I know I'm a bad poet, but I'm a good man. All I ask is that... is that you try to see me—

William ,'Conversations with Dead People'


Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.

There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."


Connie Neil - Nov 15, 2006 10:22:35 am PST #1588 of 28160
brillig

(I'm also feeling like the only Buffista who wasn't in AD, but if my school or state had had it, I would've been! Really!)

I don't think my school thought knowledge was competitive. I'd never heard of these competitions till recently. I graduated high school in '79, so maybe I predate these things?


Amy - Nov 15, 2006 10:32:01 am PST #1589 of 28160
Because books.

I don't think we had any of these things when I was in high school, or my school didn't participate. I was in AP English senior year, so I feel like my teacher would have encouraged us to do it otherwise.

Possibly I was too busy smoking out in the parking lot.


Connie Neil - Nov 15, 2006 10:34:26 am PST #1590 of 28160
brillig

I was in AP English senior year, so I feel like my teacher would have encouraged us to do it otherwise

Oh, yeah, if Mr. Berryhill had had a way to show off his star students, he'd have done it.


Hil R. - Nov 15, 2006 2:23:38 pm PST #1591 of 28160
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l

I graduated high school in '79, so maybe I predate these things?

I just checked the website -- Academic Decathlon started in 1981.


Sheryl - Nov 15, 2006 2:39:20 pm PST #1592 of 28160
Fandom means never having to say "But where would I wear that?"

The only knowledge-based competition I can recall from my high school was the Math team. Not quite the same as the stuff you folks mentioned...


beth b - Nov 15, 2006 8:10:25 pm PST #1593 of 28160
oh joy! Oh Rapture ! I have a brain!

ok. if you ever get the chance to see Nancy Pearl, the author of Book Lust and More Book Lust, speak, GO. very entertaining. even if you are a really picky reader she 's got stuff for you. and Besides - she is the only Librarian I know , other than BatGirl, that has her own action figure.

[link]

and the action figure

[link]


IAmNotReallyASpring - Nov 16, 2006 3:48:14 pm PST #1594 of 28160
I think Freddy Quimby should walk out of here a free hotel

Random nugget I stumbled upon that's old but perhaps not old news.

Anthony Minghella's rather excellent film adaptation of Samuel Beckett's Play.


Tom Scola - Nov 20, 2006 7:46:24 am PST #1595 of 28160
Mr. Scola’s wardrobe by Botany 500

[link]

Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, “Against the Day,” reads like the sort of imitation of a Thomas Pynchon novel that a dogged but ungainly fan of this author’s might have written on quaaludes. It is a humongous, bloated jigsaw puzzle of a story, pretentious without being provocative, elliptical without being illuminating, complicated without being rewardingly complex.

Review is by Michiko Kakutani, so adjust your rhetorical filters accordingly.


Ginger - Nov 20, 2006 8:37:44 pm PST #1596 of 28160
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

I just saw that Jack Williamson died [link] I had started to hope he was going to live forever. He was such a nice guy.


§ ita § - Nov 25, 2006 5:26:25 pm PST #1597 of 28160
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Does Terry Goodkind write good books? I mean, is there an overarching context that can make one excuse these snippets of evil chicken?