In the stand-alone book department, I finished Who Could That Be At This Hour?, the Lemony Snicket sort-of-prequel to A Series of Unfortunate Events. It was an odd read: familiar themes were hit on (adults being utterly indifferent/unhelpful to children, wacky definitions of "difficult" words, vague conspiracies tip-toed around) and at least one ( Read more... )

In Books:

The Incense Game, by Laura Joh Rowland (Sano Ichiro mysteries, #16): Beginners beware, this is not the place to start this excellent series; you'll spend too much time wondering who is who, and not enough marveling at Rowland's ability to spin a murder mystery in the middle of a tale about recovery from terrible disasters. The story ( Read more... )

I've seen, read, and experienced a lot of wonderful pop culture this year, and I'm still boggling over just *how much* I've gotten to experience at all, given that my son turned 2 and spent much of his time unintentionally taking up mine. (99% of the time, that's great, but the other 1% is tough.) I've been lucky to get anything done at all! ( Read more... )

Over on the Onion's A.V. Club, there's an interesting discussion around the question: what is the pop culture gift you'd like to share with everyone? There are some fabulous answers there (the always awesome Tasha Robinson lists "My Neighbor Totoro" as her pick, effectively affirming (and stealing) my original answer), but I thought I'd like to ( Read more... )

In Books:

I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution, by Craig Marks: I gave up on this about 100 pages in. Here's what I said on Goodreads: "I don't think that I was the target audience for this work. After about a hundred pages, it was just a blur of people talking about cocaine-fueled orgies in between making videos, ( Read more... )

In Books:

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), by Mindy Kaling: I enjoyed this volume of chatty, breezy essays, although I would love to just cut out the chapter about dieting completely. If you skip that (which is easy, since it's the first one), the rest of this book is a rewarding, effortless read that sounds as if Mindy ( Read more... )

J.K. Rowling's new book, The Casual Vacancy, comes out today to much speculation and to some incredibly snide reviews. The reviews are so vitriolic/fawning that I still have no idea whether or not I actually want to read the book, only wonder at the hatred some people apparently harbor for Rowling. (Socialist rant? What?) I mean, really, some ( Read more... )

In Books:

The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold: This was an excellent book, although reading it, at first, felt like a real slog. Bujold is a highly accomplished storyteller, of course, but her prose is so dense that the first quarter of the book felt like an overstuffed lasagna. Just when I thought I'd finished with one layer, bam! ( Read more... )

In Books:

Embassytown, by China Mieville: Mieville has so many ideas in his books that I sometimes worry that the story is going to explode in a metaphorical spring-snake-out-of-a-can-of-"party-nuts" surprise ending. The plot in this book wasn't like that, exactly, but I began to feel like all the fabulous ideas came at the expense of something ( Read more... )

In Books:

Bleeding Out, by Jes Battis: So, I have really loved these books and was sad to read that this one would be the last. I understand that Battis has another career and other projects. However, I am very disappointed in this narrative, and I don't really feel like it was a fitting end for any of the characters, except one, and she was not ( Read more... )