It's funny you bring up Mere Christianity, megan. Fred Clark, over on his slacktivist blog frequently harps on Lewis for Mere Christianity because of his failure to understand why it might not be as "obvious" to other people as it is to Lewis. Clark much prefers Lewis' A Grief Observed, written after the death of his wife, when Lewis realized "Oh! Holy crap! Grief, suffering, and other kinds of pain and misfortune are real, and can cause doubt, and questioning one's faith, and other things like that!"
Willow: Were there dolphins? Tara: Yes. Many dolphins at the pound. Willow: Was there a camel? Tara: There was the front of a camel. A half-camel.
'Selfless'
Spike's Bitches 38: Well, This Is Just...Neat.
[NAFDA] Spike-centric discussion. Lusty, lewd (only occasionally crude), risqué (and frisqué), bawdy (Oh, lawdy!), flirty ('cuz we're purty), raunchy talk inside. Caveat lector.
Sean K - Dec 19, 2007 2:20:15 pm PST #9185 of 10002
You can't leave me to my own devices; my devices are Nap and Eat. -Zenkitty
omnis_audis - Dec 19, 2007 2:21:27 pm PST #9186 of 10002
omnis, pursue. That's an order from a shy woman who can use M-16. - Shir
KT, I've been having itchy issues too. After countless nights, I realized it was mostly concentrated in high clothes-skin contact zone (waist, sock zone, and shoulders blades). Since doing laundry at laundromat #1 (closer to work), the itching has gone down a LOT. And I wonder, does laundromat #2 (near home) not rinse enough?
Maybe your using too much soap??? Or maybe try an extra rinse cycle? What I'm saying is, the lil bumps might not be bug bites, but skin irritations. Just a theory. YRMV
omnis_audis - Dec 19, 2007 2:25:21 pm PST #9187 of 10002
omnis, pursue. That's an order from a shy woman who can use M-16. - Shir
my god we are posting fast today. We'll hit 10k in no time.
And I'm on the other side - I love Tolkien to pieces but find most other fantasy writers dull as dishwater (yes, sorry, including CS Lewis). I've tried rereading other fantasy novels I enjoyed as a child and teenager, and Tolkien's the only one I can still enjoy.
Thats cuz they are all copying Tolkien... including Star Wars!
:: ducks and covers like they taught me in elementary school ::
Sean K - Dec 19, 2007 2:29:00 pm PST #9188 of 10002
You can't leave me to my own devices; my devices are Nap and Eat. -Zenkitty
(I bring up the slacktivist blog because it's a blog from a Christian perspective, and Susan turned me on to it)
Jess, you should strongly consider giving George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series a try (A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows, plus a couple more books yet to come). A number of people I know, who pretty much detest all fantasy novels love these books. They may turn out to not be to your liking, but I think you might like them, and they are worth a shot, I think.
Pix - Dec 19, 2007 2:33:35 pm PST #9189 of 10002
We're all getting played with, babe. -Weird Barbie
What I'm saying is, the lil bumps might not be bug bites, but skin irritations.Definitely not little bumps. Big bug-bite-sized bumps. It could be in part a reaction to an itchy wool sweater I wore a few days ago, but you would think I would have gotten them in more than one area, in that case. Annnyway...enough of that.
I'm outta here. Time to hit Panera and get some serious grading done. Chase me out of here if I show up before I've graded at least 10 more essays, okay?
Jessica - Dec 19, 2007 2:34:21 pm PST #9190 of 10002
And then Ortus came and said "It's Ortin' time" and they all Orted off into the sunset
Hmmm - I'm generally suspicious of books with the word "swords" in the title, but I will bookmark your post and check them out if I ever get near the bottom of my TBR pile. (Which is at the moment about 80% scifi and 20% nonfiction. Oh, and the latest Powers.)
Pix - Dec 19, 2007 2:37:33 pm PST #9191 of 10002
We're all getting played with, babe. -Weird Barbie
Jessica, Sean is right. Trust me, you won't even remember it's fantasy by the time you read a few pages. It reads more like historical fiction or political intrigue in many ways, and boy is it brutal. I love that series, too.
Not here.
brenda m - Dec 19, 2007 2:42:52 pm PST #9192 of 10002
If you're going through hell/keep on going/don't slow down/keep your fear from showing/you might be gone/'fore the devil even knows you're there
vw, I loved The Golden Compass. Loved loved loved. And I didn't find it antithetical to theism either, actually. The direction he takes the subsequent books is more agressively atheist,
Also more aggressively didactic, simplistic, tell-don't-show...
Sorry. Just read it last week and was not pleased. The transformation of [whitefonting in case others are reading the books now with the movie out] Lyra in particular bothered me. I'm not sure it was intended, and for a while I tried to convince myself he was trying to make a point, but jeez. "Now I must put aside my own goals and stifle my own talents to devote myself to the dreams of this boy I've met, and his angry tirades just prove that this is the way it should be." WTF ever.
That said, I really did enjoy the first book, and agree that on its own I don't think it's very agenda-driven.
erikaj - Dec 19, 2007 2:56:11 pm PST #9193 of 10002
Always Anti-fascist!
I attempted to read those, but I didn't get it.
JZ - Dec 19, 2007 3:06:08 pm PST #9194 of 10002
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.
Hec and I were talking about that series the other day -- neither of us has read them, but we've both heard numerous people say that they loved The Golden Compass but felt like Pullman trainwrecked the series somewhere from the middle of the second book to pretty much anywhere in the third. And then we wandered to Laurell K. Hamilton's books and the Kushiel books and the Ender books and all the various series in our different TBR piles, and how someone really should compile a big master list of Exactly How Far You Should Read In Each Series, Because After Book [Whatever] The Author Drives It Right Over A Cliff.