I contributed to the IndieGoGo for Jenna Moran's Enemies Endure. One of the rewards for my level was the ebooks of An Unclean Legacy and The Fable of the Swan. Only trouble is, I'd already bought both of those when they first went up. So now I have duplicates.
Anybody out there want 'em?
Anybody out there want 'em?
On this last day of the candy year, let's take a moment to contemplate before the fallow season starts.
You all know the seasons of the candy year, right? September 1st through October 30th is Halloween. October 31st through December 24th is Christmas, December 25th to February 13th is Valentine's, and February 14th through Holy Saturday is Easter. Then Easter Sunday through August 31st is the fallow season, when there is no actually seasonal candy being pushed. It gives us all some months to rest before the new candy year starts.
You all know the seasons of the candy year, right? September 1st through October 30th is Halloween. October 31st through December 24th is Christmas, December 25th to February 13th is Valentine's, and February 14th through Holy Saturday is Easter. Then Easter Sunday through August 31st is the fallow season, when there is no actually seasonal candy being pushed. It gives us all some months to rest before the new candy year starts.
Gacked from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kouredios
I’m running a test to see who’s reading my posts. So, if you read this, leave me a one-word comment about your day that starts with the third letter of your LJ USERNAME. Only one word please. Then repost so I can leave a word for you. Don’t just post a word and not copy – that’s not as much fun!
kourediosI’m running a test to see who’s reading my posts. So, if you read this, leave me a one-word comment about your day that starts with the third letter of your LJ USERNAME. Only one word please. Then repost so I can leave a word for you. Don’t just post a word and not copy – that’s not as much fun!
Time for my annual roundup of what I read last year.
Total number of titles was way down, although I suspect the number of words and pages was comparable: it was a year of doorstops! I read the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography, then I re-read all of A Song of Ice and Fire, then I read A Dance With Dragons, then I read the first volume of Brandon Sanderson's new doorstop series, and then I said to myself, "Self, you've been reading all these doorstop novels, why not cap it off with the ultimate doorstop?" So I went and read War and Peace.
(As it happened, a friend had given me a copy of it as a gift some years ago, so I had it on my shelf.)
Here's the full list, behind a cut:
( Read more... )
Total number of titles was way down, although I suspect the number of words and pages was comparable: it was a year of doorstops! I read the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography, then I re-read all of A Song of Ice and Fire, then I read A Dance With Dragons, then I read the first volume of Brandon Sanderson's new doorstop series, and then I said to myself, "Self, you've been reading all these doorstop novels, why not cap it off with the ultimate doorstop?" So I went and read War and Peace.
(As it happened, a friend had given me a copy of it as a gift some years ago, so I had it on my shelf.)
Here's the full list, behind a cut:
( Read more... )
Because I'm a little bored, and this sounds like it might be fun. From ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caper_est:
Instructions
1. Open up your music player. Hit shuffle.
2. Record the first few lines of the first 20 songs that come up that do not give away the name of the song. Skip instrumentals, but don't skip the embarrassing ones.
3. Make hapless LJ denizens guess the song names and artists. Google is cheating. For musical songs, the name of the musical is acceptable in place of the artist.
4. Least hapless LJ denizen wins admiration.
1. Hey now everybody now, hey now everybody, hey now everybody now.
2. I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me.
3. How I remember sleepless nights, when we would read by candlelight.
4. I am sitting in the morning at the diner on the corner.
5. I heard a sound. I turned around. I turned around to find the thing that made the sound.
6. All the people are so happy now, their heads are caving in. I'm glad they are a snowman with protective rubber skin.
7. Asked the girl what she wanted to be. She said, "Baby, can't you see?"
8. The world is treating me bad.
9. All dressed up, with nowhere to go.
10. Well, I was born an original sinner, I was born from original sin.
11. I used to see in my reflection a hundred broken hearts.
12. You know you made me cry. I see no use in wondering why.
13. What would you think if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?
14. I walk the streets alone. On feeble bones I ride. My sins are etched in stone. I got no place to hide.
15. Nobody knows what it's like, to be the bad man. To be the sad man.
16. Got a little black book with my poems in, got a bag with a toothbrush and a comb in.
17. I never should have traded you. Is there anything, anything I can do to start to try and make amends?
18. "There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief.
19. It won't be easy. You'll think it strange, when I try to explain how I feel.
20. I was working all night in my office, when a man I had recently killed called me up from the phone near my building, so I looked out the window at him.
My music runs a lot to instrumentals -- #20 here is #94 on the player. (I did have to skip over some that had a title drop early on.) I counted "Evolution of the Daleks" and "Duel of the Fates" as instrumentals, as I didn't care to try to transcribe their lyrics phonetically.
caper_est:Instructions
1. Open up your music player. Hit shuffle.
2. Record the first few lines of the first 20 songs that come up that do not give away the name of the song. Skip instrumentals, but don't skip the embarrassing ones.
3. Make hapless LJ denizens guess the song names and artists. Google is cheating. For musical songs, the name of the musical is acceptable in place of the artist.
4. Least hapless LJ denizen wins admiration.
1. Hey now everybody now, hey now everybody, hey now everybody now.
2. I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me.
3. How I remember sleepless nights, when we would read by candlelight.
4. I am sitting in the morning at the diner on the corner.
5. I heard a sound. I turned around. I turned around to find the thing that made the sound.
6. All the people are so happy now, their heads are caving in. I'm glad they are a snowman with protective rubber skin.
7. Asked the girl what she wanted to be. She said, "Baby, can't you see?"
8. The world is treating me bad.
9. All dressed up, with nowhere to go.
10. Well, I was born an original sinner, I was born from original sin.
11. I used to see in my reflection a hundred broken hearts.
12. You know you made me cry. I see no use in wondering why.
13. What would you think if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?
14. I walk the streets alone. On feeble bones I ride. My sins are etched in stone. I got no place to hide.
15. Nobody knows what it's like, to be the bad man. To be the sad man.
16. Got a little black book with my poems in, got a bag with a toothbrush and a comb in.
17. I never should have traded you. Is there anything, anything I can do to start to try and make amends?
18. "There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief.
19. It won't be easy. You'll think it strange, when I try to explain how I feel.
20. I was working all night in my office, when a man I had recently killed called me up from the phone near my building, so I looked out the window at him.
My music runs a lot to instrumentals -- #20 here is #94 on the player. (I did have to skip over some that had a title drop early on.) I counted "Evolution of the Daleks" and "Duel of the Fates" as instrumentals, as I didn't care to try to transcribe their lyrics phonetically.
So, two weeks ago I got a message from acx.com saying that my recording of Ursus of Ultima Thule had been approved, that it would undergo a final quality check which would take about a week, and then go up in places like audible.com. I've kept looking on audible.com and not seen it; I decided to wait for it to be two complete weeks before sending a message asking "What's going on?". Just before starting the process of sending that message, I looked again...and there it is!
So if you think you'd like to spend 7+ hours listening to me read you a quirky swords-and-sorcery novel with some stream of consciousness bits in and an ending which inverts the usual Freudian analysis of the sword-and-sorcery genre, I encourage you to go and buy it.
So if you think you'd like to spend 7+ hours listening to me read you a quirky swords-and-sorcery novel with some stream of consciousness bits in and an ending which inverts the usual Freudian analysis of the sword-and-sorcery genre, I encourage you to go and buy it.
Many of you may remember that I worked on a dramatic reading of Alice in Wonderland for the free downloadable audiobook site LibriVox. Well, the person who did Alice didn't have the ability to do something similar for Through the Looking-Glass, so I stepped up and organized it. 27 different people recorded 42 different parts, and I edited them all together. It's finally all done! You can download the chapters as separate files here:
http://librivox.org/through-the-looking-glass-dramatic-reading-by-lewis-carroll/
It was six months in the making. I'm very proud of it.
http://librivox.org/through-the-looking-glass-dramatic-reading-by-lewis-carroll/
It was six months in the making. I'm very proud of it.
Gakked from james_nicoll
Beginning with authors who got their start in the 1980s:
Italicize the authors you've heard of before reading this list of authors, bold the ones you've read at least one work by, underline the ones of whose work you own at least one example of.
Long, so a cut.
( Read more... )
james_nicollBeginning with authors who got their start in the 1980s:
Italicize the authors you've heard of before reading this list of authors, bold the ones you've read at least one work by, underline the ones of whose work you own at least one example of.
Long, so a cut.
( Read more... )
Over on My Mom Watches Game of Thrones the mom says:
...the Lannisters are bad, but it might be Tyrion who ends up saving Ned.Instantly I felt the urge to quote The Princess Bride...only in reverse. (With Ned Stark in the role of Prince Humperdinck, if you need a clue.)
Harper Collins is having a contest: the prize is a trip to New York to record a role in the new audiobook of American Gods. To enter, people load an mp3 file of themselves reading a paragraph from the book. Registered users on the Harper Collins web site can vote for files, and the top 20 votegetters get judged. (The rules specify that if fewer than 20 entries are received, then all entries will reach the final judging. This made me giggle just on reading. And indeed, as I type this the contest [which runs for 21 days] has been going less than 24 hours and already has more than 400 entries.)
Well, my submission is here: http://neilgaiman.bookperk.com/engine/Details.aspx?PageType=APPROVED&ContestID=29933&SubmissionID=7784521&IncrementNumber=1
I encourage everyone to go and listen to my entry, and if you feel it's worthy and you also feel that registering with Harper Collins isn't too onerous, to vote for it.
(More than once, even: the contest rules allow any one person to vote once per day....)
Well, my submission is here: http://neilgaiman.bookperk.com/engine/Details.aspx?PageType=APPROVED&ContestID=29933&SubmissionID=7784521&IncrementNumber=1
I encourage everyone to go and listen to my entry, and if you feel it's worthy and you also feel that registering with Harper Collins isn't too onerous, to vote for it.
(More than once, even: the contest rules allow any one person to vote once per day....)
I can't remember if I mentioned it here, but most of you who read this will have seen me mention it elsewhere, anyway. I've been working on an audio version of Jo Walton's Barrayaran Tam Lin play. Well, it's finally done, and now has its own web site: http://www.tamlinplay.net/
It's an MP3 file, free to download and share. The run time is about 55 minutes, and the better-quality version is 53 MB, while a slightly worse-quality one is 27 MB.
It features music composed by Davey Arthur. (My permission to use his music specifies that I should mention him in any publicity I do; I guess this qualifies.)
I'm quite proud of it, and I encourage everyone to download it and let me know what you think.
It's an MP3 file, free to download and share. The run time is about 55 minutes, and the better-quality version is 53 MB, while a slightly worse-quality one is 27 MB.
It features music composed by Davey Arthur. (My permission to use his music specifies that I should mention him in any publicity I do; I guess this qualifies.)
I'm quite proud of it, and I encourage everyone to download it and let me know what you think.
Anyone interested in hearing a dramatic reading of Alice in Wonderland, narrated by me, can download it for free from the LibriVox catalog. It's in the public domain. Total run time for 12 chapters is a bit under three hours.
I'd have posted it before, but when I heard the finished product I really wanted to re-do the first chapter. The new version is now up and I think it's a big improvement. At any rate, it's surely worth the money.
I'd have posted it before, but when I heard the finished product I really wanted to re-do the first chapter. The new version is now up and I think it's a big improvement. At any rate, it's surely worth the money.
It's time for my annual post listing the books I read last year. Total number is up a bit from last year, because I count plays, and I had a number of those since I've been doing recording for http://librivox.org/ . I also read a bunch of new comics each week; I don't list those, or graphic novel collections, just because I don't. And I have subscriptions to The Bridge World, the ACBL Bridge Bulletin, and Asimov's Science Fiction.
( longish, so have a cut. )
( longish, so have a cut. )
The music is a little overboard, but still...what a cool thing to do.
Someone on Making Light mentioned a site called LibriVox. It's a sort of Project Gutenberg for audiobooks: people record public-domain texts and release their recordings also into the public domain. I've just finished recording the part of Richard Planagenet (Richard III's father; people who've played Kingmaker will remember "Richard of York") in Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy, and had a glorious time chewing the scenery in his death scene. Just more fun than anyone ought to be allowed to have.
(I've also been recording the part of Lord Henry Wotton in a dramatic reading of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is likewise great fun; Lord Henry gets to say all sorts of wonderful Oscar Wilde epigrams.)
(I've also been recording the part of Lord Henry Wotton in a dramatic reading of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is likewise great fun; Lord Henry gets to say all sorts of wonderful Oscar Wilde epigrams.)
Katie is working late on something, so I have made a gazpacho soup recipe that she really likes. I just hope she won't be too tired to appreciate it. (There's always tomorrow, of course.)
Just back from a week in St. Louis playing bridge with my birth father. (There must be something to genetics: not only do we both play duplicate bridge [and nobody in my adoptive family does], we even both like weak notrumps.)
We did pretty well overall. In five days of play (taking one off for some sightseeing, as I've never been to St. Louis before) we won 26 masterpoints, 21 gold and 5 red.
(If you don't play bridge that won't mean much to you -- don't worry about it, just know it's a fair number to get all at once.)
We did pretty well overall. In five days of play (taking one off for some sightseeing, as I've never been to St. Louis before) we won 26 masterpoints, 21 gold and 5 red.
(If you don't play bridge that won't mean much to you -- don't worry about it, just know it's a fair number to get all at once.)
Like many geeks, I have as one of my favorite movies Monty Python and the Holy Grail. If you've seen it, you remember Dennis the Peasant holding forth about class struggle. (If you don't, watch it on YouTube here.) I recently wrote an essay trying to analyze as much as I could about what's going on in his speech, in accordance with my theory of humor. I originally sent it to my brother-in-law, who has earned money as a comedy writer, but I thought I'd also post it here. Read it if you like.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
