One Last Thing

I was watching a repeat of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain and this segment of the show made me think about those whalers at the end of their journey (if you know what I mean).

Nantucket Whaling Museum Digital Achives

enjoy.

http://www.nha.org/sites/

Ender's Game Series Flow Chart

Here it is. Enjoy. (via wikipedia.com)

More on the 2011 Reading Challenge

Skimming through some of the participants I came across people whose goal was 100, 300, 900, and even 1000! Of these participants they have combined to have read 1 book. Well done!

I decided I would try to outdo all of these absurd attempts and entered as my goal 1 and held down the zero button for about five seconds. I was then alerted that the max I could enter was 5000. 5000! How is that even a possible goal? 5000 is just as ridiculous a number as 1 billion. That would be reading over 13 books per day!

Not sure why I am obsessed with this. New post coming soon, I'm sure.

2011 Reading Challenge

I revisited this today and came across some noteworthy statistics that I'm not quit sure what to make of.

1. 145,000 plus participants have read over 3.5 million books which is an average of 24 books per person

2. As of October, participants are only 36% of the way toward reaching their goal.

3. The average goal set was 67 books. For the year. Seriously. Even if I was retired and my kids were grown up, I don't think I could pull more than a book a week.

to visit the reading challenge go to: http://www.goodreads.com/challenges/2-2011-reading-challenge

October Book of the Month: In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

via goodreads.com

In the Heart of the Sea brings to new life the incredible story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex--an event as mythic in its own century as the Titanic disaster in ours, and the inspiration for the climax of Moby-Dick. In a harrowing page-turner, Nathaniel Philbrick restores this epic story to its rightful place in American history.

In 1820, the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, it was repeatedly rammed and sunk by an eighty-ton bull sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, made for the 3,000-mile-distant coast of South America in three tiny boats. During ninety days at sea under horrendous conditions, the survivors clung to life as one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear.

In the Heart of the Sea tells perhaps the greatest sea story ever. Philbrick interweaves his account of this extraordinary ordeal of ordinary men with a wealth of whale lore and with a brilliantly detailed portrait of the lost, unique community of Nantucket whalers. Impeccably researched and beautifully told, the book delivers the ultimate portrait of man against nature, drawing on a remarkable range of archival and modern sources, including a long-lost account by the ship's cabin boy. At once a literary companion and a page-turner that speaks to the same issues of class, race, and man's relationship to nature that permeate the works of Melville, In the Heart of the Sea will endure as a vital work of American history.

"Nathaniel Philbrick has taken one of the most horrifying stories of maritime history and turned it into a classic. This is historical writing at its best--and at the same time, one of the most chilling books I have ever read." --Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm

Nathaniel Philbrick, a leading authority on the history of Nantucket, is director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies and a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association.

2011 Reading Challenge

http://www.goodreads.com/challenges/2-2011-reading-challenge

a little late but...

Fun Book Quiz

http://www.sporcle.com/games/bazmerelda/babel_book_babbles

September Book of the Month: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

via goodreads.com

The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Enter Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, the result of decades of genetic experimentation.

Is Ender the general Earth so desperately needs? The only way to find out is to throw him into ever-harsher training at Battle School, to chip away and find the diamond inside, or destroy him utterly. Ender Wiggin is six years old when his training begins. He will grow up fast.

But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. His two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Among the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

August Book of the Month: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

"Sentimental, heartfelt novel portrays two children separated during the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. In 1940s Seattle, ethnicities do not mix. Whites, blacks, Chinese and Japanese live in separate neighborhoods, and their children attend different schools. When Henry Lee’s staunchly nationalistic father pins an “I am Chinese” button to his 12-year-old son’s shirt and enrolls

him in an all-white prep school, Henry finds himself friendless and at the mercy of schoolyard bullies. His salvation arrives in the form of Keiko, a Japanese girl with whom Henry forms an instant—and forbidden—bond. The occasionally sappy prose tends to overtly express subtleties that readers would be happier to
glean for themselves, but the tender relationship between the two young people is moving. The older Henry, a recent widower living in 1980s Seattle, reflects in a series of flashbacks on his burgeoning romance with Keiko and its abrupt ending when her family was evacuated. A chance discovery of items left behind by Japanese-Americans during the evacuation inspires Henry to share his and Keiko’s story
with his own son, in hopes of preventing the dysfunctional parent-child relationship he experienced with his own father. The major problem here is that Henry’s voice always sounds like that of a grown man, never quite like that of a child; the boy of the flashbacks is jarringly precocious and not entirely credible. Still, the exploration of Henry’s changing relationship with his family and with Keiko will keep most readers turning pages while waiting for the story arc to come full circle, despite the overly flowery portrait of young love, cruel fate and unbreakable bonds. A timely debut that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the present and take heed we don’t repeat those
injustices." - Kirkus Reviews

Best of Both Worlds!

Check it out:

http://www.sporcle.com/blog/2011/07/play-on-sporcle-win-a-kindle/

Thomas Edison: Elephant Killer

The afterward of Water For Elephants mentions an elephant execution carried out by Thomas Edison. Apparently these were common in these days when an elephant had killed 3 or more workers(or 1 rube). This particular execution, of Topsy the elephant, was filmed by Edison to show the dangers of his rival's alternating current method. This 1903 version of Faces of Death was then shown to audiences around the country.

I won't show the video of this here, but it can be easily found on youtube.com for those interested.

Harry Potter Quiz

Can you guess the Harry Potter characters who own these license plates?


http://www.sporcle.com/games/waffle_of_action/harry-potter-license-plates