NPR reviews the online Dungeons & Dragons

Like NPR's reviewer, I spent years of my life sitting around tables with hit dice and graph paper, calculating battle strategies with my friends for hours/days/weeks on end -- though we more often played Call of Cthulhu than Dungeons & Dragons. I haven't tried the online D&D yet, but this review mainly makes me nostalgic for the pencil-and-paper version.

The Truro Chamber of Commerce

Stacey and others will be interested in this site, which includes a map of the locale of Alice Hoffman's story.

Spirited Away at the public library

Rick Freemon of the Tuscaloosa Public Library passes this along:

"As part of the Sakura Festival, the Tuscaloosa Public Library has scheduled a program on Anime.

"The program will consist of a showing of the movie Spirited Away with a short discussion on Anime.

"The program will be presented on Saturday, March 4th at 1:00 at the Main Library and on Thursday, March 9th at 3:30 at the Weaver-Bolden Branch."

Time confusion

I really enjoy this collection, but in some of the stories I have been confused on the time setting. For example, in "Singing My Sister Down", there is still this primitive death sentence and tribal lifestyle, but the mother was able to get a gun/silencer, (I think Stacey already commented on this) which are two things that I associate with different eras. Also, in "Cold Fires" the story the husband tells and where there are now seem to have a great time difference between them.

Did anyone else feel this way? Did you see any other examples of this??

See you in class tonight!

Lapland, or Film Noir

AVERAGE READER

many names..... confusing................... many roles played by simple characters in complex relationships... paradox.... one interpretation of a broad genre... does it make a point?.............. ellipses... understandable............. excess?......... distracting?...... lose the point?... less than amusing..... disengaging

The Year's Best

I don't know if the feeling I have will be characteristic of the rest of the stories in this collection; however, I feel like the stories I have read so far give me a deeper insight into the emotions of the characters than the other short stories we have read. I have enjoyed these stories. Even when they seem to have nothing to do with me personally, I find myself relating to them and sharing in the sorrow. Just wondering, does anyone else feel they connected with this short story collection more so than the others we read in the past?

A Good Quote

I'm going back through Monstrous Regiment right now and found a line that caught my eye. "The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely preferred to those who think they've found it." p. 212 Not terribly pertinent to my topic, but it could be of help to those of you pursuing a more religious focus. Also, it's not ill-suited for more general remembrance beyond the scope of this class. It's an especially good thing to keep in mind when talking to a person who does not share the same ideological background as you. Anyhow, see y'all tonight.

Cold Fires

Cold Fires is an odd story. It kind of screwed with me. I had hoped they would sit around and tell stories of how their love deepened for each other through the lessons learned from the stories, but instead, each story was a about a love lost. I still thought the couple talking could gain some insite from the stories and rededicate their love to each other, but it ends with "... that odd combination of sun and decay, about which they did not speak, but which they knew would exist between them forever." I don't feel like they learned or gained anything. If you are encased inside an ice house trying to survive the winter, wouldn't you think the love would grow stronger? It seemed like such a possible love story with no happy ending. But I shouldn't expect those anymore. The themes of cheating on your significant other, loving with no return, leaving the one you love and such are a little depressing. It did make me crave strawberries though!

Roy and Hitchhikers guide

In the Baum Plan, the first thing I thought of about what Radioactive Roy Destry thought about the world was very "Hitchhickers Guide to the Galaxy"-esque. All these stories I guess were 2004....I'm pretty sure that the HGttG books came out before that...makes me wonder if John Kessel is a Douglas Adams fan.

The Witch of Truro

The first line of this story reminded me slightly of the gods in American Gods. "Witches take their names from places, for places are what give them their strenth." The place doesn't have to be beautiful or even habitable. It just has to be their's. I think that's similar to the gods' need for scrifice. Was Ruth Blackbird Hill the witch? She never did anything extraordinary except live on the beach without shelter. I guess all the people from the village would make that conclusion though.