Fading Memories

By Boudewijn Rempt on Tuesday December 16, @10:46PM
About a year ago I started with Fading Memories, both to experiment with Zope, and to provide some kind of track or trail of my readings.

I've kept a reasonably meticulous record for a year, and in that year I've read about a hundred-fifty books, less than I thought, but still about three a week, seen maybe three movies, and done notes of most of them. I managed to royally piss off one person, mildly pique another and to gain top rank for searches for "Latin Lyrics" on Google.

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By Boudewijn Rempt on Thursday July 24, @09:21PM
Summer holidays. Three weeks on a Greek island (Tzia). Backpack full of books &mdash lots of note-writing to do. Not to mention the backlog. So here's the to-be-written-about-but-already-read-list:

• Death of a Dutchman, Magdalen Nabb
• Castle Crespin, Allen Andrews
• To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis (again)
• Because of the cats, Nicolas Freeling
• Tsing-Boum, Nicolas Freeling
• Fantoom in Foe-Lai, Robert van Gulik
• Learn Greek in 25 years, Brian Church
• Blandings Castle, P.G. Wodehouse
• The Bugles Blowing, Nicolas Freeling
• The King of the Rainy Country, Nicolas Freeling
• Prisma Nieuwgrieks - Nederlands / Nederlands-Nieuwgrieks
• Fingersmith, Sarah Watters
• The Chinese Shawl, Patrica Wentworth
• Harry Potter and the Oder of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
• The Fox Woman, Kij Johnson
• The Wee Free Men, Terry Pratchett
• Oude en Nieuwe Buitelingen, Godfried Bomans
• The Seven Seals, Dennis Wheatley
• Dr. Joliffe's Boys, Lewis Hough
• Destinies Shield, David Drake
• Olive Oil

And I think that I scratch all books from the to-read list and start afresh...

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By Boudewijn Rempt on Tuesday February 04, @04:57PM
Just a quick note to self: when Scholar of Magics by Caroline Stevermer is published, buy hardback ASAP. And the Dutch translation of Vegetius is great, but the Latin is readable, too.

I had the chance to read the manuscript of Caroline Stevermer's latest, Scholar of Magic, a more-or-less sequel to a College of Magics. I bought When the King Comes Home for Irina's birthday in 2002, not being aware at the time that this was the same Caroline who had written Sorcery and Cecilia, an old favourite of Irina's. When the King Comes Home is a perfectly balanced tale, and I'm going to re-read it again soon, but you can read a good review of it at Outside of a Dog. Soon we ordered everything that was still available from Amazon, and got a College of Magics, which tasted a lot like more. And A Scholar of Magics is more, but it's different, too. Better balanced, somehow, with perhaps better defined protagonists. Can't give it a full review until I've got the hardback, though, which I'm eagerly awaiting.

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By Peta Tayler on Monday January 13, @12:32PM
Another one that goes back to the stack... I like the premise of the book. According the little library card stuck in front, it's about a middle-aged woman who's caught in a boring marriage. A pregnant 17-year old barges in and gingers up stuff. A situation ripe with pregnant possibilities, and my imagination was fired.

• Author: Peta Tayler
• Publisher: Headline
• Published: 1996
• Pages: 282
• ISBN:: 0-7472-1705-X

Perhaps last week (the second week of January 2003, for the record) was a better week for writing than for reading. This isn't the only book I returned to store. I didn't finish The Code of the Woosters, either, but that one is still on the to-read, or more accurately, the to-read-again stack. I only discontinued reading the Master's immortal prose because I acquired Carry On, Jeeves, whereas I quit reading this book because I plain didn't like it.

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By Lawrence Watt-Evans on Wednesday January 01, @01:51PM
Actually, this is fantasy, but it's going back on the stack. So that's the icon I'm giving it. I'm afraid it didn't keep my attention.

• Author: Lawrence Watt-Evans
• Publisher: Del-Rey (Ballantine)
• Published: 1991
• Place: New York
• Pages: 231

I hereby vow to also enter the books I don't finish reading in Fading Memories. So, if I pick up the book from the stack, I can see whether my opinion has changed at all.

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By Boudewijn Rempt on Saturday December 14, @12:25AM
Both in order to finally learn Zope, and to keep track of what I've read (I reached a state of acute shame when I discovered I had bought a new Chaucer when I already had two copies), I thought it would be a good idea to transmute Squishdot (see the nice logo at the bottom of these pages) into a book-review and comment thingy. So there.

I'm not quite done: I've managed to learn to find my way around Zope and Squishdot, and I think I now know where I should start working to add book cover snapshots and links to Amazon (if I get around to applying for that silly affiliate program that's so much like MLM it's almost spam) and so on. And I wonder whether my old articles will still work if I do so...

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