-- Mike Nelson is too modest to pimp here, but issue #1 of HEXED came out this week (hey, free first issue is a FREE DOWNLOAD!! SMART!!). It's very, very good. I call it "Juno meets Hellblazer". I don't know what Mike calls it. Great artist, too.
-- From Warren Ellis: Polar Nuclear Lighthouses. I repeat. Nuclear. Lighthouses.
-- Mysterious Skin / Brick / The Lookout, that's a hell of a run. Skin is a hard, hard movie but for a weekend rental you can't go wrong with either Brick or Lookout. The Lookout is actually the best of the lot, really a hell of a movie, and streaming off Netflix. You could pump it through your XBOX360 and have it up on the big screen in five seconds. Oh, wait, Brick is available on Amazon VOD, too. Cool.
-- Charlie Stross' Jennifer Morgue is finally out in paperback, meaning you can now do the one-two punch with Atrocity Archive. I will admit that although I like both books, I actually prefer "The Concrete Jungle" novella in Atrocity Archive. You can read both on your Kindle ...
-- ... which, having had for nearly a year now, I will say is well worth the money if you buy as many books as I do. Like most people I have a deep aversion to throwing away books, and finding trading situations can be tricky (although Mrs. Glenn likes The Paperback Exchange EDIT: she actually recommends The Paperback Swap.).
The Kindle provides several benefits. First, I keep my big clunky non-fiction off the much smaller bookshelves of my tiny LA bungalow house. I read more, because I have that 3 pound, 1000+ page Colony to Superpower tucked into the outside sleeve of my briefcase so I can pick it up at lunch anywhere I go. It handles magazine subscriptions well -- I picked up subscriptions to Asimov and Amazing, which I'd never do with the dead tree version. Better for the environment, too.
The Kindle editions are discounted enough that I've managed, particularly on the hardcover purchases, to earn back in savings what the Kindle cost. It takes about three days to get used to -- during which you wonder what chimp engineer designed it so every surface a normal human would use to hold the device is actually a button -- but after that you can't live without it. I now actually delay some book purchases because they don't have a Kindle edition yet.
-- speaking of books, the First Law trilogy: ** SPOILER**I love, love, love Joe Abercrombie's writing style and storytelling. His female characters aren't great, but hey, first book. I urge you to read the trilogy. I'd read his shopping list. However, I don't know if I needed to spend 3000+ pages to suddenly discover that the entire work was a buildup to: "What if Gandalf was a dick?" (highlight to read).
-- New link going into the sidebar: Frontal Cortex, neuroscience fun by Jonah Leherer. Prepare to lose a day plowing through the archives.
-- Keep a pipe bomb on you at all times, you can use it to shift that genny out of the elevator door. Although I've noticed the practice is waning. Oh, and on the roof of Mercy Hospital, Smokers should ambush ladder-climbers from the LOWER rooftop, closer to the edge. You're still in range.
-- I recently in a meeting said "As useless as a Hunter on the roof of Mercy Hospital." Sadly, I do not think it's going to catch on.
-- In the Comments, please post your senior prom theme song. Which, for the life of me, I personally cannot remember ...
91 comments:
Post a Comment