Yeah only the one… it’s like a disease, finishing the books. I also read the Quixote in the 1605/1615 Spanish, and well… it didn’t impress. Especially since I had to read a bunch of other Cervantes, and he basically has the same ideas behind everything he wrote. It gets old after awhile. Particularly part 2 of the Quixote…
I’m totally with you on this 
Which must make us total infidels or something. It’s like hating Shakespeare for always using iambic pentameter.
I actually enjoyed what I read, but it was just hard keeping things straight from one picaresque novel to the other. It’s ingenious AND extremely confusing to have one work be both novel AND a collection of shorter fiction (Ironic when you consider that my favorite author alive right now is David Mitchell, whose every but one novel is a set of interconnected stories).
I began reading McCullough’s John Adams in the summer of 2001–I was enjoying it immensely–history buff and New Englander that I am.
And then September 11th happened. And I don’t quite know why, but I had to stop reading it. Looking back, I think that at the time it was just too painful to read a book about the birth of America in the midst of that overwhelming feeling I, and most Americans felt of America having been deeply wounded.
Five years later I did finish it, but I finished it in AudioBook form—the version where David McCullough narrates himself. Pretty good.
Other David McCullough books I’d recommend: Truman and 1776.
I’m OK being a literary infidel… I get to make my own canon.
No, seriously, I am. I’m not a fan of most of the big Spanish-language writers, (ahem Garcia Marquez), either.
But it’s nice to know I have company. 
Armando, Cas, I don’t get the Hobbit hate. In fact I’d say that Hobbit was the stronger of the two for the simple fact that…Lord of the Rings was so godsdamned boring holy craaaaaap. I really don’t need to know about a characters great grandfather’s sister’s son who happened to do something while also discussing ad nauseum the greenery
RotoZip rotary saw and Dremel cutting & detailing power tool. Best belated birthday gift, ever!
I better go find some scrap wood, cuz I wanna start cutting/carving something or other.
If I send you some scrap wood, would you carve me a miniature Chuck action figure? Now that would be obscure.
I’ve got a video of me and my wife in our BSG costumes with Michael Hogan saying some Tigh’ish stuff at the guy running the camera. Just need to edit it and post it to YouTube.
Not on Marquez, I’m afraid. I love his stuff. I want to set “No One Writes the Colonel” to music someday.
But he got the Knights of Ni such a nice shrubbery, with a nice, two-level effect and a nice path right down the middle. 
Hey, I didn’t say I thought LOTR was great literature (I really don’t. Best book of the millennium? HA! Haven’t people read the Divine Comedy?), just more enjoyable than The Hobbit, as far as I’m concerned. And Tolkien is really good at imitating the language of old sagas and the like, hence the appendices and the genealogies, etc. Have you ever read the Bible? I mean, REALLY read it? It’s just like it! Well, the Bible doesn’t have a Tom Bombadill type, so it has that going for it. 
I’ve got a video of me and my wife in our BSG costumes with Michael Hogan saying some Tigh’ish stuff at the guy running the camera. Just need to edit it and post it to YouTube.
Steve, you’d better post a link.
Of course… except, I may not bother the joints movable, in which case it’d be a Chuck doll, not a Chuck action figure.
Just used my brand new powertools to fix my sister’s busted door frames… yay for woodworking!
Whatever you end up making…
Keep it away from Eddy Olmos !!
Among the many, mostly stationary, items I purchased during my back-to-school shopping spree today, I also went for one item that I consider to be as all-American as baseball: Old Spice after shave. Wanna smell good at school, right!?
Who says advertisements don’t work? That’s right my man, you gonna fit right in!
It was Christmas at Armando’s house today. Not only did I get a free book from Cambridge University Press (thanks to their desk copy policy) but I also got a DVD set of Firefly courtesy of our very own Lucky. I can’t wait to sit down to watch these!
Thanks, Lucky.
Lucky is awesome.
And Armando, it goes without saying that you are going to tell us all your reactions. seriously.
And! I’m jealous about the Cambridge UP freebie… because their books are (frakking) expensive…
Glad to hear they arrived safely! And pretty quickly too. Hope you enjoy it!
Oh believe me, I will tell you guys.
And yes, Cambridge’s books are expensive. I’ve ordered a bunch of their handbooks for music, which are slim little volumes (few break the 100 page mark) on a single piece of classical music and they average about $30 a pop. They’re not only giving me those for free because I’m assigning reading from them in my classes but they’re actually special printing a couple of them that are out of print, PLUS one in a different, much bigger and much more expensive series.
I tell you, I think I may have figured out why professors assign such expensive books for their classes: because they can then get them for free from the publisher.
Sucks to be a student though. 
Glad to hear they arrived safely! And pretty quickly too. Hope you enjoy it!
I’ll be filing a regular report. Don’t know when I’ll be able to get started, but I hope it won’t take me too long. Thanks for sending those. You really are awesome. Truly.
Transformers special edition DVD where the dvd case is a megtron transformer, its not the coolest one though there’s an awesome Optimus prime mask with the normal edition.
I have been working with glass mosaic myself.