Comments on: Lazy Sunday!

By: Geoff Honnor

Geoff Honnor — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:06:52 +0000

“Geoff, yes, we are looking forward to it, but hope it won’t be pissing rain which we are told often happens.”

Yep. Fiordland is damp but you do get see incredible waterfalls and the whole experience kind of transcends the rain. Watch out for the legendary sandflies at Milford Sound.

By: reb of Hobart

reb of Hobart — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:34:21 +0000

A Beginner’s Guide to Art Gallery Etiquette, and How to Say Things about Art that are guaranteed* to impress other people.

(Just in case you were wondering).

The rest is bollocks…

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/30x

*This does not in any way imply a guarantee that these things might work. In fact they probably won’t.

By: Paul Norton

Paul Norton — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:23:37 +0000

Just to clarify, I would not have read and re-read the Thomas Covenant series if I did not enjoy them and get into them in important respects. I think, though, that most readers of (for example) the final volume of The First Chronicles would probably have found the chapters in which High Lord Mhoram (a more or less conventional hero) is leading the defence of Revelstone against the Raver and his army more unambiguously enjoyable than those in which Thomas Covenant himself (the anti-hero) figures, apart from the penultimate chapter when he meets and defeats Lord Foul).

By: robbo

robbo — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:04:28 +0000

Started on the last book in “the gap” series. I really enjoyed Thomas Covenant so thought I’d read the gap. Very different, but I am enjoying it(perhaps I’m just a Donaldson junky).

Zorronsky@1, we are in the same boat with bloody dial-up. Crappy mobile reception so no wireless and we are only 25k from town and 1.5 k from a telstra exchange.Needless to say when we hear Conroy rabbiting on about ultra fast broadband for the city we wonder aloud why we always miss out.I don’t think this Govt. has any intention of providing those of us who live in the bush broadband.

By: Paul Burns

Paul Burns — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:16:54 +0000

I loved Thomas Covenant. One of my favourite fantasy books. Read it in my 20s, I think. Don’t know why they’ve never made it either to TV or the big screen.But then again, I love Crime and Punishment too. As I noted some time ago it was a seminal teenage reading experience for me.
The Book of Genji is one of my favourite pieces of world literature. It just blew me away. But I love that kind of epic stuff in books and on the screen.

By: sg

sg — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:04:49 +0000

Yes Paul, I remember I enjoyed both series but in a kind of strange masochistic way. I think there’s a real skill in crafting a story about an essentially not very nice person and convincing people to keep reading it. I try not to dip into that type of fiction too often…

By: Paul Norton

Paul Norton — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:58:26 +0000

Also, if you consider the other books I’ve been reading recently which I mentioned in my first comment, you would probably conclude that my reading habits perhaps reflect my depressive realist personality type, as even the escapist fiction I read is depressing!

By: Fran Barlow

Fran Barlow — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:58:01 +0000

I spent much of the weekend, like the previous three ripping out and mulching invasive plants. Hard physical work — every muscle aches. (well perhaps not all 200(?) of them, but is feels as if they are.

As I was assailed by mosquitoes, ants and spiders and kept falling into and through accumulations of lantana, cactus, hakea, camphor laurel and aspargus fern, I kept wondering why it was that this mass of waste biomass couldn’t be converted into useable energy (perhaps via plasma torch methods) or even in an AD. Surely local councils could have blitzes where they cane in and did a block for a discount rate — say $150 per Ha — I mean, we surely would all pay, and the council could get rid of potential fire hazard and invasive species and even turn a profit on the deal.

I made spaghetti and got the satisfaction of being able to source seven of the ingredients — tomatoes, buck choi, garlic, chile, leek, parsely and mint — from the kitchen garden. The buck choi were very luxuriant and it’s hard to imagine I could get them this fresh any other way. I’m sure it tasted nicer even than the organic stuff I buy, though this could simple be affirmation bias. I’ll take it either way.

Hubby managed to put his new mobile phone through the washing machine. He’d only bought it because he had mislain the old chunky NOKIA — though he got it back ultimately — and had wanted an exact duplicate. Apparently this style is no longer sold and so he had no choice but to get one of those iPod-like things with the result I described. Hmmm … progress ….

By: Paul Norton

Paul Norton — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:53:39 +0000

sg #14, The First, Second and Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant are all "annoying" in the sense that the central characters from the "real" world are, most of the time, not the kind of people you'd invite to dinner, and I would agree that it can be burdensome to labour through literally thousands of pages of text in which such characters persistently behave abominably towards all the decent characters in the story. Of course the central message of the books is about the capacity of such people to raise themselves from the slough of despond and, when push comes to shove, not succumb to despair and self-hatred. I suspect a lot of readers would also find Crime and Punishment an annoying book for much the same reason. I guess what it comes down to is that there is a certain kind of book which can't be written about pleasant and appealing central characters.

By: reb of hobart

reb of hobart — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:24:46 +0000

We went to see Keating the Musical. Laughed? I nearly had a cardiac arrest!

Also finished re-reading David Sedaris “When You Are Engulfed in Flames”

Then made a nice curry with a bottle of red.