cellophane

6. Neverwhere, Neil Gaimon (Story about London Below. Vivid, weird, captivating. It kind of reminded me of Nightmare Before Christmas, or at least that's what all the characters looked like in my head. I liked it.)

5. My Own Kind of Freedom, Steven Brust (free e-book. He's a published author, a friend of mine, and I like Firefly, so now I have read my first fanfic novel. It was entertaining.)

4. Dragonfly in Amber, Diana Gabaldon (I'm getting a bit tired of this series, a little too much romance without enough realism, but the girl who loaned it to me will be sad if I refuse the next one. Amusing line though, from a woman who has traveled back in time: "Lying on the floor...I found myself thinking that I had always heretofore assumed that the tendency of eighteenth-century ladies to swoon was due to tight stays; now I rather thought it might be due to the idiocy of eighteenth-century men.")

3.5 The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper (I made it through almost half on my Treo before I gave up. Boring boring boring!)

"I have a bunch of pots and pans to wash."
"Fortunately I don't have that problem, because I don't cook."
"Well I use a lot of pots, because my oven is... say, your oven works, and you don't use it."
"Well, I put things on it."
"You probably wouldn't even notice if I took your range and oven and put them in my house."
"Actually I might not at that."
"You'd just see the space and think, huh, wasn't there something there before?"
"You're probably... no wait, I used my stove just last week, when I made tea!"
"You don't microwave your water?"
"Certainly NOT. That's crazy. I have a whistling tea kettle."
"You use a tea kettle."
"It whistles. And a tea pot. It's part of the tea ritual."
"I still think you wouldn't notice. You'd walk by, feel like something was missing, then you'd shrug it off."
"If I don't get sick or cold, you might be right. That's when I need to cook water."
"Now if I took your microwave or your toaster oven, you'd be in trouble."
"I'd starve."

(note: this isn't entirely true. i use my oven for things sometimes. pizza, for example. and sometimes i cook pasta on my range too... so there.)