Theatre of the Gods by M Suddain Review

Theatre of the Gods by Matt Suddain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was fantastic! The plot jumped all over the place for the first 300 pages with hilarious results and considering the main objective of the Character Fabrigas is to jump to another universe, this works beautifully.
One of the things I loved the most of the pop culture references. I wish the "traditional sea shanties" had continued into the second half of the book because the image of a dirty, disreputable rabble of grisaled sailors singing mixed up versions of pop songs is one of the funniest things I have read...ever!

The second half of the book is where the plot settles down and goes in a more linear fashion. This is where the action really heats up and once the homunculus shows up we're really cooking with gas.
Awesome book really worth the read.
I want more from these universes.

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gobookyourself: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas...

gobookyourself:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

If you love your sci-fi delightfully silly, then try these.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde for quirky bookworld sci-fi

Flying Dutch by Tom Holt for dysfunctional crews

Dimension of Miracles by Robert Sheckley for an unlucky hero in space

Colony by Rob Grant for laugh-out-loud absurdist sci-fi

Hey I have “The Eyre Affair” and haven’t read it yet.

via Tumblr http://ift.tt/1g3mbAX

April Book Photo Challenge Day 7 Socially Awkward Character

I have two favorite socially awkward characters that I just couldn't split and I just relised that they sit together on a shelf.

Dirk Gently knows so much and can read so much into everything that people miss judge him to be socially awkward. Abit like Sherlock Holmes but without the class. I use one of his phrases all the time when I'm doing bugger all and people think I'm smart; "What are you doing?" I'm making a topographic map of my navel" It a great way to shirk people off without them feeling like they are being shirked off.

I love Rincewind. I have loved Rincewind for as long as I can remeber. His pathological fear of just about anything has never stopped the world from inflicting his destiny on him wheather he is having fun or not, usually not. He knows he is socially awkward and would just like to left along but the rest of the world and even some magic spells don't notice or just don't care. Good thing he is a wizard otherwise he might have to deal with the oppiste sex too.

I love these two and have taken on board a lot of their traits over the years. They have a special place in my heart.   

It's been a while!

Sorry it has been so long since my last post. I went on a holiday where I had no internet so no blogging to be had there. Then i got back and started work again for the year. That has been all sorts of crazy. For startes I don't have my own room any more so I have to move classrooms every lesson, but I did get a funky trolly to carry all my stuff. I feel the need to steam punk the thing but I just had to work out a design. Secondly I have 2 extention classes and a stage 2 upper school so that means sooooo much more planning than I used to have to do. Weekends have been taken up marking, making homework and prepareing for the next week.

Anyway, that is boring real life stuff. The exciting news is that not only have I already read 17 books this year (18 and 19 well on the way to compleation as well.) but, most exciting of all. I had my 30th birthday and had a big party and instead of asking for small things that aren't much bother when people asked me what I wanted, I responded with "something spectacular" and boy did they deliver.  

Pictures to come but the pinicle was my awsome partner who got me (some how, I love eBay) an American first edition, signed Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. To top it off I got presented with it at my party (a week before my birthday) so I got to show off. Needless to say I cried. This book is now, instantly my prized possesion. Douglas Adams Touched My Book!

So, will post some pictures of all the other cool stuff I got soon and some reviews of the books read so far this year. Well on track to reaching my goal of 70 books this year. Yay!

Day 7 Book Photo Challenge: This Book Inspired Me

We all know by now that this is my favorite book but now it has inspired my do something I haven't done in quite a while. Draw. I'm not that good and I am surrounded by people that are but drawing these quotes from the book have allowed me to enjoy my drawing again.

Day 5 Book Photo Challenge: Favorite Non-Human Character

Couldn't split this one. These are Marvin; the paranoid android from Douglas Adams' Hitch Hiker's series and The Luggage from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.

Luggage was made from sapient pearwood and is featured in (amongst others) the very first Discworld book The Colour of Magic (1983) and I have always wanted one. Most of the time he is mildly annoying but some times he saves lives. (see luggage is a he as they find a female luggage in Interesting Times and they have children.) 

Marvin on the other hand, I have always loved because I felt a kindred spirit with him. Not so much the "brain the size of a planet" thing but the "life, don't talk to me about life" thing really spoke to me as a teenager. Where as others had grunge and rock stars, I had Marvin. And now he's on my car keys wherever I go.

The Re-Reading of the Hitch Hiker's Guide Ombibus

I have decided to re-read The Hitch Hiker's Guide omnibus because.....well.... I want to and I haven't in many years.
Here's the plan/challenge:

• Read one chapter per day (or so, let be honest)
• Find my favorite quote from each chapter.
• Blog the quote with one of my terrible drawings ( it would be one of my beautiful, well constructed drawing but frankly I'm still waiting for that to happen)

The results prediction:

• I get to re-read Hitch Hiker's which I always enjoy and is never a waste of time.
• I get a repository of awesome quotes.
• I may just get a little better at drawing, which would be nice. 

So, I invite you to come alone on my journey of my own interpretation of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Day 23 Book Photo Challenge: Own Multiple Copies

These are just some of the books in my house that are multiples. Not surprisingly we have multiples of Douglas Adams Dirk Gently books with the omnibus belonging to my partner and the separate books to me. The Raymond E. Feist books of Magician are multiples because I'm looking after my friend's books until she moves somewhere with more space and the old one is mine (its as old as me!)

Day 21 Book Photo Challenge: Would Suggest to a Friend

Today's topic is definitely a challenge because, although I regularly suggest books to friends (and to be perfectly honest anyone who will listen to me for more than 10 seconds.) My suggestions are target to the audience.

For example, I have a friend who has read (and adores) the Mortal Instruments series and has actually read the fifth book which i have not. I would recommend The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.

To my friend that that reads even more than I do and loves both fiction and not fiction and strange things i would recommend The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, but mostly she recommends books to me.

To people who like reading the next big thing i have recently been recommending The Bone Season By Samantha Shannon and have done recently.

To I regularly recommend The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett partly because i love them and partly because the humor in them eases people into the science fiction and fantasy genre.

I recommend Threshold by Sara Douglass to people who like maths and fantasy and Ellis Peters books to people who like crime fiction but don't like books set in the modern day.

The most common thing i recommend to people in general is simply to read, and being a teacher i do this a lot. Don't just read tumblr or twitter or facebook but an actual book. I don't care if it is an ebook or a physical book, a piece of classic literature or a pulp fiction novella or even a graphic novel but read something because in the words of the great George R.R. Martin "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one."   And life is too short to live it only once if you ask me. That goes for puppies too.

Literary Photo Challenge Day 14: Favorite Character Name

I am running a little behind at the moment so here is catch up time.

Slartibartfast is one of my all time favorite character names for the shear ridiculousness of it. It was so ridiculous Adams even acknowledge  it in the dialogue between Slartibartfast and Arthur Dent.

That and my Mum used to call my brother and I Slartibartfast just as a funny word to say and not tell us where she got it from.

Douglas Adams' Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a great one for awesome names anyway but this will always be my favorite. 

Book Photo Challenge Day 2: Favorite Series

Day 2 photo challenge. The Hitch Hiker’s  Guide to the Galaxy series. 

The large book is actually an omnibus of the famous trilogy in four parts but I thought I would add in the other two too.
I have talked about my love for Douglas Adams before but seriously, how awesome was the man!

Inspiration and realisation

So, I have started writing a novel/book/story. This is a big step for me as I have always wanted to write a novel but have always stopped myself for various reasons. The biggest reason in my mind has always been that nothing that I could possibly produce would stand up to the comparison with my favorite authors, namely Sara Douglas, George Orwell, Terry Pratchett and, of course, the great Douglas Adams (because all of these people are hoopy froods that know where their towels are at!) However, I have come to realise that the version of these authors books that I know and love, is not, in any way, shape or form, the version that they first put to paper or computer. Ohh Duh you say but sometimes things in my brain don't always click into place nice and easy like. How I came to this quite obvious realisation is a little roundabout but bear with me. I have now been a high school teacher for three years and in Australia, there is a big focus on really supporting new teachers with professional development in order to give us the conscious skills needed to run highly effective classrooms, and I honestly praise the work that gets put in to us new teachers in order to reduce the drop out rate. It works. Hence I have a "tool kit" of skills to draw upon in the classroom to deal with all sorts of situations. This development made me aware of the tools I had to do other things outside of my career. I was a student for a very long time, and it wasn't until I repeated year 12, did I learn the skills of how to study. I then went on to do a bachelor of science in chemistry, where I learnt lab skills and research skills. This process of looking back on my life and the thing that I have become proficient at, I realised that I had to learn/be taught or teach myself all of the skills required, even if i had a natural talent for something, I needed to practice some aspect of it. With that epiphany, came the well timed "Future of Storytelling" MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). I jumped at the chance to actually learn the skills I require to get the stories out of my head. The final piece of the puzzle dropped into place when I was watching one of the MOOC's videos that had an interview with Cornelia Funke, author of the Inkheart trilogy among others. She was saying that she had read approximately 50 books in the research of one of her novels, and said novel had taken 7 years to write (or 5 years, i can't quiet remember, but a really long time.) My brain lit up. She couldn't possibly have put the whole story down on paper in one go for it to have taken that long, it must have had multiple drafts and re-writes for that length of time....I can do that. Also this year I have been hearing about the 10,000 hours theory of mastery. It takes at least 10,000 hours of practicing something to master it. Considering I'm just this semester feeling confident about my teaching in a class and I have been teaching for three years, that equates to about 3000 hrs of classroom time. So once I get to about 3000 hours of writing, I should feel pretty good about what i am producing....maybe. So, I have started writing a novel. It may take me 10 years, it may never be published, (who knows what the book industry will look like by then) but you will hear about it here and I think I will enjoy the process.

Musings on why my favorites are my favorites

I can always list what my favorite stories are when asked, but reading a discussion board today has made me realise why they are my favorites.

They are the stories and worlds that have been integrated into my own life, weather by a message or an ethos of the way i live, or by determining the relationships i have with other people or just simply by providing me with jewelry themes and dress styles.

Hence my favorite stories are:

Book: The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (the trilogy in are we up to 5 parts now?) by Douglas Adams.

Why: I'm Dyslexic and it was a wonderfully complex story that was in an easy to read format. It was so important to me that I carried an omnibus around with me as a teenager for ages. When I met my partner, I found it was his favorite book too and that sparked our relationship. Now as an adult, every towel day I walk the halls of the school where i work with a towel in hand, proudly remembering the great man. (this is also my favorite radio program because it is slightly different in dramatic ways)  

Movie: Nightmare Before Christmas by Tim Burton.

Why: Other than having everything nightmare before Christmas that i can get my hands on, i re-watch this every Christmas and it still gives me the same feelings of childlike joy about Christmas that it did when i was young. Its been out for 20yrs now and it still works! Which is especially telling since i was born and have grown up in Australia, where it is not unusual to have a +40 degree Celsius day and i have never seen snow.

TV: can not split Dr Who and The Simpsons

Why: I love the Simpsons, they tell so many stories and drop so many references that you end up looking it up and learning new things left, right and center. Than and i love Simpsons quotes so much i have on occasions, gone a whole party speaking only in them! If your a fan, give it a go, its a lot of fun.

Why: Dr Who is so important in my life that it may just be the reason why my best friend is my life long best friend and it definitely is the cause of her and her husbands relationship.

Oh and the Curse of Monkey Island because its funny.