Nollaig

Salem's Lot is awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwesome.

Oh come on, the very very end? The implicit ending is the stupidest thing I've ever read.

By works do you mean his writings (poems/plays/short stories etc)? I don't have a collection of those yet, or the complete collection of his personal letters, but I have lots of individual bits and this small collection of his letters.

I'm a few 'chapters' into Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters and it's quite fascinating. He's (so far) exactly the kind of person I imagined, (outwardly self-assured and unquestioning of his desired place in high society) but still in his twenties and on the up and up, so it'll be interesting to see how his disposition changes as his situation worsens in his 30s and 40s. It's possible to see through some of the act in his letters to his friends - when he got his distinctions at college he passed it off as being unnoteworthy, even waiting til a day later when it was published in the local paper to actually confirm it, but he says in a letter to his friend how he terribly brushed it off and that he was secretly quite proud of his achievement. Bless

My brother and I were born three years and two days apart, he on November 10th and I on November 12th. We always had one party as kids, but that suited us as neither of us likes attention, and we only got one cake, but nobody wanted to eat two cakes anyway, so we were quite happy really.

Yes Man - it's surprisingly good!

I Am Legend is on the movie channels.

Look up everything you can by Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. It's well worth delving right into their stories and styles, they are two of the best and my two favourites.

It comes in a lovely display box too, presumably to prevent loss of facsimiles falling out of their pockets. It's really nice.

Finished The Titanic Experience, review here. Now reading Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters and still reading Matthew Pearl's The Last Dickens.

The Titanic Experience Beau Riffenburgh (2008) Synopsis: Review: When such a wealth of information as regards the legend of Titanic exists, it's difficult to know where to begin reading. While the selling point of The Titanic Experience seems to be the 20+ facsimile documents included, I can without hesitation recommend this as one of the most comprehensive general texts available. Although only 63 pages long, it covers in considerable detail the competitive development in ocean liners during the 1800s which led to the concept of Titantic and her sister ships, Olympic and Britannic; right through the construction, launch, sinking, rediscovery and representation in books, movies and on stage of the ill-fated ship. Heavily (if not melancholically and beautifully)illustrated by paintings, posters, and, in particular, photographs, the book brings a level of realism to the tragedy I had not before encountered, and also to the many crew and passengers, famous and anonymous, survivors and dead. Small fact boxes documenting statistics and figures (including food and cutlery brought aboard, estimated departmental crew figures etc)accentuate the more general overview of the main text. Many key figures are traced throughout the events with regard to their actions, famous people(Molly Brown, the band that went on playing etc)but also slightly lesser known persons such as Harold Bride. Bride was the Junior Wireless Officer aboard Titanic and as the book chronologically documents the disaster, his story is gradually told. Recipient of some ice warnings throughout the 13th April, the officer who relayed distress calls to the Carpathia, who went down with his ship; surviving 45 minutes trapped under a lifeboat in an air pocket with all but his feet in tact, the man who spent the night with another Harold, (Cottam, the Wireless Officer aboard the Carpathia) relaying the names of survivors until his arrival in New York where, unable to walk, he was carried away. His is but one of many stories chronologically interwoven with the likes of Stanley Lord, captain of the Californian, J. Bruce Ismay, Managing Director of the White Star Line, Captain Smith, and many unknowns. The facsimilies include blueprints, posters, advertisements, the telegrams exchanged between the Carpathia and Titanic the night of the disaster, later propositions for new lifeboats and safety measures; arguably my favourite is the four page letter handwritten by Captain Stanley Lord attempting to clear his name of the fabricated accusation that the Califorian was the infamous Mystery Ship seen by Titanic which sailed into the night without offering aid. My second favourite is a typed letter from the sons of Ismay and Lord regarding the inaccurate portrayal of their fathers in the 1958 film "A Night To Remember". Later pages include the details of aftershock of the event, the impact on sea travel developments, on the survivors lives and the controversy surrounding recovered artefacts from the wreckage. All in all, the book spans over 150 years of information relevant to the creation, destruction and subsequent legend of Titanic. A condensed and concise modern text, it's suitable for both the new Titantic explorer or old enthusiast. It comes complete with a list of recommended further reading, including books written by survivors of the disaster, and a list of related websites, making it the perfect base resource for further study. Highly, highly recommended. Rating: 10/10

I bought a collection of Oscar Wilde's the other day - not the complete collection, which I will buy when I have the money, but it's a selection picked by his grandson which he thinks best represents him in short. I've never read a letter collection before but it's a real insight to the character of the person out of the spotlight.

The Titanic Experience Beau Riffenburgh (2008) Synopsis: Review: When such a wealth of information as regards the legend of Titanic exists, it's difficult to know where to begin reading. While the selling point of The Titanic Experience seems to be the 20+ facsimile documents included, I can without hesitation recommend this as one of the most comprehensive general texts available. Although only 63 pages long, it covers in considerable detail the competitive development in ocean liners during the 1800s which led to the concept of Titantic and her sister ships, Olympic and Britannic; right through the construction, launch, sinking, rediscovery and representation in books, movies and on stage of the ill-fated ship. Heavily (if not melancholically and beautifully)illustrated by paintings, posters, and, in particular, photographs, the book brings a level of realism to the tragedy I had not before encountered, and also to the many crew and passengers, famous and anonymous, survivors and dead. Small fact boxes documenting statistics and figures (including food and cutlery brought aboard, estimated departmental crew figures etc)accentuate the more general overview of the main text. Many key figures are traced throughout the events with regard to their actions, famous people(Molly Brown, the band that went on playing etc)but also slightly lesser known persons such as Harold Bride. Bride was the Junior Wireless Officer aboard Titanic and as the book chronologically documents the disaster, his story is gradually told. Recipient of some ice warnings throughout the 13th April, the officer who relayed distress calls to the Carpathia, who went down with his ship; surviving 45 minutes trapped under a lifeboat in an air pocket with all but his feet in tact, the man who spent the night with another Harold, (Cottam, the Wireless Officer aboard the Carpathia) relaying the names of survivors until his arrival in New York where, unable to walk, he was carried away. His is but one of many stories chronologically interwoven with the likes of Stanley Lord, captain of the Californian, J. Bruce Ismay, Managing Director of the White Star Line, Captain Smith, and many unknowns. The facsimilies include blueprints, posters, advertisements, the telegrams exchanged between the Carpathia and Titanic the night of the disaster, later propositions for new lifeboats and safety measures; arguably my favourite is the four page letter handwritten by Captain Stanley Lord attempting to clear his name of the fabricated accusation that the Califorian was the infamous Mystery Ship seen by Titanic which sailed into the night without offering aid. My second favourite is a typed letter from the sons of Ismay and Lord regarding the inaccurate portrayal of their fathers in the 1958 film "A Night To Remember". Later pages include the details of aftershock of the event, the impact on sea travel developments, on the survivors lives and the controversy surrounding recovered artefacts from the wreckage. All in all, the book spans over 150 years of information relevant to the creation, destruction and subsequent legend of Titanic. A condensed and concise modern text, it's suitable for both the new Titantic explorer or old enthusiast. It comes complete with a list of recommended further reading, including books written by survivors of the disaster, and a list of related websites, making it the perfect base resource for further study. Highly, highly recommended. Rating: 10/10

I've just moved this to the 'Looking For A Book' forum - we keep all these threads in here regardless of genre I'm afraid I don't know the book though. I am however very intrigued! It reminds me a little of Hyperion by Dan Simmons, but the Priest's story is only one of seven. He is telling a story on a tree-ship en route to Hyperion, about his previous visit there to seek a legendary race of people called (I think) the Bikura. I loved that story, so this book sounds really fascinating. I hope someone can help!

That'll happen here

I'd recommend the illustrated edition of Labyrinth, it's lovely.

The new one is The Winter Ghosts, which is an extended version of her short story 'The Cave' - I've heard that if you've read The Cave, you won't get much more in the other. I have only read The Winter Ghosts, and it was nothing amazing but I enjoyed it. It's quite short. I started reading Labyrinth and didn't get around to finishing it but what I read was very good.

It's an awesome book, I'll write a review when I'm done. It's by a guy called Beau Riffenburgh - he's been involved in a series of these 'Experience' books, so this one is called 'The Titanic Experience', with 'the Legend of the Unsinkable Ship' as a subheading. It's well worth purchasing in my opinion - great info for newbies to the subject and the facsimiles and photos for enthusiasts.

76 BIG pages with small text. I read about 30 pages today and it took a while. The information is so condensed that you're trying to remember names and you end up flicking back (tells you all the names of the senior crew, captain, chief officer, first/second/third/fourth/fifth officers, how they got assigned and what they ended up doing on the night of the disaster, and the same for the designers/various people associated with the building of the ship. It's actually very, very good.

His Dark Materials is brilliant. It's (self-admittedly on Pullman's part) a bit of a commentary on religion, so it was never going to do well. Personally I like Weitz - it wouldn't surprise me to find he was restricted as opposed to wanting to make GC as it was.

I'm over halfway through my Titanic book, it's extremely comprehensive regarding the crew and passengers; names, actions, attitudes, deaths and survivals etc. Everybody knows Molly Brown and the band that played until the ship went down, but there are other bits too. The Junior Wireless officer, Harold Bride, whose superior Phillips failed to get the ice warnings to the captain throughout the 14th, refused to leave his post despite the captain's dismissal, and went down with the ship (as did Phillips). He survived being stuck in an air pocket for 45 minutes under a boat, and once aboard the Carpathian he started working, despite injury and exhaustion, with the Carpathian's wireless officer Cottam (whom he had earlier contacted with distress calls) sending telegrams documenting the names of the 700 odd surivors. Lots of photos of everyone too.

He directed The Golden Compass? Oh man I'm glad I didn't know that before I saw New Moon. He did an excellent job with New Moon but he ripped Northern Lights to shreds. Course, anyone who ever did it was going to I suppose.

It's a generic compilation. It's been taken away to be wrapped as it's actually a Christmas prezzie so I can't check the info now - I'll let you know on Christmas day. But it's just a generic set thrown together to look pretty and make money, I only got it because A) I had no Shakespeare other than individual student copies of plays and for

The Dark Knight is on, so I'm half watching that.