Welshrogue

Only 12 of these race track sports cars are being made. 700,000 quid a pop, makes me wish I had won the lottery already.

From the Publisher

When the Soviet Union masters “Star Wars” technology, rendering the United State’s arsenal of nuclear missiles impotent, America’s only hope lies in The Old Dog Zero One–a battle-scarred bomber fully renovated with enough weaponry and stealth hardware to earn it the nickname “Megafortress.”

A different take on the air force adventure story. The main character isn’t a dashing pilot but a navigator, one with the predictable trademarks of not being your average air force office yet being very good at what he does.

The plot, while a little far fetched, does a nice job of building up the tension and keeping the pages turning. The techno jargon is kept to a minimum yet you never lose track of what is happening and by who. Very enjoyable read, look like I will be reading more Dale Brown in the future!

Story here

Batwoman does babes? What next, superheroes dressing up in spandex? Whoops….

Some sexual terms I have never heard of..

ANASTEEMAPHILIA: Attraction to a person because of a difference in height (basketball groupies)
BATRACHOPHILIA: Attraction to frogs (insert offensive French joke here)
CAPONIZE: To castrate a chicken (sorry, I thought this was Sex Terms… how the hell do you castrate a chicken?)
DASYPYGAL: Having hairy buttocks (I thought that term was MALE)

Get the whole list here

I haven't seen the Da Vinci Code movie and I don't intend to. I read the book in paperback last year and totally not blown away by it. It does present some interesting ideas, the same way as some conspiracy thereoists present ideas about the faked moon landing. Luckily, no one has tried to write a long winded book about NASA faking out the world to stop the Russians from landing on the moon. The Da Vinci Code, IMHO, was double the length it had to be because it was filled with tedious explanations and thoughts. A good rule of thumb is any book in which the action takes place over a short time period, should not take longer than that time period to read. My thoughts of the plot were further confirmed when nearly every review of the movie slammed it for the same reasons. Wow, I actually got something right for once!

Yes, the movie has brought in a whole lot of money but lets face it, most of the people going to see it are probably the same Catholics that have been urged from the Pope downwards to not go and see it. I think human nature is such that if you are told not to see something, you want to see it to see why you shouldn't see it. A good example is if you are talking face to face with someone and you say something like, "don't look behind you". Most people will look around to see why they shouldn't look.

You may have noticed that there are quite a lot of churchs in the world, and from what I have seen, many are holding presentations debunking the Da Vinci Code. One church that I saw was running a multi-part session over a couple of weeks. I would have thought that someone standing up and saying, "This book is FICTION!" would have sufficed but apparently not.

This got me thinking. What is the reasoning behind so many churchs jumping on the debunking wagon? I came up with 3 almost credible choices, they are:

1) Churchs have been told by the Vatican (through a secret organisation) to debunk the Da Vinci Code as they fear that church goers will believe anything they read………

2) Churchs by them selves have decided to try and protect the Vatican by running these sessions without guidance from above as it were. This makes me think that perhaps local churchs may believe the Da Vince Code ideas and want to cover it up.

3) Churchs are jumping on the 'lets get more people in church by using the Da Vinci Code to entice them in' wagon. This would show great understanding on human nature and perhaps a slightly sneaky nature.

Given the huge uproar that this book and movie has created, I do believe that perhaps the Catholic church as a whole has protested too much. Religion adapts as time goes on, so if the ideas that the Da Vinci Code presents somehow were real, I am sure that the Catholic church would shuffle its feet a bit but carry on. After all, didn't Christmas day (December 25th) start out as a heathen day of celebration?

And it even looks good as a hard top….

From the Publisher

Brick Maxwell lost a friend when fellow pilot Raz Rasmussen was shot down in the first Gulf War. Years after he is declared KIA, Raz’s now-remarried widow receives a call claiming he is alive, and she asks Maxwell to investigate. But while searcing for answers, Maxwell discovers the CIA is working its own shady agenda–and a shocking betrayal places him right in the kill zone.

Because of the style of the writing and indeed, the topic, I was reminded of Stephen Coonts books. This is not a bad thing. Good action, a twisty plot slowed down only by a seemingly annoying ‘relationship’, the book was a fast read. I think I’ll start from the begining and read them all!

An FBI agent gets caught up in a middle eastern nuclear plot.

Condition Black is an OK book but without any clear cut hero it tends to lack something. Most of the characters are flawed and it is hard to actually find any sympathy for them. Not a bad book, just not a great one

I am going to design a T-Shirt and it will sell millions. It will contain four simple words. The words?

HAVE KIDS

BE SICK

Went down Friday with "Spectacular Strep Throat" and a high fever. Just in time for the weekend. I'll by-pass the bad bites, the sweats, the shakes, the blah blah blah. I did manage to drop 20 lbs in just over 4 days from not eating but that will soon come back as I make up for lost time!

It feels like I totally wasted the weekend plus Monday and Tuesday but it wasn't a total loss. I did buy 17 second hand books for the handsome fee of ….17 dollars. Ah, I love the smell of cheap books in the morning. Memo to self, must put up book shelves in bedroom quick…

Talking of book sales, at the end of June my local library has its 'super' book sale… Memo to self, build bigger shelves in bedroom. You can purchase a plastic bag (from a local shop) packed to the rim with books for….. 2 dollars Thats it, 2 dollars for a bad full of books.

And people wonderful why I giggle to myself sometimes.

Unlocking a cold case with explosive implications for the future of civil rights, forensics expert Lincoln Rhyme and his protege, Amelia Sachs, must outguess a killer who has targeted a high school girl from Harlem who is digging into the past of one of her ancestors, a former slave. What buried secrets from 140 years ago could have an assassin out for innocent blood? And what chilling message is hidden in his calling card, the hanged man of the tarot deck?

A good thriller with more than its fair share of twists and turns. Jeffery Deaver always puts in one or two more twists than you are expecting, keeping you going in the wrong direction until he lets you see whats happening. With the main characters having been finely tuned over the last few books, this novel feels more like reading about old friends than characters in a book.

Looking forward to the next one.