It's Talk Like a Pirate Day today!

I found two pirate-y ABC books! Shiver Me Letters: a Pirate ABC, written by June Sobel and illustrated by Henry Cole is full of fun, silly pictures to go with the rhymes for each letter.

The illustrations (by Gris Grimly) are a bit more detailed and a bit more scary in The Dangerous Alphabet, by Neil Gaiman. See if you can spot the (intentional) error! The rhymes are clever and witty, be sure to read them out loud.

And, also today, the new season of Doctor Who begins. That seemed like a good reason to post these titles:

Who is the Doctor: the Unofficial Guide to Doctor Who the New Series, by Graeme Burk and Robert Smith? (the ? is a part of the name) (really!) is a book that covers Doctor Who from the reboot forward (to the Tenth Doctor). This was a most enjoyable read as each of the episodes is discussed in depth ... what the authors liked, or didn't like, what made them roll their eyes, and always a bit of fun trivia.

Since Doctor Who is still airing, any book is going to be out of date by the time it's published. Still, The Who's Who of Doctor Who: a Whovian Guide to Friends, Foes, Villains, Monsters, and Companions to the Good Doctor, by Cameron K. McEwan (creator of Blogtor Who) with illustrations by Andrew Skilleter did include a bit on the War Doctor and the 12th Doctor. There is a nice bio and picture for each entry.

It's been decades since I read any philosophy, and then it was just one part of the class I was taking. Recently however, Char shared a book with me that she had really enjoyed. It was all about the show Breaking Bad. Since I have never seen the show, it was making no sense at all to me, but, in the front of the book we found many other titles in the series Popular Culture and Philosophy. There were books on Star Trek, Transformers, South Park and more ... including one in particular that looked interesting to me .... Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Inside, edited by Courtland Lewis and Paula Smithka.

From the First Doctor to the Eleventh (just a little bit) there are essays on things like time travel (is it possible?); ethics in a universe filled with diverse life forms, the Companions and so on, that made this is an interesting read. Since a lot of authors made contributions some of entries are better than others. Even as 'new to Who' as I am I enjoyed most of them! (And, since there was no test, I could skip or skim the ones I didn't enjoy). ;-)

Other books about Doctor Who may be found in the January 31 and March 12, 2015 posts, and the April 13, 2015 post.

Reading Hermit With Dog