Guilty as charged.

Obligatory kitten note: Galen is getting more relaxed – he spent a lot of time yesterday playing with the feather wand and the new scratching post. But he still cowers sometimes when we approach, or from upstairs noises. So we’ll keep him mostly confined to the bathroom for a bit longer.

Now, on to the main topic for today: books.
Hello, everyone. My name is Jeremy F, and I am a biblioholic.

This week I checked out a book from a university library: Making a Living in the Middle Ages: the People of Britain, 850-1520. I just started reading it for fun.
It was published in 2002, and no one else had checked it out since it was added to their collection...

I got the following from Cody’s Books in Berkeley.

Do You Suffer from Literary Abuse Syndrome?

Once a relatively rare disorder, LAS has become far more prevalent in recent years. Answer yes to three or more of these statements and you may be a literature abuser. Five or more and you definitely have a problem, friend. You may need help. We know we do.

How many of these apply to you? Get a pencil. Be honest, now. ( Read more... )

To quote John Stracke: "I’m not a bibliophile, I’m a bibliophiliac. When I go in a bookstore, my wallet bleeds."

more book info

Yippee! Neal Stephenson's latest, Quicksilver, is coming out in late September. What makes this journal-worthy is that he's doing a couple of local signings: Cody's in Berkeley and Kepler's in Menlo Park.

This is an author whose works I enjoy immensely. He's also fairly misanthropic and hates doing tours. I think I got some of my copies signed when Cryptonomicon came out, but I'd given up hope that it would ever happen again.

Booked in the calendar (so to speak...)

Okaaay... someone has "issues"

BRAZILIAN KILLS HIS PARENTS OVER INFLATABLE BRIDE

Rio de Janeiro (dpa) - A man who considered an inflatable puppet his "bride" killed his parents because they demanded he divorce her and damaged the toy, media reports said Wednesday.
The 44-year-old unemployed man apparently confessed to the crime, which occurred on Saturday, after a long interrogation by police in a suburb of Sao Paulo city, a police spokesman said.
"The man thought the doll was a human being, called her his 'bride' and talked to her," an acquaintance of the family was quoted as saying.
But his parents, who were religious, demanded he separate from the doll.
When the mother took a scissors and cut holes in the man's "bride", the man strangled and stabbed his father, age 70, and mother, age 71.
"My parents didn't love me and didn't understand me," the man was quoted as saying.