CritterKeeper

Grey hairs? I got my first grey hairs in junior high! Came in handy, too, when I was fresh out of vet school, a year younger than most of my classmates, and trying to look like I was old enough to know what I was doing. Now that I'm old enough to look like I know what I'm doing without the greys, my hair has magically returned to being 100% Dark Auburn. Or occasionally Medium Auburn. By your logic I should've been over the hill before my first quarter-century. Besides, the hill isn't symmetrical. There's a relatively gentle slope on one side, and a sharp drop-off on the other. (My goal is to hang around on the side of the hill in between. ;-)

https://xkcd.com/1053/ Most of The Dresden Files are good mysteries, too. I'm also fond of P. N. Elrod's Vampire Files, starting with Bloodlist, in which the first book involves the protagonist solving his own murder. The orignal radio drama of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is also excellent! It came before the books, and every version of HHGTTG is different. There's a book of the scripts, but that just doesn't have the same feel. I've aslo recently listened to some of the Doctor Who audio dramas. I can't help but think that podcasts and mp3 players have played a part in saving the audio format from oblivion. ;-) Anthony's Apprentice Adept series is pretty good, too. Come to think of it, if you're looking for something fun and easy to read, and you're not allergic to puns, the Xanth series is good, too, although I don't think very many people have read the whole thing. I even recall there being gender- and species-bending. Second on Gaiman and Dragonlance, too, although I shudder at the thought of a Kender-like character appearing in EGS....

All the respect and courtesy airlines used to treat their customers with. To be fair, likely also proportionately higher fares, although I doubt they were as bad as First Class fares are now.

Sardines

Perhaps a good "soft" entrance to Discworld would be the Tiffany Aching series! She's the protagonist in The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Wear Midnight and The Shepherd's Crown. These stories are a bit easier, faster read and are neither as sunk into the Discworld mythos, nor as big a commitment as the whole series. They're *meant* to be a different way to start reading Discworld. I'm torn about the first Discworld book -- Sir Terry was getting some frustrations with the cliches of the high fantasy genre out of his system, and it isn't nearly as funny if you haven't read any of the series he's making fun of. On the other hand, the Luggage is one of the most popular and iconic characters in the whole overall series!

If Dan hasn't read a lot of series, I'm trying to think of things that are a relatively fun, light read, just to get him started reading again. Not necessarily fluff, but not something that's intimidatingly long, or really dense, difficult writing (like LotR). Artemis Fowl would certainly fit the bill. P. N. Elrod's Vampire Files are fun, if a bit violent in some books, but then again the Dresden Files can get rather violent, too. The Parasol Protectorate is light and easy to read, although some scenes might make him blush. Anyone else got something that's relatively light and fun?

BOGO stands for Buy One, Get One. If you want to say Buy One, Get A Discount On One, then say BOGADOO, not BOGO. No, I don't care if you've got fine print below saying "fifty percent off", that would be BOGOFPO. You can't have a great big BOGO on your sign unless it's actually Buy One, Get One, period!

It seems my internal clock is still in there....

Funny how different some authors' works can be. I've been meaning to go re-read George R. R. Martin's Fevre Dream, which I remember really liking when I read it. I don't think it was much like his better-selling A Song of Ice and Fire series, but it's been so long I feel like I should confirm that. Anne McCaffrey also had a few series that were very different from her best-known Dragonriders of Pern series.

budget gridlock

Want a list of great books? Look for a list of banned books. Next best source of interesting books worth giving a try? Look for heated arguments about a book, or for a book with both a lot of five-star ratings and a lot of one-star ratings. Whichever side you end up agreeing with, you'll be better for the experience!

Ever read the novel "Jumper" by Steven Gould? I think you'd enjoy the version of teleporting in that one. (Trigger warning: the first time David teleports is to escape an abusive father.) There's also an old 70s TV show that was ITV's counterpart to the BBC's Doctor Who, called The Tomorrow People, which involved a group of kids who can teleport, as well as having telepathy and telekinesis. I found DVDs of it at my local library, and if you can stand it *being* 1970s sci-fi, it's held up about as well as old Doctor Who episodes have. :-)

That was my guess, too.

The question was about book series, not standalone books, so I'm pretty sure he's read more books than what he listed. I have just ventured onto Twitter, despite having missed the last episode of Game of Thrones and thus risking the horrors of spoilers, in order to make a couple of suggestions. Now, back to wandering the cold lonely streets, peering through windows in hopes of finding someone watching the episode so I can get caught up before the series finale next week....

Piffle. You can't even see the summit of the hill from forty.

Well, given that appearing somewhere naked would make it a lot harder to be inconspicuous, it seems fair to assume that clothing can come along with when teleporting. Of course, there are various kinds of clothing, of various thicknesses, and one would assume teleporting onto Antarctica safely would require being able to bring along thick boots, parka, goggles, etc. Now, if you took all of that stuff and bundled it up, it would be no more unreasonable to teleport holding it in your arms, or carrying it in a backpack, while wearing shorts and a T-shirt, than it would be to teleport while wearing it. Carrying it in a shopping bag by the handles is no more unreasonable than carrying it in a backpack, which can also be dangled by the straps. This proves that you can bring along something you are only touching with one hand, or even dangling by one finger, which I do with shopping bags all the time. If you can teleport with a full backpack while wearing clothing, you can teleport with a full backpack while wearing the Antarctic gear. You can incrementally prove you can teleport with over a hundred pounds. If you can teleport things you are only touching with your fingertip, and you can teleport with over a hundred pounds, you can obviously teleport another person merely by touching them. (Don't make me start with carrying a baby and work my way up, none of us need that hassle.) It follows along similar lines that you can teleport vehicles your are riding on or in, ships you are standing on, buildings you are standing on, land masses, or even planets. The advantages in the case of an imminent asteroid impact on the Earth are obvious.

Given that Some Guy won the tournament, I'm betting he's a pretty good strategist and knows the importance of balance in a team.

Practicing the ancient Chinese art of Tu Ning.

The ability to teleport, with all the associated abilities needed to do so safely, like being able to tell what's at the other end so you aren't arriving inside a wall or in front of a crowd. Ideally, some sort of an optional Somebody Else's Problem Field would keep other people from noticing you jaunting in and out (optional so that you *are* able to demonstrate if you *want* to).

I thought they started trying to recruit as soon as you turn fifty....

Didn't I say she would know it was irrational? Sometimes feelings happen, whether they're logical or not, and I can definitely see Susan recognizing such feelings are happening, and consciously working to not let them affect her actions.

Ashley strikes me as smart enough to reach a correct or semi-correct conclusin in her own. If she knows about the TFG, etc. then she'd figure out it was Ellen transformed. If not, she'd "figure out" that Elliot only provided genetic material as a favor to his twin sister. Either way, she doesn't strike me as the jealous type. Oddly enough, if Susan were Elliot's current girlfriend, I can picture her getting jealous. She'd figure out that it was irrational and try to keep it in check, but she's not very experienced, relationship-wise, and was raised to be suspicious of men and think the worst of them. Her hackles going up at the possibility of Elliot being unfaithful would be in character, as long as she gets to be smart enough to figure out what's going on and that she shouldn't let that feeling drive her actions.

...and carry a beagle

Yeah, I don't see them wanting to start having babies in the immediate future. They'll likely both be heading to college, especially Nanase, and there's really no pressure to start early. Unless, I suppose, Tedd were going to move away, the magic clog were fixed so the watches didn't work any more, and the Uryuoms and/or government were reclaiming the TFGs. Hmm, if getting pregnant while sex-transformed makes the transformation permanent, I wonder what would happen if, say, a ninety-year-old Sarah got herself transformed back to her 18-year-old SARAH.BAK file, and then got pregnant? I would assume she'd at least stay young long enough to safely give birth, but would it be permanent beyond that? Until she was through nursing? Would she still be ninety on the inside except for her reproductive tract? Or do they have a way to live forever (barring accidents etc) as long as they keep having babies every few decades? Even the guys, if Tedd really can cause permanent sex-changes, would be able to stay guys for all but nine months or so every renewal.

Sorry, but my impression has been that you were promoting the "separate relationships" perspective at the expense of the "we're a family as a whole" perspective. Everyone dating each other is *not* the same thing as being a family together -- everyone dating each other is still seeing them as a bunch of individual relationships! A family is something more, and you seem to be so busy insisting on the existence of the groups you see as neglected that you yourself are diminishing the very existence of a whole-is-greater-than-its-parts (or even -different-from-its-parts) type of poly relationship. The families I know and love are just as tired of being erased from existence as your individual relationships are.