I took a little time with this one. I picked it up and started reading, but after the first session it took me awhile to really get in the mood to continue. I don’t think I fault the book for that, it just took a bit to get going, and I had some other things I wanted to do in the meantime regarding the world of job hunting. Once I got back in to it though, I was able to marathon straight to the finish line from there.
Now I like westerns on screen, but I’ve never really read a western book before. Of course, I still haven’t technically, since there’s a lot in this book that doesn’t fit in the western genre. Still though, there’s a lot of it that does, and I’d almost say there is more western in it than anything else. Apparently this isn’t enough though, since a central story element is fantasy, so that’s the section the stores and libraries place this book. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve long been a patron of the late night talk shows, though I’ve had bouts of extreme interest, and then bouts of little to no interest. One thing doesn’t change though, and that’s that I kept coming back to these shows, and I still watch them and enjoy them. I started watching around the time Dave took the leap to NBC and the late night wars really began, and have been watching various late night shows off and on since. I’ve given pretty much every late night host on a network channel a chance and some I like, others I don’t; but recent events in the late night wars have really driven me to put in my two cents on this whole thing, and pick a side.
Now, as most know by now, NBC gave “The Tonight Show” back to Jay Leno, and Conan O’Brien (Coco) has been given the boot. It’s a nice boot, with $45 million for him and his staff, but it’s a well deserved nice boot since he has basically lost his dream job, and any chance he’ll ever get in the future to sit at the desk on “The Tonight Show”. If anyone wants to catch up on these events, a good place to do so is at the Talk Show News blog. I’ve avoided really weighing in on this up until this point because I really wanted to see how things played out, and hear what everyone had to say. Now I’m ready to weigh in on this, though I’m sure the title of this post alone will give you the short answer of where I stand. For the longer answer though, feel free to keep on reading. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno, NBC, Television
I mentioned it before, but part of what I like about Charles de Lint’s Newford series is that it’s not an ongoing storyline, but rather a bunch of novels and short stories that take place in a common setting with some common characters and some one-shot characters. This lets me read the series intermittently without the discomfort that is usually associated with reading a series with a continuing story in pieces with large gaps. I figured now was a good time to pull another of his books off my shelves and take a trip to Newford once again.
I’ve read two from this series so far, one was a short story anthology, and the other was a full novel. Both worked for what they were, but weren’t exactly flawless either. This time around we’re back to a short story anthology which was released about six years after “Dreams Underfoot”, and five years after “Memory and Dream”. While the gap is large, there’s only a few other books in the series released by de Lint in that time. Two of those books are written under his pseudonym of Samuel M. Key, and are more horror books that just happen to be in Newford than a real part of the series. Another is “The Dreaming Place”, which is a hard to find book of only 160 pages that is considered young adult. The other two are “Trader” and “The Ivory and the Horn”, both of which I’ve never seen on a shelf and have not had a chance to buy. Luckily, since these stories aren’t directly tied together, jumping a few books doesn’t have a huge impact and I can always go back to those when I finally get my hands on them. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Charles de Lint, Moonlight & Vines, Newford Series, Orb Books, Urban Fantasy
As promised, here we are before Christmas and my journey through the world of the “Looking Glass Wars” novels is complete. There’s more out there in the form of graphic novels, which I intend to explore, but I’ve now finished the story of the books themselves. Considering how long ago I purchased the first book in the series, it feels pretty good to have finally pulled them from the shelf and actually read them. I prefer hardcover books, so I buy early, but if it’s a series I’ll try my best to wait until its released in its entirety. With the release of this book a few months back, the road was finally open for me to enjoy the series from cover to cover in the way I prefer.
The last book presented a bit of a cliffhanger, so I was certainly glad I waited for the whole series to be released and was able to quickly crack open the next volume and find out what happens next. This book is pretty much the same size as the first two books, and is also divided in to three parts. The first night I read through the first part of the book, but ended up marathoning the final two parts on the second night. I got through part 2 and realized that I was only 100 pages from the end, and the book had me to the point that I didn’t want to wait until the next day to read those last 100 pages, and I pressed on. These aren’t big books with little print by any stretch, but it’s still unusual for me to take in so much in such a short period of time, which says something about the book and series. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ArchEnemy, Dial Books, Fantasy, Frank Beddor, Penguin Group, The Looking Glass Wars
I had a few days I had to devote to shopping since it is Christmas and all, and I had a few other things going on this past week, so that delayed my start a little bit. Once that was out of the way though, I pretty much tore through this book with the same total amount of reading time that it took me to get through the first book. The final book in the series is about the same size as well, so I honestly expect that I’ll have this series wrapped up before Christmas.
As a trilogy, the first book was pretty much self-contained. It often seems with book series and film franchises and other written or scripted mediums that this is often the case. I imagine it’s done in the event the first planned book or film is not as successful as they’d have liked, so it can be ended without being incomplete. It provides the potential for a continuation without the promise, while wrapping up the dominant story in a fashion that the story could stand on its own even if no sequels are done. The second book is often when things start to go downhill though, and almost always end in a fashion that is something of a cliffhanger in preparation for the final book. Of course, when a series goes beyond three books things run a bit differently, but since this was a trilogy this is the basic expectation I had when starting this book. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Dial Books, Fantasy, Frank Beddor, Penguin Group, Seeing Redd, The Looking Glass Wars
Alright, Isis made for a good placeholder, but a one hour read as the only read in such a span is pretty poor. My time back in the world of gaming is starting to stabilize though. After being without a decent computer for years, I will freely admit that I got carried away for awhile with online gaming again(no MMO’s) since I missed that social element to gaming in particular. Plus, there were games I’ve had that I’ve been meaning to play through and couldn’t, so now I have. I’m still having fun on the computer, but it’s reached a point now where an hour or two is fine and then I’m back to my usual patterns, such as reading.
So now that the last book of this trilogy has been released, I decided it was time to pick it up and start reading. I’ve always loved Lewis Carroll’s work, particularly his two masterpieces. When I heard about Beddor’s re-imagining, I hopped right on that one, and it’s been on my shelf for quite awhile. I was waiting until the whole trilogy was out, as I prefer to read back to back instead of with long gaps, so I delay reading a series if I can and if I have something else to read. I can’t always abide by that rule though since there are authors like George R.R. Martin who take so long to release each book that it could be another decade before their series is done. This one has had its third release now, so I started it late on Wednesday and easily mopped up the 30 or 40 pages I had left Friday evening. This one really flew by quite quickly, but I was busy yesterday so I wasn’t able to post this until now. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Dial Books, Fantasy, Frank Beddor, Penguin Group, The Looking Glass Wars
We all know the crime dramas on TV nowadays, there’s more now than ever, and the diversity amongst them is huge. “Law and Order” is the series that has really defined the genre, running for 20 years and spinning off 3 other shows, 2 of which were successful. The genre has really picked up since the early days of “Law and Order” though, and now we have shows like “Numb3rs” which uses a mathematics professor to assist the FBI in solving cases. There’s also “Medium”, which uses a psychic to also help solve cases. You’ve got others like “Criminal Minds” that takes a psychological approach, “Without a Trace” that focused on missing persons, “Flashpoint” that follows an SRU (SWAT team equivalent), “Cold Case” which pursues new leads on murder cases that have gone cold, and so on. There’s a lot of shows out there with a spin on the genre, and I have to say that there’s really something in this genre for pretty much everyone.
Aside from the “Law and Order” franchise though, there’s no denying that one of the biggest players in this genre is the “CSI” franchise. The “CSI” franchise is less reliant on gimmicks like psychology or psychics or very specific case types, and does more to follow the investigative process of cases and the related police work. It’s not a flawless series by any stretch, and I’d actually say that the three series in this franchise get a lot of grief from people. Still though, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy this franchise, flaws and all. In fact, I don’t necessarily see the flaws as flaws in the way the critics do, I just think some people aren’t capable of suspending their disbelief or recognizing a dramatization when they see one. Yes, these series are based on technology and investigative work of the real world, but they’re also television shows that exist to entertain an audience. Dry shows with dry characters and slow plots and without the flash don’t necessarily go very far in accomplishing this. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: CBS, Crime Drama, CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, Television
Around Halloween my eye was caught by a small book with a pretty interesting cover. The cover itself doesn’t have incredibly fantastic art or anything on it, like what caught my eye with Patricia McKillips books and the fantastic art that graces many of her covers. Instead it was the gothic and victorian style of pencil art that I saw that really drew me in. I’m not talking about that Burtonesque style of gothic imagery that seems to be the norm these days, with the striped stockings or all black or the piercings or all the makeup. I’m talking real gothic art, that’s more about the atmosphere than some sort of fabricated aesthetic front, which is about all modern gothic is.
It’s a small hardcover, but it unfortunately has a price tag that doesn’t seem to scale down from larger hardcovers. It’s cheaper, yes, but not significantly so. Still, after reading the synopsis and thumbing through it a bit, I was taken in by the book easily, so I bought it then and there. If you’re not the type who really cares if your books are hardcover or paperback, then picking up the paperback or just borrowing it from a library would be the best option. It’s not really expensive, but it’s still more than half the price of books 6 to 10 times its size. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Douglas Clegg, Glenn Chadbourne, Perseus Books Group, Vanguard Press
Alright, I’m guilty, I was really slacking off when it came to this one. It had nothing to do with the story quality, I was just enjoying having a computer that can actually, you know, play games again. Between the Half-Life series and Team Fortress 2, I admit I spent many nights playing through that playable movie or firing rockets at people wearing blue or red. I’m still enjoying gaming, but I’ve settled a bit to the point I’ve settled back in to reading, which was obvious when I wiped up the second half of this book in just a few nights.
After settling back in to my reading groove, so to speak, finishing the book was pretty easy. It’s about 400 pages, but with pretty sizable print and a number of full page illustrations bordering the chapters, it goes by pretty quick. My interest in this book was obviously inspired by the classic film that’s based off of it. After hearing about how different the film was from the book, I decided that I wanted to get the real story as the author meant it to be. In fact, the Hollywood version is incredibly different that the author actually tried to sue the studio to halt production because they were taking too many liberties. When I heard that, I was actually quite saddened since I used to love that film, and still do, but there’s no denying it failed miserably as an adaptation. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Dutton Books, Fantasy, Michael Ende, Penguin Group, Ralph Manheim
It has been a bit since I posted as I’ve been quite busy this past month, which I’ll go in to a bit here. I do expect to get back in to reading “The Neverending Story” this week, as I’ll be out of town the next few days and often will have nothing better to do (I’ll get in to that as well in this post). As an update I’ve been playing my way through the entire Half-Life series, which has been a blast. I finished Episode Two last night, so I’m stuck in a holding pattern until the final episode is released. I’m debating whether I want to post about Half-Life now or wait until whenever they finally release episode 3. Given that Valve has release schedules like Blizzard, there’s no telling how long of a wait that’ll be.
I have a few updates though, so I’m going to squish them all in to one thread. One update is along more personal lines, which I don’t post often aside from major events. The other is site related, though nothing particularly huge, just some changes I’m in the process of making. Then I also have a little rant I decided to toss in, which I’ll get in to at the end of the post. Given that I’ve been immersed in the Half-Life world and am waiting on Episode 3 at this time, I’ll divide this post in to “episodes” as homage to the game. Read the rest of this entry »
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