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Posted

I read a decent chunk of Sapkowski's The Last Wish and I'm now working on Blood of Elves, the first of the Witcher novels and...they're not particularly good, man.  It just feels like they don't really hold up to top-end fantasy fare, even though the ideas behind it are oftentimes compelling.  I always wonder with this whether it's the translation or not: there are clearly some instances where it is - "don't be such a know-all!" - really?!?!? - but otherwise, it's, well, just OK, and I prefer what the video games ended up doing from a storytelling perspective.  Maybe they get better?

Posted

5/5 to "Death's End" by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu.

WOW.

This may be the best hard sci-fi I have ever read, because it remembers that humans are humans, in all our glory and horror and contradictions.

I also have no idea how NetFlix is going to film this. 😂

 

Posted
4 hours ago, JLSigman said:

I also have no idea how NetFlix is going to film this. 😂

There's gonna just cancel it before they get to this part >_>

  • Sad 1
  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

This week I've been reading Castle Waiting by Linda Medley. It truly is the most delightful book I've read in a long time. In fact, it's the most excited I've been about comics since I discovered Strangehaven and Age of Bronze. It reminds me of when I first discovered the early issues of Bone and bought the first trade paperback with the Great Cow Race. Beautiful black and white cartooning and a pure joy to read. I was so absorbed in the story that I put everything else aside this week and only read Castle Waiting. Loved every single panel. Check this out if you enjoy enchanting storytelling. 

  • Like 1
Posted

Did you get the big omnibus? Or reading it another way? I had a bunch of letters printed in the single issue days. Linda was always very cool back then. 

Posted

Read Uncanny Avengers, and it was pretty neat, really. I liked that Deadpool was way toned down for this.

I think the only other post-Hellfire massacre book I need to read is the Nightcrawler one. Someday my library might even offer it. 😛

Posted

The Time of Contempt is a Hell of a lot better than the other, earlier Witcher books, but it certainly raises the question of why Netflix had to suck so hard at adapting the whole Reince plot and the Yen/Ciri relationship.

Posted

I'm in the home stretch on The Raven Cycle and the Dreamers Trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater and it's been a real strong case in point for why I try to distance myself from popular opinion. Raven Cycle is often meandering in a way that made my interest waver, but the great characters, interesting magical stuff, and overall style got me to the finish line. Finding out that it was the better liked series by the fandom made me a little unsure if I wanted to jump into the second one, but eventually I gave it a try and I'm glad I did because it absolutely rocks and is, for my money, significantly better than the first series. It still has the sort of wandering dream logic plot work driving it, but it keeps a tighter focus on its leads and has a forward momentum at all times that's kept me hooked end to end. On the final book right now and genuinely hyped to see how it all wraps. 

It's a shame she's decided not to write anything else in this universe because I'd love to see more of it.

  • 3 weeks later...
Posted (edited)

Read the 1000+ page, 30 pound hardback version of Ultimate Mile Morales.

This is some AMAZING writing. I loved about 98% of it - there were a few times when I (someone who grew up around a lot of Black and Afro-Latine kids) could feel that this was a White dude writing a Black kid (he would NOT say that, do that, etc.) but it wasn't egregious. I loved the new Cloak and Dagger (I'm an 80's kid, I can't help it). I have stuck a few more of the crossovers from that version of the Ultimate universe in my Hoopla TBR pile to check out.

Edited by JLSigman
ADHD strikes again
  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Sonic Life by Thurston Moore is indeed fantastic. Especially thrilling to read about life in late 70s/early 80s New York. To no surprise, his articulation of music is second to none. I really hope this leads to more books. 

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)

Love for him to do a list of his fave records and a dissection of them. 

Just finished Dopeworld: Adventures in the Global Drug Trade by Nico Vorobyov. He was a kid from Russia who ended up in the UK, was a low-level dealer who got a year in prison, and decided to make a book. It's a really excellent overview of the, well, global drug trade from the POV of a kinda drug tourist who hits all these different places. His perspective is pretty gonzo/HST in nature and I gather he could have faked the whole book, but it's really good. There is actually little travelogue stuff and more history, and he definitely did the interviews, so I suppose it's all legit. The craziest parts are 1. Russia where he talks to crazy vigilante thugs, 2. Iran where he gets totally fucked up because their population is secretly getting high on EVERYTHING right under the radar, and 3. the Phillippines where Dutarte is committing mass genocide on "drug dealers", i.e. anyone he wants to kill, extra-legally via vigilante forces or not. Basically anyone. And the public is in full support in him including victims. It's totally insane. The capper is a good layout of how drugs should be totally legalized and controlled in different ways for different drugs. I can see it all working in theory but it would also involve governments to pour the funds they save into actual fair, poverty-lifting measures, so basically destroying Capitalism and yeah it ain't gonna happen and we're still gonna have death squads in favelas.

The other books I snagged from the library while dropping it off:

Rise of a Killah: My Life in the Wu-Tang Clan - Ghostface Killah. Went ahead and read some of this and him and another dude are detailing their wild early life, and boy there is a lot of slang, I'm pretty good with that kinda stuff but it can get convoluted. I always felt Ghost was the dark heart of the Clan, the dude you REALLY don't wanna fuck with, and even though they all did dirt this is pretty telling. 

The Fixer: Moguls, Mobsters, Movie Stars, and Marilyn - Josh Young and Manfred Westphal. About Fred Otash, a former Marine turned LAPD vice cop turned private investigator and fixer to the stars. Apparently he would do "anything short of murder" and wiretapped eeeeeeverybody. So this is some real LA Confidential shit. 

Dark Wire - Joseph Cox. In 2018 the FBI created this secure communications app called Anon that criminals thought was their own, and started discussing every crime under the sun on it. Now this should be interesting.

Edited by Curt McGirt
Posted

Forgot to mention, I read a cookbook called Prison Ramen last go round. It's self explanatory -- recipes with shit you get in canteen or manage to steal from the kitchen. Almost ALL of them involve ramen, even recipes that aren't ramen-specific. The inventiveness of a man buried in the prison system is incredible. Along with the recipes are some really good anecdotes from ex-inmates, so you also learn a lot. This should probably be mandatory reading for Americans in particular to help understand the penal experience and what we have wrought upon our society.

  • Like 1
Posted

I've looked at Prison Ramen before. It's a pretty fair representation of things you can make depending on your facility. I've been places without microwaves, places with, places that sell hot pots and places that have a hot water spicket only. The medium security wing of the last place I was only had lukewarm sink water to cook with. You adapt. If I'm being honest, I usually make something similar to a break (or slam in Indiana or tons of other names) at work once a week. 

I went to a used bookstore and grabbed a bunch of John D. MacDonald paperbacks. It seems like a good chunk of my favorite mystery/crime/thriller authors cite him as an influence or favorite. I also grabbed some John Saul and a Bentley Little novel I've never read. First though I'm reading The Dain Curse by Dashiel Hammett. 

  • Like 2
Posted

My wife got a whole box of books from someone who was cleaning out their house and just wanted them gone. She saw one that she figured I'd like and gave it to me, but th there's an issue. The book in question is "Night and Day" by Iris Johansen. It's the third part of a trilogy and actually the twenty first book in the Eve Duncan series. So, I'm torn. Do I get the very first book in the series for an introduction to the character, or do I just get the first two parts of the trilogy and start there? 

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)

I've read a few of that series. It's like most thrillers where you can get the general idea but some of the fine details might go over your head if you haven't read from the beginning. Personally, I wouldn't rank it in the top thriller series list. 

Edited by RazorbladeKiss87
  • Like 2
Posted

Finished Volume 2 of Something is Killing The Children. I wasn’t blown away by the first volume, partly because I thought I knew where the story was going and things felt a little rote. Volume 2 showed me how wrong I was. I loved it.

Posted

Finished the Ghostface Killah book. Here's some fun facts. 

1. He used to smoke PCP all the time including a time the police were following his series of cars throughout I believe Manhattan. He had a bunch and apparently cut a hole in the seat to stuff his shit in, then lit up the sherm purely out of insolence, they got pulled over and searched where he was found to be wearing a vest and they didn't find his gun or the drugs, kept following him, he pulled over to his attorney's firm and pulled him down from upstairs to approach the cops who were super pissed that they were caught surveilling nevermind busted by a lawyer and couldn't continue after. 

2. He shot beneath his friend's crotch to try and get at an attacker who was robbing the friend at knife point. 

3. Him and his crew chased Biggie out of a club and tried to shoot him because of beef they had right before he was actually murdered. Ghost claims to have been at the party prior to the murder where him and some women he was friends with noticed some supposed Fruit of Islam dudes, and possible assassins, looking sketchy. 

4. He got in a fight with Busta Rhymes' clique at a club and BEAT THEM DOWN BY SWINGING AROUND AN EMERGENCY FIREHOSE. You know, the kind with the big brass nozzle at the end. 

He is also probably an undiagnosed schizophrenic who has heard voices telling him to hit people and jump off of buildings and bridges. Doctors tried to medicate him but somehow did not recognize this. They didn't realize he had malaria when he came back from Africa either, though, so...

Anyway. Shit is crazy. There was also a long, boring, rambling chapter about his faith in something or other. And I found out (probably forgot in the first place) that RZA lost five albums worth of beats in a flood before he fell off and goddamn, if you could change anything in the musical world...

Library called and I got A Cook's Tour from Tony Bourdain that they stashed away for me, and I'm plowing through the Ultimate Punisher book. Some of the pages -- scratch that, single panels -- in that thing are breathtakingly good. 

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)

I'm going to have to grab that Ghostface book. He's always been my favorite member of the Wu-Tang Clan. That PCP story is wild. Driving on that just.... well, it's not good. My guy got a batch of it by mistake and I lost an entire weekend. Just no knowledge of what I did. RZA losing those albums has always been a major "What If?" in my mind. 

I'm interested in hearing how A Cook's Tour is. Kitchen Confidential was really good, even if it reinforces some of the worst aspects of kitchen culture. 

Edited by RazorbladeKiss87
Posted

I follow the E.C. Comics Fan Addict page on Facebook and was inspired to buy a collection of Wallace (Wally -- though he hated being called that) Wood's "preachies" entitled Came the Dawn. Apparently there are several of these compendiums of different artist's works from E.C. "...So Shall Ye Reap!" really affected me when I read it as a kid so this should be really good; the only problem is I'm still dealing with all the library stuff. The Fixer has been my go-to when I'm eating at the dinner table and I'm about halfway through. There are some crazy stories about the dude saving Rock Hudson's bacon when they were gonna reveal his sexuality during divorce proceedings, actually saving Judy Garland's marriage, career, and prolonging her life as a result, etc. 

Posted

There’s been a reboot of EC/EC style horror comics at Oni with some big name talent working on them, like Jason Aaron. I think issue 1 came out recent

y. 

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted (edited)

Yeah I think it's called Epitaphs from the Crypt? I'm following the E.C. FanAddicts Facebook and they've shown coverart.

EDIT: Heh heh, boils and ghouls! Looks like some are not happy about Epitaphs judging from a response I read last night on there, something about doing something awful that I can't remember being preferable to reading it again. So YMMV. Then again you know these vintage creeps are gonna hate on new stuff. 

Edited by Curt McGirt

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