My husband just linked me to this article/post, which I found quite interesting, and relevant to this comm, so I thought I'd share it with you guys.

Legos & language

Quick summary to decide if you want to click:
A father and son use Legos frequently; son has friend over and they have minor incident over the "name" of a type of piece - father realizes children tend to name them, but clearly different children choose different names - makes a simple survey of a few children to compare what they call all the pieces.

It sounds a little dull from that, but it really was an interesting read, and some surprising differences & similarities arise in the children's naming. Check it out. =)

First a little context for the title: Many many years ago now, I read an article in some newspaper talking about Depeche Mode's relationship to their young and emotionally fragile fan base. A recurring theme was their persistent habit of addressing whichever band member they happened to corner as "Martin Gore".

In any case, for whatever reason I've been listening to a lot of early Mode on YouTube lately. (Far from the most embarrassing thing I've been watching there, but that's irrelevant.) Apparently there's a new documentary retrospective thingo just out on British television, because I ended up playing a clip of it. While watching, I was thinking, It's Martin Gore speaking, so why does the screen say 'Dave Gahan'? And now that it's the weird one with the unruly blond mop, it says 'Martin Gore'. I wouldn't have expected BBC to make a boner like that!

So I am looking for a book that I read, oh probably about 6 years ago now. I can't remember the title or the author but I remember that I loved it when I read it. It was a funny, adult take on some fairy tales.

The main character's name was Prince Charming and he goes to rescue Sleeping Beauty and on the way to this rescue you also see Snow White and Cinderella (I think that the evil Stepmother from Cinderella may even try to seduce him?).

I'm really sorry that this is so horribly vague but that is all I can remember and I'm hoping that someone has a clue as to what I'm talking about.

Thank you!

So, I have a tongue-tie, aka ankyloglossia. If you aren't familiar, it basically means my tongue is tethered far too far forward. I can't stick my tongue out more than maybe at most a centimeter. And even then, only in a V-shape since the tip of my tongue is held back by the tie. Most of my childhood I had to go to speech therapy classes because I wasn't able to make "TH" sounds and "F" sounds distinctly different. (Needless to say, it was pretty freakin' rotten to be an elementary kid in 'speech therapy'.. endless taunting, but that's beside the point.)

The problem is, I'm trying to learn Arabic and my pronunciation sounds awful because I can't perform the proper trilling motion with my tongue to roll the "R"s. Makes me rather embarrassed to even try speaking in front of anyone.

Has anyone else dealt with this problem in Arabic or any other language that rolls their "R"s? Anybody got any suggestions on how I can make this sound? Or at least some way to fake it? It's extremely frustrating. I've contemplated getting surgery to correct it, but it's rarely done on adults (usually this problem is corrected shortly after birth) and it's expensive (and probably not covered by my insurance either.)

So... any suggestions out there? Rolling "R"s with a tongue tie, anyone? I'd really appreciate some guidance, thank you! =)

Hi all!

I've taken CHIN 111 and CHIN 212, the first two courses in the sequence for Chinese for heritage speakers, at my university. However, because of a class conflict, I wasn't able to take CHIN 313 and won't be able to take the next class in the sequence next semester because of it. I still want to learn Chinese though and get up to a level of fluency.

So I was wondering—what online resources (or books that I can look for at my library) do you guys recommend for a heritage speaker learning Chinese? At my school, completion of 212 is equivalent to completion of 204, or four semesters of Chinese, putting me at roughly an intermediate level. So either materials that teach Chinese for heritage speakers or intermediate-level Chinese would be great. Also, this is a little nitpick, but I prefer learning traditional characters.

Thanks in advance for your recommendations!

Author: Ooka Shohei (大岡昇平)
Title: Fires on the Plain
Original Japanese title: Nobi (野火)
First line: "My squad leader slapped me in the face."
Genre: historical fiction
Pages: 246
Recommended for those interested in: World War II (from the side of the Japanese), introversion, postwar Japanese authors.
Blurb from the book:
This haunting novel explores the complete degradation and isolation of a man by war. The book is set on the island of Leyte in the Philippines during World War II, where the Japanese army is disintegrating under the hammer blows of the American landings. Within this larger disintegration is another, that of a single human being, Private Tamura. The war destroys each of his ties to society, one by one, until Tamura, a sensitive and intelligent man, becomes an outcast...

Tamura is never less than human, even when driven to the ultimate sin against humanity. Shocking as the outward events are, the greatness of the novel lies in its uplifting vision during a time of crushing horror.


( Short spoiler-free review behind the cut. My first review ever, so please let me know if I've done anything wrong. )

Rating:
Amazon | GoodReads

Dear Linguaphiles,

This may be a somewhat unusual request... I'm trying to convince my (French Major) advisor to let me change my senior project. We've been reading nothing but Molière's plays, and next semester we'll be expected to write a paper on a topic having to do with Molière.

I enjoy Molière, but this has been done SO OFTEN. And I know I'm not well-informed enough to be contributing anything new to the field. I hate feeling like I'm wasting my time.

One of the women doing Honors in the major (which I should have done, but was misinformed...) is translating a book that she had read for a previous class. I don't know what it is, but it's a collection of (autobiographical?) stories by French-speaking Algerian women, I believe. She's translating the book into English, then writing a short paper on the life of Algerian women, plus another short paper on her experience translating the book.

... I WANT TO DO THIS.

However - and here's where my real question comes in! - I have no idea where to find French books that haven't yet been translated. As far as I can tell, I have to pick something either really obscure or really, really recent. I'd like something *worthwhile* - does Camus have any unpublished works or letters? What about Sartre, Hugo, Racine, even Molière? Or is there a particularly interesting collection of letters somewhere - perhaps by one of les précieuses? - that has NOT been translated into English before? I'd like a book of between 50 and 250 pages, if possible... Those are probably the absolute limits.

Any suggestions of books, or of resources? A novel, a collection of letters, a critique, an analysis... something having to do with French history, philosophy, or culture, if it's not actual fictional literature.

Thanks so much for anything you can suggest!! I want to have some ideas before I try to convince my advisor that this would be a good alternative project for me, even being proposed this late in the year.

Death’s Daughter starts off like your typical chick lit book. We meet Calliope Reaper-Jones, a twenty-something that hates her job, loves shopping, and has just been set up on a blind date by her best friend. That is until the memory charm she cast on herself four years ago breaks, and she remembers who she really is, the immortal daughter of the grim reaper. Callie, who wants nothing more than to live a normal life, is livid at this turn of events until she discovers that her father (death) has been kidnapped along with her older sister. In order to save her family’s immortality, she must complete three tasks and become death herself. Unfortunately, she’s not the only one interested in the job.

I really wanted to like this book, and there were some things I did enjoy. If there’s one thing Benson did do well here, it’s her world building. I enjoyed the mix of old and new religions that created the world of the afterlife. Also, I found that Benson’s writing flows quite well, making the book quite easy to read. What brought everything down was its protagonist. Despite being the same age as the Calliope, I had difficulty connecting with her throughout the book. I didn’t relate at all to the spacey city girl who whined about not being able to goof off more at work, nor did I connect with the hapless “heroine” who kept on stumbling into trouble and having to be rescued. Possessing the maturity of a bratty teenager, Callie seems to spend most of her time crying, getting into danger, and lusting after every age appropriate male. Whenever I began to enjoy the book, Callie would open her mouth and say something that made me want to slap her. I also found that I also had some issues with the logic of the plot. I don’t want to give too much away, but I didn’t understand why people did certain things. Such as why did Callie put a memory charm on herself to forget about her family when she’s immortal? Wouldn’t she notice not aging and dying after a while? There were several times during this book when I had to stop and ask myself similar questions.

As I said before, I really wanted to like this book. Benson is a talented actress and from my memories of meeting her at a Common Rotation concert, one of those rare, genuinely nice people. Unfortunately, as much as I tried over the past four days, I just couldn’t understand why Callie was the way she was and did the things she did. As a result, I never connected with the story. By the time we got to the big twist at the end I found that I didn’t even care. I will not be continuing this series.

Rating: two stars
Length: 359 pages
Source: paperbackswap
Similar Books: For similar paranormal reads try Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan Series (beginning with Dead Witch Walking), Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files (beginning with Storm Front), or Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampires Mysteries (beginning with Dead until Dark).
Other books I've read by this author: this is my first

Now I'm going to go feel like a big meanie for writing such a negative review...

xposted to bookish and temporaryworlds

Hi!

I kind of stumbled upon Victoria Holt as an early teen and I think I've picked through all her books and was wondering if anyone has read her and know of anything similar or better? I've also read Phyllis A. Whitney but those are hit or miss for me. Thanks!

Shakespeare's Landlord (Lily Bard Mysteries, Book 1) Charlene Harris

2/5.
Lily is the main character in the book series. In the first book she finds someone placing a dead body near her house when she is out on her nightly, comforting walks. She doesnt want to bring attention to herself so she anonymously makes a call to the cheif of police who lives close by. Throughout this novel she finds herself trying to figure out who the murderer is while cleaning her many clients homes.She chose this job to keep to herself. She cant put her finger on the case but knows it must be solved for her to ever feel comfortable in her small town again. Of course a book like this needs some romance. She finds herself involved with her instructor. Lily has learned how to protect herself because of her unforgetful past. She cant seem to put it behind her. Someone in her small town is letting her know they know about her past as well by trying to spook her. Through out the book Lily is trying to understand her liking of Marshall, find the town killer, and make sure her past remains hidden.

I was impressed with this book after I was about 75% through it. (Not sure about page number due to reading it on the kindle.) I had started it and was a little down about the plot but then it started getting better. I would have probably given the book a 3 if it hadnt taken me so long to get to a part I really enjoyed. Once I did though, I was on edge. I have already read 2 more books of this series and am on my fourth. I will post another review tomorrow on book 2.

61. Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey - 816 pages (7.5/10)

Firstly, I must say I absolutely hate these covers. Her mark looks like a giant tramp stamp. It doesn't even look like a real tattoo--it looks like a peel on sticker you'd get from a machine for a quarter, honestly.

Secondly, I re-read this for the first time since I was 15. All I can say is: wow, I can't believe I read this kinky stuff when I was so young! This novel tells the story of Phedre no'Delaunay, a girl sold off as a whore from a young, tender age to the god (of love) Naamah's service. Luckily, she is fostered first by the Night Court and then by a handsome and mysterious man alongside a fair boy and becomes a learned and multi-talented courtesan, among other things.

Phedre has been marked from birth with both an unlucky name and an unlucky scarlet mote in her eye. The scarlet mote represents Kushiel's Dart, meaning she's been struck by the god to be very kinky, horny, and submissive. This makes her a one-of-a-kind commodity among the rich sadists of Terre D'Ange (Land of Angels), a near-medieval France.

The setting was quite interesting. There is the nearly French Terre D'ange, the Nordic Skaldi, the Scottish Alba, the Roman Tiberius, among others. The reader ends up seeing several of these lands throughout the course of the novel. The varying religions and politics were engaging enough to keep me interested.

In general, the writing is fairly good, but the prose can be much wordier than it need me. Over and over Phedre says things like "although how this happened, I cannot say" or "I did not learn it then, but I learned of it later." Just explain at the beginning that this is your "memory" and it's imperfect, and leave it at that! Phedre also weeps frequently and usually has sex with most of the men she meets.

Overall, it's an entertaining enough novel and worth reading if erotic fantasy is your cup of tea.


If you like my reviews, this journal is full of reviews of books I read, some films and tv shows I watch, gadget reviews, occasional looks into what it's like being an ex-pat American in Scotland...feel free to add me as a friend if that sounds vaguely interesting to you!

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

Hello! I'm an author and when I posted here a while ago about my young adult fantasy novel, Basajaun. Some of the people who commented asked me to give a heads up when the book was more widely available, so I wanted to let you guys know that you can now buy Basajaun on Amazon.com, here:



"Basajaun is a beautiful book, written by a masterful wordsmith!" --T. A. Barron (The Lost Years Of Merlin, Merlin's Dragon, The Great Tree Of Avalon)

"an original and memorable tale that young adults and older children will certainly enjoy" --Fantasy Book Review

"an unusual, intriguing young adult fantasy" --Lansing State Journal newspaper

( I've also included the back cover & blurb under the cut )

These are strictly my PERSONAL opinios of these books, and I hope it's helpful!
--"Graceling" by Kristin Cashore
(5/5): This is now my 2nd favorite book of all time! Katsa is a strong woman who stands by what she believe and learns to make her own choices and not be a subject in society. This is a heart-wrenching tale of power and love that will leave you breathless. I would recommend this book to EVERYONE! It is so beautifully written. Props on it being her DEBUT novel as well!!
--"Fire" by Kristin Cashore
(4.5/5): Another job well done. It's two different women in two different places all in the same world. This is her second novel, but it takes place 30 years before 'Graceling'. Fire is a woman of a different kind and the only one of her kind. She doesn't quite fit and she learns to embrace it. This is another truly beautiful story. From the moment I started reading, I never wanted it to end. SERIOUSLY, read these books!! You will not be dissappointed!

I want your opinions! And now, more book recommendations, :D
---Happy Reading

Hi fellow booksters!

This is my first post here and it's a question (sorry! I'll do a review soon!!) about a book whose title I've been desperately trying to remember:

The book was actually (as far as I can remember) part of a short YA series. It was about a little black cat who moved into a new neighborhood who starts making friends and having adventures with all her new cat friends. Some fun parts of the book were that the black cat was really skilled at dancing "The Sailor's Hornpipe," another cat played a diamond "nose flute" and there were a pair of twin cats named "Romulus" and "Remus."

Does this sound familiar to anyone? I remember really loving those books as a kid and was trying to figure out how to get my paws (hahaha...*cough* ahem...) on that series.

Thanks in advance for you help! :)

So, here's the Readers' Digest version: my work is pretty hard-up to get rid of our Epson Stylus Pro 7600, and I've thought of snagging it as I could get it for next to nothing.

THE PROS:

Dude! Wide printing!!

This would allow me to make my own prints and then who knows? Maybe sell them at bear runs or something.

It actually functions and would, initially, cost me next to nothing.

THE CONS:

It's huge; seriously! And I'm in an apartment!

Because it's for professional printing, the equipment is much more expensive.

The heads need to be cleaned, which adds to cost.

Oh, and Carl might kill me. :: laugh ::

As much as I'd love it, I'm not sure it's a wise purchase, as much as I would love to have this as a designer/artist, will it really be worth it in the long run?

What do YOU think?

The announcement of the winners of the Veterans Day Giveaway. And the winners are...

sweet_mel is the winner of the unabridged CD copy of "Silks", by Felix Francis.

sleep_aurora, virtueandvice, and im_writing are the winners of the Packet O' Dragon*con Stuff. Congratulations, everyone!

I am looking for some horror/thriller or just all around disturbing books. Since my book list is growing pretty short again, I would like to make a new list and I figured you guys could help me :)

I've already read "The Girl Next Door" by Jack Ketchum
"Perfect Victim: The true story of the girl in the box"
 
and many books by Stephen King.

bassie_smith and I went on a photo trip last weekend. I think that it's pretty interesting to see how we each shot and processed the same subject in several cases:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/4093520321/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccmonty/4089185516/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/4093284425/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccmonty/4094056375/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/4094051718/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccmonty/4094085271/

My collection
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/collections/72157622772902932/
Her collection
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccmonty/collections/72157619235570159/

I have a question about the imperfect subjunctive in Spanish.

As far as I know, the two sets of endings are equally used in Spanish, but the Mexican people I know never use the -ese/ -ase endings.
I personally much prefer the -ara/ -iera endings, but my teacher would rather I used -ese, to be sure I'm not using the future tense instead of the imp. subj. I however, want to avoid things like sintieses, because that sounds strange to me.
He says use whichever, as long as you stick to one.

My question is, essentially, which do you prefer to use (and what kind of Spanish do you speak)? Is there any difference? Can you mix and match -iera with -ase between -er/ -ir and -ar verbs?

Any help you can give me would be thoroughly appreciated, as we got ourselves into a real semantic dilemma! Thank you.