The Best American Essays 1996
I read this while in the emergency room between midnight and 6:30am. I wasn’t drawn in by any of the essays… I can’t remember a single one. It may have been the conditions in which I was reading, or it may have just been an off year.
So, eh.
Finding Serenity: Anti-heroes, Lost Shepherds, and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon’s Firefly Edited by Jane Espenson
The second fan book I read in a row. A series of essays by random people (including one by the Kaylee actress), written before the movie came out.
There was a funny parody of how Fox decided to cancel the series, told through a fictional series of memos sent to Joss.
There was a somewhat interesting history of westerns and sci-fi, and how Gene Roddenberry, while doing great things, also ruined it for everyone else.
Jewel Staite just wrote a piece about her favorite bits from the episodes. Bleh.
A little bit about the story behind Firefly creation and production.
All in all, I’m just going to stop reading books about TV series. I’m not a hardcore fanboy at heart.
Mugglenet.com’s What Will Happen In Harry Potter 7? by Ben Schoen, Emerson Spartz, Andy Gordon, Gretchen Stull & Jamie Lawrence
Emerson Spartz was a bored 12 year old homeschooler in 1999 when he started MuggleNet.Com, which apparently exploded along with the popularity of the books. One assumes he’s not one of the Ultra Religious Homeschooler crowd like we have here in Georgia who were trying to get Harry Potter banned from school libraries.
The web popularity even enabled him to do a personal interview with J.K. Rowling. So, huzzah for him.
The book, which I borrowed from my brother’s girlfriend, is a somewhat tedious read. It is highly repetitive and written without elegance. But, then again, I am reading a fan book, so none of this is surprising.
What I was really hoping for was a cliff notes to the series, with all the likely important plot points listed. If they were trying to fill space by repetitiveness, I think they might have considered doing a plot and key info breakdown of each book. That would’ve padded the tome out nicely.
Regardless, there were some interesting theories suggested, with supporting data from the books and interviews with J.K. Rowling.
Not spoilers, since it’s just rehashing known information, but…
Every once in a while, I like to head over to the emergency room and check out the chairs there for a while. You really need to sit in them for a long time to be sure, say, 5 or 6 hours, because you never know if they just seem comfy at first. They can fool you like that, those chairs. Also, it’s best if you go in at midnight. Because you’re going to want to see whether you can sleep in them, otherwise you’re not really testing the limits of those chairs’ ability to provide comfort.
I needed an excuse, so the other night after midnight I told
Then, I had to act concerned but, you know, not too concerned so she’d guess I was acting.
We gathered up the kids and headed out to Piedmont where we have a thorough familiarity with the chairs, and checked them out. I made sure there would be a long wait to see a doctor, and then released Stacey and the kids to go home so I could really settle into my chair review without distraction.
Five hours later, I reluctantly had to cease my examination to go sit in one of the medical examination rooms, where, sadly, there are no chairs of interest. So I took a nap on an appallingly comfortable bed until a doctor came in. He confirmed what a nurse had said earlier, a pinched nerve or something probably caused by sleeping in an easy chair with a baby. He had some x-rays taken, then gave me prescriptions for muscle relaxers and codeine-laced pain medication.
Reluctantly, with a wistful look backwards at the waiting room chairs, I called a cab and headed home for an hour nap before work.
Last night, I took the muscle relaxer before bed and discovered this new possibility for nighttime activity which is to go to sleep and then not wake up until morning. It’s radical, it’s revolutionary, and I can’t wait to tell my son about it. I’m sure he’ll be interested in trying it out, too.