It is always a difficult task to write the life of a living writer, and that too the biography of an opiniated and at time infuriatingly controversial, but highly talented writer, like V S Naipaul. Partick French has succeeded in doing just that:A narrative of the lfe of V S Naipaul from the sugar cane fields of Trinidad to the hieghts of Nobel fame and glory. The World is What it is covers the life of V S Naipaul from the vantage point of uncovering the man behind the books, it is reverntial wi...

Okay, this is going to be a quick one.  Can I just say that I really didn't ever need or want to know any of the details of Babs sex life?  I have a special contempt for anyone who chooses to sleep with a married person but then to advertise the fact in your memoirs.  Maybe you should have just kept it to yourself. 

Stay classy, Babs. 

   Jere's Part 2 of the Iliad for the Common Reader. The Article Link reads back to the previous one in the series, if you're lost.

    With these words he sat down, and Calchas, wisest of prophetss, who knew things past present and to come, rose to speak. He had guided the Greeks with their fleet to Troy, through the propheses which Phoebus Apollo had told him. With all sincerity and goodwill he addressed them:

    "Achilles, loved of heaven, you a...

    I'm gonna try putting the Iliad into plain English. It's already in English in the translation I'm using, but I'm making it simple. It will have footnotes. Most quotes will be left somewhat intact, especially describing the pantheon of the Greeks.

    Sing, O goddess*, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Greeks. It killed many of the Greeks, and it led to the death of many heroes, for so Zeus's commands fufilled, when son...

I didn't get to read much in January. I basically got up, went to work for 8 hours at the office, came home, worked for another 8 hours, and went to bed and repeated that. Very busy time in those last weeks of Sins of a Solar Empire, new year business work, GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor, MyColors, WindowBlinds, DeskScapes, Impulse, etc.

But now I'm back.



So now I'm starting to read again.  This month I'm reading "Arrest Proof Yourself" which I got to learn more about what type...

I just got back from the future in my time machine. Lots of cool stuff and not so cool stuff too.

But one of the things that surprised me was how eBooks ended up succeeding in ways one didn't expect and failed utterly in the areas it was expected to do well in.

It all started with the Kindle.  The Kindle was the first mainstream (seriously mainstream) attempt to get eBooks going.  With Amazon getting behind it (just like the did the Segway incidentally) the Kindle became pretty s...

This comic is done by a friend of mine and she is an amazing arts. Her artwok as well as Erin Seigel's work on the comic make this a new and upcoming sensastion. It has a unique american style as well Kay is a fan of the old school style Art work that used be produced all the time by Disney.

You can get a feel for the art style of the comics by checking out their site.

Hope you Enjoy it and if you do, please stop back by here and let me know!

It is banned book week.  I was surprised to see how many books I had read that were in the top 100 banned books.  I think the freedom to read what we want is so important.  It worries me that people don't read as much as they used to.  It worries me that people seem to take their freedoms for granted.  I don't understand the philosophy that I think this book is bad so no one else should read it.  After looking through the list I just wonder why we are so uptigh...

Mere Anarchy is Woody Allen's latest book, a collection of 18 humorous short stories, more than half of which originally appeared in The New Yorker.

This book definitely isn't for everyone. If anything, it's sunk by its own pseudo-intellectual pretensions. If you're the kind of person who doesn't like to watch certain sitcoms because you don't get the references or whose head begins to ache every time Dennis Miller opens his mouth, you should either treat this book like that odd, smelly neigh...

I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this weekend. Yes I was one of the nerds who went to a midnight release (in costume) and then didn't come out of their bedroom until it was finished. Which for me was at about 2:00 Sunday morning, and I started reading it at about 1:30 on Saturday morning. Slightly over 24 hours, not bad. It was an awesome book though! I thought it was a wonderful way to end the series, though maybe a bit predictable. I think people overall were predicting ...

I am looking forward to reading the final installment of the Harry Potter series.  I didn't preorder the book and I don't plan to be going to any of the late night parties to buy it either.  My husband plans to buy it and read it at our cottage next week.

I don't know when I will get the chance to read it since I'll A) have to wait until Brad is done reading it and B) will have to wait until the baby allows me time to get some reading in.

So, in the meantime, any suggestions on a...

This isn't so much a book review as it is a review of a series of books. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher tells the stories of the only wizard you'll find in the yellow pages. Harry Dresden, the detective wizard, works with Chicago Police head of Special Investigations Lt. Murphy. Together, they fight vampires, werewolves, creatures of Faerie and demons. Harry also has to deal with the White Council -- the governing body of wizards who do not trust Harry because he has a bit of a history wit...

Let me start off by saying that Kuperman's Fire by John J. Clayton moved my more than any other book that I have read in a long time. Only 304 pages in length, it took me longer to read than I would have thought. There were parts that I read over several times to savor; other times I had to stop after only a few pages because a passage left me emotionally drained.

It is hard to put Kuperman's Fire into a category. Is it suspense? There are certainly suspenseful portions. Is it philosophy?...

Instead of writing two very boring papers for my lit theory class, I decided to write a fun paper on....drum roll.... Harry Potter. I know, you're shocked.

And, while I'm not asking for help writing this paper, because that would be wrong, I thought I would put some of my notes up here to see what ya'll thought. I think it's pretty interesting stuff (I would) and I thought someone else might also find it interesting.

The focus of the paper is how does JK Rowling, by writing about a subc...

As most of you know, I have a love of Fantasy Literature. However, no matter how I fight and say that fantasy literature is worth academic study, it is not a proper area of study for an English major. I have had to relegate Fantasy Literature to "pet project" and "hobby." I'm ok with this, as I love all kinds of literature and I fear that being forced to work at fantasy lit, I might grow to hate it.

This means that I needed to find a proper area to focus my studies on. Not being a fan o...