I'm currently reading John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men for English class. So far so good. George bugs the crap out of me :edmad:

For leisure? Gregory Maguire's Wicked. The book is

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than the musical, sorry to say :)

The Pocket Essential: Animation by Mark Whitehead

I picked this up for 24p at a discount book shop...for that price, it was certainly a bargain, and while it does make for a pretty entertaining read, I have to say that I have lost just a little respect for this Mark Whitehead's authority on the matter. Referring to Animaniacs as a "cynical corporate monstrosity" I could forgive, since that at least is just a matter of opinion, but stating that Nick Park's short film Creature Comforts was later spun-off into a series of advertisements for British Gas is just symptomatic of sloppy research. Why? Because those advertisements were for Heat Electric. True, it's a mistake which quite a lot of people seem to make, but for pete's sake, you only had to pay attention to what the characters were actually saying. If not, then the closing Johnny Morris voice-over made it as clear as day.

Oh well, he does at least give props to Craig McCracken for his work on The Powerpuff Girls, describing his output, along with Genndy Tartakovsky's, as the "most enjoyable and risk-taking work" to come out of Cartoon Network. Incidentally, this book was published in 2004, so it (just) predates the arrival of Foster's.

.........

British Gas? Honestly, Mark...

The Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts.

Hey I used to have that. It's brilliant. I'd love to own it again. I loved the 'Total Perspective Vortex' and what happens to Zaphod in it.

I've been in a sci-fi mood myself recently, enjoying some short stories by HG Wells, Stephen Baxter, Robert Silverberg etc. Today it was The Door in the Wall by HG Wells which is just amazing.

The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660 - 1783, by Aldred Thayer Mahan (1890). Quite interesting, really, with good accounts of several sea battles. The book is also accused of being the inspiration for the naval arms race between the Germans and the British that led up to World War I.

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K Leguin.

Published in 1971, the novel takes places in the unlikely future world of 2002 where the global human population has reached 7 billion, the Greenhouse effect is wrecking the world's climate and violence in the Middle-East is spiralling out of control. However none of this is necessarily a problem when reality itself can be altered, in this case by a disturbed man's dreams guided by his ostensibly well meaning psychiatrist, who's more than a little guilty of hubris. Watchmen fans may be particularly interested in what happens in chapter 6.

Moral Minds, by Marc D. Hauser

It's effectively a book talking about the evolution of morality in mankind, both as a whole and within different cultures. He more or less argues that man could find a way to better understand morality by using a system similar to how Chomsky explained the evolution and development of language in man.

Good book.

I just finished "What Are You Laughing At: How to Write Funny Screenplays, Stories and More." By Brad Schreiber.

I thought the humor producing portions of my brain could use a little bit of reeducation and this book with it's endorsements from numerous respected writers, entertainers, etc such as Penn Jillet and Larry Gilbert is a good as any place to start.

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy.

It's pretty good, but I'm rather angry at Natasha Rostov right now.

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I yell at my books....

No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

Yeah, I know I was planning to read this a good few months ago, but I wound up being distracted by quite a few other things. I'm not hugely far in, but from what I've read so far, the Coens have been remarkably faithful in their film adaptation. Much of the dialogue was transcribed word-or-word, and the action is almost exactly as McCarthy described it. There is one notable change that I'm already aware of (to do with how a certain character reacts to a situation, rather than the outcome itself, which essentially remains the same), but I still have quite a while to go before I reach it. It'll be interesting to see how McCarthy's orginal vision plays out, particularly since the scene in question, in my opinion, was one of the most striking and powerfully understated in the Coens' film.