Here are a few from Amazon's 50 Pre release Books, looks like some good ones to keep one busy in the Autumn.

- Mary, Mary ~James Patterson
The 11th Alex Cross thriller from the Sunday Times number 1 bestselling author, and filled with the ruthless and shocking twists that make his fans hunger for more, MARY, MARY is James PattersonÂ’s most sophisticated thriller yet

- Thud! (Discworld S.) ~Terry Pratchett

Koom Valley? That was where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs, or the trolls ambushed the dwarfs. It was far away. It was a long time ago. But if he doesn't solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch is going to see it fought again, right outside his office. With his beloved Watch crumbling around him and war-drums sounding, he must unravel every clue, outwit every assassin and brave any darkness to find the solution. And darkness is following him. Oh...and at six o'clock every day, without fall, with no excuses, he must go home to read 'Where's My Cow?', with all the right farmyard noises, to his little boy. There are some things you have to do.

- Where's My Cow? (Discworld S.) ~Terry Pratchett

At six o'clock every day, without fall, with no excuses, Sam Vlmes must go home to read Where's My Cow?, with all the right farmyard noises, to his little boy. There are some things you have to do.It is the most loved and chewed book in the world. But his father wonders why it is full of moo-cows and baa-lambs when Young Sam will only ever see them cooked on a plate. He can think of a more useful book for a boy who lives in a city. So Sam Vimes starts adapting the story. A story with streets, not fields. A book with rogues and villains. A book about the place where he'll grow up.

- On Beauty ~ Zadie Smith
Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn't like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering Professor at Wellington College. He has been married for thirty years to Kiki, an American woman who no longer resembles the sexy activist she once was. Their three children passionately pursue their own paths, and faced with the oppressive enthusiasms of his children, Howard feels that the first two acts of his life are over and he has no clear plans for the finale. Then Jerome, Howard's oldest son, falls for Victoria, the stunning daughter of the right-wing icon Monty Kipps. Increasingly, the two families find themselves thrown together in a beautiful corner of America, enacting a cultural and personal war against the background of real wars that they barely register...

- Dark Tower: Dark Tower v. 7 ~Stephen King
The triumphant, gripping finale to Stephen King's magnificent, epic masterpiece - now available in trade paperback The final volume sees gunslinger Roland on a roller-coaster mix of exhilarating triumph and aching loss in his unrelenting quest to reach the dark tower. A journey which means he must leave his faithful friends Eddie, Susannah, Jake, even Oy, as he closes on the Tower. His steps are followed only by Mordred, half-human, half-terrifying creature heir to the Crimson King. In the end, it is an unlikely ally who will hold to key to the Tower itself, centre of all time and all place.

- End in Tears ~Ruth Rendell
A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The driver behind is spared. But only for a while... One particular member of the local press is gunning for the Chief Inspector, distinctly unimpressed with what he regards as old-fashioned police methods. But Wexford, with his old friend and partner, Mike Burden, along with two new recruits to the Kingsmarkham team, pursue their inquiries with a diligence and humanity that make Ruth Rendell?s detective stories enthralling, exciting and very touching[B]

Personal Dilemma-please help.

I have (like many saffers) always stated that at an International level, I would support two countries. South Africa and ANYBODY competing against Australia for/in/at anything (said with a great gesture of fun and tongue in cheek, as I would go and live there tomorrow if I could).

Back to the point and statements like, I would rather eat glass or slit my wrist than support Australia (amougnst others made by myself).

Now with relation to the above, and the fact that if Australia could beat NZ this Saturday in the Tri-Nations. The Bokke will maintain the Tri-Nations title. :confused:

My Dilemma: Do I retract everything I have said in the past, slit my wrist and eat glass this Saturday or do I root for the Kiwis? :wall:

Or could a draw be the solution to my dilemma, and The Bokke could still win?:hooray: ok:

Would you go against everything you have said and believe in, to give The Bokke the back door option of winning the series?

This is hialrious..........http://www.radioireland.ie/audio/giftjose.wma

take a look

click here

Suid Afrika speel ongelooflike goeie rugby, en jy kan nou aan

Radio Sonder Grense luister

http://www.rsg.co.za/programskedule_more...00:00%20PM

dit is in Afrikaans



10 - 7 vir Suid Afrika

2 tries already

Ci è nessuno vivendo qui in Italia?

This is very sad news indeed.

Chinese tiger dies in South Africa

JOHANNESBURG, Aug. 22 (Xinhuanet) -- A rare Chinese tiger "Hope" which came to South Africa to learn how to hunt two years ago, died in a tiger reserve, about 500 km south of Johannesburg, on Saturday, according to the reserve on Monday.

Li Quan, the founder of the "Save China's Tigers" foundation, told Xinhua through telephone on Monday that "Hope had an infection and he stopped eating meat. He died on Saturday evening."

This would be a fresh blow to efforts to save the species from extinction. With only about 10 to 30 left in the world and another 60 in captivity, the Chinese sub-species of the tiger clan is perched precariously on the brink of extinction.

"Hope" was born in a Chinese zoo and sent to South Africa as a cub with his mate "Cathay" in 2003 for a pioneering experiment seen by some as the last chance to preserve the species a "rewilding program" to encourage the animals to hunt on their own.

Hope and Cathay were taught to hunt at the Laohu Valley Reserve in South Africa's Free State province -- at first killing birds, and then graduating to antelope.

The plan had been that they would impart their skills to any cubs they might eventually produce, who would be sent to a reserve in China.

A younger breeding pair, Madonna and Tiger Woods, arrived in South Africa in October last year for the project. They can now catch sheep. Enditem 　

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-0...390201.htm

Winking at God while breaking his laws
By Robert Kirby

For the murders of 10 people, BTK slayer Dennis Rader on Thursday received 10 consecutive life sentences. He will have to serve a minimum of 175 years.

Rader, who was actively seeking his next victim when police arrested him, has apparently found Jesus instead. During sentencing, he offered biblical quotes and said that the Lord's light was starting to shine through the dark part of his soul.

I was hoping Rader would find the light in jail. But I wanted him to find it in the form of 80,000 volts. Instead, he'll live long enough to memorize the entire Bible.

Those of us who also profess to believe in the Bible consider it more than a bit ironic that Rader didn't find the light while serving as president of his church's council at the time of his arrest.

Even though he worshipped God on Sunday, Rader had previously hauled a body of one of his victims into church when no one was there so that he could take bondage photos of it.

Makes you wonder what he was thinking when he sang hymns and prayed in a building he had defiled. How could he compartmentalize his attitude toward God like that?

The fact that Rader discovered the light only after he was caught is laughable to those of us who really know Jesus, right? I mean, really, how can he say that he believes and still behave that way?

Except that we all do it. We aren't serial killers, but we're all winking at God while behaving contrary to publicly professed beliefs.

At a news conference after the sentencing, a relative of one of Rader's victims announced that she couldn't wait until he died. In heaven, Rader would be met by all of his victims and God, who would fling him into a pit for an eternity of suffering.

The woman obviously believes in God. After all, she included him in her plan for Rader. But she wants payback even though the Bible really only offers justice. She wants God to prosecute her hate despite being taught that he's all about love.

It's understandable that victims have these feelings. It's a little odder when they expect a merciful God to be their hitter.

We all have our personal counter-God passions, the darker sides of our natures that we feed while pretending to be much nicer. We're so good at pretending that we sometimes fool those closest to us. Hey, sometimes we even fool ourselves.

Lust, drugs, money, power, hate, indifference - we're all willing to wear a different face while pursuing private agendas, even though we really ought to know better.

I'm not saying that Rader should be let out of prison and welcomed back into the arms of his church and society. He is where he belongs.

But while I say that I'm a believer in forgiveness, mostly I believe that I'd like to see Rader ride some lightning. And he hasn't even done anything to me.

Just imagine how I feel toward the people who have.

If you want to understand how Rader could do what he did, how he could get away with it for so long, a good start is to examine the other side of your own mask.

http://www.sltrib.com/kirby/ci_2958100

This article is written for the Salt Lake Tribune (a mainstream Utah newspaper) by an LDS (Mormon) columnist. His articles inevitably come with a Christian slant (from a Mormon perspective) as they are written for a largely Mormon audience and are pretty good. I will share a few here and hope that you will enjoy them as much as I do.

Playing numbers game with religion is risky
By Robert Kirby

Thirty years ago, I trudged around South America on an LDS mission. Dogs bit me, I wrecked bikes, caught all sorts of intestinal parasites and baptized 20 people.

I say "baptized" rather than "converted" because that's what my companions and I did. We gave people a brief idea of the doctrine and then made the more agreeable ones members of the church. The converting part was up to them.

Twenty people sounds like a lot considering that some LDS missionaries only manage one or two. Unlike Europe and the Pacific Rim, South America was considered an "easy" mission.

But if the South American baptism rate is higher than other areas, so, too, is the inactivity rate. Today, less than 30 percent of Mormons in South America actually go to church or even still consider themselves members.

So, I'm guessing that only three or four of my baptisms are still active participants in the church. Doesn't surprise me considering that some of them stopped going to church the day after they were baptized.

On the other hand, I also watched the church help make a functional human being out of a guy we found passed out in a ditch, a transformation that stunned the entire village.

Read what you will into either case. My own take is that sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Never was it entirely up to me. There was always something about it that couldn't be measured, although not for the lack of trying.

For two years my life centered on statistics - people talked to, hours worked, lessons taught, people baptized. I measured my efforts by the minute and by the word, wrote it all down and sent it in.

In fairness to the church, it's probably not a good idea to turn a bunch of kids loose in a strange land without making them somehow accountable. I'm just not sure stressing the importance of numbers does that. In many cases it had the opposite effect.

Equating correct behavior with statistics is dangerous, mainly because it's possible to make a set of numbers say anything. Worse, you'll start believing it. And some of us did.

We did it because good missionaries got good stats. Good stats meant you were working hard. Hard work equaled building up the kingdom of God on Earth.

Except when it didn't.

I followed some of the real stat-getters in our mission and found that like most things in life, quantity rarely makes up for quality. The big numbers often amounted to a lot of empty pews.

Today, it's pressure to finish 100 percent of home-teaching visits, pay 10 percent tithing and get to all the meetings, as if everything will be fine if the numbers are there. Small wonder that God is so often viewed as a stern accountant.

Personally, I think religion is at its best when it goes where it can't be measured. Make it a business and pretty soon people become mere ciphers. Faith isn't something you can tally in a column or measure on a bar chart.

Statistics probably have a place in the world of religion, but they can also blind us to the entire point: understanding what causes some to wander away and others to finally get out of a ditch.

http://www.sltrib.com/kirby/ci_2939595

People are often unreasonable, Illogical and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind,People may accuse You of selfish motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful,You will win some false friends
And some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, People may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway..

What you spend years building, Someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness,They may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, People will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you have anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, It is between you and God;

It never was between you and them anyway.

~Mother Teresa~