As you can tell, I went back to the old template. There are still some
things that I am not completely satisfied on this template. However, I
could not get several of the things that I really like on this one to
work well on the others I actually tried out. I picked up several from
blogskins.com that I think are really good, but they are going to take
some real work to get where I want them, and I didn't feel up to that at
the moment.

Keep an eye out. I'll probably give them a try in the not too distant
future, just not for a while.

If you browse down the "Reading" portion of the sidebar, you will notice
that is has changed.

I finished The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. Excellent book. It is
the book that the movie Gettysburg is based on. As usual, I thought the
book was better than the movie. However, that is not to take anything
away from the movie. I think the movie is the best representation
possible, within the confines of the film format, of the book.

Before I read The Killer Angels, I read Gods and Generals. Another
excellent book. Written by Jeff Shaara. You will notice a similarity in
the two author's names. Michael was Jeff's father. Michael wrote The
Killer Angels in 1974. His book was considered to be groundbreaking in
historical fiction. The main reason is that, instead of creating
fictional characters and putting them in historical situations, he stuck
with real people in real situations, and very often used things that
they are documented to have said at the time. He just filled in a few
details with fiction around what is known, historically, using those
people. Michael died in 1988. His son, Jeff, as a tribute to his father,
decided to write a book that followed his father's style. That book,
Gods and Generals, acts as a prelude to The Killer Angels. It highlights
Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, but it, also, follows the main characters
of The Killer Angels from before the Civil War until shortly before The
Killer Angels starts.

Both are exellent books, but I found that I enjoyed Gods and Generals,
as a book , more than The Killer Angels. Which I found a bit odd,
because I enjoyed the movie Gettysburg much more than the movie Gods and
Generals. Both movies are excellent renditions of their respective books.

It's like something I saw recently. I was watching the Special Features
for the film "Field of Dreams". There was an inereview with W.P.
Kinsella, the author of the book that the movie was based on. He went on
to say that the film is quite a bit different than the book that he
wrote. But then, he said that you can't expect the film to be like the
book. Film and books are two completely different formats for
communicating that each have different strengths and weaknesses. There
are thigns that are very easy to do in a novel that are almost
impossible to do in a film, and vice versa there are things that you can
do in a 5 second film shot that take many pages to explain in a book.
With that in mind, he said that he was real pleased with the film
rendition of his book. I was glad to hear that as the film is one of my
favorites.

Which brings me to the latest book that I am reading, Shoeless Joe by
W.P. Kinsella. The book that the film "Field of Dreams" is based on. It
is quite good, so far, and, as the author stated in the interview I saw,
quite different than the movie. One thing remains constant though
between the two, on the surface, both stories are about baseball, but
that's not what they are about at all. They are both much deeper than that.