yahoo! i recently bought a few little treats for myself! i haven't bought any books or dvds in a while now and, while i can't buy any books really, because of my (self-imposed) tbr pile restrictions, i can buy comics! so i got:
the dark knight! which i'm very happy about. i've only read this once, but have never owned it, so it is so nice to have it now! i like the book so much and i often feel like just paging through it.
daredevil: love and war. i love bill sienkiewicz and frank miller - so a book by both of them is going to be great fun! this is my "graphic novel that i haven't yet read" present to myself.
E' un libro non di sola esegesi, ma che tenta di coniugare storia (vicende e istituzioni) con l'analisi del testo biblico.
Indice sintetico:
Prafazione e Introduzione
Parte I : La questione dell'autorità in Israele tra VI e IV sec. a.C.
Parte II: Studio esegetico di Nm 11 e 16
Conclusione
Bibliografia - indici
Two friends of mine have a lovely shop in Dorchester called '' which sells the most gorgeous, contemporary kitchenware, tableware and furnishings and a range of yummy foods too. It is always my first port of call when I need to buy a gift. Today, I bought some beautiful glasses for a 30th wedding anniversary gift (I'm off to a party on the 8th) and as usual, I couldn't resist buying myself a little something too and I also saw this wrapping paper. It's by who makes really funky, fun kitchen and tableware. It has the spots on one side and the stripes on the other. I couldn't decide which pattern to use on the outside of the book and so I made two :-)
So if you were to buy these books, you could also have the matching mug, teapot, bowls, plates, cake tin, biscuit barrel, oven gloves etc etc.....
You could also buy this tea towel while you are at it...
The other news of the day is that my ex has turned into a rock star! His album, called '' by GTA, is now available for download on iTunes, which is very exciting!
My bit of glory came a couple of days ago when I was 'Blog of the Day' over at 'Fuel my Blog' You will have noticed that I now have a little widget-ty thing in my sidebar and every time someone clicks it, it is recorded as a vote over on the Fuel My Blog website. Well, I was for a day or so, top Art/Design blog and then I was 'Blog of the Day' and was sent this little badge to display...
is an interesting list of "The 100 Best Novels" written in the English language. I will make a few observations.
1. The Board's List is not too bad, but they have callously neglected Science Fiction and Fantasy. Which is a shame, a black mark on the credibility of this list. Tolkien, Peake, Heinlein, Lewis, Zelazny (heh) and many others deserve to be on that list. So does Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, actually.
2. Apparently, the board could only fully agree on 1. and 2. The inclusion of Brave New World among the Top Five is a bit puzzling, since Orwell's 1984, is, to me, the better work. Also, Huxley has indeed written better.
3. The Reader's List has a problem: a lot of the voting was done by Scientologist and Objectivist nutjobs. Other than that, it is more inclusive in terms of willingness to embrace Science Fiction & Fantasy. Pity about the nutjobbery, though.
4. Lists are lists. I like how Bob Dylan responded to the Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs list:
His fellow musicians paid tribute to him when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, joining him in a rousing rendition of his most famous song, "Like a Rolling Stone." That song was recently named by Rolling Stone magazine as the No. 1 song of all time. And he has 12 other songs on their list of the Top 500.
"That must be good to have as part of your legacy," says Bradley.
"Oh, maybe this week. But you know, the list, they change names, and you know, quite frequently, really. I don't really pay much attention to that," says Dylan.
"But it's a pat on the back," says Bradley.
"This week it is," Dylan replies. "But who's to say how long that's gonna last?"
Taken from: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/02/60minutes/main658799_page2.shtml
Blurb from the BookCape Wrath lighthouse.Pew tells Silver ancient tales of longing and rootlessness, of ties that bind and of the slippages that occur throughout every life.Motherless andanchorless Silver is taken in by the timeless Mr Pew, keeper of the One life, Babel Dark’s a nineteenth-century clergyman opens like a map, that Silver must follow.Caught in her own particular darkness, she embarks on a Ulyssean sift through thestories we tell ourselves, stories love and loss, of passion and longing, stories of unending journeys that move through places and times and the bleak finality of the shores of betrayal.
I thought this rather a strange book.Lighthousekeeping is a book about stories.I liked the start of the book and I liked the stories but somewhere along the way I got lost and was not sure what was happening.This is the first Jeanette Winterson book that I have read so I don’t know if this style is typical of her or not. It is a very short book so I managed to finish it and I am glad that I did, but I don’t think this was for me.
The Masonic square and compasses symbol is seen on the main floor wall frieze, on 19 November, at the headquarters of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Southern jurisdiction, in Washington, DC. A sequel to the blockbuster thriller "The Da Vinci Code" is set to lift the veil on mysterious Freemason symbols carved into the fabric of the historic streets and buildings of the US capital.
WASHINGTON (AFP) — A sequel to the blockbuster thriller "The Da Vinci Code" is set to lift the veil on mysterious Freemason symbols carved into the very fabric of the historic streets and buildings of the US capital.
Novelist Dan Brown has set the new adventures of his hero, scholar-adventurer Robert Langdon, right in the heart of Washington, which could reveal some astonishing facts for history buffs.
Brown "had a contact with us but then cut it short. We are all sitting around waiting for his book to come out but nobody knows what he's going to say," Akram Elias, grand master-elect of Washington's Grand Lodge, told AFP.
According to the pre-publicity, the book -- working title "The Solomon Key" -- will feature Langdon hero of the mass-selling "The Da Vinci Code" and who was played by Tom Hanks in the hit film version.
"For the first time, Langdon will find himself embroiled in a mystery on US soil. This new novel explores the hidden history of our nation's capital," Brown wrote in a posting on his official website.
Washington has strong historic roots in Freemasonry -- an old and widespread fraternity which traditionally practised secret rituals.
Despite its reputation for secrecy, the Freemason community is noticeably open in the United States: lodges are advertised in the phone book and their signs are prominently displayed.
The first US president after whom the city is named, George Washington, was a Mason, as were his fellow founding fathers James Madison and Benjamin Franklin, plus James Hoban, the architect of the White House.
The broad steps, stone sphinxes and colonnades of a Masonic temple dominate a corner of 16th Street near the city center -- one of a number of Masonic lodges in the capital -- and just a stone's throw from the White House.
Elias cites theories that the city's streets themselves are laid out in the shape of secret Masonic signs. "It may be a coincidence, but there are indications that are difficult to ignore," he said.
Establishing the nation's capital, George Washington is said to have demanded that it be laid out in a symbolic square.
"It's fascinating. If you take an aerial view of Washington, you cannot but see the perfect square and the compass which are the universal symbols of Freemasonry ... meaning rectitude and equality," he said.
"Was it on purpose? I don't know, but I think it's difficult to ignore those mysterious aspects," he added. "It adds another level of mystery to the city of Washington."
The shape of a square and compass is also formed by drawing a line on the map between two of the city's major landmarks, the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, and along the walls of the White House and the Jefferson Memorial.
At the center of these stands the George Washington monument, a vast brick obelisk whose dimensions themselves are symbolic: 555 feet high by 55 wide (170 meters by 17).
The number five is said to refer to the traditional five orders of architecture, which in turn relates to the Freemasons' regard for geometry as a symbol of order, and of "the great geometrician" -- the supreme being.
Inside the Capitol building, the heart of US lawmaking which sits at the dead center of the square city boundaries, lies a cornerstone laid by George Washington himself, dressed in his ceremonial apron, in a Masonic ritual in 1793.
"Here goes Washington heading a ceremony in order to lay the cornerstone of the Capitol, using corn, oil and wine to send a very powerful message to those who will be working in the parliament," Elias said.
"Their mission should be to work in achieving prosperity, peace and happiness for the American people."
Some play down the perceived prominence of Masons and their symbology, for fear of encouraging conspiracy theories which may be harmful to Freemasons.
"Freemasonry has a very important role in the history of the US and the early American republic," said Mark Tabbert, director of collections at the Washington Masonic memorial in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, and author of the book "American Freemasons."
"But that role is not based on any kind of political or religious construct."
Tabbert offers an alternative to claims of Masonic design in Washington's city plan.
"The design of the US capital is based more on neo-classical style, more related to the attempts to create a new republic based on an ancient Roman republican model than anything that related to freemasons," he said.
Codes and secret signs were Brown's stock-in-trade for the staggering success of "The Da Vinci Code" however.
"I'm nervous about it because I don't think he does very good research," Tabbert said of Brown and his new book. "But fiction writers are fiction writers."
It's been a morbid week so far. I've gone from talking brain tumours and missing teenagers to an urn with someone's ashes. Ashes with a message. Sex may still be somewhat taboo in British YA books, but death and how you get there, is alive and well, so to speak. It isnt' that long since the Resident IT Consultant queried whether it really was OK to kill off the main character halfway through a children's book.
I'm not surprised Jenny Valentine won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize with her first book, Finding Violet Park. It's not just a good story, it's different and special.
Violet Park has been dead a long time when Lucas comes across her ashes in the office of a taxi company. With the help of his grandmother and other family members, as well as friends, Lucas finds out who Violet was and what happened to her.
It's a journey of discovery, which also helps Lucas understand his own life, and that of his missing, or possibly dead, father. Finding Violet Park is both funny and sad. A really good read.
When it comes to Exclusive Books, I go straight to the Fantasy section to see if there's that one darn Terry Pratchett I'm missing, then to Fiction for any of the Dean Koontz books I still don't have and then I end up in their tiny little humour section. We've managed to find a couple of damn good pointless toilet reading books in this section, because, sometimes you actually just need a good book or magazine in the toilet.
One of the winners is "What's what, the encyclopedia of pointless information", it's amazing the crap I have learnt but didn't need to know from it. In the spirit of this, welcome to my day of pointless information!
- The first elastic bands were patented by Stephen Perry & Co. of London on 17 March 1845
- According to the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, a centaur is impossible since horse and man live to different ages, so one half would be dead when the other was still in its prime.
- Between 1520 and 1630, some 30,000 people were reported to the French authorities for being werewolves.
- According to NASA, the items most missed by astronauts on space missions are pizza, ice cream and fizzy drinks.
and then
- The average size of an erect penis is only 5in (12.8cm), which is significantly smaller than most men believe.
An Italian study in 2002 discovered that, of 67 men seeking enlargement operations, all had penises well within the normal size range.
The most common causes of injury to the penis are ritual circumcision, animal attacks, bicycle accidents (another reason not to be a wanker cyclist) and zipper injuries.
And if you go to www.phallus.is you can view the website of the world's only museum of penises. I shit you not, someone in Iceland opened up a Phallological Museum.
After giving people a link to a penis museum there really isn't anything left to say.
Sometimes it is hard to think of something that is simple enough to be drawn with the mouse, especially if the drawing is just an excuse to bring in those brilliant computer-generated colours.
Sometimes, to get an idea you'll have to look at real art, discover some minuscule detail in paintings by Chagall, Hodler, Klee, Miró.
Here is a fragment from a picture by Paul Klee.
Simply look in your computer for the Paint program included in Windows and for novel and luminous ideas you may have to ask your kids. The fish are from a place where they study oceanography.
Here is a fragment from a picture by Paul Klee.