'Lifeless' by Mark Billingham

I'm a bit of a fan of detective novels, not so much thrillers but the likes of Ian Rankin and Colin Dexter. I'll let you know what I think of the book once i've finished it!

I've found I can be a bit full of myself and overly sneaky like Mat Cuathon (Wheel of Time,) not to mention having a fascination with military strategy and tactics. Ask me how p----d i was at how Jackson did the Battle of Pellenor Field? You just don't turn a formation of pikemen 180’ in an instant; when cavalry suddenlty show up on the flank of pike, pike die, quickly and painfully, amid charge-wheel-repeat until they're all dead or they break and you run 'em down and THEN they're all dead. Whole libraries have been written on the "turning movement" to change infrantys orientation on the march (which is about the only way it could be done,) and his skill in its execution (largely due to the first regularly drilled army) were a large part of Alexanders success.

Friday afternoon my foot surgeon stopped by with his copy of Dan Browns Special Illustrated Edition of Angels & Demons as I had previously loaned him my copy of C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy. These books are Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That hiddious Strength.

But back to Angels & Demons, I took it to bed for my bedtime story at 1 am Saturday thinking it would put me to sleep in a few minutes, even though it was very heavy (weight-wise) for reading in bed. It was a horrible read causing me mush loss of sleep, for I kept saying "Just one more chapter," time and again. I finished this 500 page barn-burner (page-turner) 10 hours later at 11 am. Now I'll have to find The Da Vinci Code.

I'd much rather discuss this appealing work despite knowing nothing about it. I can't tell you in detail what I think of Dan Browns work other than to note that the Priory of Zion is ancient organization almost a decade older than me, whose founder did time in a French prison for mail fraud. When I told my mother this in a discussion of the Da Vinci Code here response was "So he's a con-artist?" Yep.

I have real issues with Mr. Browns whole this-is-a-work-of-fiction-based-on-proven-fact disclaimer when in FACT those "facts" are anything but. Given statements elsewhere I can't get into now they would create more questions than they answer if they WERE true.

And besides, aren't you supposed to be starting The Eye of the World soon? Countdown to October (if you have no life at all and read nothing else you might be caught up by then) continues; Demandred's out there somewhere, and his self control has to give out soon....

At the moment I'm rereading LT2 and reflecting on how it's been so long since I have that there isn't even any loose tobacco in the spine between pages. Great was the fall of Gondolin indeed, and HoME still lures me the way it always has: if you want LotR like detail on such matters rather than a few sentences, that's the place to go. Soon, however, I'll have to dedictate a few obsessive weeks to Lord of Chaos through Crossroads of Twilight to refamiliarize myself in time for Knife of Dreams. In the interim I've learned that the Borderlander saying "Death is lighter than a feather; duty is heavier than a mountain" was actually one of the Kamikazes mantras. It fits, in a lot of ways.

Morambar stated:

Oh man, I am so glad that I am not the only one to hate Dan Brown's work. I read The DaVinci Code, (silly, silly girl), because everyone was raving about it. I have not read a book that was so poorly written in, well...in a long time (and when I say poorly written, I mean sentence structure -- of which I pretend to be no master -- but I certainly recognize complex sentence structure when I see it). I heard Angels and Demons is better (and I'll trust Grondy that it's a good read), but I still will not support it after reading The DaVinci Code...*gag*. The stupid clues he gave, I figured out in about two seconds, and was wondering why the so-called professor couldn't (hey, they were like your backwards writing, Morambar). And don't even get me started on the inconspicuous albino. A friend of mind hates when I say this, but I'm going to say it anyway....WHATEVER!

As for taking on character traits, I try to be honorable like the good Horatio Hornblower, try to be fit like Aragorn, try to brood sometimes like Harry Haller (from Steppenwolf) and Holgrave (from The House of the Seven Gables), and I try to be unpredictable like Hermine (also from Steppenwolf).

Tonight I sideline Saint Liebowitz and the Wild Horse Woman and unwrap my brand spanking new Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I hope I'll be able to fall asleep and save some for tomorrow night and maybe the next. HP and the Order of Pheonix only lasted two nights.

He's been travelling but he was on chat yesterday.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. Strongly written and hard to put down. I surely can imagine he why he won the Pullitzer price with this book.

Tonight I will probably start Elizabeth Peters's Guardian of the Horizon, which another in the Amelia Peabody (and family) archeological murder mysteries. This one was new last year and back tracks to cover the 1907-8 period of their lives. I just got it in paperback, for I seldom ever buy a hardcover book of the murder mystery genre. I figure I can wait and if it wasn't good enough to bring out in paperback, I probably won't miss reading it.

I just finished Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince and being the girl that I am, I nearly cried. It only lasted three days; Order of The Pheonix lasted three days also. Tomorrow, I'm going pick R. A. Salvatore's The Cleric Quintet back up (I dropped it for Harry Potter )

For a change in pace I started yet another reread of something called The Fellowship of the Ring written by some dusty old English Professor. I haven't read it in total since Rednell held classes on it a couple years ago; though I have another copy of it open for fact checking just about daily.

I rereading The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey.

I just started H G Wells' 'The Time Machine' having finished 'The War of the Worlds'

The Eye of the Word by Robert Jordan
The Invisible Man by HG Wells having also finished The War of the Worlds

I've just finished the Da Vinci Code Amazing! It really lived up to its reviews on the Internet! Now I'm just savouring it, rereading bits of it here and there, y'know, milking out all the flavour I can get.

I finished the Da Vinci Code and feel his Angels and Demons was better. Now I'm reading The Man Who Changed His Skin by Harry Stephan Keeler. It was written in 1959 and published only in Spain in 1966. It's about a man who takes a drug in 1855 Boston and wakes up with black skin.

Just finished The Secret Country by Pamela Dean, and I’m going crazy because it’s going to take me a while to get a hold of the second two books of the trilogy, which is apparently all one story (kind of like LotR, except I don’t think this was originally meant to be published as one book’) It really grabbed hold of me like only new Terry Pratchett books have been wont to do lately (not that this is necessarily on the same level, but it moves along well, and the world is interesting). I was lucky I even read it; I normally don’t try things by authors I don’t know unless they’re recommended to me or they’re new. But I liked the premise, which is: five cousins have been playing a make-believe game every summer for years. The summer of the book, their made up land becomes real.

I just finished Dashiell Hammet's 'Red Harvest'. I thought I had read it before; however, this was a much different story from what I remembered, so it was a new experience for me. It is about a P.I. coming to a 1920s town and cleaning it up by turning the gangsters against each other, while trying to stay alive and out of the crooked cops' jail.

der zerbrochne krug - a drama by heinrich von kleist. it's quite funny.

Forgot to ask. Who likes Paulo Cohello?

Try "The Alchemist" firstly. It is very beautiful. Almost all of his books are really good, but this one I particularly adore. I hope you'll like it.

I'm currently reading Tolkien in the Land of Heroes by Anne C. Petty.

I'm reading Whispers by Dean Koontz;
I've discovered that I love his books, but that can be blamed all on Phantoms...

Of course i am reading the all time best The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers

historical murder mysteries... that really sounds interesting. you made me want to read something by this author...
at the moment I'm reading another Wolf-Haas-novel called Silenzium.