I mentioned last week that a few months ago we had listened
to the audiobook of The Hot Rock, the first of the Dortmunder novels.
I just finished reading it as an ebook on my phone.
I enjoyed it a lot but I think I found it funnier when I heard it as an audiobook.
Partly, the first time around, I didn't know what was coming next;
partly, the narrator's skillful delivery gave me time to savor the humor.
I read so fast that …continue.
The first volume of John Cleese's autobiography
takes us through the first 30 years of his life,
from his birth in Weston-super-Mare in 1939
to the creation of Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1969.
I learned along the way
that his mother was impossible;
that the Pythons consider themselves writers first, performers second;
that he greatly enjoyed his school years;
quite a lot about the various TV and radio shows he worked on before Python;
not much about his first marriage to Connie Booth;
and that his speech in
A …continue.
Tiffany Aching, now 11, becomes a trainee witch.
But an ancient evil, the hiver, has noticed her and possesses her.
Her Nac Mac Feegle friends, the diminutive and indomitable blue pictsies,
come to her aid.
She may only be eleven, but she's as tough as nails.
XKCD's Tech Support Cheat Sheet nails it!
This is essentially what I'm doing when I sit down
at your computer and dig you out of your latest hole.
If only you'd make some more intelligent guesses for yourself,
you might be able to solve more of your problems.
But it's not quite that simple.
You probably don't understand very much about what you're doing.
I have enormous depth and breadth of experience which informs my investigation.
I am—no false modesty here—a master of debugging.
The extra context helps me hone in on a solution more often than not.
Still, do give the flowchart a shot.
Being able to …continue.
Tommy Flood is another of Chris Moore's Beta Males.
He's also a brand-new 19-year-old vampire, newly turned by his girlfriend Jody—herself only a vampire for a few months.
He's not too keen about his new state, but he's trying to cope.
It doesn't help that his former crew of shelf stockers at Safeway
are trying to hunt his vampire ass.
And he has a 16-year-old Goth chick for a minion who thinks
the Lord Flood is like OMG totally hot.
Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's in 2007.
Fortunately, it's not evident in this Discworld book.
Moist von Lipwig, con man extraordinaire, finds himself in charge
of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork and the Royal Mint.
The people don't trust the banks much.
In an effort to get money flowing, he introduces paper money to Ankh-Morpork.
Lipwig, like his creator, is an acute observer of people,
and pulls it off against the odds.
Pratchett does his usual trick of holding a fun-house mirror
up to …continue.
Simon Canderous, dorky newbie at the underfunded, secretive
Department of Extraordinary Affairs in New York City,
investigates the death of a beautiful ghost
and the apparently respectable cultists at the
Sectarian Defense League.
He has the gift (or curse) of psychometry:
when he touches something,
he can divine its history.
This book wobbles between not very black comedy
and straight urban fantasy,
and doesn't really succeed as either.