Get up...get up, you stupid piece of... What did you do that for? What's wrong with you? Didn't you hear a word he said? All of you! You think there's someone just going to drop money on you?! Money they could use?! Well, there ain't people like that. There's just people like me.

Jayne ,'Jaynestown'


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 28564
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 28564
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 28564
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 28564
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 28564
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 28564
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 28564
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 28564
hwæt

[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 28564
"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 28564
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?