Monday, July 31, 2006

 

Random Quotations

This is a spot for random quotations that I like (which may or may not be from actual books).

"If religions was based on scientific evidence it would be called
"science"... and no one would believe it."

-Stephen Colbert

"A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven."

-Jean Chretien

Average is as close to the bottom as it is to the top.

-Lulu Lemon poster

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Friday, July 28, 2006

 

Mostly Harmless

I've recently re-read the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy. I'd like to put my posts for these books in the correct order but, as fate would have it, was on book 5 by the time I decided to start this blog. So I'm starting with the last book and working backwards (with some other books in between, I'm sure).


I'm on a bit of a Douglas Adams kick, so expect to see a post on The Salmon of Doubt, which I'm reading right now (and, incidentally, I highly recommend), in addition the rest of the trilogy.


The book opens with the following written on the first 4 pages:

I found this fairly amusing. Shortly after reading Mostly Harmless, I started reading The Salmon of Doubt, in which Adams talks about this (so expect to hear more about it in that posting, whenever I get around to it).

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Nothing's Sacred

I'm a big fan of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Despite not having cable for the last 5+ years, I've always kept up with the show by watching clips on the Comedy Central website. All of their correspondents are hilarious and Lewis Black is no exception. He yells and rants like a neo-Con, but he's totally a lefty. So he's yelling and ranting about things that drive me crazy, things that make me yell and rant too. So when I saw this book of his at the library, I knew it would be a good read. I think Jon Stewart summed it up well in his quotation on the back of the book:
Lewis Black is the only person I know who can actually yell in print form.
-Jon Stewart
The first quotation from this book that is worth recording is the dedication:
This book is dedicated to all of my friends who helped me get to where I am today -- you know who you are... and when I find you I am going to kill you.
Now that's a dedication!

Many other fine quotations come from the chapter titles and/or their taglines, including:


Now, lest you think I only read the chapter titles, here are a few quotations from the body of the book that I really liked:


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Tuesday, July 18, 2006

 

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

For some reason, I've been hearing about this book a lot lately. I mean, a lot. Like every second person I talked to mentioned it. So I decided to check it out. After waiting for a while (being 27th on the waiting list at VPL), I got the book and, quite honestly, I couldn't put it down. I didn't find it to be very well written (far too repetitive for my liking), but for some reason I found the book fascinating. Now, I don't agree with some of the things he says... most notably, his views on taxes. Basically, he feels that taxes just penalize the poor & middle class, because the rich hire expensive accountants to get them out of paying taxes and the government wastes the tax money you give them anyway. But to me, this means that we should be fixing our tax system so that the rich pay their fair share and to eliminate government waste, making sure that tax money goes to the things it's meant to go to. Things like education, research and health care are, in my opinion, far too important to be run by corporate interests. But I did find many of the things that he says in this book thought-provoking. I definitely like the idea of having my money work for me rather than working for my money (but that could be because I work for very, very little money!). I also like the idea of working to learn things and the recommendation to never stopping learning.
Some of the quotations I liked from this book were:

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Monday, July 17, 2006

 

All The Books


All the books I've made postings on, in alphabetical order:

By Title:



By Author:


Poetry

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Why A Blog

I tend to read a lot of books. Right now I have three different books on the go, with several others also checked out of the library. I also tend to have a very poor memory for things I've read (or movies I've seen, or things I've said and done, or... well, you get the idea). So I often write down quotations from books as I read, to try to remember the good stuff. Of course, due to the aforementioned poor memory, I usually can't find the paper/napkin/envelope/person on which I wrote down the aforementioned quotations. I started writing them down in a little red notebook, which is handy for when I'm reading on the bus but not so handy when I lose the notebook for a week and a half (which I did recently). So I thought that perhaps a blog for these quotations (and the occasional reflection) might be a good way of keeping all this stuff together... I mean, I can't misplace the internet, can I?

I don't anticipate that this blog will be all that interesting to anyone but me, so I'm not going to advertise it. Let's just see how long it takes before someone stumbles upon it on my Profile page...

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