h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

busting to get back to the Victory after all those Hornblower books

Right... Lauren K Hamilton - Nightseer didn't have much sex, and that there was wasn't explicit, more of a fade to grey. So I'm guessing the sex comes in her later stuff which I'm not going to read. If I want to read elf-porno-sex I'll find some LOTR fanfic!

Die Verwandlung not being translated as Metamorphosis? that really should _not_ be allowed. I have to start it again as I'm actually not finding it too interesting. But I have a few days off coming up so I'll have another go

Right now I'm reading Making the Cat Laugh which is a collection of articles about singlehood by Lynn Truss (yes, the one of Shooting Leaves fame) it's ok, but as with most collections of this ilk, the columns were probably more interesting at the time they were written.

I've read a Soul Survivor book by Mike Pilvachi recently and one on witches in London. What a contradiction hey?

W. B. Yeats and Tradition by F. A. C. Wilson. Price 16/= (that's 16 shillings for youngsters - about 80 pence in the current coin of the realm).
Interesting thing about this Methuen Paperback is the list on the back cover. You can get delights like The Contexts of Poetry by Hazard Adams for example.

I just finished "The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary". Quite a story about a project that was expected to take a decade and ended up taking over 70 years. It reminded me of the Hubble Space telescope, which finds more galaxies (LOTS more) every time they point it in a new direction. In the case of the OED, it seemed they discovered more new (or olde) words every time they read more literary works.

I thought it kind of ironic that the most complicated word for the project to define and document has only three letters. My local library has the 1933 OED edition, in which the word takes up a couple of dozen pages, each with three columns of fine print.

That word being 'set'?

Correct. Who would have thunk it?

Steve
If you like dictionary history try "The Surgeon of Crowthorne" by Simon Winchester

OK, thanks, sounds like a closer focus on a specific part of the OED story, by the same author. Plus good reviews at Amazon ...

Just finished "Something Rotten" by Jasper Fford. I picked it up because I REALLY loved "The big over easy" and since my brother had bought it recently, I decided that diving into it would be a good way to spend the office hours.
I was a bit disappointed I have to say. It felt like, and I am embraced of writing that, believe you me!, too much! I do appreciate the guy's imagination, but somehow time-travel, vampires, life after dead, living into fiction, make-your-own-dodo home kit, etc., all in one book made it hard to follow and spoiled the fun...
I wonder was it the fact that I was reading it while hiding from my co-workers and bosses, or was it that I started with the last book from the series...
No, I don't wonder, I am sure! I think I am going to and get the first Thursday Next book and prove myself right! Or should I say wrong???

You really should start with the Eyre Affair, you don't have to read them in Order but it does help clarify a few things. Have a read of The Fourth Bear, the next one in the Nursery Crime series, it's just as funny as The Big Over Easy

Yes, the Fourth Bear is on my wish-list. Poor Santa will have huge troubles because of me this year

I liked the 2nd and 3rd Thursday Next a lot more than I liked 'Something Rotten'. I decided that after those 3, The Eyre Affair would be superfluous.

(I loved the bit about Next's son by her never-existant husband who grows up babbling in Lipsum)

Currently on Patrick O'Brian's "The Reverse of the Medal". After that it's probably Volapuk by Andrew Drummond.

Desperately, desperately wanting 'Decca: The Jessica Mitford Letters' in my stocking.

Still reading The Boer War, but also reading A Brief History of the Circumnavigators by Derek Wilson.

'Olympos' by Dan Simmons. I feel my lack of classics is a disadvantage here, as I suspect if you are familiar with the Homeric tales which it draws upon, there's probably another level on which to enjoy it.

Another from Kurt Vonnegut jr. This time it's 'Happy Birthday, Wanda June'.

That's unusual. Lucky. Most people haven't read that one, since it's a play (I have, of course, Vonnegut being my Mastermind specialist subject.

I've bought 'A Man Without A Country' for my brother's Christmas. Sure, it's not earth-shattering, but it *is* pure Vonnegut.

btw - he abandone the 'Jr' with Galapagos. (Edward, you have scored thirty points and no passes.)

I got it in a Christmas Bazaar for 1 €uro! Also the collected poems of Wallace Stevens (about 500pp) and lots of other good stuff. About 12 €uro worth altogether!
Mastermind, eh? I only remember the taxi driver. Fred Housgo wasn't it?
I was on a Tyne Tees TV Crossword Quiz with Joan Bakewell (the thinking man's crumpet) as my team mate. Unfortunately we came up against Andrew (Barcelona) Sachs and the All Ireland Scrabble champion so were done in!

Go on...ask me anything.

im reading in the begginning by henri blocher.

given in on the dorian grey for a while again!!!!