AnHeC (I'm too fucking busy and vice versa)

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.

 

"Why?" asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

 

"Well, I'm a panda," he says. "Look it up."

 

The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

*If you didn't get the joke, maybe you shouldn't proceed. Just saying*

**If you did understand it and didn't like it, I probably don't want to know you. And that's kind of heart-breaking. Just saying too.**

Word count: about 60 000

This book almost drove me crazy. It's supposed to be an introduction, so one would probably assume it'll be written in a conversational manner and full of maps and pictures to give dimension to the endless, mercilessly tricking stream of names and dates. No. Such. Luck.

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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18366288-stalker?from_search=true

This book is clearly put up to intimidate me, and no, actually, there have been no surprise repercussions from my drunken reviews.  Whether or not I choose to continue them depends on how long I want my reviews to be, and how much I like the alcohol I have on hand.   

 (Enjoy the ambiguity)

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I wanted to thank all my amazing friends that keep us (well, at least me, 'cause I live under a rock. But hey, "I'm alive now, that's pretty current where I'm from") updated. I truly appreciate your effort. Please, continue to keep your finger on a pulse. It matters.

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This book makes me laugh. Connor seems like my kind of person. ^^ We don't know much about him yet, only that he's kind of 'insane' (weird, but in a good way).

20%

Epic hero tales, the likes of Illiad, always make me gigle a bit. Why you ask?

"So every elder and experienced councilman
among my people supported my resolve
to come here to you, King Hrothgar,
because all knew of my awesome strength."

I just love how humble heroes are in those. And, naturally, rampant kalos kagathos. "Oh my, an unknown force of warriors landed on our shores. But they must be trustworthy because I've never seen more mighty/pretty warriors caring better universal slaughter-and-pillage equipment. I better go and introduce myself. "

*Sidenote - if you don't have an audiobook, read it out loud. It gives a real feel of an epic, vernacular, oral legend.

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Today we had a first lecture, and teacher told us what we're supposed to 'read' for the next class. It went something like this:

"In two weeks we'll talk about Beowulf, so be prepared. You don't have to read a whole book, it's very long. You see, it's an epic story, kind of like Homer's Illiad. A lot of repetitive hero stuff. I mean, if you're a Tolkien fan, you may enjoy it, but apart from that don't read the whole thing. In fact, skip most of it. Or you could watch a movie. Yes, recently there were like three movies  made. Including that famous one... you know... with Anthony Hopkins... and other stars. You can watch that. I just want you to get the feel of the atmosphere. "

*crickets*

My thoughts - two weeks are more than enough to get through the book. Really. Especially since it's the ONLY class in which we have to read at all.

A pulse - that's literally all that's needed to pass this one. If you're sitting there and sign your name on the list, you get a passing grade. Congratulations! Now you can spend the rest of a lecture on facebook! AND YOU'LL PASS!

You want to know what our American history teacher said last week? That we'll use Longman's "Illustrated History of the USA" ... WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?! It's not even an academic textbook! It's a university for fuck's sake! Give me at least one proper title on a given subject, damn it! 

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A few days ago I went to a library to find some fun books about history of British Isles, and... OMG, It's Malthus! Just standing there on a shelf! My excitement levels skyrocketed, I grabbed a book and hugged it (no one read it since 2008). I believe books get sad when you don't read them (which is why I also grabbed the "Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays" by Orwell - no one borrowed this particular copy of a book since 2001. And that's depressing, so I kept petting it on a bus. I think it felt happy in my lap). But I digress. Back to Malthus.

I studied sociology for two years, which meant a lot of demography classes. That alone would be enough to make me read it, but last year I had a course with my favourite teacher (and one of my favourite people) in a whole wide world. The course was (a drumroll please)  historical demography! Don't you dare to frown upon it! That was one of the best semesters I had! Ever! And we talked extensively about Thomas Malthus and how he fucked up and why despite being wrong, he's kind of right and relevant. An amazing story! One that I'll share with you in a review, so stay tuned! But for now know this - I had to take it. I just did. I swear it's not going to be boring (not the book, but what I have to say about it). ^^ I'm shaking with anticipation.

In the spirit of... Vodka (I’m Polilsh after all) I should start writing (writhing) well thought out, coherent reviews. I have a second year of a writing class right now, and should use every opportunity to become a proficient language user… Riiiiiiight. Can you imagine me, a haphazard, overly emotional mess, using punctuation correctly? Can you imagine me being serious? And dropping all the profanity? They want me to grow up *sad face* They want me to act responsible, and now I have a writing identity crisis. I firmly believe you all deserved a fair warning.

I wrote this (like most of my obvious tutorial posts) because disturbingly large amount of people keeps asking about it. If it's obvious for you, don't hate me, just move along. Here's a nice page brake so it doesn't take up your feed ^^

Yes, you can edit entire shelves at once!

It's time for Thursday Release and it's a feature many of you requested :-) Now when a given book doesn't fit any default status on your Shelf (Read, Planning to read, Currently reading) you can create your own exclusive book status.

*fangirl squeals*

Probably yet another one of those obvious things, but ...

To avoid losing your customized code, save it somewhere offsite in a Notepad document or a similar format that (unlike, e.g., Word) doesn't add a whole bunch of bells and whistles of its own.  If things ever get messed up on you or you accidentally hit "reset template" (or even if you do it deliberately) ... the last thing you probably want to do is start from scratch even with the things that you've already found work for you.  Been there, done that, and trust me: It is decidedly NOT fun!

*Reblog, because I wholeheartedly agree (a person that read all Anita Blake novels)*

There seems to be a glut of Urban Fantasy today.  People who read the odd fantasy book once seemed to believe that fantasy novels involved dragons and Morris men; today, such people most likely think that fantasy must have a vampire, werewolf, and a sexy woman involved in a love triangle.  Gone are the days of vampires and werewolves as the evil dictators who must be destroyed.  The average person stands a better chance of being the villain than those one time horror matinee characters.  While many of these books seem to invert standard gender roles and supposedly endorse a degree of sexual freedom for women, a closer look reveals a disturbing and confusing message about the nature of “good” women and sex.