A description of my blog. http://www.my-site.com 1706183401056220891 Books Etc. 2008/01/#1706183401056220891 2008-01-22 Apologies to Beth for the title of this post....

Ok, I've upgraded Humor-Blogs.com from MySQL to SQL Server, and I think I've worked out most of the bugs. The commenting app on this site should be working now as well. Sorry if you had trouble posting a comment over the past few days, and sorrier if you're one of the people whose comments I accidentally deleted. Trust me, it hurt me more than it hurt you.

Let me know if you still have trouble posting a comment here, or if you experience any weirdness on Humor-Blogs.com. You can contact me by filling out the contact form on the H-B site or by emailing me at diesel - at - mattresspolice.com.

In other news, I've finished a few more books on my list. Sort of.

I read The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks suggested by Cindrarella of the famed Quill Driving Competition. I don't have the energy to write a full review (besides, my reviews of shitty books are way more entertaining), but it's a fascinating book. Oliver Sacks is a neurologist and the author of Awakenings, in case you didn't know. The book is comprised mainly of case studies of various brain damaged people, like the guy who couldn't remember anything for more than about 30 seconds, and the guy who work up one morning with an extremely heightened sense of smell. Sacks does some philosophical musing on the nature and ramifications of these disorders as well, but the best parts are the bizarre stories of individuals whose brains don't work quite right.

I gave up on Love in the Time of Cholera. I'm sorry, Pavel. I just couldn't get through it. Way too much atmosphere and descriptions and symbolism and people lolling about languidly trying to get the courage up to do one thing or other. I was going to cheat and watch the movie, but I hear it's even worse. And I feel pretty bad, considering that I already cheated by picking this Gabriel Garcia Marquez book instead of the whore one. But holy crap, Gabe, would it kill you to throw in an explosion or two?

And then there's The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver suggested by Al from Up the Hudson with Gun and Camera. First of all, Al already told me that I could watch the movie instead if I wanted. Second, my wife reminded me that I actually have already seen the movie (yes, it's that memorable). Third, Al seems to have disappeared into thin air, so unless he shows up here and tells me I still need to read this one, I'm crossing it off.

I do intend to read most if not all of the books remaining on my list, such as American Tabloid by James Ellroy suggested by Mr. Fabulous from Pointless Drivel. (Mr. Fabulous was kind enough to do a post about my book yesterday, so I thought I should mention him). By the way, I'm also reading the draft of Mr. Fabulous' own novel, which is hi-freaking-larious, in a sort of "what the hell is wrong with this guy" sort of way. Hopefully it will be published and available for purchase soon, then ya'll can read it too.

I was hoping to have gotten through more of the books on my list by this point, but as usual I have taken on way too much. Part of the reason I haven't been able to read as much as I hoped is that I've been busy working on my own novel. What, you didn't know I was working on a novel? Well, isn't everybody? The difference is that I actually have about 145 pages written. So when I say that I'm working on a novel, I don't mean the way that I've been "working on a novel" since I was 14. I mean that I actually have a good chunk of usable material written. And as of this morning on the way in to work, I think I even have an ending, which is a plus. You'd be surprised how hard it is to come up with an ending for a novel about the apocalypse. I don't want to say too much, but if you're interested maybe I'll do a post about it sometime in the future.

I think I'm going to take tomorrow off, but maybe I can get Grundir to sub.

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