Tag Archives: books

The Cat’s Pajamas

I read most of The Cat’s Pajamas on the way back from San Francisco. Ray Bradbury is one of the great authors of our time. I expect I’ve mentioned that before. Some very good stuff in here, drawn from more than 50 years of his short stories. (Not republished stuff, just things that he had laying around.)

I fear, however, as Mr Bradbury gets older, and even more so once he has passed on, we’ll see a lot of cast-off short stories getting published, and this will finally rather water down his good name. After all, he has written a story almost every day for the last 70 years or so, apparently.

Barefoot geeks

I read Dancing Barefoot on the flight out to OSCon, and I read Just A Geek on the flight back. Wil Wheaton is a hugely talented writer. I am really glad I got to attend his signing at last year’s OSCon, and to hear him read. I wish him huge success with his writing, and I look forward to reading his books in years to come as he develops his style.

And, for the record, if there was ever any reason that I disliked Wesley Crusher, it was simply that he was exactly the same age as me, and he got a chance to be on that show with all those amazing actors, and in Star Trek, for Bob’s sake, and I DIDN’T. But, while I do remember feeling jealous, I don’t actually remember disliking Wesley.

A series of unfortunate events

I’ve started reading (actualy, listening on tape) to A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket. I find his writing to be pretentious, a word which here means “uses large words, and then defines them, in order to make the readers’ parents believe that the books are educational” However, I also find them amusing, a word which here means “causing me to giggle inanely while driving.” The books are fairly addictive, a word which here means “after you’ve read one, you’ll probably want to buy the other 76 books in the series.” The books are read on tape by Mr Snicket himself, whose voice is very cacaphonic, a word which here means “ok, so hopefully by now you’ve got my point, so I don’t actually have to come over there and kill you.”