Readin' 2-25-5

     I finished the White Company, which I found highly entertaining and a good read. The historical detail was rich, and the plot was good, and it had that charm that this famous author brings. I'm now a good ways into Sir Nigel which was written after the prvious, but is a a prequel. Kindof like episode 1,2,3 for starwars, exce this one seems better than the previous book so far.
     In other news, I borrowed Andy's book, O'Reilly's Programming PHP . I've read some online stuff about PHP before, and so this is a good book. I'm more interested in getting versed in postnuke documentation, however, so I think that will be my next computer related research venture.

Idaho at last

     Of late, I've been reading The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle. I've really enjoyed it. The breadth of historical detail that is found in it and in Quentin Durward is really impressive. I've been getting some motivation to work some more on my King Arthur project, tentatively titled: A Postmodern Commentary on King Arthur's Court. It's one of those projects that needs to have some deep though invested into it to make it really, truely fun.

50,000 hits can't be Elvis fans

As of January 30th, 2005, the website has received 47675 hits since going postnuke. Thus, it's soon approaching its 50k page hit mark. Kindof exciting for having a website. It's funny to see that some of my mispellings in the website have brought some of that traffic, and also people using search engines for quotes I referenced have brought other traffic. I also have enjoyed using the postnuke PHP frontend and learning about MySQL. It's really a very powerful web hosting content management system.

Quentin Durward reading - 1-30-5

     I finished reading Quentin Durward. It was a really good read. After reading so much Dumas stuff of the French Kings, e.g. Three Musketeers, La Reign Margot, this was a welcome variation. It was kindof like Braveheart meets the Musketeers, and was very interesting for that point. It also was well written and had a bit of a different voice/voabulary to it, which made it even more delightful. So, if you've read the three musketeers saga, and would like something enjoyable that has to do with those fun French kings, it would highly recommend Quentin Durward.
     I also finished up reading Treasure Island, and the last half of the book was much more enjoyable than the first half, though the ending did seem kindof weak. It was like ending a movie with the postscript of what became of the characters, though not as bad.

Readin' Latin 1-18-5

     I finished up Alamut. It was a great read, and makes one think alot about how philosophy and theology plays out in real life. It was well written and was an excellent example of how historical fiction should be written. The book was written before WWII, and you can see some different philosophical mindsets in the characters that really portray 20th century thought.
     I've continued on reading Treasure Island, and now am almost finished.I've been enjoying it more now that the story has picked up and the voice is not so 'tabula rasa' matter-of-fact ignorant/skeptical. Is it necessary to explain why the character knows and doesn't know things? I guess so, but it makes it a bit tedious.
     I've also got my hands on a copy of Wheelock's Latin, and have started to learn me some Latin. The English language is made of 60% latin words according to Wheelock, so this should be an insightful and enlightening experience.
 

McCall

Went to McCall this weekend for my cousin's wedding. It was lots of fun. I got to ride up in my brother's Cadillac Escalade, which has heated seats. That was just crazy. It reminded me of the days when we snowmobiled alot, and had heated handlebars because it gets really cold zipping along at 50 mph in the snow. Speaking of cold, it was 10° below zero, which is pretty cold. It snowed 6" last night! The wedding was fun, and it was nice to see all my extended family, and have a fun time hanging out with my family. We played some battle Uno and some classic Space Cadet pinball. My nephew Ayden was very enjoyable, also. Today we all headed back to Boise, and I am helping my parents pack their motorhome for their delayed migration to Arizona.

Readings 1-10-5

      I got a Christmas present of some money to go to the bookstore and grab some books. I went and got enough to keep me busy for a while. Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, The White Company, Sir Nigel, and Treasure Island . I've read through Ivanhoe, and half of Treasure Island so far. Ivanhoe was excellent. The voice in Treasure Island is a bit too Hardy Boys-ish for me.
      I also received my copy of Alamut. This books is really good so far. Apparently it is about the man whom our English language gets such colorful words as Assassin and Hashish.
Alamut is the first-ever English translation of Slovenian writer Vladimir Bartol's gripping, near-forgotten masterpiece translated into 19 languages and a bestseller across Europe 60 years after its initial publication based on the life and legend of the original assassin, Hasan ibn Sabbah.