Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Jennifer Crusie novels that is...

After finishing karentraviss' The World Before at San Francisco International Airport ("cracking read, Gromit"), I picked up marypcb's copy of Jennifer Crusie's Faking It. After a perfunctory chapter or two on the plane, I left it until I got on the tube home. Suddenly I found I couldn't put it down. A story of conmen, art fakes (not forgeries), dead husbands, dysfunctional families, and true love in closets, it read like a Nora Ephron romcom movie, only with an added dose of what can best be described as "snark". I rather enjoyed it...

Since Monday I have also read Welcome To Temptation, Bet Me, Fast Women, Tell Me Lies and What The Lady Wants - and am about to start Crazy For You. Can I make it seven in seven? And where has marypcb put the rest of them?

Actually I blame tamaranth for all this¹. She's the one who forced that copy of Welcome To Temptation on marypcb, which then got read out to me at various points (I think I was actually convinced to read the books by The Princess Bride quotes).

¹In a good way, of course...

...or just pretends to?

Endemol, the company behind 'Big Brother', is pulling out all the stops for its new Channel 4 production. In it, contestants vie to fly to space. The snag? They will be grounded at a military base, victims of probably the biggest hoax ever attempted on TV.

[...]

For 10 days, the channel will televise the contestants as they undergo intensive training in Russia, before being flown 100km (62 miles)above the Earth into near space. Here they will spend five days orbiting the Earth and conducting experiments. Or so they think.

In reality, the nine - joined by three actors whom they believe to be fellow contestants - will be at a disused military base somewhere in the UK and will never leave the ground. The whole process will be filmed live in an unprecedented television event presented by Johnny Vaughan.

Next: "The Truman Show"?

And does Russia really smell of boiled cabbage? Or am I the only one to find this aspect of the hoax somewhat xenophobic?

Stag in the evening mist on a frosty day.

Richmond Park, London.

November 2005