The Energon Pub

I'm reading "Memnoch the Devil" and "Servant of the Bones" by Anne Rice.

Plowing through my monthly reading-crack from my friends at Hard Case Crime. They reprint these awesome noir/hardboiled novels from the '50s and '60s, when men were men and women were dames or molls. Delicious reading. This month: _House Dick_

Also zipping through _How to Break a Terrorist_ which, if you want to know how good Army interrogations work, is a great read.

HK, my floor is leaking. I think my house is possessed.

Just finished the following books while HMW was down

Twilight
New moon
Eclipse
Breaking Dawn

OVerall I good book series especially for vampire and romance readers. I must admit I was able to enjoy it some much I might read it again in the near future.

hellkitty wrote:
What?! How can you pass up all those fart jokes in the Miller's Tale?

I'm teaching Chretien's Arthurian Romances. I used to teach a fantasy novel (Lian Hearn's Across the Nightingale Floor) but I went into a snit last Fall about teaching college students with a frickin' YOUNG ADULT title like they're too stupid to handle like, y'know, real words.

HK, apparently, I misjudged them.

Well, only the NPT and the Pardoner's are actually in the textbook. I really love the Wife of Bath and her tale. It's a good segue into Gawain and the Green Knight, and I like the proto-feminism therein (even if it was unintended.)

The Miller's tale is fun, but it's not deep, and I doubt my teeneagers would enjoy the fart jokes, being not quite outrageous enough for today's youth humor. The truly outrageous humor therein, however, I would blush to explain. There's something about frenching a nether hole that just strikes me as inappropriate for high school... (what? women don't have beards!) etc. If I was teaching a college course, though, I would certainly add it to my list.

The truly outrageous humor therein, however, I would blush to explain. There's something about frenching a nether hole that just strikes me as inappropriate for high school... (what? women don't have beards!) etc. If I was teaching a college course, though, I would certainly add it to my list.

One of my colleagues insists on teaching Mac Flecknoe in his survey course. To howling protests of obscenity. To which he has taken the habit of bringing in an episode of South Park--if they're not offended by *that*, what's Dryden doing wrong?

Trust me, young folks are plenty profane. And if they can text (or 'sext' as it's now allegedly called) naked pics of themselves to all and sundry, they have no right to even pretend to be prudish about fabliau. One of these is child porn, one isn't. Shazam.

Myself, I've occasionally flogged intro to lit with Les Quatre Souhaits Saint Martin. It's hilarious, obscene, AND has an important social message: apparently in the middle ages, it was great fun to make fun of peasants. Stupid peasants! Ha ha!

HK, because lit got a bad reputation as boring BECAUSE people play it too safe for fear of offending uptight idiots.

I just got done reading Runelords by the ever-descriptive David Farland . Before that though, I was reading Wizard's First Rule, the first in the Sword of Truth series (this was before 'Legend of the Seeker' decided to rear its head BTW)...I've not come across any other books from either series though, it's driving me bloody CRAZY!

Tristar wrote:Just finished the following books while HMW was down

Twilight
New moon
Eclipse
Breaking Dawn

OVerall I good book series especially for vampire and romance readers. I must admit I was able to enjoy it some much I might read it again in the near future.

Just so you know, in no way is that series about Vampires. If anything, they're more like Zombies.

[quote="Shadowman
Just so you know, in no way is that series about Vampires. If anything, they're more like Zombies.[/quote]

Glampires... Faeripires... (I'm corrupted by oldschool Whitewolf, though, so I don't think I get to judge.)

For other fans of oldschool Whitewolf, I just read a Robert Asprin book that was fabulous, Dragon's Luck. It was a sequel to another Dragon book, and had all sorts of magical folk showing up. Unfortunately, there will be no more. It could have been such a fun series. RIP.

As to prudishness, as a teacher of minors, I can only be so subversive. I know they, themselves, are crude and rude and vulgur, but I am an employee of a schoolboard. IAlso, just hate having to explain humor. I sometimes do a Monty Python lesson, and when I am compelled to explain why it is funny, I die a little bit inside (or ignore them because enough of the kids get the jokes.) Once again, I skip over the Castle Anthrax. Maybe it's my hypocrisy showing... I dunno.

Lorekeeper wrote:As to prudishness, as a teacher of minors, I can only be so subversive. I know they, themselves, are crude and rude and vulgur, but I am an employee of a schoolboard. IAlso, just hate having to explain humor. I sometimes do a Monty Python lesson, and when I am compelled to explain why it is funny, I die a little bit inside (or ignore them because enough of the kids get the jokes.) Once again, I skip over the Castle Anthrax. Maybe it's my hypocrisy showing... I dunno.

True. In college I'm more or less protected by FERPA. Their parents can rage all they want, but they can't do anything to me as long as what I'm teaching is a *classic*.

The WORST, though, are homeschooled kids. I had one who refused to read _All Quiet on the Western Front_, calling it 'vile pornography' and 'obscene'. Huh? So after going through all the deans and the president of the college to get me fired, while I was nicely suggesting he just drop the course, he asked me if anything else we were going to read in the rest of the semester was offensive.

The rest of the semester included Oedipus Rex and Hamlet. Murder, incest; nah, nothing offensive there.

After having gone through *that* guy, I've found myself actually more aggressive. Taught _Lolita_ for a few years, till I finally got nauseated by the mere thought of Humbert. Sure it's petty and childish of me, but they are all, legitimately, classics. Whatever that says about the canon....

Oh, for fun: Iron Angel. Neat read. Not done yet: it may be a huge disappointment, but the first book was quite spiffy.

HK, dirty old white men decide what's literature.

Boba the Fett wrote:Just started the book 1 of the Bounty Hunter Wars: The Mandalorian Armor. Came real close to stopping when I first picked it up but it won me over after a second shot at it. Really enjoying it now.

I don't know if you've finished it by now, but you really should have trusted your first instinct. I remember reading that trilogy years ago and being very disappointed with it.

Chaoslock wrote:

Boba the Fett wrote:

omega wing wrote:Currently i am steaming my way through Star wars new jedi order Vector prime by R.A. Salvatore its the first apperance of the Yuuzhan Vong and i gotta say its a good book very interesting then after that i have just got myself the Darth bane Rule of two by Drew Karpyshyn read the first one hope this one holds up

That one is good. I recently just finished the New Jedi Order series and really enjoyed it.

Ditto. It was a very good series; I just ordered the Swarm War trilogy, and plan on continuing with the Legacy of the Force after that.

I've read TNJO, Dark Nest and just finished up LotF... I liked TNJO except there were too many filler books, Dark Nest was pretty pointless except as a set-up to LotF... LotF had it's moments but all in all very disappointing in that the whole ***(potential) Spoiler*** Jacen going Sith ***/Spoiler*** and related consequences seemed so unnecessary. IMO the SW writers nowadays are set on making the SWU a darker-grittier place simply for the sake of doing it.

I just finished up Micheal Crichton's 'State of Fear'. All in all a pretty good book, though by this point I've read so many of his novels that I can see the plot twists coming a mile away. Also it pretty much was the last nail in the coffin of my belief of Global Warming (sorry, 'Climate Change'. Gotta keep up with the lingo )
Crichton makes a good case with all the sources cited that Glo...'Climate Change' really is just a boogey man made up based on incomplete data and sold to the well-meaning masses.

After that I picked up 'The Essential Works of Thomas Paine' which I'm currently working thru.

Also reading 'Liberal Fascism' by Jonah Goldberg. So far it's an interesting read. From what I've read it's about how the American Progressive movement has socialist roots and was really the U.S. equivalent of Italian Fascism and German National Socialist (aka Nazi's). and Once WWII started and those movements were discredited Progressivism morphed itself into what we currently think of as Liberalism.

Waiting for my copy of 'The 5,000 Year Leap' to show up.

I am currently reading The Orc King by RA Salvatore.

Zombie Survival guide, for the infinate-th time, going over every 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons book, again. Also the new Pathfinder beta .pdf. gotta get familiar with the new system. 4th edition sucks.

Just finishing a biography about New York Jets QB Joe Namath.

i am reading the hobbit and it is awesome can't wait for the movie in 2010 i am also a huge fan of lord of the rings witch after the hobbit i will read

I just finished MacCarthy's The Road for a graduate class and whoa man, was that great. As soon as I finished it I started it again, which I can't remember the last book I did that with. What a great book. Depressing, but really an excellent piece of writing.