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Advent Calendar Day 24: May Your Days Be Merry

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(Image from this Christmas Wallpaper)

Every year Kailana and I share the honor of finishing the Blog Advent Calendar together. Our trademark seems to be something to make you think, no doubt much to everyone’s chagrin. This year will be no different. When I was in second grade I remember checking out a book of Elephant jokes from the library. These jokes were every bit as groan-worthy as you might imagine, but I laughed aloud as I made my way through the book, sharing the jokes aloud with my peers while choking back tears. In the spirit of those bygone days, you will find a list of 10 Christmas Jokes, worthy of boos, hisses, and shouts of Bah, Humbug! You will find another 10 on Kailana’s site. You will find the answers to these nuggets of “humor” below after the jump. Give them the ol’ college try before you make that jump, or Santa might deliver the proverbial lump of coal in your stocking.

To give you a little incentive to work the little gray cells in the midst of Christmas prep madness, those who comment on both my site and Kailana’s, letting us know how you did, will be entered into a drawing for a $15 online bookstore gift certificate of your choice. The drawing will be held on Monday, December 27th, 2010, chosen from those who comment on both sites by 11:59 p.m. CST Sunday, December 26th, 2010.

May God bless you all this Christmas season. The gift of your friendship is the most precious gift of all, thank you.

Questions:

1. What did Adam say on the day before Christmas ?

2. Why does Father Christmas go down the chimney ?

3. Why does Scrooge love all of the reindeer?

4. What do snowmen eat for lunch ?

5. What happened when the snowgirl fell out with the snowboy ?

6. What did the bald man say when he got a comb for Christmas ?

7. If Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus had a child, what would he be called?

8. Why are Christmas trees such bad knitters?

9. How do you make a slow reindeer fast ?

10. How does Good King Wenceslas like his pizzas?

Bonus question: Why did Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer cross the road?

Continue reading Advent Calendar Day 24: May Your Days Be Merry →

Book Reviews, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories

The Dying Earth ~Jack Vance

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The Dying Earth ~Jack Vance

–originally published 1950
–Orb Books
–130 pages
–4/5 stars

Jack Vance has been on my radar for several years, beginning when I purchased the Subterranean Press collection, The Jack Vance Treasury. I read a handful of stories out of that collection and really enjoyed them yet I hadn’t gotten back to reading any of his work in the past two years or more. Recently Tor Books sent me a copy of the Jack Vance tribute collection, Songs of the Dying Earth. This volume is filled with wonderful illustrations by Tom Kidd and many stories written by authors whose works I have enjoyed. Although I suspect one could jump right in and enjoy these tales, I decided I would take the time to read the book that inspired the tribute in the first place. This was one of my good decisions.

Continue reading The Dying Earth ~Jack Vance →

Book Reviews, Science Fiction, Young Adult

Starman Jones ~Robert A. Heinlein

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Starman Jones ~Robert A. Heinlein

–originally published 1953, Scribners
–252 pages
–4.75/5 stars

Max Jones is a dirt poor farm boy on a far future earth who dreams of sailing among the stars, following in the footsteps of his uncle, Arthur “Chet” Jones, who was an upstanding member of the Astrogator’s Guild. A kick in the pants from Fate, in the form of a sleazy new step father, sends Max Jones out into the dark night on the road to adventure. Through a series of mishaps and misadventures, and a healthy dose of deceit, Max Jones is given the chance to test the old adage “be careful what you wish for”.

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book news

Looking forward: The Bookshelves will be Bulging

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Joe Sherry recently posted a list of the books he was looking forward to in the first quarter of the new year, including a link to Locus magazine’s forthcoming books list. This prompted me to do a little looking of my own and what follows is a mostly, but not entirely, genre-filled list of books coming out over the next several months that are already on my TBR list.

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Book Reviews, Science Fiction

A Confederation of Valor ~Tanya Huff

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A Confederation of Valor ~Tanya Huff

–published 2006
–DAW Books
–619 pages

An omnibus edition featuring:

Valor’s Choice

–published 2000
–282 pages
–4.25/5 stars

The Better Part of Valor

–published 2002
–308 pages
–4/5 stars

Tough-as-nails Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr is the heroine of the Valor series, written by author Tanya Huff. The recently released fifth book in this series, The Truth of Valor, caught my eye the other day on a gift-hunting expedition to Barnes and Noble. “Military Science Fiction” is a sub-genre of science fiction that I avoided, though not with forethought, for most of my reading life. That all changed a few years ago when John Scalzi became a (geek) household name with his much lauded Old Man’s War series. That series not only rekindled that old feeling I used to get from reading science fiction as a kid, it also made me cognizant of many classic and contemporary military science fiction books that my eyes used to pass quickly over when perusing bookstore shelves, including one of the most well known, Robert A. Heinlein’s award-winning novel, Starship Troopers. I read Starship Troopers earlier this year and was very impressed by it. As I gazed at the covers for Huff’s Valor series I was struck with a desire to step back into the kind of science fictional universe that I enjoyed in both Heinlein’s and Scalzi’s novels.

Without anything to go on other than a hunch, I decided to take advantage of the two-for-one nature of A Confederation of Valor.

Once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down.

Continue reading A Confederation of Valor ~Tanya Huff →