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If you didn’t get enough ideas for summer reading from our list of science fiction series, take a crack at fantasy instead. Though before anyone starts to quibble over terminology, I’ll note that though “epic fantasy” is sometimes interchangeable with “high fantasy,” my definition here has more to do with scope than genre. These book series are epic in the sense that they’ll take you a while to read, and probably suck you right into the world while you’re doing it. Though rather than being too obvious by singing the praises of Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, here are some other book series to eat away at some of your summer free time.
The Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
It’s been ages since I read these books, and I think it might be time for me to enjoy them again. This is one of the ultimate stories of parallel worlds, and you’ll find that it’s full of philosophical concepts – the nature of existence, and even more obviously, the tension between order and chaos. Oh, and if you’ve got a thing for Tarot cards or Shakespeare, you’ll probably find these particularly enjoyable. There are 10 books that were originally released over a period of 20 years, but in the grand tradition of the omnibus, you can just get the whole kit and kaboodle in one really really big paperback.Though the first book is Nine Princes in Amber, if you can find a copy of it.
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Saturday, May 22, 2010
5 Epic Fantasy Book Series to Read This Summer
"To be or not to be" Shakespeare in the Sookie verse
On page 10 we read ....
“There’s the rub,” Eric said. Somewhere along the line, my Viking honey had read Shakespeare.
Pg 10
The quote was fromShakespeare's Hamlet. "To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub."
Then on the last few pages..
“This is positively Shakespearean,” I said, looking around at the remains and the blood soaking into the ground. Pg 217
“You were right,” Eric said, still in that very slow voice. “This is just like the end of one of Shakespeare’s plays.”
“We’re the people left standing. Yay for us.” Pg 218
And in the play, Hamlet that scene reads like this .....
Horatio says at the end of hamlet amidst the carnage
And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
380 How these things came about. So shall you hear
381 Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
382 Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
383 Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
384 And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
385 Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I
386 Truly deliver.
Good night sweet prince
There is only a few additional Shakespearean reference in the Sookie books:
Club Dead
Eric began to grin. "You offed Lorena?" He had a good grasp of the vernacular, for a very old vampire. It was hard to interpret Bill's expression. "Sookie staked her," he said. "It was a fair kill." "She killed Lorena in a fight?" Eric's grin grew even broader. He was as proud as if he'd heard his firstborn reciting Shakespeare. "Very short fight," I said, not wanting to take any credit that was not due me. If you could term it credit.
Dead and Gone
I was standing out in my backyard hosing down fairy blood and making melodramatic statements all to myself. Next I’d be doing the Hamlet soliloquy that I’d had to memorize in high school.
This afternoon had brought me down hard, to a real bad place.
Friday, May 21, 2010
'Dead in the Family' Sookie Book #10 Recipes: Southern Style Country Steak
4 cube steaks
Lawry's Seasoned Salt
3/4 cup AP flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Canola oil
1/2 of a medium onion, sliced
1 envelope Lipton Golden Onion
1 cup of water
Milk
Sprinkle both sides of cube steaks with seasoned salt. Combine flour with salt and pepper and dredge cube steaks in the flour mixture, pressing the flour into the steaks; set aside. Heat to medium high enough canola oil to evenly cover the bottom of a cast iron skillet. Dredge the cube steaks in the flour once more, pressing the flour in well. Place into the skillet and brown on both sides. Remove and set aside. Add onions and cook until nicely browned. Sprinkle onion soup mix and stir, scraping bottom well. Stir in water, bring to a boil, return steaks to pan, reduce heat to simmer, cover and cook for approximately 30 to 40 minutes, depending on thickness of steaks. When done, remove steaks again, set aside, stir in enough milk to desired consistency, return steaks to pan, and turn to coat well.
I know the' country steak' from the part of Mississippi Charlaine is from is not like Texas Chicken fried steak- so maybe something like this ? Anyone have a better recipe?
Posted at http://mynew30.blogspot.com/
HBO will premiere an exclusive clip from the first episode of True Blood, during 'Lost 'Sunday night on ABC
Dallas has seen it and Wow! - you guys will really want to see this clip.
HBO will premiere an exclusive clip from the first episode of True Blood, Season
3 during Sunday night's Lost finale on ABC.
To see the clip, viewers need to DVR Lost and look out for the True Blood promo. Embedded in the True Blood promo is a special QR code. To access the clip, simply take a picture of the QR code on your smartphone. This will require a QR code reader, here are our preferred apps:
o Inigma - http://www.i-nigma.com/
o NeoReader - http://get.neoreader.com/
Here's a preview of the exclusive clip linked to the code.
An interview with Kristin Bauer
After Ellen by Trish Bendix
On the first two seasons of HBO's True Blood, Kristin Bauer showed up sparingly as Pam, the side kick to vampire mayor Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and co-owner of Fangtasia. Her devil-may-care attitude, witty quips and killer fashion sense had fans hoping they'd get to see more of her amongst the Sookie and Bill, Sam and Tara and other intense storylines.
Last year, it was announced that Kristin would become a series regular on the show, and Truebies rejoiced, as Pam is a huge part of the books the show is based on, and it also happens Pam becomes omnisexual, if not fully lesbian, around age 200.
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Hear the TRUE BLOOD Vol 2 Soundtrack in it's entirety!
What’s on it? New songs from Beck, Lucinda Williams and Elvis Costello, and the Band’s Robbie Robertson; covers by M. Ward and “Bad Things” theme song singer Jace Everett; plus classic tracks from Bob Dylan, 13th Floor Elevators, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Eels, Chuck Prophet, and more.
read onand listen to steaming !
“True Blood” Hitting Theaters midnight June 1st
Loyal fans of “True Blood” can get a bite before the Season 3 premiere.
HBO will host special midnight events for the vampire series at movie theaters 
across the country on June 1.
The night includes a screening of the Season 2 finale, an extended sneak preview of Season 3, and a live Q&A session with cast members and creator Alan Ball.
Tickets to the screenings are free, with VIP passes available through a variety of promotions and contests. The show’s official Facebook page gives fans a chance to win passes by “coming out” as a vampire, shapeshifter, werewolf or (ahem) “fangbanger.”
HBO explained the event as a reward to a passionate fan base that turned “True Blood” into a hit last year.
Anna Paquin’s Sookie Stackhouse, Stephen Moyer’s Bill Compton, and the rest of the Bon Temps gang return to television on June 13.
Charlaine Harris and Muse: Stars Come Out for New Literary E-Zine
Mega-sellers Lee Child, Bernard Cornwell, RJ Ellory, MG Harris and Charlaine Harris contribute to a new e-zine launched by Litopia Writers' Colony
A free e-zine by writers... for writers
(PRWEB) May 21, 2010 -- MUSE, a new quarterly literary e-zine from the pioneering Litopia Writers’ Colony, will launch on Monday, May 24.
Cornwell, RJ Ellory international YA success MG Harris and Charlaine Harris, the first issue makes gripping reading.
Written and produced by members of Litopia, Muse contains author interviews, articles, reviews and short fiction – not to mention a writers’ agony column with the irate (and somewhat batty) Granny Bates, an anonymous Stig-like publishing guru.
Litopia founder, London-based literary agent Peter Cox, said: ‘We’ve always been a pioneering community, from being one of the earliest online writing forums through to the development of our podcasts and our use of social media to engage new members and listeners.
Continues
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Interview with Becca Wilcott author of Truly, Madly,Deadly: The Unofficial True Blood Companion
Becca Wilcott, author of Truly, Madly, Deadly: The Unofficial True Blood Companion
Give us a quick breakdown of True Blood, and a pitch to convince other newbies to become Truebies.
True Blood is set in sleepy, sweaty Bon Temps, Louisiana. It’s a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business, so it’s an interesting mix of political tensions (racism and homophobia still run rampant) and a need to get along with everyone, especially when there’s only one watering hole in town, Merlotte’s Bar & Grill.Alan Ball, the series creator, has said that True Blood is about the terrors of intimacy. I think that’s spot on. Most of life is about such terror, but it’s particularly fitting for this show, one in which the main characters struggle constantly with what they share with the outside world, what they keep hidden, what secrets they’re trying to outrun, and which secrets need to be brought into the light of day. Sounds like typical, heady, Alan Ball fare (he’s the mastermind behind Six Feet Under), but the notable difference is that many of these characters inhabit extraordinary traits. In seasons 1 and 2, we become most acquainted with vampires, shifters, and our heroine Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress.
Vampires feature most heavily in the first two seasons of the series. A Japanese company has manufactured a synthetic blood, which resulted in vampires “coming out of the coffin” now that their needs were being satisfied with Tru:Blood. However, while this synthetic blood nourishes, it doesn’t necessarily satisfy, and there are vampires who refuse to relinquish their true selves simply to mainstream into modern society. Like any good suspense show, there are the Good Vampires and the Bad Vampires. But, of course, it’s more complicated than that. It’s far more about working against a homogenous society that shuts out anything it deems “different” and immoral. To that end, the show has been cited as a strong example of programming that seeks to comment on “real world” problems, the parallels to homophobia and heterosexism particularly apparent.
read on here
Launch for Becca Wilcott's Truly, Madly, Deadly
Details: An alter ego launch party for Truly, Madly, Deadly will be held at Czehoski, 678 Queen Street West, Toronto, on 1-June, 7pm to 10pm. Attendees will be provided with name tags upon arrival and encouraged to write down the name of their alter ego for the evening, role play to follow.
Charlaine Harris and Sookie Stackhouse on the iPad.
More adventures in Dallas's iPad- I did show Charlaine her own web page and the iBook version of "Dead in the Family" on my iPad the other night at dinner.
She thought it was very cool and said it was " a great new toy."
Looks pretty good, huh ?
Club Dead in hardback now available !
Dallas now has a complete set of all 10 Sookie books in hardback and all are autographed !
Remember the 1st 3 books of the series: Dead Until Dark, Living Dead in Dallas and Club Dead WHERE NEVER published in hardback. LDiD came out last year and now CD completes the whole set!
Evan Lysacek: Dancing With Twilight and True Blood!
Hello True Blood casting, get this Olympian into at least a walk on !
What's this I hear about the dance last night being inspired by Twilight?
There were some props involved, but our dress rehearsal was such a disaster. I tried to glue fangs on my teeth but they fell off. They drew a widow's peak on my forehead, but then I started sweating and had black dripping down my face. I was 
So, are you a Twilight fan? Have you seen the movie?
Yeah and I really enjoyed it, but actually I love True Blood. I'm obsessed with True Blood. I think [Anna] was coming at it from more of a Twilight angle and I was coming at it from True Blood. I travel with the True Blood DVDs and I get so hooked. Last year I was doing a show and missed my number because I was watching backstage. They announced me and I wasn't there! I was too enthralled with the show.
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