These two are a related story, but The Cold Six Thousand is not a necessary sequel to American Tabloid. I heartily recommend them both. If you enjoyed All the President’s Men, you would like these. The characters are fascinating and each has their own style, reflected in the writing. Historical fiction.

The Atrocity Archives (with The Concrete Jungle) by Charles Stross
Halting State by same

Both of these books were excellent, if light reading. A little too engrossing for the beach, but very entertaining. Atrocity Archives is a punched up modern Lovecraftian story, but a little light on the menace. Halting State is similar to Snow Crash.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

While reading this, I kept thinking that I was reading a book by Yan Martel. It felt like Life of Pi. The only difference being that I read it from start to finish, instead of jumping around the chapters like I did with Pi. After I was done, I had an odd sensation of having jumped into the deep end of the pool, but hitting the bottom anyway, as if I had somehow misunderstood the number on the lip.

Most of the Wheel of Time (as an editorial exercise)

These books have not aged well at all. They meander and spin off sub-plots whose only point seem to be the padding out of the page length. This series easily could have been a tight 5 books or maybe 6, with a spin-off series of the subplots if someone had reined in the author. Instead, we got a wandering series that hasn’t ended with the death of the author. I have heard that the final book had to be split into three because there were too many loose ends to tie up.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Freakin’ hilarious. I was surprised by how much dialogue was retained unchanged from the original text. The Reader’s Group questions on the last couple pages are a brilliant addition as well.

Drink Play Fuck by Andrew Gottlieb

Amusing, if less than enlightening. Good beach reading with light prose and light humor. Apparently, this book has been optioned for a movie and scheduled for a 2010 release. Ten bucks says that Gerard Butler stars and there is no nudity. Aside from Butler’s ass. Women will flock to this movie, and men will wonder what the big deal is.

Brazzaville Beach by Andrew William Boyd

I would not appreciate this book if I hadn’t studied anthropology in college. I would be wondering what the big deal is, instead of wondering why someone would expect anything different from certain characters. I am still in the middle of it, but am enjoying it so far. Even the parts that are solely about the main character’s inability to understand her ex-husband. Sometimes, I amaze even myself because this really isn’t the sort of topic that should interest me in the slightest. A man failing to understand his wife fascinates me, but I am less than enthused by reading from the woman’s perspective. Maybe that’s because I’m a prick, or maybe that’s because I have a harder time reading women written by men.

The movie looks fantastic.  The sets and ships and cgi looks pretty damn great.  Everything looks cool, but not always Star Trek-y.  The production felt very much like someone had been watching a lot of Enterprise and other Trek series, and then remembered some cool stuff from Battlestar Galactica (new series).  For example, the phasers look very similar to the original series, but behave like a lot of the weapons in Enterprise, retaining a sort of functional mechanization to the prop itself.  There are tons of aliens seamlessly, and heedlessly, thrown into the backgrounds and foregrounds of crowd scenes.

The plot is not bad, by Star Trek standards.  That caveat is important because a viewer needs to remember that Trek does certain things in its Trek way and these things can be totally dumb in any other setting but Trek always makes it seem ok.  Like time travel.  Or God-like beings living in the center of the galaxy.  Or reincarnation through proto-matter.  Or Nazis on other planets.  Or any of the other goofy things that would never fly in Babylon 5 or Firefly or etc, etc, etc.  So when I say the plot is not bad, I mean the sequence of events that together contribute to the telling of a story works and is entertaining.

The weak points were almost minor enough, but still silly.  Every time you saw an experienced Captain, the guy left his ship in the hands of the nearest person.  Every single one of them removed their own obstacle from Kirk’s path to the big chair.

The dialogue is a completely different story.  Most of it comes straight out of the Big Fukkin Book of Action Movie Dialogue Book For Big Fukkin Summer Movies: Lock and load while saddlin’ up Edition with a New Foreword by Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer.  The bright exceptions being Spock and McCoy.  Karl Urban channeled Deforest Kelley pretty effectively, though it felt a little forced at times.  Zachary Quinto did a damn fine Spock and seemed to be the best written character in the movie.  Kirk’s lines were rather limp and his fight scenes were a travesty for the flying-leg-kicker.  He used to win fights.  I feel like shouldn’t hold that against the movie, but for a guy who was supposed to have “advanced hand to hand training,” he got his ass beat a lot.

The major point that I can imagine everyone griping over, which I feel would be too spoilery to reveal, is explained with the epitome of all Star Trek explanations in all series, ever and for all time: alternate realities.  There is not a single series that didn’t deal with this aspect of time travel, so far as I know, and a movie using it, much less the director and writers using it, feels so utterly appropriate that I almost want to applaud Abrams and his people for this explanation/excuse.  Except that I think applause in a movie theater is beyond stupid, unless you are attending a special screening with the stars or something.  It gives them great license and freedom in sequels, but we all know the dangers of giving people too much freedom in sequels.  Sam Raimi.

Sidebar: I don’t know how I feel about admitting that I read that last book, but there it is.

The books by Lethem were great and have been discussed many times by other people smarter than I, so I’ll just recommend them and anything else he’s written to anyone who chooses to read this blog. If you’re reading this, then you’re extremely likely to enjoy his work.

Additional Sidebar: I think I could do with more reading.

John Ringo is pretty much the polar opposite of Lethem. His writing is pedestrian and his editor is lazy. Not only did I notice actual spelling errors and punctuation mistakes, but the author overuses cliches to deadly effect. I noticed this with his other books about the Posleen aliens, but I was kinda hoping that the co-author might have tempered this tendency. Alas. I can’t really recommend Ringo, without a heavy grain of salt and a large sunny beach to sit on while reading. His characters are pretty much all super heroes, both hard core military-types and also holding multiple doctorates. They’re rather like a Doctor Who with a gun, and get a little annoying in that regard. You can’t relate to them at all, but at least he tends to kill off quite a few of them in most of his books. His attempts to drift into hard-science fiction territory often go awry and detract from the action, a bit like Michael Bay trying to host a re-make of Cosmos.

Further Sidebar: I doubt my novel will be any better.

Sean McMullen’s Voyage of the Shadowmoon was a little disappointing as well. The book clearly had a lot of backstory which intrigued me, but, like the show Lost, kept you in the dark about a lot of stuff. At the time of reading, there were no other books yet in the series, nor did my copy mention that it was the start of a new series. Perhaps I will withhold further judgement until I have read more.

Yet Another Sidebar: Still not letting myself get involved in Lost.

Anathem was a lot of fun. I have not read the Baroque Cycle, but I didn’t really like Leibniz or Spinoza anyway. Anathem was far more interesting and maintain’s Stephenson’s cool but human hero trend while incorporating Socratic thought. A lot of Socratic stuff actually, probably more than I noticed, given how bad a student I was. If you liked his other books, you’ll like Anathem. If you want Stephenson to get back to his pre-Baroque form, you’ll like Anathem. If you like protractors and orbital mechanics, you’ll like Anathem. If you’re a dork who wants to save the world through applied mathmatics, you’ll like Anathem.

Superfluous Sidebar: I liked Anathem.

As for Pride and Prejudice, I will admit to reading it. I will even admit to enjoying it. I will admit to nothing else.

I purchased The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie some time ago because a.) I generally like history and b.) I still kind of like fantasy and, heck, c.) I thought that a novel written by one of the more interesting novelists of late that was a kind of historical fantasy bridging Europe and India sounded like it ought to be really neat.  Instead, I ended up pushing through about half of the book and
putting it down.  I blamed it on a number of things, the most significant being the difference in style between a “serious novel” and the type of prose you’ll see on WRN.  It could also have been the flowery language and circuitous plot.  Moving on…

A few months later, I came across The Places In Between by Rory Stewart; a story of his walk across Afghanistan in 2002.  While chronicling his journey across Afghanistan, Mr. Stewart weaves in the narrative of a character named Babar and his harrowing journey along much of the same route, but set in the 13th century.  The book itself is not bad, however I would be hard pressed to out and out recommend it to someone else because it is a little dry and has a little bit too much of an air of expectation.  I mean here is this guy talking across the land and he just expects everyone to feed him and really seems to be perturbed when maybe they’ve got something better to do and can’t be bothered to give him a decent meal for free.

Back to the story at hand, I picked up Enchantress again last week and, lo and behold, the Indian kingdom (Mughal Empire) detailed in the book was founded by the same Babar and is set in the northwest portion of India.  Furthermore, Rushdie proceeds to talk about a series of battles set in Afghanistan, most of which being the same cities I just read about.  Suddenly, I

That’s not to say I’ve finished it; I still have the last quarter to go. I plan on attacking it on the plane today and hopefully I can update this post tonight with the thrilling conclusion…So, stay tuned??!?

As the presumed recipient of a little recent advice about some unlooked for free time, I am trying to push forward and find some lemonade or maybe even a decent margarita.

Slightly related sidebar: There are a surprising number of categories on this blog about my somewhat erratic posting schedule

In my initial attempt to use up some of this free time, and the completion of the annual WRN never-in-one-place rendezvous — details as they are scrubbed free of any information that might out anyone’s jealously guarded cover IDs and memories float up from the blur of activity, allow me to describe the preview screening I saw last night.

A friend managed to get tickets to a preview screening of Monsters vs. Aliens (MvA) last night and agreed to share them with me if I would go sit in line so we could get decent seats. First off, I have to say the new polarized 3D glasses strike me as much better than the older options. Secondly, it’s been a long time since I have seen another 3D movie so the only thing I remember about them (and this may be wrong) was that the 3D experience was much more specific. Namely, that only certain items at certain times were really presented in 3D. With those caveats in place, I have to say that the 3D in this movie really impressed me. It was much more pervasive than I expected and it was done quite well.

Unrelated sidebar: I just watched the “Ultimate Game” episode of Dollhouse while procrastinating during the writing of this post and I was scared to realize that we already have a “Joss Whedon” tag and “Hunting the Ultimate Game”

Overall, I liked this movie. I am pretty much the target audience for the film. It has an inordinate amount of San Francisco scenes and includes voice acting from Will Arnett and Stephen Colbert, two of my favorite actors/comedians. I will admit that the film may be a little to California-centric. Set in Modesto and San Francisco with prominent mentions of the new Peoria, a.k.a Fresno, it really plays to those roots. It does feature a line that I think may well replace “by Grabthar’s Hammer” in my personal lexicon for at least the next six months but I am trying my hardest to refrain from uttering it for at least another week.

My largest annoyance stemmed from the fact that this is a family movie. A four-year-old kid behind spent about fifteen minutes of the movie throwing popcorn at me. That hindered my enjoyment and replaced the fact that it was pretty fun to sit through the first few minutes of the movie where they show-off the 3D magic and the kids gasp as asteroids and comets come ever closer.

The movie doesn’t quite approach the Pixar magic where every scene has some little hidden jewel but instead it feels like the dialogue tries to fill that role and almost every line is a reference to some other cultural moment — E.T., Godzilla, Arrested Development, possibly Peter Gunn — and the possibility for dissecting the dialogue and looking for other little buried treasure references to places in the Bay Area makes me far more likely to go see this movie again than I might expect.

To summarize, go see this movie if you want to see the sci-fi, kid-friendly version of Superbad. In fact, that is a good relation to my feelings for this movie. It has flaws; I wouldn’t give it more than 3 out of 5 stars but yet I will end up seeing it again because there are some superb moments that let the rest of the movie float by on the overall sense of fun and mischief. Also, I am still dying a little bit on the inside from trying not to ruin all of the one-liners while I still can.

Besides the fact that I never use pet names like ‘honey’ (preferring instead pet names like ‘devil girlfriend’ or ‘hey you’) I think that buying some of these Amazon Gold Box deals as gifts for Valentine’s Day seems like a bad idea.

Example:

Glittering diamonds are the icing on the cake of this charming pendant, crafted from 10 karat yellow gold. The petite cupcake-shaped pendant has a yellow gold base with sculpted edges to resemble a cupcake wrapper and three tiers of genuine diamond accents above. It’s fitted with a single bale and featured on a slender and delicate yellow gold rope chain that fastens with a spring ring clasp. An adorable cupcake-shaped gift box makes the presentation extra sweet.

Regularly priced at $100, this is the perfect gift for someone who wants to waste $100.

Show off your sassy side with this devil heart pendant, crafted from 14 karat yellow gold. A stunning heart-shaped lab-created ruby serves as the centerpiece. Held in a three-prong setting, it has a faceted cut and a vibrant red hue. Curved devil’s horns, studded with genuine diamonds, extend from the top of the heart, adding a provocative touch. The pendant is featured on a 14 karat yellow gold rope chain that fastens with a spring ring clasp.

Currently sold out, this would have been the perfect item for the significant other who you like buying useless crap for.

Weave a magic spell with this captivating spider pendant. A luminous gray freshwater cultured pearl comprises the spider body, while polished 14 karat yellow gold shapes the legs. The spider’s head is detailed with three sparkling diamond accents (.012 cttw), for an added touch of elegance. This dainty spider hangs askew from an 18-inch light rope chain, also in 14 karat yellow gold. Enjoy this pendant with the chain provided, or purchase a different gold chain of your choice.

Spiders!

This miniature handcuffs pendant is so edgy and sweet in 14 karat gold and genuine diamond accents. Available in your choice of white or yellow gold, it features two handcuff charms that dangle from a single bale. A total of 14 petite round diamonds line the handcuff shapes, which feature cut-out keyholes for added realism. This trendy piece captures attention with its sassy attitude and dash of bling. It presents on an 18-inch rope chain that fastens with a spring ring clasp.

I guess if you’re dating a cop or a criminal that could work out.  Only $130.

The whole process reminded me that I wish I had learned how to draw:

The Ant and the Dove

An ant went to the river to get a drink.

The water rushed along so fast that he was washed off the bank into the river.  “I shall drown!” he cried. “Help! help! help!” but his voice was so tiny that it could not be heard.

A dove was sitting in a tree that overhung the water. She saw the ant struggling …

The dove quickly nipped off a leaf and let it fall into the water. The ant climbed upon it and floated down the river until the leaf was washed upon the bank of the stream.

The ant called out in its tiny voice, “Thank you, kind dove, you have saved my life;” but of course the dove could not hear him.

Several days after this, the dove was again sitting in a tree. A hunter crept carefully up to the tree.

His gun was pointed at the dove and he was about to shoot, when he was bitten by an ant.

He cried out with pain and missed his shot.

“Thank you, kind ant,” cooed the dove, and the ant heard and was glad.

So yeah, that’s pretty lame, I know. But hey, ti took me a lot of time and I still didn’t get an A in the class so what do I know?

Apparently this post (by Chuckles obviously) is the culprit for getting us ranked so high in that regard but man, I don’t get it.  All we usually blog about is beer, movies, and other random garbage.  I don’t see how any search engine would ever find us particularly relevant, especially when it comes to ‘ass2mouth.’

What can you do though? I guess I’ll have to encourage Chuckles to write more filthy posts from the library.  That is apparently what the people want.  Maybe some posts with swimsuit sexiness will get more interest as well.

Oh, and I just realized our site search function is broken.  Whoops.

So guy who got here by searching for that, I apologize and hopefully we’ll have more relevant content to your searches in the future.

I am not an experienced reviewer, but it should be enough for me to say that I’ve had an Eye of the Hawk two days in a row, especially when you consider where I work and the immense selection available to me as an employee. It’s a fine ale that is well balanced between hops and malt. The Eye is a little stronger than you might expect at 8% but the flavor is smooth and the beer goes down easily. The Eye avoids the easy, boring, middle ground of a lot of ales and has a deep but not overpowering flavor, and would be excellent company for any barbecue or spicy meal.

I might have said this before, but it bears repeating: I am not a guy for hoppy beers, nor do I generally enjoy IPAs. The White Hawk is a decent IPA that doesn’t punch you in the face with hoppiness, so I enjoyed it.

The Black Hawk Stout was a little bitter and I didn’t really expect that from an “Irish-style stout.” My stout experience is limited to a rather unlimited consumption of Guinness, so perhaps I ought to expand my palate, something I shall enjoy.

For those of you lucky enough to live in the regular distribution area of Mendocino Brewing Co, I’m jealous.

Why would you replace a nice font like Calibri with replace it with a universally reviled font like Comic Sans? My only guess is that you don’t want people to take you seriously. Maybe I should forward her a link to tell her how to make her emails look like they were written on a mountain .

Sigh.