Matthew Lang

An impressive collection of books by Cultural Offering. Makes me wish I had a larger house for a collection of my own books. Unfortunately our pokey little house in the UK will only allow me to have a small collection of books next to my new office at home. Still, a small collection of my favourite books is better than none at all.

Might have to make a wee visit to the store when we visit the in-laws next year.

via The Verge

Another little gem that hit my inbox courtesy of Caesura Letters:

Sitting at the edge of the universe prompts me to ask the same questions I find myself contemplating as I look up into the starry night sky: How did this universe come into being in the first place? How did this mind-achingly massive void of nothingness get here first? What, precisely, is nothingness and how much of it is out there beyond our universe?

— Edge of the universe by Caesura Letters

Get your daily dose of solitude with Caesura Letters. It's the one thing that makes me want to open my inbox every day.

Defense is prepared. It is what we do with what the world throws back at us.

via Cultural Offering

After seeing this posted on various blogs I'm subscribed to, I decided to list my five favourite books of all time.

• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens - I've been reading this book every Christmas for the last 25 years. A classic piece of writing that restores my faith in humanity every time.
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson - The first adventure book I ever read and is responsible for my love of fantasy and adventure books.
• Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien - Fantasy is my preferred genre for reading most of the time, and this trumps everything I have ever read in the genre so far. The amount of detail and work that went into the book is just astounding.
• Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read - I never heard about the story of the crashed Uruguayan plane in the Andes until I was about 12. The story itself is a harrowing account of how far humans can be pushed to survive.
• A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin - Forget the HBO TV series that made this mainstream. The books in this series, still unfinished, are such a refreshing change from the usual books in the fantasy genre.So there you have it. I've nothing as deep as War and Peace here.

I tend to stick to the fantasy genre for most of my books, but I have been branching out into some more historical areas in recent years. Conn Igguldenn's Conqueror and Emperor series are both highly recommended and at the moment I have started reading through the Aubrey-Marturin series by Patrick O'Brien as recommended by Michael Wade.Instead of nominating 5 others to participate, I'm just going to leave an open invitation to you all to join in. Come on, get those 5 favourite books of yours listed.

Pretty sure that @andygumley will probably have his eye on this to compliment his road bike. Wouldn't mind it myself, especially since it's a titanium frame.

This would make a mighty fine addition to my Langster.

I use Markdown everyday, so it's great to see TextDown, an Markdown editor extension for Chrome, that I can now use across different platforms.