web-goddess

Category: Books

  • Weekend Accomplishments

    Did I mention that it’s Labour Day here? I really needed the three-day weekend. I entertained some of my girlfriends from the office here Friday night – in case you were wondering, that wasn’t me flashing her boobs on OfficeCam, incidentally – and spent most of Saturday recovering. I also knitted like crazy. I finished another Harry Potter scarf order – a Slytherin for Kathy. Check it out. (Did I tell you that I got my hair chopped off a few weeks ago? Because I did. It looks like crap here though because I was out in the rain.) I also braved the school holiday hordes in the city today to get myself some new gym shoes. I went to the Athlete’s Foot in Centrepoint and got properly measured and Fitprinted. It turns out that I have relatively flat arches but I’m weird in that I tend to roll my feet to the outside (whereas most of my flat-footed brethren roll to the inside). So I got hooked up with some sweet New Balance Women’s 811 running shoes. (Apparently they’re a new model because I can’t find them on the site anywhere.) So that’s my weekend done!

    Slytherin Scarf

    My new shoes!

  • Interesting mathematical trivia

    The Dewey Decimal System classification number for numerology is 133.335. If you reverse that and add them together…

    133.335 + 533.331 = 666.666!

    The sign of the beast! Repeated! The math book I was reading thought it was pretty interesting, anyway.

  • Gordon’s Got a Snookie

    Gordon's Got a Snookie!Saturday the Snook and I were strolling through Newtown when we saw this book in a local shop window: Gordon’s Got a Snookie! How cute is that? We went in and read it. It’s a picture book about the new male gorilla at the zoo, whose arrival has all the other animals excited. When they see he has a snookie (a security blanket) though, they laugh at him and make fun of him. He ends up all by himself hugging his snookie (because a snookie is something you hug when you’re all alone and you want your mommy). But then one day the baby gorilla falls in the water and Gordon uses his snookie to save him. All the animals think he’s a hero and he gives them all pieces of the snookie. Isn’t that sweet? I’m glad I have a Snookie. 🙂

  • Friday Five

    I don’t like these questions so much. I’m too indecisive.

    1. If you could only choose 1 cd to ever listen to again, what would it be?
    Ugh. There’s no way I could pick just one. It would have to be a mix CD that I burned myself of all my favorite songs.

    2. If you could only choose 2 movies to watch ever again, what would they be?
    Pride and Prejudice and the Star Wars Trilogy. (I can count Episodes 4-6 as one movie, right?)

    3. If you could only choose 3 books to read ever again, what would they be?
    Jeez. No clue. Seeing a pattern here? If I absolutely had to pick… To Kill a Mockingbird, The Stand, and a book of Greek mythology. That covers a lot of ground.

    4. If you could only choose 4 things to eat or drink ever again, what would they be?
    This one I like. 1) Mountain Dew. 2) My aunt Berb’s chicken and dumplings. 3) The Snook’s chicken risotto. 4) McDonald’s french fries. *dries drool off keyboard*

    5. If you could only choose 5 people to ever be/talk/associate/whatever with ever again, who would they be?
    What, you expect me to answer honestly? My family reads this site! Actually, if you’re talking face-to-face association, I don’t think I even have five people here that I see on a regular basis. There’s the Snook… and that’s it. Yeah, I really need to make some Australian friends.

  • Literary issues…

    I finally managed to track down the text to a very elusive and rare Roald Dahl short story entitled “In the Ruins”. I am absurdly proud of this. I like being an expert at something. Granted, it’s not in a very lucrative field, but I take some pride in the notion that (other than his relatives and biographers), I probably know more about Roald Dahl than anybody else on the planet. Isn’t that nuts? The thing is, it’s gotten to the point where I don’t actually enjoy his books anymore. He’s an academic challenge for me. I started the site as an exercise to learn HTML and produce some content, but somehow along the way it turned into something else. It’s like a job now. I do it because nobody else does and I think somebody ought to. There’s an odd feeling of possessiveness involved. Dahl is mine.

    Which reminds me, I recently read A.S. Byatt’s Possession, which (among other things) is about the “cult of the author” and the way fans/critics/scholars deconstruct and construct writers’ lives. I identified with a lot of it. There’s quite a thrill associated with discovering something the “average” fan doesn’t know. I surf eBay and I have to restrain myself from the impulse to buy every crap piece of Dahl-iana that’s on offer. I don’t need the stuff, but the urge to possess everything is powerful. I found the character of Mortimer Cropper distasteful yet sympathetic. There but for the grace of God (and lack of a lot of money) go I.

    To bring it back to “In the Ruins”, this story has only been reprinted a few times. It’s obviously not one that Dahl or his family felt would contribute to his legacy. So should I have bothered tracking it down? Do literary scholars have any responsibility to respect their (dead) subjects’ privacy? Is it wrong to make museum pieces out of someone’s personal items? I’m rambling. I think about these things though.

    (Oh, and if you decide to read the story, be forewarned that it’s pretty gruesome. Best not read it right after lunch.)

  • Chamber of Secrets

    Wow. Is it really only 53 days til Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets comes out? That’s not long at all! The Herald‘s got some nice pictures that I hadn’t seen before. Draco’s Dad looks like Celeborn the elf from Lord of the Rings. Kenneth Branagh looks pretty good as Gilderoy Lockhart (though I still think Hugh Grant would’ve been better). And as I said before, Tom Riddle is hot.

  • Lovely Bones

    The Lovely Bones discussion is still going on, for those of you that read it. If you haven’t graced us with your opinion yet, drop in. And don’t forget, we’re supposed to be reading Neil Gaiman’s Coraline for this month! (*grumble* Still haven’t gotten my nice illustrated copy yet… *grumble*)

  • Banned Books Week

    I’ve been doing tons of work over at my Dahl site lately. Check it out if you’re bored. And don’t forget, it’s Banned Books Week! Celebrate your freedom to read. (I still can’t get over the fact that some school tried to ban The Lorax because it “criminalizes the forestry industry”.)

  • Books

    Have you guys heard of Singlefile? It’s a web-based application that allows you to keep track of your book collection. It sounds like a great idea, but I’m not sure if it’s worth $20/year. I could probably build something similar and run it here at my own site. Hmm… I smell a new web project coming on!

  • Big Trouble

    Hmm, so Dave Barry’s Big Trouble movie has finally been released? I’m less than enthusiastic. I bought and read the book years ago and – if I recall correctly – I thought it sucked. I’m normally a big Dave Barry fan, so the utter non-funniness of this book should be apparent to you. I can’t even remember what it was about. That’s how forgettable it was. I can’t imagine that it’ll make a very good film, especially if Tim Allen’s in it.