This morning during my commute I started listening to the first course we bought from The Teaching Company. This particular course is King Arthur and Chivalry taught by Bonnie Wheeler. Ms. Wheeler has been on TV a few times, on The History Channel & A&E, so I was familiar with her (which is one of the reasons I picked this course). What I got was a couple of clear plastic cases with CD’s in paper sleeves and a pamphlet with course notes. Its not fancy but its functional and in fact this case will be easier to open one handed while driving when it comes time to change disks. 🙂

Anyway, my initial reaction is very favorable. Its clear that they just recorded her lectures, so it isn’t 100% polished…I get the feeling they didn’t do ‘takes’ or anything. They do record the lectures in a studio, though, so the sound quality is good. So far Ms. Wheeler has proven to be an engaging speaker, but I’d anticipated that after seeing her on TV, where it was clear she was passionate about the subject matter. The first lecture is more or less an overview of what’s to come, but already I’m anxious to hear more.

I’ll report back if things take a turn for the worse, but so far I’m very, very pleased. I may find myself getting a bunch more of these.

I finished Doc Sidhe, by Aaron Allston, tonight. It was a fun ‘pulp fiction’ kind of story. A down-on-his-luck kickboxer gets transported to the FaeWorld (my term, not his) and he and his girlfriend get embroiled in a battle against an evil madman. The other world is whimsical but believable; people there are poisoned/burned by the touch of iron or steel, so most of their technology is based on copper and so forth, which has retarded their technological growth when compared to ours (they call our world the grimworld). But they have magic, so you end up with almost a steam-punk kind of land, but not so gritty as what you might think of when you think of steampunk.

Anyway, the book won’t win any awards for Classic Fiction or The Great American Novel, but it was a darned fun read and an imaginative enough story. And though I’ve linked to it at Amazon, you can d/l it for free (or read it online) at Baen’s Free Library. I read the whole thing on my PDA while waiting in lines or during solo meals and what not. Not a bad way to pass some time.

Elaine just turned me on to this site:
The Teaching Company – Great Courses That Engage The Mind
We’re going to try a couple of courses from them. The on-sale courses are about $50 and we’ll get them on CD so we can listen to them in the car.

Will report back on whether they’re any good, but some of the instructors are familiar to be from seeing them on TV on The History Channel or Discovery.

Stephen King’s On Writing is a mixture of autobiography and ‘how-to-write’ book. It works both ways. I’m not a huge King fan but it was still very interesting and inspiring to hear about his early misadventures, especially if you’ve read some of his short story collections and get the fun of connecting story to real life incident.

As a ‘how-to-write’ book it was liberating to me. A lot of what King thinks just falls in line with what I feel, or even hope. One of his premises (and out of context it sounds a tad silly but it fits, believe me) is that stories already exist, and as a writer it is your job to carefully unearth them for the world to enjoy. King eschews elaborate outlines and summaries and instead lets the story go where it will. That appeals a lot to me.

There’re also some very practical tips and advice; in fact the book is jam-packed full of good stuff. If you’re struggling to find your voice, to meet your muse, read this book!

Finished Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten this morning. It was a wonderful book; I can’t believe it was her first. I was very skeptical of the whole ‘modern day werewolves’ theme, to be honest, but damned if she didn’t pull it off nicely, telling us a riveting story while giving us glimpses into the whole werewolf mystique and leaving room for many more stories to come (I hope).

Overall she kept a tight leash on things (yes, pun intended) until the very last parts of the story where she got a little careless about leaving bodies behind, so to speak. This is forgivable in that the reader is so caught up in things by then that they’re probably just as happy to not have to pause for the explanation of how a fight scene is cleaned up. Ideally, though, we wouldn’t be left with questions of “What will the police think when they find….” and so forth.

That’s a minor nit, though. The story moved along really nicely; a real page turner. Elena is a believable modern day heroine. She’s got flaws and she has some very dense moments (perhaps a few too many — several times I was shouting the Bitten equivalent of “DON’T GO IN THE BASEMENT!”) but she’s still likable and a very sympathetic character.

I’m looking forward to reading more from Ms. Armstrong.

So suddenly I’m on a crazy Backgammon kick, and I’ve been playing at DailyGammon.

But I haven’t played in years, so I assumed I was going to suck. I dislike sucking at things that I do so went out looking for a book on backgammon and more or less at random picked Backgammon for Winners by Bill Robertie. And it turned out to be a decent choice.

It’s a fairly thin book, which I liked. I didn’t want to spend 2 weeks reading about the history of the game (at least not right now). Robertie jumps right into the meat of the subject, first giving the rules and a bit of broad strategy as well as best opening moves for every possible first roll of the dice. But the bulk of the book is taken up with three different sample games, and Robertie analyzes each move of each game, giving lots of explanation for why something was a strong or poor move. While he suggests you set up a board and move the pieces yourself, there were enough illustrations that you don’t have to do so (I didn’t).

By the time you work through these three sample games you’ll understand backgammon notation, the different phases/styles of a backgammon game, why control of certain points is more important than others, and you’ll even see examples of when the ‘rules of thumb’ should be broken. He does a good job of urging you to go back and reread a section if its covering difficult material, keeping you from glossing over it with an ‘I’ll figure this out later” shrug.

Overall, I’m thinking this is a good first backgammon book. Recommended.

I finally finished New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver and I have to say, I can’t really recommend it. I mean, her stuff is “nice” and if you’re a nature freak than you might enjoy it. But for me there was way too much wildlife and way too few people, which left the poems feeling a bit vapid to me.

Obviously poetry is a very personal thing, though, and she is wildly popular. I just think I’d prefer something a bit edgier…

Last night I started in on Bitten (Women of the Otherworld, Book 1). It was late and I didn’t get much past the prologue but that bit was pretty entertaining. Its about a woman in modern times who is a werewolf. Yeah, back to genre fiction. 😉

Anyway, haven’t read enough to talk about the book, but oddly I wanted to talk about the publisher. Its from Plume, which is a division of Penguin Books. Its a paperback (I read in bed a lot so prefer paperbacks to hardcovers since the book is often resting on my chest.) but its got a really nice binding and feels like a ‘real book’ if you know what I mean. The cover has a flat finish rather than that glossy cheap-seeming dimestore paperback stuff.

I know, I’m being weird. But I just really like the feel of this book in my hands.