Amazon Raid

[stoutfellow]

Last Sunday, I put in an order at Amazon; it arrived in three separate packages over the last two days.

The contents included two CDs - Dinah Washington, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, and Steppenwolf, All Time Greatest Hits - and six books: Laura Joh Rowland, Assassin's Touch (another in the Sano Ichiro series); Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys; George Macdonald Fraser, Flashman's Lady; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (look, you know what a procrastinator I am!); Nicholas Ostler, Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World; and James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds.

I'm especially looking forward to reading Empires of the Word; I've heard a lot of good things about it.

Comments

[toraks.livejournal.com]

Anansi Boys I really liked a lot.

HP7 -- don't worry, not missing much...

Empires of the World sounds interesting. Do they hit India? I'm reading The Adventure of English, it's pretty good so far other than the annoying "English is the best language in the whole world, as are the English" attitude. (by Melvyn Bragg and a subtitle on the title, I'm forgetting)

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

One chapter - about 10% of the book - of Empires of the Word is devoted to Sanskrit. Flipping through the index, I also see references to several of its descendants, and to the Big Four among the Dravidian languages - Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam. (No telling, until I read the book, how much content there is in those references, of course.)

[toraks.livejournal.com]

cool, we'll see then. Thanks for checking. I, of course, have most interest in the Dravidian languages Tamil and Telugu since those are the ones I know. If you remember, I'd love to hear what you think of the book once you've read it. I can look it up if you like it. :-)

By the way, finished the Adventure of English. Pretty interesting light read, though it wasn't exactly lots of new information. Kind of cool to see where some words came from (plenty of word/origin lists) and to hear about some of the history of English in more detail -- didn't know it's most closely related to Frisian for example. So the earlier parts of the book were great. Later, was not so interesting, but still kinda neat to see word origins -- curry is from Tamil! Didn't know that. However, overall the English (language and people) hero-worship did grate, but it was bearable (though I've got a huge anti-imperialistic sore point (possibly inherited)). ;-)

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Judging from your posts about your book purchases, either your local public library is very lucky in its donation department or your house is lined with books. Or both [g].

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I don't know what you mean. I've only bought, um, fifty-four books this year.

So far.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Hey, you've got to spend your money on something, right?

I had an 8'x8' set of shelves built in my living room 2 1/2 years ago. When I unloaded -- some of -- my books onto them, they filled it about half way. It's just about full now. And that's just the bookcase in the living room. Like most of the people reading this exchange, I have bookcases in every room in my house except the bathrooms (and that's just because of the moisture issue). Even the laundry room.

I swear they breed. They're most active after a trip to Powells, generally...

[filkferengi]

Well, when the person's away, the paper products will play! It's your fault for leaving them unsupervised for that long. ;)

Talk to you next week.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

I thought that the cats were supposed to supervise them when I'm not home. I guess I'm going to have to get after them, too. Sigh.

[filkferengi]

If you're trusting cats, you are Cute When Naive. Remember the New Testament quote about "Put not your trust in principalities & powers"? That last word was actually supposed to be "purrers." Translators!

;)

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

If you're trusting cats, you are Cute When Naive.

Well, yes. And your point is?

Just to let you know, I will be very sporadic here and on email for the next week and a half. Listee company (and aren't you jealous???)

Talk to you soon. Gotta head for the airport.

[filkferengi]

I'll see your listie & raise you a stoutfellow & a mbernardi. ;)

Have a big time! [Don't forget your sunscreen.]

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

What I really needed was some Airborne (sniffle, sniffle, cough, cough). Alas.

I hope you had a wonderful Nasfic.

[filkferengi]

What I got to was pretty good. The catch was, I wasn't sleeping too well at night & kept having to go back to the room for major naps during the day. Throw in Swollen Calves Of Doom, Other Unfortunate Events, & a major heatwave, just for laughs.

Speaking of which, are you keeping your cool? fajrdrako said it was 106 where she's at last week.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. You sound almost as physically ill as I managed this past week (in addition to the cold, I also fell off a hill and banged up my elbow, and I also developed an unexplained rash on my feet).

As for heat, remember. I'm on the correct side of the mountains. It was in the mid-80s the first two days M. was here, and never got above 75 after that.

fajrdrako is in eastern Canada. M. went home to 97 degrees yesterday, too, poor soul.