Trivial Pursuit – XBox 360

The Boy and I have been awaiting the Xbox 360 Trivial Pursuit release with eager anticipation.  We’ve had a lot of fun with Scene It on the Xbox 360, and were looking forward to a general quiz game.

About five minutes after commencing a game this evening, I was rendered speechless.  One of the “Science and Nature” questions was, in my opinion, rather inappropriate.

“Which dangerous breed is this?” was the question that accompanied a picture of a Rottweiler.  Other options were Alsatian and Pit Bull.

I didn’t want to answer the question, because frankly, I don’t think that there is much merit in labelling breeds of dog as “dangerous”.  As with most things, the issue is not black and white.

For what it’s worth, all the Rottweilers I have encountered to date have been beautiful, good natured dogs.  Powerful, certainly, and deserving of responsible, caring owners, like any dog.

So much for a fun evening… Thanks EA/Hasbro!

We have snow…

…someone in this house is not a fan.

Meme: 124 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Must-Reads

Carl posted this meme today, and I thought I’d play along.  I’m not a big sci-fi reader, although that’s something Carl keeps inspiring me to try and change, and this list has given me a few ideas for books to consider.

I’ve approached this in the same way as Carl: Books I have read are in bold.  The titles of books I have sitting on my TBR shelf are italicised,

1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
2. Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
4. Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
5. Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
6. Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
7. Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
8. Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
9. Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
10. Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
11. Greg Bear: Darwin’s Radio (1999)
12. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
13. Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
14. Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
15. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
16. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
17. Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
18. Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
19. Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
20. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
21. Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
22. Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
23. Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
24. Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
25. Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
26. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
27. Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
28. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
29. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood’s End (1953)
30. GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
31. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
32. Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
33. Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
34. Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
35. Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
36. Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
37. Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
38. Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
39. Umberto Eco: Foucault’s Pendulum (1988)
40. Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
41. John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
42. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
43. Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
44. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
45. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
46. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
47. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
48. M John Harrison: Light (2002)
49. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
50. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
51. Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
52. Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
53. James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
54. Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
55. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
56. Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
57. Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
58. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
59. PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
60. Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
61. Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
62. Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
63. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
64. Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
65. Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
66. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
67. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
68. Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
69. David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
70. Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
71. Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
72. Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
73. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
74. Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
75. Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
76. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
77. Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
78. China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
79. Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
80. Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
81. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
82. Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
83. William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
84. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
85. Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
86. Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
87. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)
88. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
89. Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
90. Flann O’Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
91. Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
92. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
93. Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
94. Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
95. John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
96. Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
97. François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
98. Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
99. Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
100. Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
101. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)
102. Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
103. Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
104. José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
105. Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
106. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
107. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
108. Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
109. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
110. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
111. Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
112. Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
113. Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889)
114. Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
115. Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
116. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
117. Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
118. HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
119. HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
120. TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
121. Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
122. John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
123. John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
124. Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

There are several books on there that I would like to read, but am not planning on getting to in the near future.

Today is a day of finishing cards ready to list as Ebay auctions, and starting new cards for Ebay auctions.

I’m still pondering the idea in yesterday’s post, so feel free to chip in on that one.  If anyone has any suggestions for themes/styles of card they would like to see, please feel free to let me know!

I’ll be posting my thoughts on Duma Key by Stephen King soon.

Notes From an Exhibition & Quixotic Cards

I will admit now that this book was a read in progress for well over a month (from late November to early January), and that fact may have affected my reactions to the story and writing.  I seriously dislike reading books over such a lengthy span of time, and I grow bored not with the book itself, but with the sight of it on the bedside table.

December was not a good month for reading.  I was busy, stressed and generally in a poor frame of mind.  With hindsight a Koontz novel or something similarly paced would have been a better choice than Notes From an Exhibition.

Notes From an Exhibition tells the story of Rachel Kelly, a renowned artist with a troubled past and manic depression.  We see glimpses of her life through the exhibition notes that head each chapter, and through the stories of her children.

The story doesn’t really gather pace until late on, when we start to unravel the mysteries of Rachel Kelly’s past.  Once her long-lost sister is discovered, the story somehow takes off, and from that point I found it difficult to put down.

The ending left me a little unsatisified.  It was poignant, and even thought provoking, when I got past my initial reaction of “is that it?”, a reaction that perhaps came from the feeling that the story only really took off in the late stages of the book.  Reading Patrick Gale’s notes on the book at the end did explain this – the story having ended up as an exploration of his feelings about his own brother’s death at a young age.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, which gave me a distinct yearning to visit Cornwall again.

———————————————-

A short and not entirely fully formed post, I finished the book at the start of the month, and my head has been full of other things ever since!

I am beginning to get into the swing of things again, after our extended Christmas holiday.  The Quixotic Card card auctions are starting to appear, and soon the Buy It Now listings will join them.  Etsy listings may be returning, although there is a difficulty there in the fact that listings need to be in USD, which with the ever fluctuating exchange rate means either constantly changing the prices, or accepting less money on a sale.  There are UK based alternatives, and I’ll be looking into those a little further.

Alternatively, I can also create a page with cards for sale directly on this blog, with Paypal buttons for purchasing.  Any thoughts on this one?

A Word for 2009

This post is a little later than I’d intended, mostly because The Boy only returned to work yesterday, so we’ve been in “holiday” mode until now.

Instead of a laundry list of resolutions, destined to be broken before Valentine’s Day, I’m going for the looser approach championed by Ali Edwards – a word for the New Year.  There’s something about lists of resolutions that quickly have me itching to rebel, so this is ideal.

My word for 2009 is “health”.  Physical health, mental health and health in relationships, finances and approach to life in general.

One of my key goals this year is to lose weight and improve fitness.  Without doubt, there are many people saying exactly the same thing at the moment, it is after all one of the traditional resolutions, unsurprisingly given the tendency to have an excessive blowout at Christmas.  I think, however, that I’ve reached a point where I’m more serious about this goal, and am in a better position to begin to achieve it.  Only time will tell, so I will keep you posted.

Another key goal included in the idea of “health” is the desire to improve our finances and start working towards some longterm aspirations.  To this end, my intention is to:

1. Finish selling our unwanted clutter on Ebay.
2. Only buy books/games/DVDs/etc that we intend to enjoy at that time, rather than stockpiling.  Doing away with the “got to have it now” mindset could also be considered working towards better health mentally.
3. Conquer the “To Be Read” pile.
4. Make regular additions to the Quixotic Cards Ebay and Etsy shops, and also to list more OOAK card auctions.

In terms of mental health, my main goal is to stop worrying so much.  I’m referring to the debilitating, obsessive worrying that I have a tendency to spiral into.  I have a feeling that increased exercise may go a long way towards helping me with this goal.

Generally, I’d like to make this the year that we start to live more healthfully.  And by that I not only mean in terms of fitness and nutrition, but also by living intentionally.  I would very much like to do less procrastinating, and more living each day fully, as it comes, while adopting healthy routines.

To round off this post: a very belated photo of some of my Christmas loot.  I am in love with the cover of Just After Sunset.

Many thanks to my Secret Santa, whose gifts are only partly pictured, as the chocolates and other edible treats have now all been very much enjoyed!

I also received a copy of Stephen King’s Duma Key; I’m a few chapters in, and am happy to say King has me as captivated as ever.

Christmas Wishes

This is just a very quick post to say hello and Merry Christmas to all my blogging friends (and anyone else who drops by!).

I didn’t quite make my NaBloPoMo target, as the last few days of November proved to be busier than expected.  Then, when I was thinking of posting again, I found the news about Dewey in my Google Reader and was completely thrown.

I wasn’t close to Dewey, but her blog was a favourite of mine, and I always looked forward to her posts.  I have thought of her often in the days since reading the news.  Dewey’s passing is a great loss to the community, and as all the tributes have evidenced, she will be greatly missed.

We are spending Christmas at home this year, just the two of us and the dog.  Today we’re making gingerbread and walking the dog on the beach.  I daresay we’ll also squeeze in some time on the XBox.  Tomorrow we have turkey and all the trimmings, and I think we’ve planned another walk on the beach.

Whatever you’re doing, wherever you are, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas, and that the New Year will bring great things.  To Dewey’s family and all who loved her, I send my very best wishes.

I will be back at the end of December/early January, ready to recommence blogging in earnest.

There’s children throwing snowballs instead of throwing heads. They’re busy building toys and absolutely no one’s dead!

Today saw me getting into the festive mood.  The Nightmare Before Christmas DVD went on, and I sat punching out snowflakes for card orders.

The Nightmare Before Christmas remains near the top of my list of favourite films, and every time I see it I am struck by just how awesome Tim Burton’s work is.  As usual, I will be watching it a number of times over the Christmas period, along with other Christmas classics like The Grinch (original animation first, then Jim Carrey).

I find myself possessed by a slightly odd fascination with gingerbread this year.  I bought a book on making gingerbread houses last year, but didn’t have time to actually make one.  Sadly I think that this year will be much the same, although I have just seen a set of cutters that intrigued me and which I may just have to purchase…I think I could find time to play with cutters and construct a house, but planning and cutting one myself just seems a little daunting when I think of all the other projects I have to complete.

Busy Bee…

It just dawned on me that I haven’t really made any progress with any of my personal festive projects, and yet I still keep thinking of new things to add to the list.  I have no idea why I do this to myself!  I am of course, a very last minute person…so no doubt everything will get done, at the last possible opportunity.

I don’t really have much to share today, so I’m going to leave you with a photo I took a few weeks ago, when I was trying out the new camera.  I was surprised that it came out at all…

This little bee was following me around as I tried to practice taking photos of flowers with various settings to see what worked.

I haven’t been taking many photos over the last week or so, but we are off visiting family again this weekend, so I’ll be taking the 400D with me.  Not sure what we’re going to be up to, but no doubt there will be plenty of opportunity to play with the camera.

The Witch’s Trinity by Erika Mailman

The Witch’s Trinity tells the story of a medieval village struck by famine, and the tragedy that ensues as women are accused of and tried for witchcraft.

Erika Mailman deftly evokes the desperation and confusion of the time, when the Church and old superstitions were crossing over.  Pagan signs and runes are still used by the townsfolk, but an elderly woman skilled in herbalism is burned at the stake for witchcraft.

This was a book I picked up purely on a whim, attracted by the title and synopsis.  It proved to be more than a pleasant surprise.  Mailman’s skill as a storyteller is evident, and the story is as compelling as it is disturbing.

If you’re already earmarking books for next year’s RIP Challenge, then this one would be a perfect fit.  That said, I’d recommend you just dive in right now!

Short, and not really all that sweet.

Feeling a little rough today – the beginnings of another cold, perhaps.  So, this is just a brief post, mostly to ensure I keep up with NaBloPoMo till the end!

I’m still enjoying Fallout 3.  The only real issue with it so far is that I constantly have the songs from the in-game radio stuck in my head.

Post about The Witch’s Trinity by Erika Mailman will definitely be up tomorrow!