New Books

I wish one of those new "books" was a "noteBOOK computer," mais c'est la vie. Cross your fingers it can still be repaired under the Logic Board Repair Extension Program.

Anyway, I just got back from Target with (aside from nuts and body-care products) two new books. One's nonfiction and one's a novel, so I'm hoping one at least will help me transition from Harry Potter-withdrawal.

Seabiscuit: An American Legend: "Much as Sebastian Junger did in The Perfect Storm, Laura Hillenbrand has woven together the many strands of lives that improbably create a phenomenon -- in this case, no raging storm, but legendary racing history. The little horse, Seabiscuit, with his crooked legs and sad tail, was at first thought lazy, but with the help of a trinity of men -- his trainer, his owner, and a jockey -- would make racing history and find a place in the hearts of thousands of fans in Depression-era America."

And yes, I have seen the movie. The movie played a lot like a book, actually.

The Birth of Venus: "A beautifully written historical novel is always a pleasure, but one that also offers subtle and insightful parallels to events in our own century is a treasure. Sarah Dunant's The Birth of Venus belongs in the latter category."

I guess I'm just a sucker for a period piece.

I'll replace my book link to the right once I decide which one I'm reading first. But in case you share my Book-Six lust, here's a link to The Leaky Cauldron.

What with my computer on the fritz, I'm increasingly relying on Scott's mom's computer (i.e., Scott's old clamshell iBook). Her default browser is Camino, which I haven't used much since Safari went 1.0 and Firefox got the Pinstripe theme. It's weird thinking how fabulous this used to seem, when the alternatives were just Internet Explorer and the Mozilla suite. Now, I can't believe there was no tab-closing widget anywhere and that there's no integrated Google search box. Of course, I know both of these will be in Camino 0.8. But had they made it out the door, oh, nine months ago, they might have seemed more impressive and maybe I'd still use Camino.

But then, that's also assuming the tabs got fixed so they didn't look like Panther buttons and that the persistent white-box bug got a miracle cure. That last one is just weird. Plus the Aqua-style widgets, nice as they may be, really screw up this Blogger entry page. But maybe that has something to do with this low-res screen as well.

On the other hand, Camino 0.7 handles the BlogThis! bookmarklet splendidly while Firefox 0.8 messes it up miserably.

Finally - my first daily paper article is here: Six generations going strong with humor.