Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling

So, I read the last Harry Potter book and I will admit that I enjoyed it a great deal. Not to spoil it for anyone, but I had kind of guessed the twist when I read the sixth book. I am a little disappointed in JK though - I think she wussed out at the end. Though I suppose it is really a kids' book...
Anyway, for all you Potter fans out there, I don't think you'll be let down. It's exactly what you would expect. Anyone who doesn't buy into the Potter phenomenon, don't bother reading this, because it's exactly what you would expect.

Pottery

Well, I didn't quite line up to get a copy at midnight, but I did go to my local Tesco's on Saturday afternoon and buy the latest (and last) Harry Potter book. And I interrupted myself reading 'The Book Thief' to start it. I'm four chapters in and so far, it's just as Pottertastic as any of the other books (take from that whatever you will!) Review to follow...

News still coming...

Sorry to be such a tease. I haven't got the official confirmation I've been waiting for so I'm still not ready to reveal my new life plan to the huddled masses. It is coming soon though. I promise. (I hope!)

Camping

I got back yesterday afternoon from a week's camping (yes, camping. In tents. In that weather...) with the Girl Guides. It was an International camp, hosted by IGG (that's the Irish Girl Guides, to the uninitiated) at Tattersalls in Ratoath, Co Meath. We had 25 Guides from Counties Kildare and Dublin and 2 from Singapore.

It was awful. It rained every day. Several times. Except for Friday, when it only rained once. It just didn't stop all day. I spent most of the week damp or wet, with rain running down the back of my neck.

We're currently planning on where to go next year. Iceland or San Francisco, maybe...

Lost Girls by Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie

OK, so I read this months ago and never put it up as a review. Why? Well, there's lots of stuff that I read that doesn't get reviewed on my blog: magazines, newspapers, trashy romances, and (apparently) porn. Now, it's not that I'm embarrassed or anything; just that it never really crossed my mind to include this with all the rest of my reading material. Anyway, Con outed me on his blog (in a post not called "My Wife Reads Porn") for reading this and wanted me to post my comments on it, so I figured I go one better.

So, Lost Girls is a three volume boxed set of graphic novel/coffee-table-porn, in which Alice (in Wonderland), Dorothy (not in Kansas anymore) and Wendy (without the Lost Boys) each retell the story their sexual awakenings, with plenty of shagging in a wide variety of positions, locations and partners. It's pretty hornsome in spots too.

There's news coming

I'm not saying anything yet because nothing is official, but there's some news coming. Big news. It involves work and the rest of my life. Watch this space...

Book Reviews - Amended

Just in case you're wondering what's happened to my book reviews, I've broken the one big entry into seperate ones for each book I've read. That way, "BOOK REVIEW" will get a massive citation in the label cloud and my favourite authors will also get noted...

Any comments that had been left will stay with the first book review post...

Gamer-scores and Wife-points

I used to play lots of N64 when I was in college. I was pretty good at Mario Kart and Mario 64 and Wetrix and Bust A Move. Quite enjoyed them too. I was never much good at the shoot 'em ups though. I could never get the hang of the way they worked: couldn't find my way around; couldn't move in a straight line, or around a corner, or through a door, as required; couldn't aim; couldn't shoot; certainly couldn't select, prime and fire a weapon under pressure...

Anyway. I don't play anymore. I skipped the whole PS2 thing and it looked like I was going to similarly avoid Wii and x360.

Until Conor got Kororinpa (Wii) and Hexec (x360). Not that I'm proving a threat to anyone's gamer score or anything, but how much fun are these games??? It's a shoddy truth, but these days I can't wait for the baby to go for his nap, so's I can spend an hour or two playing. My biggest daily dilemma is now which game to play: should I spend an hour on each? Or play them on alternate days? What if the baby wakes up early and I miss out?

Apparently, I was getting a lot of wife-points from Conor's mates for letting him play so much. Does my new-found obsession increase these points or nullify them? Do I care? I'm having too much fun!

The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

...and Goldilocks ran off into the woods and was never seen again...
Jack Spratt and Mary Mary are called in to investigate to disappearance of Goldilocks and uncover an unlikely conspiracy involving Quang-Tech, SommeWorld, the Gingerbread Man (is he a cake or a biscuit?), Dorian Gray, Virginia Kreeper and extreme cucumbers.

Euro 2007

How close was that?!
We nearly got null-points.
I wish we had.

What monkey let that tone deaf foundling sing for our country?
She was out of tune and off-key for the whole miserable experience.

At least she didn't make me cringe like the UK entry (or she did, but in a different way). Christ almighty, what was that about?!

The winning song didn't quite capture my imagination like last year's epic Lordi, but you gotta love Serbia's strategy: excellent singing and beauty. The issue was that they couldn't find both in one package, but that wasn't a problem. Enter stage-left, one short-arsed, chubby songstress in a man's suit and runners, with an amazing singing voice and five tall, slender, fabulously attractive women in tailored suits and high-heels, who may or may not be able to sing, but frankly no-one cares. Obvious? Hey, it worked...