My Kind of Romance

    Call me sentimental, but this type of Romance appeals to me.

Art Appreciation Friday

    Two "Art Appreciation" memes this week.  Yooze are indeed blessed.

Book Excerpt for t he Day

    I sat on the bed abruptly.  Where had that come from?  Was I petty enough to be angry that my boyfriend had been thinking of a dozen different ways to be sure his descendants (the unfriendly and sometimes snooty Bellefleurs) prospered, while I, the love of his afterlife, worried herself to tears about her finances?

    You bet, I was petty enough.

    I should be ashamed of myself.

    But later.  My mind was not through toting up grievances.

    (from Club Dead by Charlaine Harris)

    7*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Take Your Child To Work Day

    Good advice.

Art Appreciation Tuesday

   If you're too young to be familiar with Norman Rockwell's paintings, you don't know what you're missing.

Sawhorse

    Monday Pun Day.

Star Wars Sunday

Book Excerpt for the Day

    Far from having “small Latin and less Greek,” as Ben Jonson famously charged, Shakespeare had a great deal of Latin, for the life of a grammar-school boy was spent almost entirely in reading, writing, and reciting Latin, often in the most mind-numbingly repetitious manner.  One of the principal texts of the day taught pupils 150 different ways of saying, “Thank you for your letter” in Latin.  Through such exercises Shakespeare would have learned every possible rhetorical device and ploy – metaphor and anaphora, epistrophe and hyperbole, synecdoche, epanalepsis, and others equally arcane and taxing to memorize..

    (from Shakespeare: The World As Stage by Bill Bryson)

  9½*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Music Friday - Geezer Edition

    It pains me to call Guns N Roses a geezer band.  But really, their heyday was more than 30 years ago.  Appetite For Destruction, which featured Welcome To The Jungle, came out in 1987.

Chess on Television

    Once upon a time, back in the 80's or 90's, PBS televised a major chess match.  I don't recall now who the two players were, but they had commentators (not at the actual site of the game, of course, but back at the studio) and everything.

    Full Disclosure I've been a chess fanatic all my life.  So believe me when I say, there is NOTHING more boring than watching a chess game on TV.

Monty Python's Holy Grail

    I want this poster!

Only 3 Percent Will Share This...

    Really, people.  Knock it off.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    Ah, the great leap of Faith.  The ones you get to hear about, of course, are the ones that don’t end up in long drops and messy landings.  History tends to skate over those: the aeronautical pioneers who proved that it’s not possible to fly simply by jumping off tall buildings flapping your arms like a bird.  For every Wright Brother there are ten thousand equally earnest believers who got scooped up and buried in jars, and whose memories weren’t preserved by succeeding generations, because nobody wants to admit they’re descended from an idiot.

    (from Doughnut by Tom Holt)

  8*/10.  The complete review is here.

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E-Card Sunday

    I don't like to brag, but, yes, I'm trilingual.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

        A great nod to Celtic legends from Mythtickle from quite a few years ago.

Semi-Retired

    That's me, except it's been 45 years, not 25.  But as of today, I've switched to part-time, 20 hours per week.  Which means every weekend is 4-day or 5-day.  Kewlness.

Word for the Day

Book Excerpt for the Day

    “Some people distill alcohol from fermented holum root, for drinking.  They say it gives the unconscious free play, like brainwave training.  Most people prefer that, it’s very easy and doesn’t cause a disease.  Is that common here?”

    “Drinking is.  I don’t know about this disease.  What’s it called?”

    “Alcoholism, I think.”

    “Oh, I see…. But what do working people do on Anarres for a bit of jollity, to escape the woes of the world together for a night?”

    Shevek looked blank.  “Well, we … I don’t know.  Perhaps our woes are inescapable?”

    (from The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin)

  7*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Quote for the Day

    It's been that kind of day.

Flat Earth

Root Canal

   Ignoring the typo ("denist"??  really now, nine words and you still managed to misspell one of them?!  Plus, there should be a comma after 'up', to say nothing of periods at the end of both sentences.), this was me, last Thursday, as I underwent a root canal.

Daylight Savings Time

    Spring forward.  Fall back.

LOTR Friday

Book Excerpt for the Day

    “Damn, Kyle, couldn’t you have found a felon that smelled a little less like a garbage truck on a hot day?  Wait, that wasn’t Jackson.  It’s you!”

    “You better get used to it if you want to be a real detective and work the streets.  I’m just trying to maintain my cover.”

    “As what?  A 10-year-old jockstrap?”

    “How’d you guess?”

    (from Guardian of the Red Butterfly by D.S. Cuellar)

    6*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Voice Mail

    True dis.  I am fairly good about responding to text messages.  I am positively horrible about returning voice mail.

Writing God

    I'm a reviewer, not an author.  But if I did sit down to write a novel, this is exactly how I'd be.

Monday Pun Day

    Oy.

Drum Solos

    Frankly, I can keep my hands on the steering wheel during In The Air Tonight.  But the drum solo in In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is an entirely different story.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    “Nefferati?” Gabriel said.

    “She’s one of the other two True Grace Mages.  She’s a very remarkable woman, which is saying something coming from me.  I’m rather remarkable myself.  She is the oldest mage, True or otherwise.  She was born on the banks of the Euphrates around 3500 BCE and claims to be nearly seven hundred years old, but I suspect she’s lying about her age.  She’s eight hundred, if she’s a day.”

    (from The Wizard of Time by G.L. Breedon)

     7½*/10.  The full review is here.

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Quote for the Day

    Jane Austen holds a special place in my heart.  Not.

Yearbook Deletions

    Full disclosure:  I did this a couple times in my high school and junior high yearbooks.  It's kinda embarrassing to look at it nowadays, but at the time it sure felt good.