2003-11-29
Yes, I can wallow in the reading and imagining about the life of the people who could afford building the stately homes of England, and who could afford to live there. So what? I can always say it's good research for the novel-in-planning.
A perfect gem of a Wodehouse, one of the Blandings stories I most often reread — I was surprised I hadn't already read A Pelican at Blandings this year. But my Fading Memories log says not, so there...
A Pelican at Blandings is the quintessential Blandings story; Right Ho, Jeeves is the quintessential Jeeves and Wooster story.
Lord Ickenham is a Wodehouse character who can be counted upon to spread a bit of lightness around whenever he can escape from the stranglehold of his wife to the vast wildernesses of London.
2003-11-28
When I bought a Wacom tablet my intention was to use it to sketch maps for my novel-in-progress. Quite soon I discovered that it came with an application that purported to imitate, simulate or fake real artist's media, like charcoal, paint and ink.
Not really a book by Godfried Bomans, but rather a collection of memories jotted down by his family and friends after his death on December 22, 1971, about two years after I was born.
Magician's Ward is the sequel to Mairelon the Magician. I bought the latter first, as is fitting, and just before I started with Fading Memories. At the end of Mairelon the Magician I was quite sure that Kim, the ward, would end up marrying Mairelon in something very close to the classic King Cophetua stunt.
2003-11-17
Otfried is one of Germany's best known children's books authors; others are of course Michael Ende and Erich Kastner. And there is little doubt that Otfried Preußler's master work is this book, Krabat, rather limply translated into Dutch as Meester van de zwarte molen.
I've noted before that I'm not really all that fond of the works of the very well known and very highly regarded Dutch author Tonke Dragt. Neither her style in illustration, nor her stories have ever held me spell-bound.
2003-11-03
As I said before, I rather like good buildings. Irina knows this, and when she came across this book in our local bookshop, she knew it would be a perfect birthday present.
My father-in-law bought, or received, this copy of The Man Upstairs in 1939, and he has apparently read it to pieces. Early Wodehouse, and this is very early, ca. 1914, is far less exuberant than the product of his old age. This is apprentice-work, not quite mature, but full of promise.
An early Havank, and a fun one. But a quick notice, since I've been typing a lot of notices tonight, and I'm getting a bit tired.
I have two editions of Pepys famous diary; that is to say, I have got two volumes from the Everyman edition, and I've got the Concise Pepys Diary. The Everyman isn't complete, of course, and it wouldn't be complete even if I had all volumes. The Concise Pepys is a cheap Wordsworth reprint of the original 1825 abridged publication.
This book I borrowed from a collegue of mine at Tryllian, Peter Tax. It appears to be and have been the standard text for Computer Graphics 101 at Dutch universities and technical universities, because another collegue, Remco Schaar, offered to lend me his copy, which is a new edition. Since I've never done anything academic with computers except for a course in SGML, another in SNOBOl and a last in Pascal for Linguistcs, all this stuff was new to me.
Jonathan Knudsen is, acknowledges the back blurb, an O'Reilly staff writer. That means he's not a subject expert, but what is technically termed a 'hack' who writes about whatever subject O'Reilly needs a book. That's not to say that he doesn't know his subject, but his book on Java Cryptography wasn't all that good and at first I thought that the book on Java 2D graphics wasn't up to scratch either.
I've started studying theology, having enrolled in the correspondence course of the Saint-Serge Institute, as translated and provided by the Centrum voor Theologische Vorming Johannes de Doper in Brussels. One Saturday every month I travel to Brussels to receive a wad of papers and some face-to-face tuition. I've had only one lesson yet, because Irina was away the weekend of the second lesson, and the third Saturday, coming up now, we already have exams.
Baen's Free Library is a great institution. Lots of titles from Baen's back catalog are available in html, word or another format, freely downloadable, freely readable. No conditions, nothing. And since I don't usually read (the covers tend to be somewhat off-putting...) what Baen publishes, this is the perfect way of making the acquaintance of what their authors write.
Gosh! It's almost ten years old, this book! Ten years. It's a long time in programming. When this book was published I had just started using Linux full-time, having made its first acquintance in 1993 or 1992, I don't remember exactly. At that time, I only knew Basic, Pascal, Snobol and SGML; in 1994 I started learning SQL, PL/SQL and C. And since then I've picked up Java, Python, C++ and Visual Basic. And a smattering of Bash.