meepalicious
50bookchallengeTa-da! I'm halfway there, but lagging behind a bit. I ought to spend less time online and more time reading! (*determined*) I guess I'd be more caught up if I counted the manga I was re-reading, but ...

Anywho~ I just (literally, just) finished reading The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume 1: The Pox Party. It was good ... not at all what I was expecting, but good. Octavian is a "prince," the son of an African "princess" taken to America shortly before the American Revolution. The College of Lucidity keeps him for their own strange purposes, &c. It's really hard to say anything about it without giving anything away. I loved Evidence Goring and was sad when his part was over. I hope he's in the second one in the series, which I plan to read.
It's worth mentioning that the author (M.T. Anderson) is the same man who wrote Feed. I feel like the whole meaning and substance of the story shifted when I found that out. They're not at all alike, but they are. Very strange.

Also, I finally got to read Saiyuki Reload volume 8 awhile ago. Series continues to be good, cliffhangers continue to hang (though the current arc seems to be reaching a climax soon). The short at the end was adorable and funny. Can't wait for more, &c.

purexxjuice
0bsessed_readerHello everyone!

You might be surprised to find that I have joined this community, since I usually only read books when required for my English class. I'm completely literate though (;)), and actually read at a higher level than my grade, and since I'll be a junior in high school in the fall I assume I'm at least at college level by now. I'm a writer, and although I haven't written much lately, people have always told me that I'm a good writer. The majority of my writing is fanfic, though, and I find it more difficult to write original stories, but I did have a really great idea for a novel a few years ago (and no, I won't tell you what it was, XD).

Recently a friend told me about the Earth's Children series by Jean M. Auel. We were having a conversation about sexuality and all it entails, and she said that some of the themes we were talking about were addressed in the series. I decided to check it out, since it really did seem interesting. I bought The Clan of the Cave Bear and was basically hooked. I bought The Valley of Horses immediately after I finished Clan, which was Monday (July 14th, I think) and finished Valley on Wednesday night. Then Thursday morning I bought The Mammoth Hunters and today, Friday July 18th, I am halfway done with the book. Needless to say, I'm positively addicted. I figured it was about time to join an active community to talk about it. I've joined earths_children, but it's not the most active community, and since the Earth's Children series is highly renowned I figured many of you here would have already read it. While I was at Borders buying The Mammoth Hunters, I decided to go ahead and buy The Plains of Passage and The Shelters of Stone, just so I wouldn't have to wait to go to the store in between books. XD That almost sounds pathetic, especially coming from me. I have never been so involved in a book or series.

ANYWAY. This series really strikes a chord with me since it combines two of my favorite things: writing and history. I'm pretty much a history buff, especially with ancient cultures. Therefore, I find these books endlessly fascinating. And through them I have discovered the most amazing genre of literature: historical fiction. Throughout my writing career, I have longed for something that was like history, but not. Even the novel idea I got a few years ago had a lot to do with ancient history. It was really intricate, and way too complicated for someone like me to handle, but maybe someday I could pick it back up. It depends, I've forgotten a lot of the details. When I discovered that there was actually a whole genre dedicated to fictional twists on historical events and places, it was like I had discovered the Holy Grail. It was like a long-neglected thirst had finally been quenched. The whole world opened up. And I can't get enough.

You can probably guess where this post is heading. So I'll get right to it: What are some of your favorite historical fiction novels? I've heard about Shogun by James Clavell and it sounds very promising, so I'll definitely check it out the next time I go to Borders, which might be very soon. It would be great if I had a whole list of historical fiction to check out. I've had a taste, and I can't seem to get enough.

And not just historical fiction. At this point I'm willing to check anything out, to see if it interests me. I feel like I've missed a big part of life all these years, not reading much. Now that I think about it, it's a bit strange that someone like me, a good writer with an advanced reading level, never really seemed interested in books. This is a whole new discovery for me, and I need more, more, more! XD

Here are some of my primary interests, so you can make more specified recommendations. You can still recommend some of your favorite books, whether they fit my interests or not, and I might check them out. Anyway, here they are:

Anthropology, history, sociology, travel, culture, animals, science (but not science fiction, usually) etc. etc. ...I suppose you could just go to my profile and look through my interests and see if any books come to mind.

Sorry for this very rambly introduction, I don't know how I let it get so out of control. XD Kudos to whoever has read this whole post, and I hope this community will become one of my favorite places on LJ! :D

tigerkat
50bookchallenge#14 Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. This was a re-read for a book club. I did notice some things this time around that I didn't notice the time before; stuff about Bella and Edward's relationship that bothers me a bit, but not as much as some librarians I know. I still need to read Eclipse.

#15 Godchild Vol. 1
Whacked out, violent, beautiful manga about a young man who is "cursed" it seems and who solves crimes. I can't wait to read the second one, too bad it is *still* out at the library.

#16 Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins

A demon decides he's going to take a vacation and snitches a body seconds before a mopey, lazy, teenage boy dies. He wants to see what it is like to be alive and revels in the everyday things that we take for granted. The first half of the book was great, then it started to go downhill. The main character starts to seem petty and almost contradict himself. I was very dissatisfied with the ending.

Currently reading Around the World in 80 Days and The Missing Girl. I need to get going because I am now on a committee for the Thumbs Up Award which is given out by the Michigan Library Association to one teen book each year.

vudu
macintoshthe other day my ibook did the automatic software update and after the restart i only get the white screen with the loading circle. i tried to restart with the option key and select disk utility from the os dvd and i get the same thing for 2 or 3 hours. when i use the option key and select the hd on the ibook it has a little x in the bottom right corner. has the hard drive died on me after the install?
thanks for any help

shkarlson
50bookchallengeThat's a crack Omar Sharif as Dr. Zhivago makes when some Loyal Soviet Official asks him to diagnose a comrade. That happened frequently in those days. In the off-the-scale paranoid final years of Stalin, non-acknowledgment of things not consistent with the workers' paradise is standard operating procedure. Thus Child 44. A serial child-killer might be riding the rails from the steps of Odessa to the steppes of Central Asia. An investigator gets into trouble with his superiors by treating that possibility as a working hypothesis. Because the object of Book Review N^o. 27 is a mystery, that's as much as I dare reveal. I did read it very quickly, and it's not going directly to the Half Price Books pile.

(Cross-posted to Cold Spring Shops). 

siriuslyjames
50bookchallengeBook #22:

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Summary: Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker–his classmate and crush–who committed suicide two weeks earlier.

On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out how he made the list.

Through Hannah and Clay's dual narratives, debut author Jay Asher weaves an intricate and heartrending story of confusion and desperation that will deeply affect teen readers. - Barnes & Noble

My Thoughts: ( Minor spoilers ) Over all it was a quick read that I didn't want to put down, so I'd give it a rating of 6/10

22 / 50 words. 44% done!

7876 / 15000 words. 53% done!

faded_mystique
macintosh

Does this mean my screen is broken?

No, really. I need this laptop, like, now, and when I turned it on that's what I got. Is this something I can fix myself? I emailed Academic Computing at my school, but since today's Friday, they won't get it until Monday. =\

susannag
50bookchallenge41. The Lost Constitution, by William Martin. 752 pages. (2007)

Grade: B+

This is a novel, with murders, about the second amendment, and about several searches for a "lost" constitution - a draft copy annotated by several Founding Fathers as to what they REALLY meant.

A fun ride, and a paean to New England.

gwynraven
50bookchallengeBook #79 -- Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, 323 pages.

One of the classics of fairy tale studies, Bettelheim provides psychoanalytic readings of popular fairy tales, stressing the importance of such tales to the child's Freudian development. He goes a little to far as often as not, and seems obsessed with providing a Freudian interpretation for *everything*, but he does make some good points. Not an easy book to get through, however.

Progress toward goals: 200-366 = 54.6%

Books: 79/150 = 52.7%

Pages: 21571/50000 = 43.1%

2008 Book List

cross-posted to 50bookchallenge, 15000pages, and gwynraven

carrieellen
macintoshI have a Macbook running Os X 10.5.4. I have an HP F4140 All-in-One Printer/Copier/Scanner.

But for some reason, it won't scan. It will print, it will copy, but when I press the Scan button, the power button flashes for a few seconds, then goes off. Nothing comes up on my computer. Has anyone else had this problem? I realize it's a long shot.

I am redownloading the software/drivers to see if that helps.

blacklikenight
macintoshFor the past few weeks, Safari won't display random images. Just the little blue box with a question mark. At first I thought they were broken images, but I visited the same pages on my PC and everything looked fine. It's the same with all browsers on my Macbook (Safari, Firefox, Camino). I'm having the same issues with videos. YouTube, Vimeo, whatever. Videos play occasionally, and only after reloading the page about ten times. Safari is my primary browser and I use Firefox when Safari starts acting weird, but both browsers are really slow and close randomly.

Any idea what's going on?

samantillesOne of my first forays into my interest into history was back in the seventh grade when Mr. Bush, my teacher, made us watch Glory from which I fell into love with the US Civil War. Since then (and a degree later) my focuses of history have changed, but I still have a heart for the US Civil War, and it doesn't help at all that my mentor in college was my Civil War professor, Dr. Silverman. Anyways, this is just a post as a memorial to the battle that got me into history in the first place (and yes, every July 18th, I watch Glory also!) 



(The Battle of Battery Wagner, Morris Island, South Carolina, July 18th, 1863)

For more information:
Wikipedia: Robert Gould Shaw
Wikipedia: Fort Wagner
Wikipedia: 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry
Congressional Medal of Honor Winners: Robert G. Shaw (I didn't know he won the Medal of Honor until just today!)

gothayesd51708
50bookchallengeBook #24
Book Title: All Together Dead
Author: Charlaine Harris
Category: mystery; romance
# of pages: 323
My rating of the book, F- [worst] to A [best].: B
Short description/summary of the book: (taken from amazon.com):Bestseller Harris mixes humorous Southern-fried fantasy with biting satirical commentary in her seventh novel to feature Sookie Stackhouse, the bubbly telepathic barmaid from Bon Temps, La. (after 2006's Definitely Dead). Sookie attends an all-important central U.S. vamp summit on the shores of Lake Michigan as a "human geiger counter" for Sophie-Anne Leclerq, vampire queen of a Louisiana weakened by Katrina and who will be tried during the event for murdering her king. Sookie knows the queen is innocent, but she's hardly prepared for other shocking murders, not to mention protests by the Fellowship of the Sun, a right-wing antivampire movement. Her sleuthing skills, along with those of her new telepath friend, Barry the Bellboy, are put to the extreme test. Harris juggles a large cast, including several romantic contenders for Sookie's heart, with effortless exuberance.

My Thoughts: There was so much that took place during this book! If I attempt to explain what happens I think I will spoil the book for others so let me just say that if you're reading this series, then this book twists the plot even further.

Books read this year: 24/50. I'm 48% done!!!


Next read(s): I just started reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.

gwynraven
50bookchallengeBook #78 -- Brian Keaney, The Promises of Dr. Sigmundus, Book One: The Hollow People, 224 pages.

I just got the sequel to this at ALA, but when I sat down to read it, I realised that it had been over a year since I read this one and I couldn't remember much of the complicated plot. So I've been rereading this in preparation for reading the sequel. It really is a very good and original book - just with a complex plotline.

Progress toward goals: 200/366 = 54.6%

Books: 52.0%

Pages: 21248/50000 = 42.5%

2008 Book List

cross-posted to 15000pages, 50bookchallenge, and gwynraven

nightfive
macintoshI'd like to delete all my music and start adding it again to a completely empty itunes, so I was thinking of saving it all to my external harddrive and then copying back the music I wanted, but I know that you can wind up with duplicates etc, so what would I have to delete completely in order to get my iTunes back to 'as new' status? Is it the library file in the iTunes folder?

patdislove
50bookchallengeHaha I totally started this journal as a sort of book blog and I have been totally shirking my duties here. I have read a couple of books and I haven't posted reviews on either of them *smacks self* So here are those long lost reviews!



Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West by T.R. Reid

Summary:Anyone who has heard his weekly commentary on NPR knows that T. R. Reid is trenchant, funny, and deeply knowledgeable reporter and now he brings this erudition and humor to the five years he spent in Japan--where he served as The Washington Post's Tokyo bureau chief. He provides unique insights into the country and its 2,500-year-old Confucian tradition, a powerful ethical system that has played an integral role in the continent's "postwar miracle."
Whether describing his neighbor calmly asserting that his son's loud bass playing brings disrepute on the neighborhood, or the Japanese custom of having students clean the schools, Reid inspires us to consider the many benefits of the Asian Way--as well as its drawbacks--and to use this to come to a greater understanding of both Japanese culture and America.

My Thoughts: ( Read more... )



Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Summary: (I feel wrong posting this, it is imo impossible to summarize Murakami's books) With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come.

This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle–yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.

Extravagant in its accomplishment, Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s truly great storytellers at the height of his powers.

My Thoughts ( Read more... )
I am about halfway through The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde and that is going really good so far so a review should be up of that soon enough :D

rescueme_fromme
macintosh[sorry if this has been asked before] i use unrarx for rar files; i downloaded a video from a live dvd and it's divided into 8 parts. i only want part 7, but when i try to extract it, i get a message saying that i need to extract from a previous volume. is there any way to extract 1 file out of multiple split rar parts? are there any programs that can do this? thanks!

musicxxangel
50bookchallengeBook Title: Magic Steps
Author: Tamora Pierce
My rating of the book, F- [worst] to A [best].: A +
Short description/summary of the book: While caring for her uncle in Summersea, Lady Sandrilene Fa Toren witnesses a boy working a most unusual spell. Pasco can dance magic, but he wants nothing to do with his powers. It''s up to Sandry to teach him about his magic--and to convince him he can use it to get to the bottom of a series of gruesome murders.
My Thoughts: One of my re-reads for the year an an excellent book!

11894 / 15000 words. 79% done!

38 / 50 words. 76% done! 

samantillesIf i didn't know any better, I could have sworn that Kevin was watching Fantastic Four with my parents rather than "The Wire" while waiting for me to come home from work! I began him on his journey through the 'gate tonight by watching the first movie, and from the very beginning, he was totally mocking half of what was going on! For instance, when O'Neill and Jackson make it through the gate the first time, they all turn on flares, and his comment was (I kid you not)... if they had gay guys in the military they wouldn't need flares, we would just "flame on!" like Johnny Storm (and then of course he went off on what Johnny storm was actually wearing when he flamed on, including that pink midriff top and spandex bathing suit bikini bottoms *groan!*
Tonight was the first night my parents noticed Kevin's snarky side, graced with the comment "you spend too much time with Sam"... he's always been snarky, he's just comfortable enough in our house to show it even with my parents *happehsigh*
It was by far an enjoyable evening, though Kevin's colorful interpretation made me see SG in a whole new light! I will be forever more tainted *no!no!mustremainasinnocentasfirstseasonDaniel!!*

Kevin's Journey through the 'Gate so far:

1 / 217 (0.5%)