How to Train Your Dragon II

this is a quick follow-up to my most recent entry (about 30 minutes ago). after checking things over at Wikipedia, i realized that How to Train Your Dragon is actually the first of a 6-book series (for now) by British author Cressida Cowell.

The other 5 books are:

1. How to Be a Pirate

2. How to Speak Dragonese

3. How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse

4. How to Twist a Dragon's Tale

5. A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons

the hero of this series, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, continues to find interesting adventures in subsequent books, along with his dragon Toothless and his best friend Fishlegs. Hiccup is a bit unusual for a Viking in that he is more inclined to use his brains than his brawn to solve his problems. He's not really a wimp mind you, he just doesn't believe in the usual rough-and-tumble stuff that every self-respecting Viking berserker seems to delight in. This of course does not necessarily endear him to his muscle-bound and brawling peers, but he eventually gets things done.

at any rate, here are a few Dragonese phrases that might come in handy should you ever stumble into a dragon one of these days.

Nee-ahh crappa inna di hoosus, pishyu. (No poo-ing inside the house, please)

Mi Mama no likeit yum-yum on di bum. (My mother doesn't like to be bitten on the bottom.) 

Pishyu keendlee gobba oot mi freeundlee? (Please would you be so kind as to spit my friend out?)

Doit a wummertime. (Let's try that again.)

have fun.

by the way, DreamWorks Animation has bought the adaptation rights to How to Train Your Dragon, which will be released on november 20, 2009.

a lucky find

i was idling my time away last sunday (i was waiting for the traffic to clear so i could go home in relative peace), so i stopped at Booksale to browse among the items there. after 15 minutes i grew bored and was about to leave when i glanced at a corner and saw this book.

it doesn't look impressive i grant you that, but for some reason it beckoned to me. so i opened a few pages, and to my surprise i actually chuckled loudly before i even finished a page. this rarely happens to me, so i jumped a few pages and was promptly beguiled by several pages of illustrations inside — no they weren't particularly good or even eye-catching. it's just that the caricaturish way the figures (bad spelling and all) were drawn blended well with the humorous way that the author has laid out the story.

How to Train Your Dragon is presented as a translation (originally in old Norse, according to its playfully imaginative author, Cressida Cowell) of the memoirs of a famous Viking chieftain, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III – specifically on how he progressed from being an undersized but sensible warrior wanna-be to a still-undersized but moderately acceptable Viking hero by training his own undersized, unremarkable and ornery dragon (which he calls Toothless – go figure).

This book is basically for male juveniles but grown-ups with overdeveloped sense of humor will also appreciate the concept and the humor (both slapstick and implied) interlaced in almost every situation that the author can think of.

with names like Hiccup (son of the chieftain of the tribe of the Hairy Hooligans), Thuggory (his counterpart in the Meathead tribe), Gobber the Belch, Snotface Snotlout, Dosgbreath the Duhbrain, etc. for your characters, how can you go wrong? anyway, if you're looking for mindless fun and are fond of Viking culture, How to Train Your Dragon is right up your alley. enjoy (P120.00).

Search for Topic

sometimes in an effort to be both interesting and informative, we tend to go overboard by latching on things that we can't even discuss or describe with sense and coherence. with determined obstinacy, we soldier on… thinking that if we try hard, we can actually write a couple things about a subject, then perfume the whole thing with splashes of inane details and maybe insert some pictures for variation.

that is, until sheer exhaustion sets in, or worse still a creeping lack of interest. and if you're lucky maybe you'll even wake up and admit that your heart wasn't really set on it anyway.

so we often end up sighing in disgust and doing nothing at all.

as good old shakespeare would say:

…
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

sigh. sometimes, it's enough to make you want to hang up your pen for good.