My bookreviews and fanficrecommendations. You are welcome to comment. Please read the notes in the sidebar below! BeeLikeJ@gmail.com

Saturday, February 7, 2009

BOOK: Girls Are Weirdos - Todd Harris Goldman

Title: Girls Are Weirdos (but they smell pretty)
Author: Todd Harris Goldman
Genre: Comic
Publisher: Workman Publishing 2007
Pages: Hardcover, 80
Language: English
Rating: 6/10

Summary: Single picture cartoons with a lot of text about all kinds of supposedly girly subjects -from Accesorizing to Undies- by a man who proofs men really never grow up.

Review: Meh. I loved the title and some of the cartoons are funny and even clever, but a lot of the observations are rather familiar and/or insulting, and made me roll my eyes. ("I'm a huge fan of the silent treatment and wish you girls used it more often". haha). Good for a little giggle, but not very original.

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Sunday, January 18, 2009

Book: Jippus et Jannica - Annie M.G. Schmidt

Title: Jippus et Jannica
Author: Annie M.G. Schmidt
Genre: Children
Publisher: Athenaeum
Pages: Paperback 140
Language: Latin. Original Dutch included.
Rating: 9/10

Summary: A Latin version of stories about childhood favorites Jip and Janneke. Translated to interest people for ancient languages. Such a joy to read.

For your entertainment I'm sharing an exerpt and the adorable cover.


Cover, left page in Dutch, right page in Latin (click to read;)

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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Recommendations: CSI Nick & Greg

Here are (some of) my favorite Nick/Greg authors and stories. (a WIP;)

I'm pretty sure the first Nick/Greg stories I read were by Caroline Crane, founder of the Nick/Greg archive What Makes The Desert Beautiful (From 2023 on AO3!).
She's not in the archives for personal reasons, but When she was in the proces of moving her fic to her own journal, I saved my favorites in this library (with permission!), check them out:
  • Sweet Cool Water (NC17)
  • The Fetish Series (NC17)
  • Four Things...(and one) (PG13)
  • All The Way To Paris (NC17)
  • Sunglasses At Night (NC17)


  • ETA: Now also available in her own LiveJournal: Caroline's Complete CSI Fic Directory: go take a look, it's massive!

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    Friday, November 28, 2008

    FANFIC: Sunglasses At Night by Caroline Crane

    Posted with permission from the author. See notes in sidebar.
    Title: Sunglasses At Night by Caroline Crane
    Rating: NC17 (See happy reading in sidebar!)
    Fandom: CSI
    Pairing: Nick/Greg
    Summary: "What? You don't want to play good cop/bad cop?"
    Warnings: PWP

    It's days like this he's glad he doesn't date women anymore. He's spent the better part of the night shift reassuring Catherine that she still looks good, and when he wasn't doing that he was busy wondering why so many women feel like they need to get a whole bunch of work done just so they can feel good about themselves. He doesn't get it, and no matter how hard Catherine tries to compare it to keeping in shape, he'll never get it.

    So he's glad to be home, glad for the chance to peel off his clothes and stand under a hot shower until he can't smell the antiseptic ammonia of the plastic surgery clinic anymore. He doesn't glance in the mirror to check himself out when he gets out of the shower, but it surprises him that he has to force himself not to, and okay, maybe Catherine had a small point. But it's still not the same, he tells himself as he wraps a towel around his waist and pulls the bathroom door open.

    To find Greg standing in the hallway, leaning against the wall in his CSI jacket and those damn sunglasses. And if he'd known Greg was actually going to wear them he never would have dug out his old uniform, but he can't help smiling when Greg pulls them down to peer at Nick over the top of the mirrored lenses.

    "How do I look?"

    "Like a cop."

    "Sara says I look like a porn star," Greg says, pushing himself off the wall to follow Nick into the bedroom.

    "What does Sara know about porn?" Nick asks, but as soon as Greg opens his mouth he holds up a hand. "I don't want to know."

    Greg smirks, unzipping his jacket to toss it on the end of the bed, and it kind of ruins the effect, but Nick doesn't say anything. Because he's not interested in encouraging Greg's weird fantasies, and anyway, Greg's never needed his encouragement.

    "So, do you want me to frisk you?" He didn't hear Greg cross the room, but suddenly there's a hand on his hip and that voice right next to his ear, and Nick can't help the shudder that rolls through him. It gets him an appreciative little chuckle, then Greg's mouth is pressed against his neck and his other hand's traveling down Nick's side. "That a yes?"

    And he's way too tired to play games, but he's been thinking about this since Catherine started on her 'you're a guy, you wouldn't understand' routine, so he turns in Greg's grip until they're face to face, hands on Greg's shoulders to push him back toward the bed. He reaches up with one hand to pull the glasses away, but before he gets them off Greg's reaching up to stop them.

    "What? You don't want to play good cop/bad cop?"

    "I don't want to play anything," he says, the words coming out as more of a growl than he really intended, but it gets his point across because Greg lets him pull the glasses off. He drops them in the vicinity of the nightstand, not really caring where they land because Greg's hands are still on his skin and he's still wearing way too many clothes.

    "Hey, careful with those."

    "I'll get you a new pair," Nick murmurs against Greg's skin, still moving backwards until they hit the mattress with a soft bounce.

    "I don't want a new pair," Greg answers, hands tugging at Nick's towel as Nick works on the buttons of his shirt, "I like those."

    "They're just glasses."

    "They're your glasses."

    The words are murmured against his mouth, and Nick wants to pull back to see Greg's expression, but Greg's tongue is already pushing past his teeth and he's already pushing up against Nick, fingers digging hard into Nick's shoulders and it's all Nick can do to get his shirt open. He gives up Greg's chest is bare, shirt bunched around his shoulders and hips lifting off the bed to let Nick slide his jeans down. He rolls off Greg long enough to let him kick them off, the fabric getting tangled in his shoes until he remembers and kicks those off too.

    And it's kind of hot, watching Greg get so turned on that he forgets how to undress himself, but it's taking way too long so Nick slides off the bed to tug his jeans and boxers off the rest of the way. When he looks up again Greg's leaning up on his elbows, skin flushed with need and knees splayed and Nick doesn't think before he's pushing up on his knees to take Greg in his mouth.

    His hands are flat against the mattress, tongue tracing the underside of Greg's cock until he's moaning and thrusting up in search of more, hot and wet and when Nick's mouth closes around him he makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat that tells Nick just how long he's been thinking about this.

    He splays one hand across Greg's hip, holding him against the mattress as he pushes his other hand between Greg's legs, past his balls to press against the taut skin there until Greg's moaning something unintelligible and pushing down against Nick's hand. Seeking more, trying to get Nick inside him and this is the part Nick likes best. Likes knowing just how much Greg wants him, seeing it in the way his body begs for more and hearing it in the way Greg murmurs his name in that breathy, broken voice.

    He pulls his hand away, ignoring Greg's disappointed murmur and reaching up, fingers pressed against Greg's mouth until he takes the hint and sucks Nick's fingers inside. And he's pretty sure he could come just from this, because he can feel the pressure of Greg's mouth all the way to his groin and when Greg finally lets Nick's fingers slip out of his mouth again he's almost disappointed.

    But he knows where this is going, so he ignores his own need and lifts Greg's hips to push two wet fingers inside. He watches Greg's face, cock twitching at the sight of his mouth dropping open in a silent sigh before he closes his own mouth around Greg's cock again. He's moving faster now, watching Greg rock between his mouth and his fingers until he loses control and comes with a low, broken moan.

    Nick waits until he stops shaking to pull off and spit into his hand, then he wraps a slick palm around his own cock and strokes a few times, eyes closed tight to keep himself from coming. It's been a long, boring night and he's not sure how much control he's got left, but he fights back the urge to come and crawls back onto the mattress, over Greg and pushing his knees apart. And Greg's still panting, whole body stained red and shaking with the effort to catch his breath, but he leans up to meet Nick anyway, hand at the back of his neck to pull him down for a hard kiss.

    He hooks one leg around Nick's waist as Nick slides inside, pausing when he's all the way in to catch his breath before he pulls out and thrusts forward again. They're moving slow, Greg's leg wrapped tight around him to pull him a little deeper with each stroke, and Nick knows he's not going to last long. He pulls his mouth away from Greg's, hands braced on either side of Greg's shoulders to watch Greg's eyelids flutter with each thrust.

    He can tell Greg's fighting to keep his eyes open, knows he wants to watch Nick watching him and that makes it even hotter. Because Nick's never really liked being watched – at least not until Greg came along – and he still hasn't gotten over how easy it is for Greg to relax and just let him look. Like he wants the attention – like he craves it, like he's just been waiting for Nick to finally notice that he's been standing right here all this time.

    And maybe he was, but he never complains about how long it took for Nick to catch on. As soon as he thinks it Greg tightens around him, pulling him in even deeper once, then one last time before Nick comes. His fingers are still pressed hard against Nick's biceps, ten spots of red on his skin that he'll still be able to feel even after the marks fade. He collapses on top of Greg, panting against his neck until his heart stops beating fast enough to fly right out of his chest.

    Greg's hands leave his arms to slide up his back, fingers absently rubbing through Nick's hair and Nick laughs against his neck.

    "Feels good," Greg says, and Nick can hear the smile in his voice. "Soft."

    And he's not complaining, because he's spent plenty of time with his own hands in Greg's hair. Before they started dating he always thought it looked hard, like it would be stiff if he touched it. But it's soft, just as soft as Nick's shaved head and even though he'd never admit it, he kind of likes the feel of Greg's fingers massaging his scalp.

    "So this is what wearing my sunglasses to work makes you think about."

    "They remind me of you," Greg answers, breath warm against Nick's neck and sending a fresh shiver down his spine. "Maybe I should give you mine, give you something to remind you of me."

    "Trust me, G," Nick says, shifting until he finds a patch of warm skin to press his lips to, "I don't need a reminder."

    fin

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    Sunday, October 26, 2008

    BOOK: De Gelukkige Klas - Theo Thijssen

    Title: De Gelukkige Klas
    Author: Theo Thijssen
    Genre: Novel (1926)
    Publisher: Salamander Klassiek (Classics)
    Pages: Hardcover 277
    Language: Dutch
    Rating: 7/10

    Summary: The (fictional) diary of teacher Staal, writing about a year in the life of his class in an elementary school in 1926. The students are all from poor families and most of Staal's co-workers (and his wife) think those children don't need to learn anything, because they'll end up in shitty jobs or unemployed anyway. But Staal has ideals and wants the best for 'his' kids. Mostly he wants them to be happy.

    Spoilerfree Review
    What I like best about reading books that were written a long time ago is to recognize how people haven't changed one bit over time. They still have the same doubts and discussions these days. I'm sure if a present day teacher kept a diary, it would say exactly the same about the different kids in the class. The cheeky one, the shy one, the helpfull one, the mean one; all types are present. And you come to care about each and every one of them. When Mr. Staal has to decide who will benefit from the free language classes after school, you too want all the kids to get that chance.
    Although Staal's thoughts and writing are often naive, he is certainly one of those teachers the kids will remember.

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    BOOK: Meneer Visser's Hellevaart - S. Vestdijk

    Title: Meneer Visser's Hellevaart (Mr. Visser's perdition)
    Author: Simon Vestdijk
    Genre: Novel (1936)
    Publisher: Salamander Klassiek (Classics)
    Pages: Hardcover 340
    Language: Dutch
    Rating: 6/10

    Summary: A day in the life of Mr. Visser, a small town man on a power trip. Written from his point of view, this is a disturbing look inside the mind of a sadist. Mr. Visser is obsessed with showing his superiority. Better to hurt others before they have a chance to find out what a sad little man he really is. He enjoys to make (and watch) people squirm. Especially his wife is an easy victim for his perverted pleasures. He loves to play nasty tricks on her and then tell his 'friends' all about how scared she got.
    Today he is summoned by the police commissioner about an incident involving one of his tennants. Mr. Visser is slightly worried, but spends most of his day thinking about ways to get back at everybody who can potentially harm him. Any information he digs up about his friends and enemies will be used against them.


    This brought back some bad memories, a very personal review
    This story made me feel very uncomfortable. I had a rough time getting into the brain of Mr. Visser, not in the least because I recognized his unpleasant behavior. I don't want to give a certain member of my family too much credit, but this hit a little too close to home. It's an awfully good book, but if you are looking for a character to love you will not find it. This is a very raw look at the dark side of humans: the ability to hurt other people by playing with their feelings and messing with their minds. It's something I inherited and I definitely do not need to be reminded of having that power. It brings out the worst in people. The story made me shiver.

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    Sunday, October 5, 2008

    BOOK: Metamagical Themas - Douglas R. Hofstadter

    Title: Metamagical Themas:
    Subtitle: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
    Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
    Genre: Science
    Publisher: Basic Books (Perseus)
    Pages: Paperback -unknown- read up until page 400 (Oct2008)
    Language: English.
    Rating: 9/10

    I've been reading this book for a while, but I haven't finished it yet. As it was on loan from brotherdearest, who wanted to share it with more people, I had to return it to him after getting about half way (page 400;) Despite it being a rather scientifical book, it has touched me emotionally. I have been sharing the awesome in my live journal, I am now parking those exerpts and reviews by chapter here.

    Comments are encouraged!

    Metamagical Themas:
    Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
    Douglas R. Hofstadter
    Section II, Chapter 5:
    Sense & Society: World Views in Collision

    "How come Truth is such a slippery beast"
    When I was younger, I used to believe that once something had been discovered, verified, and published, it was then part of Knowledge: definitive, accepted, and irrevocable. Only in unusual cases, so I thought, would opposing claims then continue to be published. To my surprise, however I found that the truth has to fight constantly for its life! That an idea has been discovered and printed in a "reputable journal" does not ensure that it wil become well known and accepted. In fact, usually it will have to be rephrased en reprinted many different times, often by many different people, before it has any chance of taking hold. This is upsetting to an idealist like me, someone more disposed to believe in the notion of a monolithic and absolute truth than in the notion of a pluralistic and relative truth (a notion championed by a certain school of anthropologists and socioligists, who un-self-consciously insist "all systems of belief are equally valid", seemingly without realizing that this dogma of relativism not only is just as narrow-minded as any other dogma, but moreover is unbelievably wishy-washy!). The idea that the truth has to fight for its life is a sad discovery. The idea that the truth will not out, unless it is given a lot of help, is pretty upsetting.

    Read discussion on 'Truth' here

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    Metamagical Themas:
    Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
    Douglas R. Hofstadter
    Section II, Chapter 6:
    Sense & Society: On Number Numbness

    A rather mathematical chapter
    "A computer doing a billion operations per seconds would really be moving along. Imagine breaking up one second into as many tiny fragments as there are seconds in 30 years. That is how tiny a nanosecond - a billionth of 1 second - is. To a computer, a second is a lifetime! Of course, the computer is dawdling compared with the events inside the atoms that compose it. Take one atom. A typical electron circling a typical nucleus makes about 1015 orbits per second, which is to say, a million orbits per nanosecond. From an electron's-eye point of view, a computer is as slow as molasses in January.[...]

    At the other end of the scale, there is the slow, stately twirling of our galaxy, which makes a leisurely complete turn every 200 million years or so. And within the solar system, the planet Pluto takes about 250 years to complete an orbit of the sun. Speaking of the sun, it is about a million miles across and has a mass on the order of 1030 kilograms. The earth is a featherweight in comparison, a mere 1024 kilograms. [...]

    These large and small numbers are so far beyond our ordinary comprehension that it is virtually impossible to keep on being more amazed. The numbers are genuinely beyond understanding - unless one has developed a vivid feeling for various exponents. And even with such an intuition, it is hard to give the universe its awesome due for being so extraordinarily huge and at the same time so extraordinarily fine-grained. Number numbness sets in early these days. Most people seem entirely unfazed by words such as "billion" and "trillion"; they simply become synonyms for the meaningless "zillion".
    This hit me particularly hard a few times after I had finished a draft of this column [May 1982]. I was reading the paper, and I came across an article on the subject of nerve gas. It stated that President Reagan expected the expenditures for nerve gas to come to about $800 million in 1983, and $1.4 billion in 1984. I was upset, but I caught myself being thankful that it was not $10 billion or $100 billion. Then, all at once, I really felt ashamed of myself. That guy had some nerve gas! How could I have been relieved by the figure of a "mere" $1.4 billion? How could my thoughts have become so dissociated from the underlying reality? One billion for nerve gas is not mereley lamentable; it is odious. We cannot afford to become number-number than we are. We need to be willing to be jerked out of our apathy, because this kind of "joke" is in very poor taste.

    Survival of our species is the name of the game. I don't really care if the number of mosquitos in Africa is greater or less than the number of pennies in the gross national product. [...] I don't care a hoot about pointless, silly images of colossal magnitudes. What I do care about is what a billion dollars represents in terms of buying power: lunches for all the schoolkids in New York for a year, a hundred libraries, fifty jumbo jets, [...] and so on.

    [...] I want people to understand the very real consequences of those very surreal numbers bandied about in the newspaper headlines as interchangeably as movie stars' names in the scandal sheets. [...] At bottom, we are dealing with perceptual questions, but ones with life-and-death consequences!"


    It's quite difficult to find a fragment to summarize the awesome pieces. I hope this made sense. You are invited to discuss the subject or point out typos:) Feel free to comment with a ? or a request for an explanation/addition;) Read discussion on 'Numbers' here

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    Metamagical Themas:
    Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
    Douglas R. Hofstadter
    Section II, Chapter 7: Sense & Society:
    Changes in Default Words and Images, Engendered by Rising Consciousness

    I had planned a long explanation about why this particular part of the book made me cry (in public!). But I can't find the words to express how much this piece touched me. I guess it was a combination of recognition (some sort of relieve that I wasn't imagining this issue) and powerless anger (it that even an expression in english?) - because I know this battle isn't over.

    In this column Hofstadter talks about the deep, hidden, and oft-denied connections between subconscious imagery and discriminatory usage in everyday language. More specifically: default sexism.

    It's about how we say "Come on, guys" to a group of people of mixed gender or even a group of girls and how if you would say "Come on, girls" to any other group it's considered demeaning. Or how we have different titles for a married woman and a single woman (who is -in addition- known by her 'maiden' name) I could quote more accurately, but it would just make me angry and upset again, and then I lose the ability to get my point across.

    If the examples above make you wonder why I'm making such a big deal of this, you should definitely read the magnificent piece Hofstadter wrote to illustrate the issue. It may not hit you as hard as it hit me, but it will make you think.

    Before I give you the link to the article, I'll let Hofstadter tell you why he wrote it: "I was provoked to write the following piece about a year after the column on sexism came out. [November 1982] It came about this way. One evening I had a very lively conversation at dinner with a group of people who thought of the problem of sexist language as no more than that: dinner-table conversation. Despite all the arguments I put forth, I just couldn't convince them there was anything worth taking seriously there. The next morning I woke up and heard two most interesting pieces of news on the radio: a black Miss America had been picked, and a black man was going to run for president. Both of these violated default assumptions, and it set my mind going along two parallel tracks at once: What if people's default assumptions were violated in all sorts of ways both sexually and racially? And then I started letting the default violations cross all sorts of lines, and pretty soon I was coming up with an image of a totally different society, one in which... Well, I'll just let you read it."

    A Person Paper on Purity in Language

    Read discussion on 'Default sexism' here

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