First lines: Hogfather

Posted & filed under First Lines.

So: Pratchett, Discworld, Hogfather.

When reading the first two Discworld (1, 2) novels in order wasn’t exactly working out for me—and I was told that the first few weren’t all that to begin with—I took a random plunge in the middle of the proverbial pool. As much as I think I like this book, I’m still not entirely won over. I’ve got Soul Music lined up next, but really, if that one doesn’t get me hook, line and sinker, I’d might as well call it quits.

What am I doing wrong here? Am I expecting too much? Have people misled me with their (presumably) strictly hetrosexual manlove for Terry Pratchett? And while I’m not naming names as I’m far above that mundane stuff, I’m sternly looking at the messrs. Van der Wetering and Van Hees here.

Terry Pratchett — Hogfather
Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.

Things that don’t make sense

Posted & filed under Life, Lists.

A short list of things I can’t quite make sense of at the moment:

  • Having to leave the most kick-ass concert of the year early (thus missing most of the encore) to catch the last train home;
  • Having a train stand still on the tracks for a good ten minutes, then backing up, wait some more for a train to pass, and then proceed in the right direction. At 1:10 AM;
  • This song by Cradle of Filth.

One hundred

Posted & filed under This website.

One hundred posts ago — or as fate would have it, exactly one year ago next Sunday — I started posting at this location. Woo-didely-hoo.

Browsing back through the archives, I can’t say I’ve gotten quite the hang of it. Yet. While I didn’t start out with a clear defined goal, I must admit that I’m kinda disappointed in a few things:

  • I haven’t been able to keep the output/updates coming at a regular pace. Particularly the last couple of months there’s been something of a creative drought.
  • While the quality of the writing has improved since I started blogging *, I’m not quite satisfied with where my writing is now. There are still too few hits to make up for all the misses. Maybe taking some writing courses like I’ve been contemplating on and off for the last few years wouldn’t be a bad idea.
  • The amount of comments from/discussion with my esteemed visitors. It’s, ehm, a bit sparse. I’d love to hear more from you.

This was post one hundred. Up to the next milestone.

* Did I actually type that? Oh my. Anyway, see the really old archives for some really self-indulgent, cringe worthy stuff. up.

First lines: God is not Great

Posted & filed under First Lines, You can call me faithless.

After having read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion last year, there probably was no need to read Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. And if I had actually read its first line (see below) or turned to page 69 (as per Marshall McLuhen), I probably wouldn’t have bothered.

Like Dawkins, Hitchens is a figurehead (of sorts) in the so-called New Atheist movement, which proposes that it’s okay to be openly atheist, as all religion is false anyway. But where Dawkins case against religion is based on science, Hitchens’ case is made with rhetoric and history. And while both make their case equally well, I have a stronger affilitation with science than with rethoric. Add to that way I struggled through both books (I don’t usually do non-fiction) and the large overlap between them, and you might see why I didn’t drink as much of the God is not Great Cool-aid as I did that of The God Delusion.

Book read
Christopher Hitchens — God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
First line
If the intended reader of this book should want to go beyond disagreement with its author and try to identify the sins and deformities that animated him to write it (and I have certainly noticed that those who publicly affirm charity and compassion and forgiveness are often inclined to take this course), then he or she will not just be quarreling with the unknowable and ineffable creator who—presumably—opted to make me this way.