Around 5:45ish there was a pretty brutal storm here in town. It actually blew over one of our trees in our backyard, and the rainfall destroyed our radio and one of our cordless phones, which had been foolishly left outside before the sudden downpour.

An interesting experience, no doubt.

And here’s what I bought:

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky Casino Royale by Ian Fleming Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov Friday by Robert A. Heinlein

It was a somewhat unrewarding shop, as I was bent on getting more Heinlein books than Yesterday’s Things had available. I was hoping to get a few other books, namely Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger.

Oh well. I guess I’ll have to put in an order from Amazon.ca or something.

Just been compiling a list.

Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger Big Fish by Daniel Wallace The Illiad by Homer The Odyssey by Homer Ulysses by James Joyce Brave New World by Aldous Huxley The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein Friday by Robert Heinlein The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein Paradox Men by Charles L. Harness

I just needed to put it somewhere.

All suggestions made in that previous post will also be added to the list.

I went to Yesterday’s Books and Things and only got two of the books I was looking for. I think I may have to go to Amazon.ca to get the Salinger books, since Coles doesn’t have them and neither does YBT.

Alas…alas…

Hello readers.

I’m getting into a serious groove where I’m reading a lot again.

Can anyone recommend some good titles? I’m okay with anything but romance-fiction, because it really shouldn’t be a genre. But, yeah. Any classics. Anything. I’m going to be shopping around for books to expand my “library” and I’d like to hear some good suggestions.

Thanks folks.

Last night, I watched Match Point over at Sam’s house, and I was extremely disappointed. If you have seen this movie, I sympathize with the various hurt inflicted on your ears and eyes. If you have not seen this movie, please make efforts to avoid it.

The merits of this movie are few and far between. The only redeeming qualities of this film - and I beg any female readers to forgive me for this - is the frequent sex scenes involving the always sexy Scarlett Johansson. Otherwise, the story just seemed a mish-mash of morality issues from Crime and Punishment (which was prominently featured at the start of the movie) with an injection of infidelity. There was one part in the movie where two murdered characters appear and mock their killer, plaguing him with doubts about his safety after his crime. Many of the doubts are things Raskolnikov experiences in Dostoevsky’s masterful work (some of them are even expressed verbatim).

All in all, the movie was kind of disappointing. Unlike Crime and Punishment, the murderers internal torment does not force him to confess and repent. Instead, he gets away with it and the story is wrapped up extremely quickly after an extremely lengthy build-up.

I first heard of this book in my Writer’s Craft class when Mr. Sinko told us the incredibly witty “Panda joke” that holds the very meaning of the title. The “Panda Joke” - in case you haven’t heard it - is transcribed below:

_ A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. “Why?” askes the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. “I’m a panda,” he says at the door. “Look it up.” The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation. “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”_

And there you have it. The witty little short that explains both the title and purpose of the book. Lynne Truss has crafted a clever book that exposes, quite plainly, the complete failure to grasp the English language that is often found in English speaking countries. It is extremely entertaining to read. My enjoyment stems from noticing how pathetic we are at writing our own language, and not due to some sort of superiority complex (as my grammar is as atrocious as the next man).

However, I do have some pride in knowing that the plural of CD does not include an apostrophe. Then again, I feel some shame in not realizing that the title to the film Two Weeks Notice was a grammatical inaccuracy.

Currently, I’m hesitant to recommend the book due to the fact that I have only completed one-third. I imagine that my recommendation can only be produced after I’ve read and digested the chapter on hyphens. It will be interesting to have my frivolous usage of them cut down. EDIT: After typing and publishing this post, I noticed that Wordpress has the inability to properly carry over indentations. I’m constantly perplexed by Wordpress’s frustrating interface. Also, when a word that ends in an “s” is made possessive, do you add simply an apostrophe or an apostrophe “s”.