Robynettely

I've already posted on this book once, but that was way earlier on in the story, when all I had read was spoilers and the first 150 pages. Since then, I have finished the book and gave myself time to think about it. This one was another forced binge finish, because the Boy was coming back from camp "tomorrow" and so I needed to finish it "tonight". Tonight actually bled a little into the morrow as I finished it after midnight. Since it's the last book, I would have liked to see more wrapping up. Maybe that's lame, I don't know. Sometimes the better book ends with questions (Tigana comes to mind, though I always loved the way GGKay wrapped up minor storylines in the middle of a book, to let you know that we won't be seeing a character again, but he did live happily ever after nevertheless. In fact, that's one of my favourite Kay-isms). Did Luna Lovegood ever find out what her father did? How did she react? She's clearly much more a descend...

I read this because I had read on GalleyCat that the real author had been sued for some absurd sum like $1.1M by the person who bought the screen rights to the book. He sued her because he had bought the rights on the basis that the book was written by a 19-year-old transgendered ex-prostitute, and this was a semi-autobiographical work. Let me say, if anyone thinks this was autobiographical, they are a sick, sick individual and America has way bigger problems than Iraq. And those problems seem to involve child prostitution at truck stops in West Virginia. Giveaways that it was not strictly true abounded, however. The patron saint of truckstop prostitutes is a magical jackalope that hangs on a wall with its ever-growing antlers, and they have to keep expanding the room it's in because the antlers are so large? Racoon penis talismans? A patron saint of truckers who protects them from speeding through weigh stations and from trouble over falsified logbooks? That said, this was an exce...

This book sat on my shelf for a couple of years. I think my mother read it with her book club. Then my sister read it while she was visiting, and so with no one else to give it to, my mother left it with me, saying "You might not like it." I started it while I was at karate camp. One of the black belts came up to me and asked what I was reading. I showed the cover and said it was about WWI in Africa, and he seemed impressed. He went on and on about how interesting it was that I was reading a book about war, and he'd like to read it when I'm done. And I finished it while we were camping, and gave it to Ed, who had finished the book he was reading (something about clans and the giant walking, fighting machines they ride in and the far future where humanity has divided into two streams). He finished it also, so we've gotten our money's worth out of this one. The book is about WWI in Africa, and written in that British self-effacing style, very funny. That's ...

This one I picked up because I read an excerpt on Salon.com, which made it sound enticing. And the first half was. It's about a group led by the guy who invented Lotus 1-2-3 (the early dominant spreadsheet program). They are trying to create something that they never called an Outlook killer though it seemed like one to me, and they're having a rough time. The book is non-fiction, something I had to keep explaining to the people I was telling about. I write computer manuals and dabble in project management in my day-job, and a lot of the anecdotes told in this book made me chuckle and shake my head. They had problems with the word "item", which meant different things depending on the person using the word; we have problems with the word Devices, and the word Preset (we have a Preset folder on the interface, and then subfolders that are also called Preset folders, but those preset subfolders hold presets, and are also called presets. I rewrote the documentation using a...