The Incredible Voyage of Odysseus

You can call him Ulysses, as the book does, but I prefer Odysseus. Anyway, this book is a picture-book version of Homer's Odyssey.

I wanted to read it because of how many books about ancient Greek mythology I've read (such as the Mytholpedia books and Percy Jackson).

It told the story of Odysseus--the story is about him going home from the Trojan War and how lost he became and how he finally got home. It tells the story through cartoon-like panels, filled with really great art. 

It explains how was the King of Ithaca and was very brave. At the start of the journey, he is pretty sure where he is going until Zeus causes a thunderstorm and they lose their sense of direction. The journey is incredibly long and terrifying for anybody normal, however Odysseys is not exactly normal. He encounters many islands with dangerous beasts and monsters on them, including the sirens, Polyphemeus, Circe, and even some Gods make trouble such as Zeus who stuck Odysseus and his crew in a thunderstorm twice and Poseidon who made trouble by answering a prayer from Polyphemeus (who happens to be one of Poseidon's children). But Athena helped him, near the end of his journey by helping him get to Ithaca safely and giving him a disguise because otherwise people would kill him because they probably were angry that their king had been gone for something like 20 years.

This book explains a lot of what happened in the 2nd Percy Jackson book, like both Percy and Odysseus encountered Scylla, Polyphemeus, the Sirens and Circe.  Odysseus was forced to see his men get turned into pigs by Circe, but Percy got turned into a Guinea Pig! 

I'd recommend it to anyone who has liked the Percy Jackson books, like I have, at least if you aren't already old enough to real the Odyssey in its original long poem form.

How to do Everything: Mac (both editions)

Yup.  Everything.  Read one of these and you'll literally know how to use everything on your

Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard computer, from the bare basics such as the ins n' outs of finder and the dock to the stuff that no one except a NERD ("nerd" in huge, bold, all-caps writing with an underline) would know how to do without the book's help. I learned all about Boot Camp, the application that let's you run Windows on your mac as if it was part of it (as long as you have a Windows-running PC with new enough hardware and software to do the job, and you yourself have experience with Windows). I'm going to try this out once dad's PC is up and running again.


I learned just about everything I know about Snow Leopard in edition 2, and some of what I know about Leopard in edition 1 (you've gotta have learned something about it after having two Leopard computers in your home for ages which is the case for my family), and I've learned that they both are beasts. If you have snow leopard, stick with it. If you're running leopard, you may want snow leopard software. anything earlier, upgrade soon.

The first edition knows
everything about
Leopard.

The second edition is the
ultimate guide to
Snow Leopard.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians #2: the Sea of Monsters

Percy Jackson, the half-blood son of Poseidon, hasn't been so much of a 'monster-magnet' as he was in previous years, certainly lucky, but confusing just as much. In fact, not a single beast has gone anywhere near Percy. But suddenly, this all changes when a simple dodgeball fight turns into a death-fight with a gang of fireball-flinging, gym-exploding, Demigod-dining, and of course ugly giants which make things even uglier then themselves. Now that's more like a normal half-blood's life.

Suddenly, when he brings his friend Tyson to camp half-blood and discovers that Tyson is a baby cyclops, he later feels weird when Tyson is claimed by Poseidon, like him (which means they are half-brothers!) . But when the barriers of the camp break down, they have to go on another quest to get the golden fleece (which can fix just about anything).

My favorite (new) character was Tyson, because he saves Percy a lot, and he also is funny (he shouts "PONIES!" whenever he sees a horse or anything like one, such as a centaur or some hippocompi.)

My favorite line was when the giant cyclops Polyphemus smashed Tyson with an olive tree. Percy said, "The olive tree hit Tyson so hard it would've turned me into a Percy-pizza with extra olives."

I thought that this book was just as fun as the first book, and I'm working on book three already.