Some Noncomics Updatin'

stef

Hi, guess what! Today I finally got my sixthirtyfive.com domain transferred from GoDaddy to Dreamhost. AND I registered the domain "knitthehellup.com".

I've been writing comics, but illustrating them has been difficult. I blame this on the extreme, intense heat in my house. Bleah. The heat in my house melted my credit card.

I've been reading a book about kimono! What have you been reading? Hooray for books!

Apathy

...you seriously managed to melt a credit card?

Drooling Iguana

I've been reading Dune.

It's nearly as over-rated as Lord of the Rings. Shorter, though, which in this case is a big plus.

X'o'Lore

I've been reading...No, wait. Textbooks for school don't count. I've been meaning to read a few things, but I still gotta buy them. Maybe I'll have time now that the quarters ended and I don't have final projects looming over me.

Jace

I just finished reading Neal Stephenson's Crytonomicon, and started reading Col. Corso's The Day After Roswell. Both are awesome stories involving intelligence, and counter-intelligence.

It gets pretty hot out in California's central valley area.

Amoeba Boy

Well then hooray for the East Coast, it's slightly less scorching.

I've slowly been taking little chunks out of Catch 22.

Professor MacJake

I tried to start reading Ender's Game for the second time, but became so violently bored around the third chapter again that I went back to my Lovecraft book. Yayz.

Jace

I finally finished up Marilyn Yalom's Birth of the Chess Queen that Chilimuffin sent me last year. It's kind of interesting in that the piece didn't have the capabilities that it did when the game was first invented. Yalom speculates that it's evolution of capabilities wasn't merely a coincident, and could have some basis on the number of women leader's that emerged during the Dark Ages.

I like the quote Chili wrote on the front page...

Because "the female of the species is more deadly than the male..."

jc

Wow, this is the first weekend in about a year that I actually read a book, and a thread comes along to allow me to mention it!

I read Freakonomics because it was sitting on my in-laws' coffee table. It was funny and surprising, but I couldn't help but want to see some of the data that the whole book was about.

Hamelin

I just picked up the second Wheel of Time book because I was at a used bookstore and it was cheap, and that's a lot of book there.

I dunno if I'll even get to it though, I have so much to read yet I haven't touched any of it lately.

mario

Stef and I just finished listening to the audiobook of "Guns, Germs and Steel" today. A fine read-of-sorts, but that guy makes really long lists of examples sometimes. And they often include bactrian camels.

Apathy

Well they are the best type of camel, after all.

I have no idea what they are, but I am envisioning a camel that has biological weapons in it's hump instead of fat/water. Please don't shatter my illusions with reality.

mario

It's shatterin' time!

Bactrian camels have two humps, dromedary camels have one. The easiest way to remember is that 'B' looks like two camel humps on end, whereas 'D' looks like one.

Behemoth

Don't they also typically come from colder climates and thus have heavier coats of fur?

Silverward

I've been reading the Alphabet of Manliness, and I hope to pick up the Real Ultimate Power book soon.

Hamelin

The Real Ultimate Power book is weird.

X'o'Lore

Hamelin wrote:

I just picked up the second Wheel of Time book because I was at a used bookstore and it was cheap, and that's a lot of book there.

Wheel of Time? I read book 11 of that a few months ago. It was actually one of the best in the series so far I think. A far cry from 10, which is not very good.

stef

JC, I also "read" Freakonomics in audiobook form on my drive across the country last year. I'd also like to see some of the data, because in some cases I disagreed with his hypotheses. But I really liked the book. The part about using information as currency to fight the KKK was awesome.

Melted Jhonnycake

currently I am reading a collection of H.P. lovecraft stories and a newtype magazine.

hlavco

I should be finishing this issue of Motor Trend any time now.

leesh

i've been reading free books that i scored this past weekend in new orleans! hooray for the american library association and hooray for advance copies from harper collins! (and for my free brand-new second copy of anansi boys, signed by neil gaiman, who was gracious enough to pose for photos.)

by the way, it's pretty hot on the east coast too, at least down in the southern part (new orleans was atrociously humid, even worse than florida). also it's thunderstormy and floody!

jc

Melted Jhonnycake wrote:

currently I am reading a collection of H.P. lovecraft stories and a newtype magazine.

I wish I could afford Newtype. I'm not a huge anime fan, but the layouts are really sharp, and Kevin Gifford, one of the editors, is super awesome.

Nato

I just finished reading the superawesome The Chinatown Death Cloud Plot, a two-fisted, spine-tingling pulp adventure starring the writers who created The Shadow and Doc Savage, and I'm now working on the ever-hilarious Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job and a weird, kinda self-indulgent superhero novel entitled Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask.

Oh, plus Osama Tezuka's eight-volume Buddha, which is just damn good.

And I think I've done all the research I can do for the penultimate issue of year one of Agents Extraordinary, so I may just have to sit down and write the damn thing.

-- Nato

jason

I just finished driving from Georgia to California and listened to Peter and the Starcatchers, a prequel to Peter Pan by Dave Barry (yes, that Dave Barry) and Ridley Pearson, and it was quite enjoyable. I'm sure part of this was the reading by Jim Dale(?) who is the person who does the Harry Potter audiobooks.

On the flip side, I can definitely recommend AGAINST the horrible audiobook of The Life of Pi. I got to CD number of 7 of 9 and happily returned it without knowing the ending; it's like if Dostoevsky had written The Old Man and the Sea, and it was read by a B-List actor doing a fake Indian accent the whole time.

Aside from moving, not a whole lot else, except for making a cell phone game with my friend.

deku12345

I am reading Lamb: The gospel according to Biff, Christ's childhood pal. I'd reccomend it to anyone, as its hilarious. It tells the story of Jesus' childhood in a style that feels similar to Douglas Adams.

It also has a Yeti.

KhanFusion

Guns, Germs, and Steel goes into detail about the domestication of cereals. That made me happy.

Unknown

Um... I read Eragon and some comics. Mostly Marvel, and one about Superman. I read a lot of comics.

Ryoga

I'm currently reading 'Full Metal Alchemist Novelized Version- Volume 1.' 'The Prince', And 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms'. I have 'The Water Margin' and Haunted by Chuck Pahliniuk lined up after I finish those books.

stef

Ryoga-- high five for both The Prince and Three Kingdoms. Fascinating reads, even if the bazillion characters in Three Kingdoms make parts of it hard to follow. I actually am still only about 1/3 through the thing.

My newest reads were loaned to me by a friend here in CA-- two books on the genocide in Rwanda, and one on modern economics of gender. They're all really awesome. I'm somewhat ashamed of how little I knew of the horrible Rwandan genocides, but to be fair, OJ Simpson was the major item on the news in the US at the time. Ugh.

jc

Also it's kind of hard to actively seek out information about genocides.

stef

I guess the snide intent of my post was less to indicate that I should've been researching genocides as a teenager, and more that it would be nice if sometimes real news could be played instead of celebrity news.

But who am I kidding. I read The Superficial more often than CNN.