This essay started life as a collection of notes I made on every Stephen King book a few years back, when I was rereading them all. Then it morphed into an answer to a question on Quora. Which I then reposted on my books blog. Read: Common Themes in the Works of Stephen King on Books Worth Reading.
Here is the original Quora question with all the answers given.
From my review of The Wind Through the Keyhole:
Although it says right on the cover that The Wind Through the Keyhole is a Dark Tower novel, it is really only set in the Dark Tower universe, rather than an integral part of the series. Of course, Dark Tower fans will want to read it and spend a little more time with their favorite characters (very little, as it turns out). But even if you haven’t read any of the books in the series, you will have no trouble following the events in The Wind Through the Keyhole. Its flavor is more reminiscent of King’s young adult fantasy The Eyes of the Dragon than any of his horror novels.
Read the rest at Book Review: The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King – Blogcritics Books.
Here is a piece I co-wrote about the iHRIS Open Source HRIS software project I’ve been working on. It provides some history and context of the project, and it looks ahead to next developments. Read: iHRIS: Where Are We Now? | www.ihris.org.
I taught myself to cook a while ago, mainly by obsessively reading cookbooks and through trial and error. (One of my other blogs, Simply Cooking, documents this process.) One of those lightbulb moments came when I realized that I could make many things I thought I had to buy, and I could make them more cheaply and deliciously.
I think this is the primary thing we’ve lost touch with, due to agressive marketing by food manufacturers: We can cook all of these things for ourselves. People used to do it all the time, we can do it too, and it’s not really that hard. The techniques are mostly simple, and the ingredients are generally few and inexpensive. So here is my top-ten list of foods that you are better off making at home, with links to my recipes:
Certainly, many other foods belong on this list, such as bread and granola, but I don’t have my own recipes for them. I also plan to try making other staples, like mustard and ketchup. One of those other secrets that you learn once you start cooking a lot is that it’s actually fun. It encourages you to try new things, experiment and get creative, on a daily basis. What’s better than that?
Over on my cooking blog, I have posted Some Ideas for Leftovers, which started out life as the answer to a Quora question. Check it out; there may be some useful ideas here.
This is a short post on my cooking blog: How to Improve Your Cooking Skills and Knowledge. It started out life as an answer to a question on Quora. I hope you might find some useful advice there from this self-taught cook.
Over on my cooking blog, I posted A Few Simple Pasta Sauce Recipes that you can make in no time at all. Right now, I am making a fresh tomato sauce with some pesto thrown in. Enjoy.
Image via Wikipedia
I am discovering the weird and wonderful world of Philip K. Dick. Here is my review of the book that spawned Blade Runner: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? on Books Worth Reading.
In brief: What’s most interesting about this novel is its take on the importance of empathy, especially in contrasting the human characters with the non-empathic androids they’re trying to kill. The experience of empathy has become a religious pursuit for most humans, as they use machines to empathically connect with one another and a spiritual leader named Mercer, and as they empathically connect with the animals in their care.This concept of empathy set against such a bleak vision of the future is particularly effective when contrasted with our current disregard for the planet and its rich variety of life while we still have it. We learn to value life only when it’s gone, but even so, we still feel compelled to destroy, to the point where we have to invent something — the androids — that we can feel okay about killing. When Deckard begins feeling empathy for them, he no longer knows who he is.
On my cooking blog, I share A Few Simple Pasta Sauce Recipes at Simply Cooking.
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