Booklist Update

I’d forgotten to keep this up… let me update.

Since finishing Ringworld’s Children, I’ve read: (N = new, R = re-read)

The Hunt For Red October – Tom Clancy (R), Patriot Games – Tom Clancy (R), Bridge of Birds – Barry Hughart (R), Tales from the White Hart – Arthur C. Clarke (R), Star Trek Movie Memories – William Shatner (R), I Am Spock – Leonard Nimoy (R), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling (N), Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams (R), The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul – Douglas Adams (R), Beyond [The Physics of] Star Trek – Lawrence M. Krauss (R), and Crashlander – Larry Niven (N).

I’m working on Eragon – Christopher Paolini (N), A Wizard’s Holiday – Diane Duane (N), and the sixth volume of Chobits – CLAMP (N).

From this list, one might deduce: 1) I’ve had lots of free time lately, 2) I haven’t lots of spare cash on me until I recently got a gift card from a relative, and 3) there’s a certain part of the bookstore I usually visit first.

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Checking in

I’ve been gone for a while, here. Sorry about that, but I’ve been going through a rough time and haven’t been feeling quite outgoing enough to post stuff here. But I’ve got a lot of backed-up reviews and links, now, so I’ll at least slap them up here before they spill over.

Fantastic Four: Decently cast, well-executed, and pretty dull, at least until the last half hour. If you know some science, be sure to bind and gag that knowledge and lock it in the car trunk before entering the theater 🙂 OTOH, isn’t it great to be a comic-book fan in an year where the worst superhero movie of the summer is still fairly decent, and the best is Batman Begins?

War of the Worlds: Not necessarily better than the George Pal version, but certainly prettier. I sure would like to see Spielberg’s people do a Godzilla or Battletech flick – at least I would believe all the visuals. This is the first version of the story I know of that gives humanity a glimmer of a workable tactic against the aliens before the traditional denouement takes care of things. It would have been nice if they’d somehow worked a USS Thunderchild into the river crossing scene.

Half-Blood Prince: Far superior to Order of the Phoenix, both IMHO and in an unscientific poll of people I’ve asked. Hard to talk about it much without causing spoilers or boredom, but Tonks and Lovegood (not a 70’s cop show) are still two of my favorite characters.

Shortpacked! on why there will be a few changes to the G1 characters in the Transformers live-action flick.

Shortpacked! again on Batman reaching the pinnacle of human reflexes and agility.

Brad Hicks on “The Spaceship We Have”, parts one, two, and three. He talks about why we have the Space Shuttle instead of the equipment every space geek in the early sixties thought we were going to have by now; and why that’s going to be a real problem real soon.