Its pretty much a IRL meme more than anything else.Originally Posted by Nessus
While I do prefer pig over beef with meat cuts etc I don't really understand the American obsession with bacon. There's bacon-flavoured sexual lubricants!
Its pretty much a IRL meme more than anything else.While I do prefer pig over beef with meat cuts etc I don't really understand the American obsession with bacon. There's bacon-flavoured sexual lubricants!
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Most 'Israeli' food is borrowed from general Middle Eastern fare. So: falafel, schawarma, shish kabob/shashlik, malawach (a flaky, Yemenite pancake) and its cousin jachnun, shakshuka, burekas, baklava, the ubiquitous 'Israeli' salad, 'Israeli' couscous-based dishes, etc. The spreads are pretty standard fare as well - hummus, tehina, baba ganoush, matbucha, etc. Pretty much take any food from Morocco, Yemen, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Syria, and tweak the flavors a bit.Bacon can be delicious, but we're not that obsessed!
Is Israeli food good that you know of? Friend of mine is going there, and I like cooking, so I was wondering if it's wirth asking her to bring a cookbook
There's also some Jewish European fare: schnitzel, various kugels (including the famous Jerusalem kugel), some desserts (notably babka and sufganiyot, which are essentially jelly donuts), etc. They've discarded a lot of it, though, since so much of it is heavy and/or tasteless.
I think that there are some fantastic restaurants in Israel, mostly because they have immigrants from so many places who have mixed their cuisine together. So, lots of good fusion stuff. I wouldn't know about an English-language cookbook, though.
Schnitzels should be made of pork! They probably do have good arab cookbooks, I.don't have that yet.
Heh, well Israeli schnitzel is normally made of veal or (if one is being cheap) chicken.
Blasphemy!
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Veal is okay, but chicken schnitzel?
They didn't have any real meat during the early years of the country (hell, they barely had eggs or poultry) - absorbing hundreds of thousands of penniless, traumatized immigrants a year in the middle of a war zone was a tiny stress on the economy. So, traditional veal schnitzels (which, btw, predate pork schnitzel) were replaced by poultry - chicken or turkey. It's actually not bad, and definitely cheaper.Veal is okay, but chicken schnitzel?
I read A Feast For Crows, expecting the entire time that Tyrion would pop up, and that this quote would make sense. I'm assuming now that you meant book 3...
Spoiler:
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 09-05-2012 at 07:35 PM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
I just read that part yesterday, I think. IMO:
Spoiler:
I'm getting close to finishing Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. It's some of the first modern Russian literature I've ever read, and I'm pleased (though, sadly, I imagine the original Russian is better than the translation). It manages to keep some of the darkness and quintessentially Russian character I enjoyed with Tolstoy, Dostoevsky et al, but he's able to update it with a modern flair and engaging stories. There are bits that are uneven (perhaps from the translation?), but all in all I'd highly recommend it.
Finished Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit", and before that was The Annotated Hobbit. The annotated hobbit is more fact driven, lots of history and backstory. Almost to the point to where you start to pick up that Tolkien borrowed most of his story, characters, and especially back story, from existing lore and stories he worked with. The first title (exploring the hobbit) doesn't bother with the history of the hobbit but is more a thoughtful analysis of the story Tolkien was trying to express, and it doesn't bog itself down in the common notion of Tolkien writing against his war experience and industrialization.
Both were good enough that I managed to finish them.
Think I'll start book 5 of song of fire and ice / game of thrones series now.
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 10-20-2012 at 05:05 PM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Watchmen
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
I'm about 700 pages into A Dance with Dragons.Spoiler:
The book is just now getting interesting. I don't know if everything previously (in this book) felt drawn out and dull because of how he spilt the books, or if Martin's writing style is getting tired and predictable. Nothing hasn't happened yet that wasn't easily predictable from either the last book of a few chapters previous. I can understand ending a pocket paperback with a twist, but filling 1000 pages to do so is not fun reading. Not getting an Arya update until well past the halfway point of the book was also annoying. Its interesting how large of a window Martin has written himself in regards to Bran.Spoiler:
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Didn't see this when you posted it before.Watchmen
Is there a full book type version, or are you referring to the graphic novel?
Whichever, any good?
Graphic novel, and it's good.
Finished a dance with dragons. Opinion didn't change. His writings are becoming overly predictable. He has this thing for taking out characters that overreach, which is exactly what happened here. The other twist...
Spoiler:
now to sit and wait for book 6
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
The graphic novel, very good, only downside was that it was a dutch translation.
Just read Gone Girl: https://play.google.com/store/books/...ynn_Gone_Girl?
The description makes it sound more like a trashy mystery novel, but that's not quite what it is. The whole thing was really entertaining.
On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?
As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn’t do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?
Beyond the Wall.
Its a collection of different authors writing about Martin's style and story. Most of them are informative and worthy viewpoints. Think there was only one that looks like s/he was writing about something out of their element.
I especially like the chapters on Littlefinger and PTSD.
R.A. Salvatore wrote a chapter, and has perhaps the most unfortunate introduction I've found in a book thus far.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
The Corrections, and 2001: a spacy odyssey
Name of the Wind. Strong for a first novel, but full of some annoying cliches in plotting and character development.
Cold Days, by Jim Butcher.
The Dresdin Files just rock. Laugh out loud moments, and his words craft stunning visuals in my head!
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
Dresden is epic. Between that and Codex Alera he's pretty much my favorite author. I do miss him working on two series... he was churning out books for both Alera and Dresden at the same time, now its just an awful wait for the next one.
I received Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind and its sequel for Christmas, I'll be reading those after I finish rereading Louis Bujold's Vorkosigan series.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Santa brought Banks's latest Culture offering.
Will crack on with this once I've finished up The Time Traveller's Wife, which I'm currently reading.
Especially when you burn through the book so fast...now I have to wait almost a year!
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
Finally got around to reading Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer, soon to be followed by the other books in the series. I thought it was good, but it had some weaknesses. I do hate 'just so' coincidences in the plot, which were rife in the book. I also appreciated his attempt to use authentic language in his 'translation', but sometimes it got in the way of actually understanding anything. He made up way too many words. The language in general was a bit ponderous as well - almost like he had a thesaurus open and was choosing his diction with an eye to obfuscation. All complaints aside, though, I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Got a big stack of books from the library I need to work through in the next week. Yay!
I read Cloud Atlas last week. Not bad:
The basic conceit of the novel is that it is told as a series of 'nested' storylines spanning a few centuries of history, from before the US Civil War until an undetermined point in the future. Each storyline is written in a very different style and to a different audience: one is written as a diary; another, as a series of letters to a friend; yet another a thriller novel; and one as a final 'testament' prior to the narrator's judgement, among several others. After the central story finishes, the previously interrupted storylines are each resolved in reverse chronological order. Furthermore, each storyline at least obliquely references the previous story, and there are strong threads of commonality in theme between them all.
I tend to detest this kind of nonlinear storytelling in film because I feel it's normally done as a gimmick rather than something that adds to the way it's told in a meaningful manner. Audiences like it because it's a bit of a mystery, figuring out how everything fits together, but it can be overused. My general rule of thumb is to consider the underlying story told in linear format, and decide whether I would still think it was good. I apply the same litmus test to this novel, and I'd say the results are a mixed bag.
First, the good: Mitchell has a fantastic command of language and vernacular in his different stories. He does an excellent job of using completely different 'voices' for his different characters in different time periods, and I appreciate the effort that went into that. It can sometimes be a bit frustrating to sort out what his characters are actually saying (and knowing French would have helped a bit for one story), but it's worth the effort to appreciate the artistry involved.
Furthermore, his themes in each story were coherent and impassioned. Essentially, this book is a meditation of the human thirst for and use of power - over others, over our environment, over society, etc. He takes a somewhat dim view of human nature in this regard (perhaps a justified one), and by paralleling past excesses with his dystopian future, he draws clear parallels with today and makes a cogent comment about our own society. The politics get a bit heavy-handed at times, but he never goes overboard.
Now for the bad: Each story, taken alone, is not really that interesting. The novel is simply too short to allow for much else - each one takes less than 100 pages, so he doesn't have much opportunity to really explore any story in much depth. Yes, they all get 'resolved', but some are far more interesting and satisfying than others. I'd like to single out his best storyline, the Orison of Sonmi, for special mention, but some of the others were less enlivening. Read in order without the nesting, it would just be a bunch of disjointed, largely disappointing novellas stapled together. This doesn't detract from his mastery of language or the clarity of his thematic vision, but it does suggest that the underlying storylines could have been spruced up some.
All in all, it was a good, but not great, book.
overused is a bit of an understatement for Cloud Atlas on the big screen. The main selling point of the 3 hour movie is how the storylines are told on top of each other.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
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