wiseheart | Party time ahead!

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Party time ahead!

Well, yes, dear folks, it's this time of the year again. The big, one-week virtual party from today to the 9th of October starts here. Come on in, be welcome, make yourself comfortable, and post a comment. May we have many collapsed threads again!

Last year we had 559 comments on 4 pages, which is an impressive record to break. But I have an excellent apple pie in the oven, and offer a virtual slice to every party guest.

Let's party!

Addition: someone asked for the apple pie recipe. Here it is, behind the cut.

400 gr wheat flour
200 gr butter or margarine
200 gr sugar
1/10 litre sour cream
1 pinch of salt
ground peel of 1/lemon
2 gr baking soda

For the filling:
2 kg apples
sugar,cinnamon, cardamom, vanilla and ground lemon peel as you like

One eggyolk for painting the top.

How to make it?
1) Make a dough from abovementioned ingredients.
2) Cut it in two equal pieces. Roll out one piece, lay it into a baking tin (baking paper under it is helpful).
3) Spread some dried bread crubms all over it.
4) Peel and plane (slice???) the apples, press out the juice with your hands (it shouldn't be too dry, though) and mix them with the spices.
5) Spread the apples over the dough.
6) Roll out the other half of the dough. Cover the apples with it.
7) Paint the top with eggyolk and bake it in a pre-heated oven, on 200°C for twenty minutes.
8) Cut it when it's cooled down.

Sorry, but I had to use the metric system. My brain doesn't work in cups and pounds and that stuff. I hope you can still figure out how much you need from the ingredients.

Addition: I also wish to gift upon my dear party guests a birthday-present, Hobbit-style: Chapter 03 - Puer Natus Est Nobis of my Cadfael fic "Sparrows" has just been posted to

hiddenrealms and to FF.Net. Enjoy!

And the end results are: 735 comments on 6 pages! It's more than I could have dreamed of, and I thank you - all of you - who contributed to this record. It will be a hard one to break next year indeed, but I hope you'll be back. :)

Thanks again, I had a fantastic time and met great new people - it was fun!

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Favourite books? Hmmm.... I used to read an awful lot of books, back when I was young. Then I had kids, and later on, stuff happened. Nowadays most of my reading is on the internet.

But thinking back, there were some books which I still enjoy today. To mention a few (in no particular order):

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Orson Scott Card: Ender's Strategy

Frank Herbert: Dune

Patricia Nell Warren: The Frontrunner

John Irving: The World according to Garp

Mary Renault: The King Must Die

T H White: The Once and Future King

+ who-dunnits, tonnes tonnes of those!!! Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, Dick Francis, just to mention a few of my fav authors.

And of course many, many books in my own language....

I was going to claim to have discounted The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the 'being to obvious' count, but then I did go for To Kill a Mockingbird so maybe I will just say it hurts to much to remember he died far too young and will never write me any more books. Yes, I believe my favourite authors write books for me; who else could they possibly be doing it for? In the same vein, I think that when they stop (for silly reasons like death or loosing their minds to Alzheimer's) they are doing to spite me. It really isn't very nice of them, is it?

Also: Oh, a fellow Dorothy Sayers fan! Fantastic! :-)

LOVED those Peter Wimsey stories!! *g*

I guess The Hitchhiker's Guide is rather obvious, but it was so original - wonderful wordplay and the most bizarre ideas presented in an absolute deadpan manner.

Still, my list was limited to English books; I could have mentioned other books I loved as much - or more! - only none of you would have heard of them. *g*

>>Yes, I believe my favourite authors write books for me<<

Oh yes! That's the feeling one gets when the story is just... perfect. Communication straight from the author's mind to the reader's heart. :-)

I am mostly kicking myself for not getting in there first with the Douglas Adams worship! They really are delightful books, so witty and original. Blowing up the Earth right at the start -- now that is different! I remember first realizing, about half-way through the second book I think, that Adams was actually keeping track of his own tale and not just telling totally disjointed stories, very good and quotable though they may be. It shocked and impressed me that he could write something that was so funny all the way through, yet still tied together. Have you read Last Chance to See? It is very funny in true Adams style, but also quite horrific with the stories of animal extinction.

What is your native language if you don't mind my asking? (I would never have guessed from your English that it wasn't your first language.)

Wonderful books. I really must reread them soon. And amazing how the books, the tv show and the radio show are all different but so good in their own ways. Also, the Dirk Gentry books are so much fun.
I read Last Chance To See ages ago, but had mostly forgotten about it - I read a friend's copy and so have never reread it.
Have you read the recent HHG book? I haven't but was wondering if it is any good (if anyone knows)?

No, I haven't read it and don't exactly intend too. I am afraid Eoin Colfer put me right off when I read him saying he hadn't read (and didn't want to read) the bits of unpublished H2G2 that Adams left behind when he died. On the other hand I have really enjoyed the Artemis Fowler books I have read by Colfer, so he isn't a bad author.

That sounds like an a bad attitude for him to have. I've not read it in part because I'm not sure that anyone could write in that series well. :(

I would love another H2G2 book, but I fear with anybody but Adams writing it I would be disappointed and I think reading an 'OK' book in that series would be worse than not reading any more H2G2 books at all.

I understand that attitude, but personally with series if someone new is writing I generally find myself able to think of the new book(s) as fanfic for the series unless I decide I want to count them as a real part of the series.

For books I really, really like (and consider good literature) I am very wary of reading fan fiction. Short take-out pieces or stories set in the same universe, I am more inclined to give a chance, but a novel length work with the main characters would have to come very highly recommended for me to even try it. I suppose the fact that I came to fan fiction in the Harry Potter fandom, where there is an awful lot of very juvenile (in the bad sense of the word) works has formed my idea of what the majority of fan fiction is like.

A great deal of fanfic, in all fandoms, is unfortunately rubbish. But there are always fantastic gems, and some of them are novel-length, indeed. I for my part prefer very long stories, because it means that I can enjoy them longer. Of course, it often means that I have to abandon the story after a chapter or two (although I'm often too stubborn for my own good), but that's what the Back button is for, right?

Alas, I also tend to *write* ungodly long stories - which may be the reason why so very few brave and desperate people read them. ;)

I agree about long stories - it makes me so happy to find a good long story in any of my fandoms, especially if it is complete. There are so many more good short stories, I find. Possibly because it seems that fandom rewards are higher for short stories.

You write very good stories - which I will catch up reading (for the fandoms I know) at some point.

Re: Fanfic

wiseheart.livejournal.com - 2010-10-05 20:48 (UTC) - Expand

I am an instant gratification junky! I like things short, partly because otherwise I have to stop myself from reading it at all because I am very bad at stopping part-way through. There is also the fact that while I do work at my computer most of the day, I find it hard to read longer texts on the screen. If I am reading research papers for work I will print them out; somehow I don't feel justified to do that with fanfic.

I understand that - I first got into fandom in the Lord of the Rings fandom soon after the second film came out - loads of dreck but also some wonderful stories. At the time, I started out on fanfiction.net which at that point didn't really have much in the way of recs, so I learnt to just jump in and try reading and quit if it was a story that I didn't want to read - of course, it helped that it was while I was an undergrad, so I had loads of free time.
I find that Sturgeon's Law (in the general version) applies to fanfiction as much as to any other fiction.

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LOVE Sayers!

Yay! Another fan. *g*

"Placetne, magistra?" *happy sigh*

Oh yes!!! And it was just right for them, in that situation - who else would you have speak latin in a situation like that and not look ridiculous?

They were both so determined to protect the other's... dignity? honour? - not sure of the right word here - that at times, one worried they wouldn't be able to make it past the stalemate and move forward. Over-thinking all the time.

I took the liberty of checking out your profile and realized you might in fact be familiar with one of my favourite books: Röde Orm. To this very day, it's one of the funniest reads and wildest tales I've read (and I still re-read it every few years). *g*

Back when I was in the 'gymnasium', the math teacher would read us the chapter about the Julegilde i Jelling as a special treat. He was as dry as they come, but this story brought out a spark in him.

I certainly know of Röde Orm though I have never read it. It is one of those books I keep thinking I will read, one day. That day has still not come, and since I seem to have less and less time to read I am not sure it will unless I give the book higher priority. With your recommendation I think I should.

Well, I always liked "boy's books" best and this is a prime example, full of stubborn, not overly intelligent, vikings, who get themselves into heaps of trouble. It's very, very funny.

Re your earlier question:

Jeg er dansk - vi er naboer! *g*

I would pretty much read anything I could get my hands on when I was young, but looking back I can see that a lot of it was "boy's books". For example I read all of the C.S. Forrester Hornblower and Alexander Kent Bolitho books that my two brothers got (as well as the Gunilla Bergström Kulla-Gulla and Anne of Green Gables (and kindred) by L.M. Montgomery that my sister and I got). Since you are a fellow Scandinavian, did you ever come across Leif Hamre? He wrote "boy's books" about flying, that I really loved when I was young. I found some in a second hand bookshop a few years ago, and they are still good.

The only Danish book I am sure I have read is Fröken Smillas känsla för snö and I am afraid I read that in Swedish. There was also a novel that I read which was very good about the escape of the Danish Jews in WWII, but I can't remember the author now.

Hej granne! Fast jag bor i London, nuförtiden...

>>I would pretty much read anything I could get my hands on when I was young<<

lol - and if there was nothing else, then the fact box on the corn flakes box, right?

Loved Hornblower, the poor awkward sod, and Leif Hamre rings a faint bell... hmmm...

***

There are so many wonderful Swedish crime writers! A while back, I realized I'd spent most of a year reading almost only Swedish authors. *g*

then the fact box on the corn flakes box, right?
What else was it for? ;-) However, my Mum did a pretty good job of making sure there were other things to read, though. After all, the corn flakes box gets a bit boring after awhile since we didn't finish it very quickly! I am still rather disappointed in the British milk packages that don't have any text boxes on them: it is an awful waste of space that could hold words for me to read!

My favourite thing about Hornblower was that he got sea sick, just like me. It made him feel like a real person.

Fröken Smillas känsla för snö - I saw the movie of that, with German dubbing. Liked it a lot, although I don't know how much it had to do with the book.

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