Heldensockenbloggendingsi

… as seen on facebook:

Rules:
* Grab the book closest to you. Now.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write that sentence as your status.
* Copy these instructions as a comment to your status.
* Don’t go looking for your favourite book, or the coolest one you have — just grab the closest one.

Thanks, Martina, for posting that one!

So here goes: “Unpleasantly convinced that the ’something’ was the priest’s heart (it was in fact merely a jerkin of sheepskin which the priest wore under his tunic during the miserable winter months, and he was unscathed), Walerand fled the place with no money and the conviction that he had consigned his eternal soul to hell.”

Okaaaaay….

Yay! One of my favourite writers wrote a fanfic novel about a bunch of my favourite characters - the Firefly-crew, that is - and the story is actually available for download under a creative commons license! (I would have bought the book as well, but it seems the publishers didn’t like it as much as the fans. Too bad…)

Thank you so much, Mr. Brust, you made my day!

… or How we found the Bishop’s Bird Stump at last by Connie Willis is a funny, witty Victorian comedy of errors, mystery and time-travel romance, all rolled into one. The quest for the “Bishop’s Bird Stump” takes the reader along with professional time traveler Ned Henry on a veritable roller-coaster ride through the space-time continuum from WWII Coventry to mid-21st century Oxford to picturesque 1888. And back. And forth. And so on.

Along the way, Ned and his fellow time travelers have to deal with boats, cats, séances, train schedules, penwipers, exotic goldfish and eccentric Oxford dons. To say nothing of the dog.

Although at times a bit too convoluted for my taste, this tribute to Jerome K. Jerome’s “Three Men in a Boat”, P.G. Wodehouse, Dorothy L. Sayers and many others is still a delightful read.