Yesterday A. brought home a book that he said was recommended by his library specialist at school. It was The Butter Battle Book. Did they even realize it was about mutual assured destruction?

From The Jennifer Morgue, by Charles Stross:
Most of the time when someone uses an ejector seat, the pilot sitting in it has a pressing reason for pulling the handle--for example, he's about to fly into the type of cloud known as cumulo-granite ...

A rendition of what cvirtue was laughing about the other day: Eeyore as Gandalf (MP3, 18K).

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

I just read The Lorax to the kids, and realized something: The Lorax speaks for the trees, but he doesn't do anything for them.

On my way to work Friday morning, I was reading the text for the operating systems class I'm taking this semester, and someone walking past stopped and said, "I know how to recognize a great hacker! I've got a startup, and we're hiring; are you looking, by any chance ( Read more... )

I just read War of the Worlds for the first time--I've had the book since I was about 10, but haven't read it.

It is a terrible book. I'm not going to worry about spoiling the plot here, because there is no plot. It's just a sequence of events. The protagonist just gets buffeted from one scene to another; he doesn't really learn anything, or ( Read more... )

Recently the kids have gotten to the point where they can, erratically, recognize words they know. So I decided to see if I could coach them through reading a book. Of course, it had to be a new book, because they remember the words to their usual books. So today I bought a copy of The Foot Book, a Dr. Seuss book which I had previously rejected ( Read more... )

Something reminded me of this the other night, and cvirtue thought I should post it:

One night, back in college, a bunch of us were hanging out in the suite. One guy...let's call him Mike, because that was his name...was reading Clan of the Cave Bear, and started laughing at some of the absurd sex scenes. He wanted to read them aloud to us. Liz ( Read more... )

Name a CD you own that no-one else on your friends list does:

Rovin, by Arcona Reel Band.

Name a book you own that no-one else on your friends list does:

Hmm...well, there's the large-print edition of My Man Jeeves that I did up through Cafepress for my grandfather (and haven't given to him yet); I know that nobody else in the world owns a copy ( Read more... )