I'm Busy Reading....

[Cenwulf]

... A Fiery Feather by Jeff Eardrops.
I read somewhere that there's a thin line between genius and insanity, and that he walks it like a master.

It's true.

He starts from near to genius and walks along the line towards insanity (he seems to be a literary funambulist), then as he gets to very crazy he turns round and goes back; and as he approaches genius, he gets as far as very clever before turning back again. And from what I've read so far, this happens several times.
So it never reaches total insanity as that would be just too bizarre, and it never reaches full genius as that would be too sane and not very funny.
He pauses in the vicinity of other points near to this thin line, which are bizarre, silly and daft - but he never falls off the line into the plain stupid.

If you're puzzled by the title and the author, perhaps I should mention that Sam Ragan was reading it before I got it...

[Scurra]

Glad you've caught up with him. Out of interest, how acquainted were you with the "original" before you read this?

[Bunnylump]

Is that the well-known novel "Hate-Free Fairy" by Jade Sproffer? Yes. Very good. I enjoyed it immensely.

[Cenwulf]

how acquainted were you with the "original" before you read this?

I did look at it at school in Eng Lit, and I have got a copy. But I haven't looked at it for a while, so should I have a squiggy at it before I continue?
I've got as far as the death by spontaneous human combustion.

[Scurra]

Not really, if you can remember the generalities. But there are a couple of sequences that are much sharper if you know the details. Then again, it might work even better if you go back and read the "original" after you've finished.

[Cenwulf]

Will do, Waldo.
My mother borrowed it from me when it was on TV recently. (That's "The Original", not A Fiery Feather.) As I was studying it at school, I may have missed some of it out.
It's been a 'Bashed Bestseller' over at DVP - twice; once by me and once by Stufarq.

Hmm. Perhaps that's another thread to re-start over here...

[MBH]

Finished my Night Angel trilogy now and moved on to Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer. Light reading...


.... speaking of which - I found the "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" book in the overflow shelves of the library. That's a bit of a doorstop, isn't it

[katsmom]

I just picked up and finished the newest installment of the 39 clues. The Sword Thief. Short and sweet. Two hours tops from cover to cover. Nothing like the first two. A few tricks up the authors sleave, but I'm not left as wanting as I was at the end of the first two.

I'm glad Amazon dropped the price of it before the shipping date. It was not worth the original price in my humble opinion.

Waiting for the New Lindsey Davis to arrive! (no funny comments please )

[MBH]

Thank you for the pointer for 39-clues - I enjoyed it (and will be looking out for the second one). Did you ever get sorted with the cards you were looking for in reation to this?

I wonder if Kingsley and Fernando have read this book? I'm pretty sure they are the correct ages

[katsmom]

No, cards not sorted. I'm still missing 2 of the freebees, but after an email or two to Scholastic, they seem to think the people/companies they gave them to just never used them. Now they have released 6 new free codes, so I have something else to hunt for.

I've enjoyed the books and Katherine is loving the clue hunting history lessons and much to my chagrin the online games.
I think Kingsley and Fernando are at the right age But there is nothing wrong with me reading them.

And for the record, I loved the Artemis Fowl series....especially decoding the messages on the bottom of each page. I used one of the books a few years back with a primary 5 class and they loved the book.

[MBH]

Still got Artimis Fowl in the car, but the house book is now a Torchwood novel called Trace Memory. I've read the others in the series up to this point - they're decently written and capture the essence of the characters you get to know on the TV series.

[kingsley]

I'm not reading anything at home at the moment, but at school we're reading a book called 'short stories of our time'. However, the list of people who have had this book that's stuck on the inside of the front cover dates back to 1977 and in some cases no names have been recorded since 1989. This is a few years before anyone in my class was born!

[LAT]

Maybe it should be called "short stories of yesterday"

[Scurra]

This is a few years before anyone in my class was born!

Which is a terrifyingly scary thought for quite a lot of us in here! I've just been reading some terrific articles about the amazing things that happened in 1989 - the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Tienanmen Square etc - and it's still a jolt to realise that they really are "history" now...

[Laura]

I started Primary school in 1989 - I suppose I'm somewhere in between!

[giraffe]

That makes me feel old. I graduated in 1989.

[Laura]

Sorry!

That is what I like about this place though. It really doesn't matter how old you are, what you look like etc, it's what's inside that counts!!!

(Sorry for that pathetically sentimal thing above - under the influence, get a bit emothional, you know!)

[LAT]

You think you feel old giraffe, my youngest was born in 1989.

[kathlyn]

born in 1989 mine was born in 1968

[eirian]

I've just been reading some terrific articles about the amazing things that happened in 1989 - the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Tienanmen Square etc - and it's still a jolt to realise that they really are "history" now...

I was at Uni then, and a friend was studying politics and history. At the end of his course, all his politics courses had become (or were well on the way to becoming) history - east/west split, Thatcher, apartheid, etc....