Books I've read in the past month

I'm not sure that I've read more than 5 novels over the past 10 years up to this past month. I've always focused more on the non-fiction side, hoping more to learn rather than entertain myself through books. So I guess the fact that I've read nearly 4 books in the past month means I'm on a tear.

This all came about because I had just finished reading "Dune". It took me nearly 2 months to read, either because I found the english to be difficult and kept having to turn to the glossary to look up things like "Kwisatz Haderach" and "Bene Gesserit", or maybe it was because I just wasn't used to reading.

Anyway, I thought the book was amazing, so I borrowed the movie from a friend. Boy did it ever suck. It was unbearable to watch, I couldn't even get through the first 20 minutes, and that led me to post about it on a forum. Someone on the forum recommended I read the Ender series. Then later while talking about Dune with my brother and Ina, they also recommended that I give the Ender series a try.

So we went to Chapters and I bought the first book, "Ender's Game", along with book two of the Dune series, "Dune Messiah".

Ender's Game was amazing. Just amazing. I was blown away. It was just so cool and fast paced, I loved it. I decided then that I had to read them all. In the forums, one of the guys recommended that I read book five "Ender's Shadow" first because it kinda worked together with Ender's Game. So we went to the library and got it. Within a week I finished it and I was really impressed. After that I reserved "Speaker For The Dead" which I'm reading now, and in the meantime I read Dune Messiah.

Dune Messiah was okay. It followed the story of the original book but it wasn't nearly the rush that Dune was. I think I'd probably read the rest of the books eventually but I'm not in any big rush anymore.

Superbowl, Dune, Cake

The Superbowl was great. It was the second best Superbowl I've ever seen, with last year's game being number one. The Cardinals didn't win, but I can't deny that the game wasn't great, and honestly, I might have called it the best game ever if I'd been cheering for Pittsburgh.

But if you had to compare the two, it really comes down to which team made a huge comeback and which one won the game. This year's game couldn't be #1 because the team who made the huge comeback didn't win the game. The best football game I've ever seen was last year's Superbowl, where comeback was made by the winning team.

Our party turned out pretty good, because in addition to the excitement of the game itself, my wife and I lost out in a bidding war for a house we were trying to buy. I thought it was quite thrilling, the whole process of making offers, then trying to beat your own offer and trying to guess if it would be enough to throw off the other bidder. In fact come to think of it, it was not unlike the Superbowl itself. Like the Cardinals, we came in as an underdog because we were a late entry to the bids. But we very nearly tied it up with our offer, and then took the lead, but in the end, we lost.

Yesterday I called in sick due to the previous day I had been coughing quite a bit at work, and then followed by that I got almost no sleep and thought it was definitely going to catch up with me. So I stayed home and between my Nutella lunch and one of my naps, I decided to watch the movie "Dune". I had read the book a few months ago and I really enjoyed it.

After watching the 30-40 minutes, I really must say -- this book.. this movie, it needs to be re-done. It needs it. For one thing, the characters, the costumes, the machines.. they were nothing.. NOTHING like what I had imagined. I certainly didn't think an ornithopter was going to be this triangular disc-like ship! Where was it's wings?! Further, it being a fairly old movie, one thing that totally threw me off was the special effects. I really truly, TRULY believe this movie has to be re-done. It just has to.