doing before the story started but in the book you learn the whole story behind those snippets. Take for instance Vizzini's comment in the movie to Fezzik about finding him living in Greenland. In the book there's quite a few pages on how Fezzik got to Greenland but I kind of liked how random that comment was in the movie - that we had no idea why Fezzik was living in Greenland.

Another plus about having William Goldman write both the book and the screenplay was that when a passage in the book was also in the movie, I could picture that scene in my head (the Inigo-Westley duel for example) and get a better sense of what was going on. Of course it also made me want to pull out the movie and watch it but that's to be expected.

So yes, I enjoyed the book and will probably read it again at some point - it made me laugh and at the end of Buttercup's Baby I even choked up a little bit - but I still like the movie more.

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QotD: Best Book of '07

nobody@vox.com(iRead) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 19:13:13 -0800

What's the best book you read this year?

An Abundance of Katherines

John Green

★★★★★

I finished this book 4 days ago and I already want to read it again. Too bad I had to return it to the library.

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Vox Hunt: Just Can't Get Enough

nobody@vox.com(iRead) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:39:50 -0800

Book: Show us a book you've read more than once.

At this point, I think I've read every book in the series at least twice. I might even do another read through at some point if I get the time.

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Vox Hunt: Writing - I Wish I'd Written This

nobody@vox.com(iRead) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:04:25 -0700

Show us a book you wish you had written.

Mainly just for all the fricking money I would have right now if I had written the series. ;-) I would have no problem dealing with all the crazy fans. Not to mention that they are well-written, interesting books that, let's face it, have gotten kids to start reading again.

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Passage of the Day: #26

nobody@vox.com(iRead) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 15:02:06 -0700

From Grave Peril by Jim Butcher:

"Wow," Bob commented. "I hadn't realized that they grew hellhounds that big. And look, Harry, it's your godmother! Hi, Lea!"
If Bob had a body, he'd have been jumping up and down and waving his fingers at her. "Don't be so enthusiastic, Bob. If she catches me, I get to join the pack."

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Book Review: "Grave Peril" by Jim Butcher

nobody@vox.com(iRead) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 16:51:30 -0700

Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, Book 3)

Jim Butcher

I finished this book last night but I'm still not sure how exactly I feel about it. It's the third book in "The Dresden Files" series but when I started reading it, it felt like I had somehow skipped a couple books between this one and the second book. You're introduced to a new character on the first page of the book but the way Jim Butcher wrote it makes it seem like we met the character in one of the first two books. However, I had no recollection of ever reading about the guy before. He did give a little more background a few chapters in but thinking back, Jim could have made the background story into the third book and made Grave Peril the fourth book.

Nevertheless, I did enjoy this book. Like the previous two books, it took me a while to get into it but once I did I was reluctant to put it down. (I was a little wary to read it alone in my apartment at night but that mainly had to do with the ghostly aspect of the book.)

There's been some talk lately on a few message boards about whether or not Jim Butcher found religion between the second and third books. (Jim Butcher supposedly showed up on one of them to defend his writing and got a little tl;dr.) Sure the book had some religious undertones but, to me, it didn't read like a "religious tract" which is what some people are saying it is. It's certainly not going to stop me from buying and reading the rest of the books in the series.

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