saw this over on katie and sarah's blogs and am now just thinking about it as the weather's turned cold. curling up on the couch with a good book while the nut is asleep or otherwise occupied sounds like heaven.

These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users (as of some days ago). Bold what you have read, italicize what you started but couldn’t finish, and strike through what you couldn’t stand. Add an asterisk to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list. Any title left untouched you consider not worthy of reading.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The name of the rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha**
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The historian: a novel
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of cholera
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange (eh, seen the movie loads)
Anansi boys
The once and future king
The grapes of wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
1984
Angels and Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s travels
Les misérables
The corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime
Dune**** (too many times to count)
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The god of small things
A people’s history of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A short history of nearly everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The scarlet letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the art of motocycle maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In cold blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The three musketeers

there are a lot of books here that i want to read and a lot that i don't care to. i guess i just know what i'll like and what i won't like. granted, KP has read a lot of the books that i don't want to read. we balance out well that way :)

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i hope that everyone has been enjoying the holiday season whatever holiday you happen to celebrate! christmas is over and i'm back at work through thursday when i get off again for the new year. i'm sure many of you are on vacation or just have the time off. just think how lucky you are not to be sitting in your office right now.

i managed to get some great christmas knitting booty this year! look what i got!

mmmm, lace

i only hope that i can actually make something from them in 2007! time is swiftly winging away from me and before i know it i'm going to have a baby and no time for knitting for a while. i'm trying to get in some things for her first before she's born and then have some mindless knitting standing by for when she appears in our home. regardless, i'm happy to have these books in my collection. they're gorgeous and full of beautiful patterns.

well, my christmas knitting went off without a hitch. i finished all three hats i wanted to make and gifted them to my family members on the 23rd.

i used up most of the disney wool/acrylic blend that i bought in japan last year for these hats. yes, there is a disney brand yarn! and it comes with little tags that you can sew into your garments with pooh or mickey on them. very cute. the hat for my FIL was made with knitpicks swish i had leftover from the first pair of glittens i made and then the pair of glittens i am making for myself right now. i made up the pattern for my BIL's hat, the hat for linda is just a generic baby cable hat, and the FIL's hat was made with this pattern from fig and plum.

now, i'm still working on the noro 3-hole shawl. a row here and there adds up to a repeat here and there and now i'm more than half way between the 1st and 2nd hole. it's pretty mindless knitting so i work on it whenever i want to just watch TV and not do much thinking.

i made some stash enhancements recently which i have to take pictures of and add to the stash page. i bought 4 balls of dale of norway falk (2 black, 2 white) for the pirate hat and mittens for my father and 3 hanks of noro cashmere islands (yum!) for the hat and mittens for my mom. i'm loving this yarn! the noro is just gorgeous and i'm looking forward to doing my first fair isle with the falk. i'm going to practice with the last of my disney yarn (which is roughly the same weight and gauge as the falk) as soon as i've freed up the appropriate needles.

these appropriate needles are currently engaged in make some glittens for myself! i figure it's gotta get cold around here soon and i'll need some gloves/mittens when it does. i think that i made them a little too big but i have a feeling they might shrink up a bit when i wash and dry them.

swish glittens galore

this time around i've devised a new system of knitting them where i pick up stitches between the fingers and then decrease them away on the next round to close up holes. it works really well and the joins feel a lot more substantial. i'm sure i'll be done with these before the weekend. they're so easy! then i'll get started on the hats and mittens for my parents and some baby knitting.

can you believe that i'm actually thinking about buying another set of denise needles? gosh, i love them. i have a set of the new ones and a set of the old ones, but the old needles don't connect well with the new cables and i've not always been able use them for projects because of this. i could really use another newer set. have you seen the pink version? $5 goes to breast cancer research. sounds like a good plan to me!

some blog news: i've decided to discontinue doing book reviews on the reading blog. i know it doesn't get much traffic and i was doing it mainly to remind myself of the books i've read but i just can't keep up with it. i've got to let something go because i've taken on a rather large and consuming project outside of work and home life (and this blog) that requires more of my attention. i'll still keep you updated as to what i'm reading on the sidebar but that'll be it after the last two reviews of 2006.

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for those who don't know, i've been keeping track of what i read since january of 2005 over on my book blog. i realized at some point that i was reading so many books a year that i couldn't remember them all and that starting the blog was my opportunity to jog my memory. i considered giving it up this january because i could never get online right when i was done reading and write up my review! i always want to put the old book on the bookshelf and pick up a new one right away. i can't be without a book for more than 12 hours! so i pared down my reviews to one paragraph and so far that's working.

i saw this meme over on lolly's blog and thought that it was great filler since i have no new knitting content to show you. (sorry! i'm very close to finishing the SC though!)

meme instructions: Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won't, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you've never even heard of.

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
(The Secret History - Donna Tartt)
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
(Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell)
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
(Atonement - Ian McEwan)
(The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert

just like there are certain directors whose movies i won't watch (oliver stone [shite, utter shite] and david lynch [same old, same old]) there are certain authors that i won't touch with a ten foot pole namely hemmingway, james joyce, and william faulkner (snooze, triple snooze). i actually like to ENJOY reading and faulkner is the worst of them all. i was never so bored in all of my life while trying to read the sound and the fury. how many pages can one devote to describing fields of wheat? apparently a lot.

of the list above, i think that there are a few that i'm feeling foggy on. i remember reading the first few chapters of catcher in the rye and being bored with holden caulfield so i put it down never to pick it up again. it's possible that years from now i might try it again, but i don't feel that there's any need to now. i believe that i read slaughterhouse 5 in middle school though that's a bit foggy too. i'm reading jane eyre right now, and it's possible that animal farm is NOT on my bookshelf as i think that my husband (whose book it is) loaned out and we've not seen it since. or maybe we're both confusing it with animal liberation, i don't know. we have too many books. all of the italicized books above will promptly go on to my amazon wishlist in the hopes that i can take myself off of my budget soon and make an amazon purchase for all the summer reading ahead!

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Your Birthdate: January 18

You are a cohesive force - able to bring many people together for a common cause. You tend to excel in work situations, but you also facilitate a lot of social gatherings too. Beyond being a good leader, you are good at inspiring others. You also keep your powerful emotions in check - you know when to emote and when to repress.

Your strength: Emotional maturity beyond your years
Your weakness: Wearing yourself down with too many responsibilities
Your power color: Crimson red
Your power symbol: Snowflake
Your power month: September

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

snowflake? that's my POWER SYMBOL? i HATE snow. almost as much as i winter, that crappy season i was born in. i'm glad my power month is september. it's a more likeable month.

by the way, did you see that i finally got around to updating my keitai gallery? for months, i let my images just sit on my mobile phone because bluetooth on my powerbook was too damn flaky but i really needed to empty it so that i can take lots of keitai pictures in japan like all the japanese! so i paired it up with my computer and, wow, since i've updated to tiger the thing works like a charm. no more turning the phone off and then back on again in order for my computer to recognize it. and boy am i glad that i use cingular and not verizon in this case. verizon INTENTIONALLY CRIPPLES their bluetooth phones so that you can't download/upload images or ringtones to them. you have to use their site and pay for the trasfers over the network. what a scam.

anyway, here are a few of my favorites from the gallery.

this was sent to me by keith during a really sweltering hot day in the summer. the squirrel was so hot that it had to lay down.

look at this beautiful child using a treo! holy crap! i remember the first computer that required that i use a mouse and i couldn't get the hang of it for months!

kat and joy. this is the night that i met the founding members of the spiders and my life was changed forever.

yes, your eyes do not deceive you. that is a 4"x6" battlestar galactica poster in my office. love ebay.

KP as cheese. this is a VEGAN man who had to spend four weeks in wisconsin. they all thought he was nuts.

more photos of strange things in the gallery. i tend to take a lot of pictures of food that i eat so some of it may be boring. other things are just downright strange. enjoy.

ok, packing commences in full force tonight for the trip to japan. we'll be spending the majority of our time in tokyo, walking the streets, shopping, visiting temples, and observing tokyoites in their native environment. we're planning on making a few day trips to nikko and kamakura but tokyo is HUGE! i'm sure that the two weeks we're there will be only JUST enough time to see all the worthwhile stuff. i'm anxious (really, i'm nervous!) to break out my nihongo and wow KP with my linguistic skills. i'm sure that i'll choke up and not be able to speak for days. hopefully i'll be getting together with kat and martine and another cool girl, stephana, all who i've met through this here blog.

the question of vacation knitting was really weighing heavily upon me these past few days but i think that i have it all figured out now. i'll be bringing the aminami shawl (the current ball of yarn and another), the mitered square project (two balls of yarn to make a total of four as i've already finished two), socks that rock with a couple of patterns since i can't decide what to do yet, and five balls of DB cotton DK in different colors to make amigurumi! it's just enough projects to keep me busy when i don't want to read. as for books, i think that i'm going to re-read the ender series by orson scott card and possibly brave new world.

oh! almost forgot... i'm near the completion of another pair of turkish slippers! this time i am double-stranding the yarn for added coverage during the winter months. i'm using some funky acrylic that i got from katie at the yarn swap this past weekend.

it's the black and multi-colored skein near the bottom of this picture. i'm calling them the uno slippers since all of the colors remind me of uno cards! gotta finish them up tonight and bring them with me to japan tomorrow. you won't find many posts here while i'm gone. KP is bringing his ibook though so i'm hoping to update maybe once or twice over the next few weeks if only to let you know that i'm alive and happy. in the meantime, be of good cheer.

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i've updated the reading blog to reflect the two books that i've read recently: out and harry potter and the half-blood prince. i've taken great care not to reveal any delicate plot points in my review of HP so if you're mad at me for posting spoilers in that last entry, you can jump over to my reading site and get a sanitized viewpoint. ok, now i can go back to talking about battlestar galactica (awesome premiere on friday!), firefly (you can catch it this friday on scifi!), knitting, and anything else i can think about... like maybe some more harry potter!! (shoot me now)

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i don't think that i have ever devoured a book so fast in my life. i was so excited for the new installment of harry potter that i read it all in less than 24 hours time... and then cried. ok, if you haven't read the book yet, STOP READING THIS up until the yarn picture. i will post spoilers so come back and re-read this later once you've read the book as well (and the review i'm going to write of it and out.. i'm two books behind on my reading blog.)

first off, here i am receiving my book.

look how happy i am for being up at midnight on a friday night! lisa looks pretty happy too!

anyway, we got our books and i just HAD to read the first chapter before bed on friday night. then i spent most of the rest of the weekend reading before finishing on sunday afternoon. so quick!

a few things about harry potter and the half-blood prince struck me right off the broomstick. harry has finally learned to control his temper! after a year of being tortured by umbridge, battling he-who-must-not-be-named, and losing his godfather, harry has become a solid, sixteen-year old grown up. his anger still mounts but he's learned to keep it under wraps when he knows that arguing is futile. there is, after all, a time and a place for everything. it was a calm and cool harry, and gosh darn it, i was so proud of him as i read along! he's finally become an adult.

there was also that monster inside him that would flare up whenever he saw a certain cute little redhead. oh ginny, you've finally captured harry's heart and it only took you three years! harry wrestled with this for more than half the book. she's his best mate's younger sister and he was torn between wanting ginny and wanting to stay best friends with ron. thankfully, ron acquiesced and with a nod to his pal, harry fulfilled a dream. he had internalized so much of his fear and anger but remembered that love, the beast inside him, should be let loose when the timing was right. i think it's safe to say that even though he broke things off with ginny at the end of the book, their relationship is not over. dumbledore made it quite clear that it's love that lord voldemort (eek!) fears most of all and will be his undoing. not only did harry's mother's love protect him when he was a baby, but the love that he shares with ron, hermione, ginny, and all the rest of his compatriots, will ultimately be his master weapon.

the saddest bit of news was the death of dumbledore at the hands of snape. i'm torn between wanting to hate snape forever and ever and wanting to find out why the heck he did it. i have a feeling that dumbledore asked him to kill him if that's the way the cards were dealt, but it's hard to come to grips with it. dumbledore pleaded with snape not seconds before he was struck down but it was so uncharacteristic of him. you almost get the feeling that dumbledore was pleading with snape to kill him so that the double-agent ruse could continue. snape was bound with the unbreakable vow and would have died if he had not helped malfoy so dumbledore's reasoning would be that it was more important to sacrifice himself than have snape blow his cover. ugh, it's just awful to think about but dumbledore was a great man and harry will carry on the fight without him.

ok, enough hypothesizing for now. i still have to write my review of the actual book before going into my thoughts and theories of what we have in store in the last book.

in knitting news, i'm still making progress on the honeymoon cami, my koigu sock, and am about to start a baby blanket too. i whipped up another crocheted case for my camera this weekend. i'm becoming quite proficient at hammering these things out. this time i used two strands of red heart (orange and white.. i'm calling it the creamsicle case) so that the camera would have more padding. i have no pictures of it yet.. sorry! but i do have a picture of the yummy yarn (above) i bought at school products two or three weeks ago! it's cashmere and silk, hand-dyed and spun, no brand name. i'm going to use it to make a clapotis so i'll post more pictures once i have that going.

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thanks to sandra, i found out that the comments on my reading blog were also busted. i haven't had a chance to look at them in IE yet but i'll do that tomorrow. in the meantime, jaunt on over there and give them a looksee. let me know if anything else is broken. now that the play is over i have more time to tinker.

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KP was looking at children's books this weekend (there are some birthdays we missed in january!!) and ran across ping which he remembered from childhood. it has some of the best reviews i've seen on amazon including john e. frascico's popular review (obviously, as it had 7225 of 7425 helpful ratings when i saw it) and a review entitled "nightmares!" hhmmm, i wonder if harry potter will have as much effect 30 or 40 years from now?

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it's been announced that the Quills Literacy Foundation will begin handing out annual book awards in the fall of each year. the quill awards will honor the categories of: best book of the year; rookie of the year, to a first-time author; children's book; graphic novel; literary fiction; suspense, mystery or thriller; science fiction, fantasy or horror; romance; biography or memoir; religion or spirituality; science; health and self improvement; sports; business; and history, current events and politics. consumers will be given a chance to vote on who gets what which should be fun for someone like me who reads an awful lot. i plan on paying close attention to books that i want to win awards this year and get the vote out!

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yeah! my upgrade to MT 3.14 went sooooo smoothly. KP was amazed when i was done because he didn't hear one curseword from me the entire time, hence it must have been easy. i also managed to upgrade mt-blacklist as well and hopefully that all works as seamlessly as it once did. so far i've noticed no difference.

the other piece of news is that my reading blog is now online with my first book review of 2005! i read a lot so hopefully this site will remain up-to-date with my latest bookworm adventure. feel free to use the comments to discuss the book or recommend other books that you think i would like. i usually read what other people recommend or give me quickly. i need to add links back and forth to the two blogs along the sidebar but i'll do that tonight. i must get off this computer before my eyes fall out.

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i've been silent lately for a couple of very good reasons. first of all, i had an awful cold that still lingers and KP had the flu. then a family relative passed away and we spent time on long island going to the wake and funeral. all that and it's january! not my favorite month even though my birthday is on the 18th.

anyway, i also recently had a brain child... i've decided to start a companion blog to gleek.net! i know i know. i can hardly keep on top of my regular postings here but this side project is special to me. after all the new years celebrations were over i sat down on the couch to start reading some books that my brother, brendan, gave me for christmas and i realized that he had done the same last year. so i sauntered over to the bookcase to look for all the books he gave me and realized that i did a heck of a lot of reading in 2004! i can't even remember all of the books i read! reading is my main hobby and everything else could fade into nothing as long as i have a book. ha! even when i start out a new semester in japanese class i always say "hon o yomu ga suki desu" (meaning i like to read.)

so, after this weekend, you'll see a new addition to gleek.net. i'm putting together a book blog that will help me keep track of all the books that i read (i'll also be upgrading to MT 3, wish me luck with that one.) i've developed a rating system and summary scheme and will update the site everytime i finish reading something. so watch out 'cause reading is, you know, fun.da.mental... at least to gleek.

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for a long time, i thought that i would never have kids. my thoughts are changing as i grow older but i don't think that i could ever be convinced to have more than three (and even that's a stretch.. two is really my limit). i feel that it's a bit selfish to have more than two kids because this planet is becoming overcrowded. in 1976, the world population was 4.2 billion. now it's close to 6.4 billion.. that's an increase of over 2 billion people in 28 years. what's going to happen when we reach 10 billion? 100 billion? where will all of these people go? i know that it's not something that i'll have to worry about in my generation or even my childrens' generation but if things keep going the way that they are, by the time we hit the year 3000, we're going to be in serious trouble.

hardly anyone thinks ahead in these terms unless you're a science fiction author. it's almost hard to believe that the earth could sustain anything over what we have now. fossil fuels are bound to dry up in that amount of time.. natural resources will be depleted and there will be nothing left to feed us.. and let's not even get into the space that will be required to house all these extra people. i know i know.. i think far ahead, but there's nothing wrong with planning for our future. if only more politicians thought the way that i do.. if only more common citizens cared about our future instead of the here and now and taxes.

"caves of steel" is a bleak look at our future. our hero of this novel is elijah baley, plainclothesman detective c-6 class, and his robot sidekick, r. daneel olivaw ("r" stands for robot in this day and age). the world that they live in is entirely different from what we have now. here in new york (present time), and in most of the world, we practice "fiscalism" which is economy based on monetary funds, but, in this book, they practice "civism" which is akin to communism. in this future, there's almost nothing left of earth's natural resources. the oil is gone and they are living off of radioactive substances that are running out. everyone lives in Cities (capitalized because it's a city that you have never seen or dreamed of), large monstrosities hundreds of levels deep. tiny apartments without kitchens or running water. public baths (called "personals") and community kitchens that serve yeast in forms of meat (because there certainly isn't any land left to raise chickens and there wouldn't be anything to feed them if they did). these monstrous cities are caves of steel.. imprisoning the people and making them agoraphobics.

man has reached out to the stars and those who have left earth to colonize the "outer worlds" are called "spacers". spacers are a quirky bunch. when they left earth, they took only those species of animals they thought that they would like and extinguished all forms of disease (imagine never getting sick your entire life). they fear earthmen and can't even come around because their immune systems would panic. they have a small area to themselves in what we call "the meadowlands" of new jersey, which is called "spacetown" to them. the novel starts with a murder in spacetown and plainclothesman bailey is sent in to solve the murder. he meets his partner, daneel, and together they learn about spacers, life, and robots.

what gets me about these books is the plain hostility of humanity on earth to robots. it's equivalent to racism of this time. as i mentioned in the "robot visions" entry, there are the three laws that keep everyone safe but it's not necessarily safety that matters it's the displacement of humans in human jobs that does. what will happen when humans become the leisure class and robots do all the work? will we be able to hand it all over and be done with it? this book starts to tackle those issues and it's a very good start. it's only the first novel of the robot series and now i am reading "the naked sun" and the plot is getting more complex. i don't want to give away who-dun-it in "caves of steel".. you're going to have to read it for yourself.

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the announcement of president bush's plan to send us to the moon and mars over a 30 year plan really intrigues me. ever since i was a youngn' i looked up at the stars and thought about how amazing it would be to see jupiter or saturn up close. in fact, i remember the first time that i saw saturn through a telescope in astronomy class in college.. it was breathtaking. my mom often tells the story about how, when i was in my single digits, she would ask what i wanted to do when i "grew up" and i never said such things as "be a ballerina" or a "princess". i would just point up at the sky and say that i wanted to fly. easy enough. now, flying on a plane irks me to no end. i don't like take-off and landing, the seats are too damned small, the airline always screws up my meal ("oh, i'm sorry. i don't have that you ordered a vegetarian meal. would you care for some chicken?"), and i always arrive at my destination on my last nerve.

but i would brave it all to go into space. i would actually eat meat if they told me i could go into space [of course, i would harass NASA for some veggie foods first but wouldn't count on getting anything in the end]. my mind works in mysterious ways. i look at this plan that bush has prepared and think that it is a good start. my opinion, though, is that it doesn't make sense for the government to hold all the cards. i believe that it should be open to commercial enterprises who can spend the money on research and deployment.. because if money is involved then the technology will innovate. but i am reminded by the fact that a good many technological advancements have come from the military, so i guess i'll just have to see what comes of it. after all, i do expect to be around in 30 years. the new york times has a nice essay from dennis overbye that i would like to make one comment on.. he states, "robots, they agree, could do a better job of exploring mars and looking for life, and would be less likely to contaminate the place with bacteria..." and i completely agree.. this leads into my reviews of isaac asimov's novels "robot visions" (and "caves of steel" later this week).

i recently finished the "foundation" novels by asimov and asked my brother to buy me the robot novels for christmas. the last of the "foundation" novels, "foundation and earth", ends by bringing the hero, trevize, back to earth to solve the mystery of why earth had been wiped from the memory of man. these "foundation" novels take place at least 20,000 years into the future when man has colonized the stars and grown a large empire that collapses and is fated to be reborn again. the thing that i love about the "foundation" novels is that they suppose that man never comes across any other forms of life in the galaxy. i'm sure that, in a way, this would make humanity very homo-centric.. believing that we are the ultimate form of life. assuming that this were true -- that there is no other form of life in the galaxy -- it would seem prudent to nuture and cultivate humanity and spread us about. what would happen if there were a great ecological disaster on earth and we were all gone? if we had a backup system for humanity on other planets, we could avoid overcrowding, loss of resources, and possible loss of life as we know it.

robots do seem like a way to pave the road to this goal. asimov's collection of robot short stories in "robot visions" is inspiring. he speaks of the frankenstein complex that, i think, inhibits our potential to build robots now. we're too afraid of robots becoming better than we are and turning on us. in fact, before reading these robot novels i had never read a book nor seen a film where some future society doesn't fight being wiped out by robots/computers. just look at "the matrix", "terminator", etc. we are afraid of what we don't understand. the religious among us are afraid of robots being "souless". if you get a chance, pick up "robot visions" and be sure to read asimov's introduction. he was the first person ever to invent the term "robotics" and write about robots that would have safeguards in them to keep all of humanity safe. in fact, the safeguards are quoted more than once as the "three laws of robotics" and many of the short stories are mysteries based on these three laws.. i shall quote the three laws here since i can now recite them verbatim:

1. a robot may not cause harm or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm
2. a robot must obey orders from a human being unless those orders conflict with the first law [ex. i cannot order a robot to kill jane doe]
3. a robot must practice self-preservation unless it conflicts with the first and second laws

these laws have provided asimov with much to write about and the stories that are in "robot visions" are witty and thought-provoking. my favorite was "bicentennial man" which actually made me cry! it's the story of one robot's quest to become a man and give robots the same decent, inalienable, "human" rights that we all have. if you want to learn more about the three laws, you can either read the books [which i highly recommend] or check out this quite thorough website.

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i've been feeling quite tired lately and i think that it's mainly due to this book. it's a collection of short stories that all revolve around being tired, sleepwalking, dreams, etc. ms. yoshimoto has a real gift for short stories. her characters are just developed enough for you to understand their emotions and their problems. my favorite of all the short stories was the first one "night and night's travelers". it didn't occur to me that the main character's cousin, mari, was a sleepwalker until i was done with the story. she just seemed to be very lost and lonely.. leaving the house without her shoes on in the winter should have been my first clue!

what i love about banana yoshimoto's books (and those of haruki murakami, who is my absolute favorite author) is the creativity of thought and the surely japanese way of thinking that comes across in her writing. the japanese seem to take everything in stride. if something seems out of the ordinary then they caulk it up to some divine power and shrug their shoulders. a dog talks to them in the street and they think it's normal, like any dog can talk if they just listened... or a child appears next to you and knows everything about you, then the next second the child is gone, and it's all second nature to them. like it happens every day. perhaps it comes from a lifetime of solitude that the japanese had before the invasion of other cultures... perhaps not.

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had marathon read this weekend. feeling as though read enormous amount of male books lately picked up bridget for some wit, humor, roundabout good times, etc. finished book two days flat and left feeling v. pleased, v. happy. am enamoured of bridget and friends escapades into dating, singletons, smug marrieds, snogging, pissing, thailand, etc. mother is constant source of amusement as are others v. funny. once also laughed outloud in manner of guilty chuckle. although not great literature, writing succint. v. fast, v. british.

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i'm not a fan of non-fiction books.. my s.o. loves them. he reads books about jazz, history, etc.. books that i find very boring. you should see our bookshelves. on one side you have my books, almost all fictional (and a good majority of which are science fiction.. i know, i'm a geek) and his side you find obscure literature and non-fiction. i once got him to read one of my haruki murakami books ("wild sheep chase") but otherwise we stick to our guns and don't cross the line.

i picked up "shutterbabe" (deborah copaken kogan) once when i was ill with a cold. i loved the cover of the book which is deborah looking through her leica camera, and the subtitle ("adventures in love and war").. i was intrigued.. needless to say, it's a brilliant book. i'm reading it through for the second time now and realize that i'm glad that i don't lead the life of a photojournalist. seems pretty tough to get up and run to whatever part of the world and put your life at risk to get images of war, famine, drugs, revolutions, etc.. it's also admirable to note that deborah is very frank about herself and the life that she once led. being young and inpetuous is hard and sometimes it's even harder to look back on it and see it for what it was: a learning experience that doesn't need to have the bleak moments editted out.

she structures the book around the men that led influential roles in each part of her adventure as a photojournalist. she doesn't try to make light of anything that she has encountered, be it a landmine in afghanistan or an orphan autopsy in romania, but instead presents the story from her viewpoint in as unbiased a matter as possible. i can imagine that it's hard not to pass judgement on horrific sights, but she does well to write it as she saw it.. and her photos give faces to the names we encounter. it's an empowerment story.. a rich story.. and it's not just for women.

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