After finishing grad school last year I did what a lot of folks do and attempted to catch up on the various books, films, games, music, and television shows I had been putting on hold while working on my Masters.
Being a relatively organized guy, I decided the simplest thing to do was to track the popular stuff from the last few years (using everything from Nielsen Ratings to Publishers weekly and IMDB to track down what sold the most and then figure out how far behind I was.
For Film and TV I actually didn't do too bad - I ended up with less than a dozen series and about 40 films behind my kids and friends, so I could catch up pretty quickly.
With books I was a bit further behind, but as my BFF Mike tends to read the current big SF I wasn't doing too badly either.
This left me with music.
In terms of popular music I was actually about twenty years behind anything that was really popular. This doesn't mean I wasn't listening to anything good, just not anything really current.
So I decided each week I would start listening to the top ten songs in Canada. Then, bowing to the inevitable, I added the US top ten list (an awful lot of overlap) and after a few months decided to add the UK top ten list as well (which actually introduced me to a number of Canadian artists) and about a month ago I added the Australian top ten list as well.
So far the experiment has been pretty fun - I recognize way more songs on the radio and in the malls, and every once I a while I surprise my musically-inclined friends with some trendy info.
So there you go - I'm creating a baseline understanding of current Top 40 music in the western world - not sure what I'll do with this info, but I have to admit it's a lot of fun!
So here I am, two days before “All New Hawkeye” by Jeff Lemire and Ramon Perez begins, and I’m finally just getting Into The Matt Fraction era of Hawkeye that ended a few months back. To be fair to my well-read book club friends, I’ve had a number of people pointing me at this series for a while, it’s only now that I got ahead enough in my regular reading to dip into some new comic titles.
So last week I got the first three collected volumes (Issues 1 – 11, the first annual and issues 14, 16, 18, and 20) of the 22 issue series, and over the course of three days I got myself well into the series.
Here what I’ve found out (again, well after almost everyone else).
1) You should really take the time to check out this series
2) The artwork is very clean, has a unique feel that runs through each story arc and
3) Sometimes it’s a great idea to go beyond the A-lister’s (being, Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Spider-Man, etc.) as the second stringers tend to have a little more slack in what can be done with their stories (I’m thinking Sandman, Swamp Thing, Starman, and other similar series here)
4) The writing moves from incredibly relatable to hilarious to heartbreaking with ease and left me wanting to read more RIGHT NOW!
5) Perhaps I should listen to my friends recommendations more often, because this stuff is FANTASTIC
For the last few days I've been getting that ominous feeling you sometimes have when a cold is on the way. Sort of a, not feeling too bad but something is certainly heading in your direction and if you can hide behind a mailbox before it gets here you should give that a try.
So now that I've come to work the last few days on a comforting cocktail of tea and DayQuill (making sure to stay a comfortable distance from my coworkers and keep myself properly hydrating), I think I'm getting ready to call it a loss to the common cold.
Also I'm not a fan of when co-workers come into the office obviously sick, and as I'm edging closer to that myself it may be time to give everyone (especially me) a bit of a rest.
For me, the worst part of the who thing is that fact that I won't be able to do much reading/watching/gameing for the next few days as it will all end up either being immediately forgotten or in the best case smushed together into some sort of unrecognizable blob of plot, character and sudden twists...
You may have won this time cold, but next time... next time... (that bit would be funnier if you knew I sounded like Doctor Claw right now)
For one of my books clubs last month I got to read a book I've been looking forward to for a long time, Daphne Du Maurier's 1938 novel Rebecca.
I saw Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 adaptation of the book a few years ago when working my way back through all the winners of the Best Picture Oscar and absolutely loved it. The film was haunting, captivating and included Judith Anderson as the villainous Mrs. Danvers, a character which still sits quite high on my list of most terrifying movie villains.
The book (which has never been out of print since its publication), focuses on a young woman who marries a considerably older man and finds herself at in charge of a large manor house, Manderley, where her husbands last wife, Rebecca ruled until her untimely death.
The novel focuses on how our narrator and unnamed heroine (often referred to as either "Dear" or "The Second Mrs. De Winter") attempts to deal with a household and environment still held under the sway of her husbands dead wife.
The book does have a lot in common with Bronte's Jane Eyre; young girl marries older man, mysterious goings on in the house, a tragic secret, etc., but is well worth reading on its own as Du Maurier has created one of the most thrilling reads about a young bride I've ever come across.
Continuing through my survey of 1970s era Science Fiction, I've just finished Bob Shaw's 1975 novel Orbitsville, which I found to be both intriguing and a little alarming (but in a really good way).
The novel focus on ship captain Vance Garamond, who while waiting to meet the CEO of the most powerful company on Earth makes a rather (sorry for the mild forty-year-old spoiler of the events of the first chapter) terrible mistake and through a moment of negligence allows the CEOs only child to die in an accident.
Obviously the next segment of the book follows his rapid escape from Earth and his attempt to hide from the most powerful person in the world, which leads to Orbitsville itself, a massive Dyson sphere (wherein a hospitable atmosphere and environment exist across the inside of a globe) but the sphere itself is so massive it is almost beyond comprehension.
For classic SF readers, the book is clearly going to draw comparisons with Larry Niven's Ringworld (1970), but although there are a number of similarities between the two - world exploration, action and adventure, Orbitsville plays down the aliens aspect and focuses much more on the alien nature of the world itself.
The book was a quick read, quite fascinating, and ended with a turn of events I was definitely not expecting. Well worth a read.
And as it's almost been a week since my last post, a quick run down of last week is in order.
From Wednesday to Friday I was at a Statistical Literacy Institute, which was actually a lot of fun and really interesting.
Then we hit Oscar weekend and I was focusing on getting my last few movies watched before the big event...
So here we are, Monday morning, and it's all going to go back to normal, so don't worry, I'll be chatting about my regular reading, viewing, etc. every day for the rest of the week to make it up to you.
Thanks all!
Bookmonkey
Growing up I read a lot of books, through elementary and junior high and even into high school I averaged four to five books a week, every week without fail.
As I've always been a fan of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction, I made my way through a lot of children's fables and fairy tales, which are filled with some of the most awful things you can imagine and then tend to aim them at kids (Cooked in an oven, eyes pecked out by birds, or bed-time forever, anyone?)
Like most people however, I've read a lot of what you'd expect and not a lot of what you might assume - like Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883). I saw the movie as a child, enjoyed the magical transformations, the epic adventure and even singing along with "When You Wish Upon a Star", but had never actually read the original source material.
So a couple weeks ago I picked up the Gris Grimly illustrated version (which is pretty darn amazing), and set down to learn about this little wooden boy.
The book is a really quick read (less than a day for me and largely I'm talking about coffee breaks, my lunch hour and the bus trips to and from work. The story is a delight to read, although may work better chapter-by-chapter over a series of readings, as much of the narrative is repetitive (Pinocchio is willful, told to think about what he is doing, acts without thinking, and is punished), and there are some very sudden and violent acts portrayed throughout the story as well (let's just say things don't fare very well for the cricket...).
In the end, the original Pinocchio is a pretty fun read, the boy is likable and the semi-self awareness of all puppets in the story is more than a little thought provoking.
