Showing posts with label Currently Reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Currently Reading. Show all posts

Thursday, August 08, 2024

Currently Reading: The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles

I just started this and I’ve not even made past the 2nd page and I’m already chortling away, again. I told Mrs B to expect many such chortlings over the coming evenings, that way she won’t ask what’s so funny, because while I find this hilarious, she doesn’t.

Thursday, July 11, 2024

Currently Reading & Quote: Monster Hunter International

On one otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth-story window.
~ Opening Sentence, Chapter One

Now, how can you not love a book that starts that way? I couldn’t resist it when I read it 12 years ago and I couldn’t resist this time either 😀 I just hope the rest of the book is as good.

Thursday, June 06, 2024

Currently Reading & Quote: Mary Poppins Comes Back

“When I was a little boy,” said Mr. Banks, “I loved going for walks. I used to walk with my Governess down to the second lamp-post and back every day. And I never grumbled.”

Michael stood still on his stair and looked doubtfully at Mr. Banks.

“Were you ever a little boy?” he said, very surprised.

Mr. Banks seemed quite hurt.

“Of course I was. A sweet little boy with long yellow curls, velvet breeches and button-up boots.”

“I can hardly believe it,” said Michael, hurrying down the stairs of his own accord and staring up at Mr. Banks.

He simply could not imagine his Father as a little boy. It seemed to him impossible that Mr. Banks had ever been anything but six feet high, middle-aged and rather bald.

“What was the name of your Governess?” asked Jane, running downstairs after Michael. “And was she nice?”

“She was called Miss Andrew and she was a Holy Terror!”

“Hush!” said Mrs. Banks, reproachfully.

“I mean—” Mr. Banks corrected himself, “she was—er—very strict. And always right. And she loved putting everybody else in the wrong and making them feel like a worm. That’s what Miss Andrew was like!”

~Chapter 2

Ha! I can remember as a young boy realizing one day that my Dad’s name wasn’t “Dad”. He had his own name, just like I had mine. It shocked me to be honest, and the world got a whole lot bigger in just those few seconds. Did you ever have some experience like that as a kid, when you just suddenly weren’t a child anymore in some minor regard and how big it was to you? Tell me about it if it did.

I included the rest of the scene because every description that Mr Banks applies to his old governess, Miss Andrews, pretty much applies to Mary Poppins as well. I’m just waiting for them to meet and for the sparks to fly!

Thursday, May 09, 2024

Currently Reading & Quote: A Subtle Agency

He walked downstairs in his socks, wearing a simple gray, long sleeved BU Hockey T-shirt, and jeans that hid the rugged athleticism of his six feet one-inch frame. Anton arrived at the front door just as the doorbell rang for the third time.

He opened the door; before him stood the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen in his life.

She was tall, nearly the same height as Anton, brunette with vivid blue eyes, flawless complexion, wearing a professional black business pants suit with a short jacket, and a translucent scarlet silk chiffon shirt that displayed the round curves of her breasts within a stylish black bra.

Just standing still, she was a seductive mix of poise, elegance, and class, with a face that demanded attention.

I started A Subtle Agency, by Graeme Rodaughan, the first book in the Metaframe War series. I know it involves vampires, but that quote from the first chapter does not bode well. I swear, if “rippling abs” make even ONE appearance, I’m dnf’ing this like it has the bubonic plague.

Friday, April 05, 2024

Currently Reading: Dr Syn

Currently reading Dr Syn by Russell Thorndike. Pirates and smugglers! And a 12 year old boy who drinks rum and wants to be a hangman and swing his schoolteacher from the gallows.

Come on, is that just pure awesomesauce or what?

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Currently Reading: Systematic Theology

Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem.

At over 1200 pages, and being my lunch break book, I have a feeling this is going to take me a year or so. Therefore, don’t expect a review any time soon, hahahahahaaa.

Friday, November 03, 2023

Currently Reading Cover Love: Double Z

How come we don’t have awesomely cool covers like this anymore? Thankfully, we can still find them and the awesomeness of cool covers aren’t lost in the dust bins of history.

Friday, October 27, 2023

Currently Reading Buddy Read: Farsight

Have started a buddy read with Dave and Markus. We’re reading Farsight by Phil Kelly, a novella about the Tau from the Warhammer 40K universe. We’re going to wrap things up by November 25th, so lots of time. If you have any interest in joining us, leave a comment and we’ll work out the details! Otherwise, shut up, sit back and be jealous of how awesome we are 😉

Friday, October 06, 2023

Currently Reading & Quote: Sense and Sensibility

Colonel Brandon alone, of all the party, heard her without being in raptures. He paid her only the compliment of attention; and she felt a respect for him on the occasion, which the others had reasonably forfeited by their shameless want of taste. His pleasure in music, though it amounted not to that ecstatic delight which alone could sympathize with her own, was estimable when contrasted against the horrible insensibility of the others; and she was reasonable enough to allow that a man of five and thirty might well have outlived all acuteness of feeling and every exquisite power of enjoyment. She was perfectly disposed to make every allowance for the colonel’s advanced state of life which humanity required.

~Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 7

This quote is from Marianne Dashwood’s viewpoint, from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. She is 17. It made me laugh so hard because “Ancient” Colonel Brandon is 10 years my junior. Oh, I love Austen’s writing almost as much as I do Dickens’.

ps,
I am posting this because,
A: I Have Words in need of getting loose
B: The Pumpkin Festival might get rained out tonight AND tomorrow and thus I’ll have nothing to post about it tomorrow. Thus this post is my “Blog Insurance”.

Friday, September 29, 2023

Currently Reading & Quote: Charmed Life

They filled their pockets and then their hats. Then a furious gardener chased them with a rake. They ran. Cat was very happy as he carried his full, knobby hat home. Mrs. Sharp loved apples. He just hoped she would not reward him by making gingerbread men. As a rule, gingerbread men were fun. They leaped up off the plate and ran when you tried to eat them, so that when you finally caught them you felt quite justified in eating them. It was a fair fight, and some got away. But Mrs. Sharp’s gingerbread men never did that. They simply lay, feebly waving their arms, and Cat never had the heart to eat them.

~Chapter Two

Hahahahaahaha! Man, that’s some good comic writing right there 😀

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Currently Reading: Netochka Nezvanova

Ok, russian novels are almost all depressing as death. I’ve read enough to know that and for the most part, I’m ok with that. But this? This is more depressing that Oblomov and that’s saying a lot. Thankfully, this is an unfinished novel by Dostoyevsky, so it has to end sometime sooner than later.

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Currently Reading: Battlefield Earth

Currently re-reading Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. So far, this is the only book by Hubbard that I’ve been able to re-read. The cover on the right is the one I read from the library (it’s the first edition hardcover) and is the one I owned. The cover on the left was made for the audiobook and ended up becoming the cover for the mass market paperback. That is a MONSTER of a paperback, at around 1000 pages. There are also some movie covers but the less said about that utter travesty the better.

I am enjoying this quite a bit. Of course, with a main character named Johnny Goodboy Tyler, you know he’s a Gary Stu. But Gary Stu’s have an important role in stories, they remind us that the Good does win in the end and that Evil will be defeated, even if it appears to be at its strongest at the moment.