Leif
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Post by Leif on Jan 15, 2014 7:35:07 GMT -8
I just last night finished a book called Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston.
Hank is a good guy, but in a down and out sort of way. After a freak injury on the field in high school ruined his chances to play professional ball, he bounced around a bit and wound up tending bar in New York. Despite being an alcoholic, he's the sort of guy to float his friends a loan and not hassle them about it, or do little favors like helping someone move or cat sit while they go out of town.
Things take a turn for the worse when a couple of Russians in track suits beat him badly at the bar one night. Due to injuries sustained, Hank is forced to go cold turkey for awhile, and finds out the hard way that a lot of bad people believe Hank has something they want. Soon enough he's on the run from the Russian mob, a sadistic Chinese guy, a scary Samoan, crooked cops, and a pair of cowboys dressed in black. Can he find what they want and turn it over in before it's too late to go back to his normal life? Can he find what they want without getting himself killed in the process? What's going to happen to the cat?
So you ever watch a movie that's non-stop action, start to finish? Yeah, I really haven't either. This book is pretty much the closest thing I've experience to that though. Cover to cover chases, fights, shoot outs, etc. It maintains a very tense atmosphere throughout, and as a result, I found it very hard to put down. There's enough backstory to see how Hank got where he is, but moments of introspection (and the occasional calls to his mom) are spaced out such that there's rarely a break in the action. A back cover blurb describes it as "brutal, visceral, and intense" which is very true. The occasional reflections give it a bit of a noir vibe, but I wouldn't say it's noir, there's not quite the cleverness for that. I found this book to be very entertaining, and give it 4/5.
I would not recommend it to people that don't like violence or foul language. There is an instance of torture, as well as some violence directed at a cat. If that's a deal breaker for you, I'll give you a small spoiler. The cat makes it through OK.
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Furare
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Post by Furare on Jan 15, 2014 13:42:37 GMT -8
Action movies are too talky - read this book instead?
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Jan 15, 2014 13:47:42 GMT -8
Possibly!
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Post by firebolt153 on Jan 15, 2014 21:12:29 GMT -8
Man, Leif is always posting thoughtful, well-written reviews of books that are kind of intellectual and stuff and I'm over here going "hey I just blew through an AWESOME trilogy that's about zombies and it's YA!" and really reconsidering if I ever grew up past the age of 17 :-p
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Jan 16, 2014 6:54:16 GMT -8
Man, Leif is always posting thoughtful, well-written reviews of books that are kind of intellectual and stuff and I'm over here going "hey I just blew through an AWESOME trilogy that's about zombies and it's YA!" and really reconsidering if I ever grew up past the age of 17 :-p Well, "Caught Stealing" was by no means intellectual. And honestly, I feel like most of what I read is genre fiction, but I've branched out some to mystery and other things. I should have a non fiction review or two coming for those folks here soon. I just need to finish "The Inheritor's Powder" and need to write up the George Washington spy book I just read.
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Post by firebolt153 on Jan 16, 2014 10:25:26 GMT -8
You make it sound so smart though!
The Washington book looks pretty interesting, I was skimming it at work yesterday.
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Jan 16, 2014 13:50:39 GMT -8
You make it sound so smart though! The Washington book looks pretty interesting, I was skimming it at work yesterday. It was interesting! One of the books I got for Christmas was George Washington's Secret Six. Contrary to the suggestion of the lady behind the counter of the Wing Shack up the road, it is not about any illegitimate children Washington may have had. Rather, it is about the Culper Ring, a group of 5 men and 1 woman who spied on the British during the Revolutionary War. After Nathan Hale was captured and hanged by the British, Washington realized he needed a better method of obtaining information from the recently lost city of New York. He recruited a promising young officer, Tallmadge, to set it up. Drawing from childhood friends and acquaintances on Long Island, he begin to cobble together the Culper ring. Chiefly, the Culper Ring operated in New York with the eventual goal of recapturing the city from the British. They'd spy in the city to learn troop counts, ships in port, some idea of supply levels, and other information of import to the Revolution. The letters would be encoded and ferried out to Long Island and then across the sound into Revolutionary controlled Connecticut. What I found interesting about the book was primarily that it was a story I didn't know existed. Spying during the war was never much mentioned in my history classes. Apparently the members of the ring were known to very few people, some kept secret from Washington and even Tallmadge, nominally the officer in charge. Some of the members' identities weren't learned until the 20th century, and one, the woman, is still unknown. There is a pretty colorful cast of characters, and you get some idea about each. It includes shopkeepers, farmers, innkeepers and even the urbane British spy John Andre. There's some more info that I had never heard about Benedict Arnold, outlining some circumstances for why he might have tried to surrender West Point beyond just "yellow traitor." The big caveat with this is that this is that other than what I learned in school and occasional trivia facts, like the Turtle, so it's possible more of this is known and less interesting to Revolutionary War buffs. It's probably a better book for an entry level read on this than someone who is a serious buff. That suited me fine. As a history book it's probably lacking. There's not footnoting and it includes several "conversations" that are imagined. Rather, they're sort of dramatic re-enactments where words would put to scenes where we have no real way of knowing what was said or how. The scene probably occurred, but what was said and all is supposition. On the whole, it kept my interest and informed me about a topic where I'd previously known nothing. Some wiki-surfing seems to indicate the info is told straight, so that's good.
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Post by AhoyLindsay on Jan 16, 2014 13:59:28 GMT -8
I love major John Andre. He's my favorite historical figure. That sounds like a great book!
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Jan 21, 2014 10:04:54 GMT -8
So my 2nd non-fiction last week was somewhat less exciting pick. Which was sad, as the topic seems interesting. The book was 'The Inheritor's Powder: A Story of Arsenic, Murder, and the New Forensic Science.' As you can tell from the subtitle there it's really sort of 3 aspects all tied together in one book. One is the poisoning and subsequent trial of George Bodle. The second is a history of arsenic and it's perception in the time period. The last is really more forensic toxicology and talks about evidence standards and testing for arsenic leading up to and beyond early 19th century England. There's also some info about how trials worked back then.
All of these, to me, are potentially interesting topics. The different aspects were all interwoven in a way that worked somewhat intermittently. It pretty much jumps in discussing public outcry over a Bulwer-Litton novel called Lucretia, which was vilified as a "poisoners handbook." And then we're off to the circumstances surrounding the murder of George Bodle and some discussion on the difficulty at the time of diagnosing arsenic poison, as the symptoms are/were similar to a particularly virulent strain of cholera. The initial diagnosis was an irritant poison. The next chapter talks about early attempts in toxicology to categorize poisons. To me, this is a digression that works. Likewise a digression talking about the difference in that time period between an apothecary, doctor, and surgeon and why it was significant.
Later, we meet James Marsh, an assistant to Michael Faraday, who is to provide a medical opinion and chemical analysis for the trial. We learn he was primarily employed at the Woolwich Arsenal, which was founded by Henry Somethingorother in 15whatever on the bank of the Thames, and was described as the a fine example of architecture, but by this time period was considered a bit blocky, and had elegant houses lining the its rabbit-laden green. Marsh was really a clever guy, winning some prize for developing a portable electromagnetic field tester as well as a new cannon firing pin that greatly reduced misfires, and that Faraday justified his pay at X£ Ys yearly because he did all sorts of jobs. Incidentally, he won the prize over some guy who invented a better poppy juicer but took second to some guy who invented a signalling kite for ships stranded at sea. It's just a big whack of info that is largely irrelevant. There are number of digressions like this that go from being interesting into just infodump about tangentially related things. I mean, yeah, it's good to meet Marsh, know that he's clever, but I don't need a description of the difficult of shipboard cannon firing to appreciate that. "By this time he'd already been recognized for inventing a portable electromagnetic thingy and a new firing pin for shipboard cannons" is sufficient. This stuff isn't just a paragraph here or there but multiple pages of stuff that is just stuff.
Ultimately, I feel the central story is interesting, as are the facts regarding arsenic and the way testing for it was improved upon. Unfortunately, the book can't get out of it's own way, indulging in a number of little side trips and tangents that detract from the interesting story and mire the reader in irrelevancies.
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Jan 23, 2014 7:22:38 GMT -8
I just yesterday finished Devil's Whisper by Miyuka Miyabe, who I understand is one of the most famous Japanese mystery authors.
3 young women have committed suicide. One leapt off a building, one jumped in front of a subway, and the last ran into traffic. Is there a connection? This is left to our hero Mamoru to figure. Mamoru's uncle happened to have hit the last one in his taxi and is being held by police as a result. The police are disinclined to let his uncle go, so Mamoru is left to try and unravel why this young lady ran into traffic.
So basically, I went into this blind after being told this guy wrote good mystery books. The prologue pretty much hooked me. It was really good! As the book went on, I got somewhat disappointed with it. The murder method was shaping up to be obvious (and a bit cliche), there wasn't really much chance of guessing who the killer was. It was more a thriller that wasn't quite living up to the early quality that'd so enthralled me. And then late in the book, there was a shift in things and man, it just blew me away. I wouldn't call it a twist, because it wasn't. On the whole, this review wound up being a whole lot more positive than it would have otherwise. I'm going like 4.5 stars, if that that's an option.
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Feb 13, 2014 9:12:25 GMT -8
Catching up on ones I haven't reviewed, I read Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life by Roald Dahl. It's a series of stories set in the English countryside. Follow along with the cast of characters as they deal with rats, dog races, poach pheasants, and deal in antique furniture.
So, I thought I'd have another go at Dahl. My Uncle Oswald didn't blow me away, but it was enjoyable enough. There's some discussion that in large part comedy comes from the betrayal of expectations. A man walks into a bar and says ouch. And so on. It's worth noting however, that while that betrayal of expectations may be the source of humor, it is not in and of itself sufficient to make something funny. Which sort of is like 7/8ths of the stories in this book. One I actually found funny. The rest, not so much. The last story about pheasant poaching is like a solid story and fairly comedic. The rest of the book is basically 1 star.
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Feb 13, 2014 10:56:35 GMT -8
I could swear I read something else in here that I'm not recalling, but the review I really wanted to write is for The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly.
David is a boy of 12 who is having a rough time of it. His mother has died and his father remarried. He doesn't get along with his step mother. Thanks to the War, he doesn't get at much time and attention from his father as he wants. All David seems to enjoy are stories. One night, David thinks he hears his mother's voice from the garden and slips out to investigate. In the middle of The Blitz. Seeing lights in the sky he seeks refuge and finds himself thrust into a strange fairy tale world engaged in a war of its own. David bounces from adventure to adventure in twisted versions of stories like Red Riding Hood and Snow White, all while seeking his mother and trying to learn the secret of the realm and it's odd crooked man.
I really enjoyed this book. Like really enjoyed it. It held my interest, and in fact I tore through it in nigh record time. There was some excitement, some mystery, some comedy, and a bit of everything really. SO yeah, I'd recommend this book. I'm going 5 stars.
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Post by AhoyLindsay on Feb 13, 2014 22:22:20 GMT -8
^That's a great book! It made me cry in the library, but it also has a lot of hilarious moments, and it's both clever and deep.
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Feb 14, 2014 7:08:24 GMT -8
Agreed!
I'm not going to say it made me cry. I will say I'm glad I wasn't reading it on the train or something. >.>
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Post by firebolt153 on Feb 27, 2014 21:16:25 GMT -8
Has anyone read High Rise by JG Ballard? I heard it's going to be a movie and the concept sounds interesting enough, but I don't know if I want to actually read it.
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Feb 28, 2014 14:11:52 GMT -8
I do not know this one. What I do know is that people should drop what they are reading and go read At The Mouth of the River of Bees by Kij Johnson. It's a collection of short stories that is super good. Many are very short. Many are also very award winning. There are like 3-4 nebula award winning works as well as a Theodore Sturgeon award winning thing in here. 1 is a novella. The rest are somewhere in between. Nominally, it's probably fantasy, but you won't find any swords (and very little sorcery) between the pages. Many of the stories have animals in them. Foxes, cats, monkeys, and of course, one featuring bees. On the whole though, while they have cats and bees and dogs, the stories are more about people. What struck me most is that they're all pretty different stories. Topically, tonally, even formatting. Each felt like unwrapping a present. You didn't quite know what might be inside or how it would make you feel. I finished some feeling heartbroken or very uncomfortable or delighted or hopeful or even laughing. Would very much recommend this book. 5 Bees. Several are available online. Of that list, I would particularly recommend The Cat Who Walked A Thousand Miles (which is the adventure of a cat, and utterly charming) as well as 26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss (which is about monkeys in a magic show, sort of). Ponies is a good story, but moderately disturbing. Spar is a much debated story and more than moderately disturbing. The Man Who Bridged the Mist is award winning and deservedly so, I think. From the book, I'd like to give an additional shout out to The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change, which is a story interspersed with stories dogs tell as well as some narrative commentary that really makes me think about pets in general. And people.
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Mar 5, 2014 7:50:58 GMT -8
Since I totally hijacked Firebolt's question, I read a time travel book for her. Sort of. Well, I read one at any rate. Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick. I got a recommendation for his Iron Dragon's Daughter as well as Stations of the Tide. Both were checked out. Dragons of Babel looked maybe interesting, but I accidentally grabbed Bones of the Earth from the shelf instead. A quick look at the inside flap, and I took it home.
Dr. Leyster is a paleontologist working for the Smithsonian. He's writing up and researching the find of a lifetime. His world quickly turns upside down when a man named Griffin shows up and offers him a different opportunity of a lifetime. Reluctant though he is to spend any time away from his current job and find, his scientific curiosity is piqued by what Griffin has with him, namely a stegosaurus head in a cooler. Not skull, head.
Soon he and a gang of enthusiastic paleontologists are off to the Mesozoic to study dinosaurs. The only restriction is that they avoid paradox, which, for the purposes of this novel, means avoiding altering recorded history. Any such action, Griffin warns us, will result in losing time travel completely. If you want more excitement than time travelling and dinosaurs, there appears to be a threat from an extreme group of Young Earth Creationists sorts who are against time travel entirely.
Join Dr. Leyster as he wrestles with paleontological quandaries, professional competition with "dino girl" Gertrude Salley, and the question of how we got time travel, and if we have it why is it being used for paleontology.
I found this book to be a pretty quick read. There's lots of dinosaurs, and some time travel and paradox stuff. It was fun, in part because I'm a huge dino dork. The time travel was sufficiently interesting. The biggest problems I had overall stemmed from the book's length. I would have enjoyed more development of the relationship between Drs. Leyster and Salley, also perhaps Griffin and The Old Man (the shadowy head of the time travel department). Some additional development of the threat to time travel, perhaps as a bit of a mystery, would have improved the book as well. Mostly, I enjoyed it, but felt it didn't live up to it's potential and left me a little unsatisfied. The author says the descriptions of dinos are up to our latest (as of 2002) research, and basically that appears to be correct, at least for the things we can study. The stuff we can't, I feel, gets a little off track. Read this book if you want to spend at least 1 afternoon googling different dinosaurs. As a time travel book, there's some of the time travel shenanigans that make those fun. I'd probably give it 3 stars overall. Maybe 3.5.
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Post by firebolt153 on Mar 5, 2014 22:12:29 GMT -8
Mm, dinosaurs. Do they travel to different periods or just one?
I maintain that my favorite time travel book is Timeline by Michael Crichton (if you've only seen the movie, for the love of god don't base your impression of it on that travesty ugh), followed by Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
I've finally been able to get anther copy of Vlad: The Last Confession (I'd borrowed it from another library in the state and had to return it before I was done) so I'm almost done with that. My library book pile is back up in the double digits so I should hopefully have some good ones to settle into soon.
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Mar 6, 2014 6:48:32 GMT -8
There's a few different dino periods visited, but the primary focus on that direction is the Maastrictian age, which apparently is the late Cenozoic right before the big K-T extinction event.
I haven't read that Crichton book, interesting.
I'm curious as to what you think about Vlad. Also Handmaid's Tale!
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Post by AhoyLindsay on Mar 6, 2014 7:24:26 GMT -8
For more great time travel, check out Connie Willis. I've only read To Say Nothing of the Dog and Doomsday Book, but they were both awesome (the former is more of a comedy while the latter is darker and more gripping). In fact, I think Doomsday Book could do with a review.
In the near future, the Oxford University history department has gotten an upgrade. Historians are a little more hands-on with their research thanks to the invention of time travel. Student Kivrin will be the first historian to go to the middle ages, where she plans to study daily life in the era she is most passionate about. She and her mentor, Professor Dunworthy, have planned the trip to the smallest details, inoculating Kivrin against 14th century diseases and briefing her on language and customs. What could go wrong? The story follows two parallel disease outbreaks. In the 1300's, Kivrin has accidentally arrived 20 years later than intended, placing her squarely in the path of the Black Plague (a 'twist' that is heavily foreshadowed enough to surprise no one other than the characters themselves, but that's okay). Meanwhile, in modern Oxford, a mysterious flu virus has led to a town-wide quarantine. The medieval timeline features a mysterious priest, two small children, and a family with far too many secrets, while the future timeline follows Professor Dunworthy and his colleagues as they cope with the sudden threat of sickness and the realization that Kivrin may be in danger.
This book is awesome. I read it twice despite it being a solid 800 pages (it's a commitment, but a good investment if you have the time). Connie Willis really did her research regarding the medieval era, but the book is overall very character-focused despite being an adventure. The people feel extremely authentic and I found myself attached to many of them, which was emotionally problematic given the whole 'fatal disease' plot point, but still worth it. Anyway, pick this book up if you get a chance-it's densely plotted without being boring, and it's gripping the whole way through. Doomsday Book won a Hugo for a reason.
ETA: Oh, if you are squeamish, you might want to try To Say Nothing of the Dog instead, as the descriptions in some parts can get a little graphic. 'Cause you know... Black Death.
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Mar 6, 2014 8:15:17 GMT -8
I've read good things about To Say Nothing of the Dog. I might have to check out Willis there, both of those are in at the library too.
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Post by firebolt153 on Mar 6, 2014 9:59:06 GMT -8
I thought The Handmaid's Tale was interesting. I agreed with your assessment thought that even though it was short, it took me awhile to read. I was probably all set to give it 4/5 until the ending. It just seemed so abrupt and…taking the easy way out, I suppose? I almost didn't read the last chunk of it because I thought it was author notes or something. I would have been happy with the ending if it had stopped there.
I think the 2 month gap in not reading Vlad kinda stole my momentum in it cause now I'm just waiting for him to die and find out what *really* happened. I have to admit though, mid 1400s history in that part of Europe isn't my strong suit, so putting it into real historical context is a bit difficult for me.
Unsurprisingly, I can't get ahold of High Rise anywhere in the state. It looks like there are legit three copies according to the interlibrary loan system, and they're all unavailable for me to put a hold on them. The librarian at my library just told me to keep trying.
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Post by firebolt153 on Mar 6, 2014 15:11:51 GMT -8
I am filled with a mighty need to perform this. And I am no Shakespearean actor. Or actor at all, really.
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Mar 7, 2014 6:45:42 GMT -8
I wonder if "Kessel Run in 12 parsecs" makes any more sense in Shakespearean English.
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Post by firebolt153 on Mar 7, 2014 8:34:19 GMT -8
"'Tis but the ship that hath the Kessel run Accomplish'd in twelve parsecs, nothing more."
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Mar 7, 2014 8:43:18 GMT -8
Not really then. Such a bad line.
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Post by firebolt153 on Mar 7, 2014 10:13:32 GMT -8
I skipped ahead (I'm at the "help me Obi-Wan Kenobi" part") and found this gem:
HAN: […]The day when Jabba taketh my dear ship Shall be the day you find me a grave man.
GREEDO: Nay oo'chlay nooma. Chespeka noofa Na cringko kaynko, a nachoskanya!
HAN: Aye, true, I'll warrant thou hast wish'd this day. [They shoot, Greedo dies.
[To innkeeper:] Pray, goodly Sir, forgive me for the mess.
[Aside:]And whether I shot first, I'll ne'er confess!
It's worth noting that this is an officially licensed Lucasfilm adaptation.
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Post by AhoyLindsay on Mar 7, 2014 10:21:31 GMT -8
That's amazing.
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Leif
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Post by Leif on Mar 7, 2014 12:10:08 GMT -8
That is great.
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Post by firebolt153 on Mar 7, 2014 23:15:10 GMT -8
Right? I want to see this performed SO. BAD.
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