Terry Pratchett

Jay read and has some good quotes from Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
He doesn't quote the great bit about the word "community", however.

Using It In a Very Specific Sense That Excluded Him and Everyone He Knew

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett: “Newton Pulsifier had never had a cause in his life. Nor had he, as far as he knew, believed in anything. It had been embarrassing, because he quite wanted to believe in something, since he recognized that belief was the lifebelt that got most people through the choppy waters of Life. He'd have liked to believe in a supreme God, although he'd have preferred a half-hour's chat with Him before committing himself, to clear up one or two points. He'd sat in all sorts of churches, waiting for that single flash of blue light, and it hadn't come. And then he'd tried to become an official Atheist and hadn't got the rock-hard, self-satisfied strength of belief even for that. And every single political party had seemed to him equally dishonest. And he'd given up on ecology when the ecology magazine he'd been subscribing to had shown its readers a plan of a self-sufficient garden, and had drawn the ecological goat tethered within three feet of the ecological beehive. Newt had spent a lot of time at his grandmother's house in the country and thought he knew something about the habits of both goats and bees, and concluded therefore that the magazine was run by a bunch of bib-overalled maniacs. Besides, it used the word "community" too often; Newt had always suspected that people who regularly used the word 'community' were using it in a very specific sense that excluded him and everyone he knew.”

To Read in 2005

Matt Mullenweg posted his end-of year tasks. Right now the only tasks I have are making lists of stuff to do in the new year, one of which is reading the unread books in my personal library. First up (but not necessarily in this order) are the following:

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  • Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (already started)
  • The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
  • Stanley Park, which was the 2003 selection for One Book One Vancouver, and which I picked up at the local library's annual book sale for a couple of bucks.
  • The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which I bought at the end of a date (yeah, I know) and which will go against my effort stop caring about politics in the coming year.
  • Magritte by Jacques Meuris, about the Belgian painter, because I'm all about the René Magritte references.
  • Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation by Chris Turner. Heard about it through <a title='Planet Simpson' Blog and Book Covers" href="http://accordionguy.blogware.com/blog/Geek/ReadingMaterial/_archives/2004/10/21/164090.html">Joey DeVilla, saw the book discounted at 40% off, and since I have a weblog about things in real life that remind me of episodes of The Simpsons, I figured the $20 it cost me was better off in the grocery store's hands and the book better off in mine. Evidently I missed the book tour as it rolled through Vancouver, but the Planet Simpson weblog is regularly updated, so I shouldn't miss too much news about it while I'm waiting to read it. Or, more likely, keep it as a reference book for when The Simpsons Archive doesn't have the quote I'm looking for, which is surprisingly often.
  • See also: my other stack of unread books, which I may or may not get to in the new year, though one of them I recently finished reading, finally.