This post is brought to you by Cesc, who led Arsenal's 6-0 mauling of Braga today. Come on you gunners and don't let the Mancs win #19 please & thank you.


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Day 11 - A book you hated

Robert Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History. I hate hate hate it when journalists write bad history. Especially when they imply that all those backwards, belligerent, warmongering little third-world countries are perpetually at each other's throats on account of some ancient, irreconcilable feud; that their ( Read more... )

So I know this pairing is pretty much dead, and moreover the entire fandom has been experiencing steady attrition since ROTS came out, but I'm going to go ahead and make a monster of a rec post anyway. I was not involved in Star Wars fandom at the time most of these stories were written. Thus, when I went on my Kyp/Jaina kick a few months ago, the ( Read more... )

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... the other was a word used by the Barcelona whores in their dealings with English sailors, and I am afraid the compositors would not print it.   ~ George Orwell

Day 06 - A book that makes you sad
Isabel Allende, The House of Spirits. I'm very hit-or-miss when it comes to sprawling multigenerational family sagas with political overtones, but this ( Read more... )

Day 05 - A book that makes you happy
Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle. Reasons this book makes me happy: (1) It's by the lady who wrote The Hundred and One Dalmatians (2) I'm partial to first-person narrators, and Cassandra is among the easiest to identify/sympathize with ever (3) they made a movie out of this with Romola Garai and Rose Byrne (4) ( Read more... )

Day 03 - Your favorite series - George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire

I read these at a very impressionable age, before I'd been exposed to much epic fantasy - before I'd read Tolkien, even. Some things have changed: ASOIAF has become mainstream (thanks HBO). Rhaegar is no longer a tragic hero but a man who made some poor decisions near the end ( Read more... )

So you know that BBC 100 book meme that's been floating around for years? Just in case you haven't yet seen it debunked yet, the claim that "the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here" is patently false, (1) because the BBC has published no such piece, it was in The Guardian, and (2) because all the Guardian article ( Read more... )

Been wanting to do this since I saw the 30 days of music, tv, movies etc. going around. I don't watch that much TV though and my taste in music is pretty pedestrian (I just listen to what they play on the radio), so.

Day 1 - Best book you read last year

Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold. I should preface this by saying I don't think it was the best ( Read more... )

One nonfiction, one fiction.

( How the Irish Became White )