JPLOP.COM

I am currently reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Finallyyyy xD

I've been reading Connie Willis lately. Last week it was Uncharted Territory, and now I'm in the middle of Impossible Things, a collection of short stories. The story I just read is "Ado," a snarky response to censorship.

I am currently reading the first in The Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling. It's called Luck in Shadows. It's really good so far. I haven't really read fantasy books properly since I was a kid, so I'm excited to get into a series.

Right now I'm reading Embassytown by China Miéville, a novel set in a human settlement on a planet inhabited by creatures who use a strange language spoken by two different voices at once. I'm attracted to linguistically-oriented sci-fi and fantasy, in case you hadn't already figured that out.

Sunday I finished reading Esperanto in The New York Times (1887-1922), edited by Ulrich Becker. It's simply a compendium of public domain New York Times articles that mention Esperanto, but it's a fascinating time capsule.

Yesterday I started reading Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware, the third volume of M. T. Anderson's "Pals in Peril" series. I love these books; they're absolutely hilarious.

Finished:
The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Airframe by Michael Crichton
Fire in the Hole by Elmore Leonard

Reading:
Under the Dome by Stephen King

There's supposed to be an Under the Dome mini-series, I'm trying to finish the book before it starts.
That way I can say "THEY DID THIS WRONG, THEY DID THAT WRONG..."

Yesterday I finished reading Being Colloquial in Esperanto: A Reference Guide by David K. Jordan. It's very informative (I'm sure I'll be using it for reference quite often) and often entertaining. Jordan injects humor into a lot of his sample sentences, which wins points with me. A few examples:

Ŝi ordonis al li donaci sian salajron al la movado por vestigi katojn.
She ordered him to donate his salary to the movement to clothe cats.

Legi stultajn romanojn estas bone. Vidi stultajn filmojn estas pli bone.
Reading stupid novels is good. Seeing stupid films is better.

Ni sukcesos iel ajn disvastigi pacon, eĉ se necesos mortigi ĉiujn ajn!
We'll succeed in some way or other in spreading peace, even if we have to kill absolutely everybody.

Diskuto buĝeta estas preteksto nek por perforto nek por la angla.
Discussing the budget is no excuse either for violence or for English.

Ŝi parolaĉis Esperante, esperante tamen, ke la bela japano respondos angle.
She stammered along in Esperanto, hoping however that the handsome Japanese would reply in English.

Mi faros ion ajn, eĉ studi Esperanton!
I'll do anything at all, even study Esperanto!

Finally finished Under the Dome. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but sometimes I got a few characters confused, there's so many of them. Can't wait to see how they screw it up on TV.

I decided that one of the perks of graduating college is that I can spend more time reading. It'll be nice to read something other than a textbook or a case study for class.

Because of that I bought David Guterson's Ed King today because I totally loved Snow Falling on Cedars (albeit four years ago now). I hope that it's Guterson's style of writing that I like. I also bought Nigel Slater's Toast because I really enjoyed the movie that they made based on it. Hopefully the book is better (since they usually are).


Sidenote: There's a part of me that wants an e-reader (most likely a tablet) so that I can buy a bunch of books for cheap but there's the part of me of that really enjoys physical books as well as perusing bookstores.

Plus the econ major in me realizes that e-books can kill jobs since it takes jobs away from printing presses, binders, and brick and mortar stores.
Oh the debate that rages inside of me.

From my understanding (and unless something has changed in the past 2 years), for the most part e-books are either relatively expensive (since you can't buy them used, they basically match cover price), or completely free (because they're public domain/you pirate them). ^^;;