Feb 15 2006
I Bought Some Books Today
Dawn and I went to Boston Pizza today alone; that is, NO KIDS! We haven’t done that in a long time. It was nice. We then went to Costco where I bought too many books:
- Roving Mars: Spirit; Opportunity; and the Exploration of the Red Planet by Steve Squyres, who’s a principal scientist for the Mars Exploration Rover mission, describes how the mission started and resulted in a success they never anticipated.
- The Golden Spruce: a True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed by John Vaillant is the true story of how an environmentalist destroyed a 300 year old spruce tree, then disappeared under suspicious circumstances.
- The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason is a novel that takes place in the late 1800s, about a piano tuner who has to travel to Burma to tune a rare piano for an eccentric surgeon.
- Cell by Stephen King is about a cell phone that kills people.
Cell? How does it do it? Send people a retardedly high bill and people kill themselves? Or is it more like “The Ring” or something like that?
The King one sounds interesting, to tell the truth. And I’ve heard of the Mason, but I can’t remember if it was good or bad.
I’m surprised none of my book-loving friends commented on the “too many books” statement, because there’s no such thing! I spent too much money on books, is what I meant. It was an impulse buy.
More BOOKs! You have too many books go buy something useful like chrystal meth or something…Books….sheesh….
hey am reading an excellent account of the battle of stalingrad, (trevor beevor) a couple months ago was loaned freakanomics….was great, entertaining…
Was there ever a bigger hack than Stephen King?
> Was there ever a bigger hack than Stephen King?
Yes: Nora Roberts, Krentz, some may say Crichton…
I don’t understand this perception of King being a hack. The guy loves to write and he writes well. Read his On Writing.
But to each their own.
Kyle: Please explain.
Harlan Ellison has been called a hack by more than a few former-academic associates of mine. As well as Danielle Steele, Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe.
The OED defines a hack as “a person hired to do esp. dull or routine work, a drudge; esp. a writer of poor or averager quality literary or (esp.) journalistic work; a writer or a journalist who will take on any available work.”
According to the last part of that definition, Shakespeare was a hack.