Sweet honey piglet

I finished The Exorcist again yesterday. It was my third time through the book and I’m still blown away by it. If I could meet one living author I haven’t met yet, it would definitely be William Peter Blatty. There is so much going on in that book, and continuing through The Ninth Configuration (which I’m rereading now) and on into Legion. It’s just unbelievable to me that so many people refer to The Exorcist as “that movie” where the girl pukes on the priest. It’s not even about Regan, really.

I hope my AP kids get that when we read the book next month.

Oh, this wasn’t actually a reread of The Exorcist, since I listened to it on CD, read by Blatty himself. He really got into the demon parts, too. He did much better reading his own work than Toni Morrison did with Beloved.

While on the subject of books, I have to comment on Carrie Jones and the success she’s having with her latest, Need. Of course, I thought the book was awesome when I got to read an ARC. It’s really taken off, though. Lots of people seem to agree with me on it. Too bad they won’t agree with me on how bad rap is … Anyhoo, I took my oldest daughter and her new friend to the Moore branch of the Pioneer Library System today and while they played on a computer with “a really cool keyboard” I looked up Need. The Moore branch has two copies. One was out, the other was on hold, and there was a waiting list for them. If you’re at all interested in paranormal young adult books, you really need to get yourself a copy of this one.

I did not get much writing done this weekend. (A little, but not much.) Yesterday was a failed trip to the medieval fair on the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman. My youngest daughter wasn’t feeling well and it was really windy, so the dirt and grass was blowing around and she wasn’t able to deal with it very long.

Today was a computer battle. I tried to fix the old desktop, which has been crippled with viruses for a long time. I no longer have the Windows XP installation discs, so I had to revert to the Windows ME system that came with it, which is a totally crap operating system. It’s running better, overall, but is already hanging up like it did back when I ran ME when I got the computer. And there are still some lingering issues that won’t allow me to install Norton. And, of course, Microsoft is no longer offering any support for ME. Grrrrrrrrr! When it rains cash maybe I can get a new computer for the wife and kids to use.

Tomorrow my AP kids will wrap up discussion of Beowulf and Grendel. On Tuesday I’m going to show them The Legend of Boggy Creek, then they get to write an essay on unreliable narrators. The Legend of Boggy Creek. That scared the hell out of me as a kid. It’s still a decent movie, except for the damn singing in the middle. Anyway, Grendel, maybe, was a Bigfoot-type creature, so it all ties in. Right?