Vanderbrew

The current number of pre-orders that Amazon.com has for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Preorders.

The book’s not even out yet and they’ve sold over 1 million copies at just this one (albeit large) retailer.

Absolutely amazing.

You too can watch the number climb

Oh, and yes, we’re one of them

Some day I will read this.

I’m a big fan of audio books. We’ve had an account with Audible for years and I listen to something almost every day - usually in the morning when I’m the only one up and am getting my breakfast together or at night when I’m washing dishes and/or picking up after dinner and the kids are in bed.

I just recently finished listening to the first three books of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series - all read by Roy Dotrice. The fourth book came out around Christmas time and I had it from the library and read it around then. I figured I’d just continue with the series so I got the fourth book (in two parts) from Audible - even though I’d read some bad reviews of the reader and had reservations…

Well, I should have listened to my reservations. This guy doesn’t hold a candle to Roy. It was so bad that I can’t even listen to it and so I switched over to The Dark Tower which I’d left off a while back.

I noticed something very interesting almost immediately. George R. R. Martin has a good story with some great characters, but Stephen King is a really freaking good writer. The words that the chooses and the way that he blends them together are truly amazing and you (well, I do at least) immediately recognize a master at his craft.

Then, I realized that I wasn’t really in the mood for such a dark story. So I switched over to Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

I think that the opening of that story is one of the most fun and interesting openings of books that I’ve read; and I absolutely love the main character’s name - Hiro Protagonist (say it outloud). Man, I get a chuckle over it every time I read it. Granted, Stephenson sometimes has a hard time ending his stories (as evinced by the gross deus ex machina that closed out Cryptonomicon) but I really enjoy Snow Crash and find the ending to be totally legitimate and in fitting with the rest of the story.

So, yeah, nothing earth-shattering, just some bits I’d been thinking about and wanted to share.

Oh, and George Guidall is a really good reader.

I (well, Amber really) picked up the latest George R R Martin book at the library today. It’s on one week checkout. Hmm…685 pages in one week with a baby due anytime. I wonder if I’ll finish it.

I like good food. It’s a taste that I think has changed over the years and it’s only grown with both my advances in the culinary arts and teh fact that I married a woman who’s a wonderful cook. Tonight we had a Green Chile Sausage Souffle with Mexican Rice and Broccoli and Carrots with Lime Dressing.

The rice was ok. For some reason it didn’t cook all the way even though it was cooking for twice as long as the direction said and we added more water as it cooked to keep the moisture up. Amber thinks that maybe it was too hot at the beginning and water boiled off, affecting the rice’s ability to absorb. Who knows, next time I think we’ll do the prep work in the sauce pan on the stove (sauteing the onion, garlic and rice in oil) then combine the rest of the ingredients and water in the rice cooker.

The broccoli and carrots were pretty good. It was an interesting dressing that included dark sesame oil, soy sauce, honey and lime juice. The veggies were boiled for 5 min and then cooled quickly in a colander before serving. The taste wasn’t perfect for the rest of the meal but it went pretty well.

The souffle was awesome. The recipe caught my eye because I made Southwestern Green Chile Poultry sausage last weekend with a friend and that was a key ingredient. Preparation involved roasting 8 peppers and pealing the skin off, slitting them and stuffing with a slice of monterey jack cheese. I’d never roasted peppers myself before and I’d always been a little afraid of the process. Last weekend however, we had to roast peppers for the sausage and my friend Matthew did it under the broiler and it went flawlessly so I lost my fear of the process. On top of the peppers was scattered the cooked sausage and we spooned the egg, milk, flour, spice mix over the top of that and baked it. Man, it was good. Definitely a recipe that we’ll have to make again.

Right now, I’ve got some cracked wheat in our smaller crockpot cooking for breakfast in the morning and some pinto beans soaking in the big crockpot. I’ll cook the pintos tomorrow and maybe make refried beans on Tuesday. We finally got the slow cooker cookbook that we ordered almost a month ago and both Amber and I are very glad of that. If anyone’s in the market for a slow cooker cookbook, I definitely recommend Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook. We “test drove” it from the library for a few weeks and it’s definitely a keeper.

If you’re a sausage lover, I highly recommend Bruce Aidells’ Complete Sausage Book. The first half of the book is how to make sausage and a bunch of different types to make. The second half of the book is all sorts of recipes to cook with sausage. You don’t have to make your own sausage to enjoy the book, but I’m pretty sure it helps. Last weekend I made French Toast Stuffed with Chicken and Apple Sausage (with Sauteed Apple Slices on top) and it was absolutely fantastic.

It has arrived. I have started it.

Man I wish that increasing reading time didn’t mean a commensurate decrease in sleep time.

So the new Takeshi Kovacs came out on September 27. I figured I’d pre-order it from Amazon and save a few bucks cause I can get it for 34% off. Oh, and hey, free Super Saver Shipping, sweet!

Or so I thought. Here it is, 4 days after the release date and as far as I can tell, the order still hasn’t shipped…

Thanks to Charlie for telling me about LibraryThing. It’s a new hosted web application that let’s you track what books you own and view some really interesting “zeitgeist” data about how you relate to other users. I’ve used the service to drop in a Currently Reading listing on the right.

Perhaps the most interesting bit about LibraryThing is the ability to tag books. You simply associate a text string with a book and there you are. Any text string (shorter than 30 characters). Then you can query for the text string, see how (if?) others have used the text string and generally just get a different view of your books.

I’m just randomly putting in books from our library that I think are interesting or want to see if anyone else has them. Amber’s entering all the books she’s read over the last few years (and yes, she keeps a list). So if you’re a reader and you’ve got a library or you just want to see how your usage stacks up against others out there, check it out.