Sweet words, rare words, cherished words.

On le facebook recently it was thus poised that instead of going to a club to pick up chicks by buying them drinks that instead one aught to go to a bookstore instead and pick up chicks by buying them a book. Google was not forthcoming with this thread/webpage but the idea and thought lives on!

I mention this story because today I went to the base library for the first time today (yay another library card :D) and I rented a book (Atlas Shrugged) and 2 movies I haven't seen (X-Men 3 and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) and Harry Potter 4 audiotape in hopes that I can listen to it and play video games at the same time. As I was checking out, I noticed a basket of disarrayed books. I asked the librarian what they were AND SHE SAID THEY WERE FREE.  Sweet words, rare words, cherished words to grace my ears. Usually these books have 1 gem in them and I end up getting a ton of random books BUT IT WAS DIFFERENT TODAY! God smiled upon me and I got SEVEN books out of the 12 book series The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. I was absolutely giddy. I got 14 books total and I do feel a little guilty taking all the happiness for myself but I left 90% of the basket so really, reader, you should be proud of me ;)

In other good news I also found that all letters I send from base back to the states are free! I just write "free mail". This magical phrase! It reminds me of my Grandpa Lee who always wrote "First Class Mail" (underlined) on all my letters he wrote me through high school and college and, to be honest, I always doubted he paid the extra fee for it. Isn't there an extra fee for first class? None the less, it made me feel special because I was worthy of first class mail.

And I get to use the R2D2 MAILBOX!!!! AHHHHH!!!!

In more disgusting news, I got a smallpox shot and what it basically does is give you small pox but only in one tiny area. I don't know how it works, but if you ever wondered what smallpox looked like  (or my carpet) here's a pic of my arm.

Wizards First Rule

Finished this book today.

This is decidedly a book I would categorize book-to-read-inbetween-robert-jordan books. I should come up for a word for that...it's a jorbookdan...nope.

Anyways, back when I had to wait between book publications of the Wheel of Time series, I would fill my time with miscellaneous books and some were genuinely good. But many were books that I would read that were just good enough to get my mind off the fact that I couldn't be reading a Jordan book atm. 

Goodkind seems to be an architectural writer. He goes from bullet point to bullet point of scenes in the book that he wishes to reach and then goes, sometimes all too conveniently, to the next. The magic system is interesting because Goodkind holds all the cards and you can't really know what's going to happen next, which can be bad as well because then the reader just doesn't feel like...well the reader begins to depend on the fact that some miraculous thing is going to save the protagonist, and it does! Let's just say when all the rules began to be broken I began to figure out was going to happen next, and I usually just like to be taken along for the ride in books I read...yeah...

Also there are just some plain weird things that happen in this book. That's what happens when you describe torture scenes I guess. But he skillfully stopped just before my threshold of just putting the book down, which is impressive considering.

I'll probably pick the series up in the future again. But at the moment I am going to search for other things on my list of things to read. I'm turning to Terry Pratchett next. I need some comedy in my life and his fantasy satire may be just what I need. Have I mentioned how many Terry's there are in sci-fi/fantasy literature? It's ridiculous!