jetpack_monkey: (Jack Skellington - What Does It Mean?)
I'm traveling on a train to Vividon in August -- 43 hours there and 43 hours back. Exciting! I have some stuff planned to occupy my time. I'm going to put a few choice movies on the iPad and I've downloaded some board games to play with [personal profile] echan. However, I also want to do some reading!

I know my friends' list is fully of savvy book lovers and I want to get some recommendations from you folks. Novels, non-fiction, etc. If it's available for Kindle or in the iBook store, all the better.

Fiction I like: Hitchhiker's Guide (only read the Adams books -- are the later ones any good?), Discworld, Vorkosigan, Dresden Files, Game of Thrones (halfway through book 2 now), 1984, Brave New World, The Running Man, the first Hunger Games book (yes I like dystopia, what of it), Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe, Rebecca (du Maurier), Ender's Game, Flannery O'Connor.

Tried getting into Honor Harrington and the military strategy/tech stuff just went right over my head. Might give it another shot.

Non-fiction I like: Books on movies, mostly. More toward the academic/analytical end of things, but given my vidding, I want to start looking at technical stuff related to editing as well. Most of my books are horror-related for obvious reasons and I'd like to branch out from that, although I am still obsessed with genre as a concept and its eternal chicken/egg struggle.

Also, John Green's Crash Course series on Youtube is making me more interested in world history, so if there's any really great reads there, let me know. Ooh and anything on the War of the Roses. I want to compare and contrast it with Game of Thrones.

Comics: Marvel tends to have more deals in the Comics app on the iPad, so I've been reading a metric ton of their stuff lately. I'd like to switch to DC and get some digital trades from the Kindle store. Any really good DC comics or independent series/storylines lately (by lately, I mean in the last eight years)?
jetpack_monkey: (Jack Skellington - What Does It Mean?)
Reading Paper Towns by John Green right now. Nearing the end and wishing I'd had this book when I was in high school. I think it would have helped me with my own Margo Roth Spiegelman type person.

Also, any young adult novel that uses a Walt Whitman poem as a narrative and thematic backbone is a-okay in my book.
jetpack_monkey: (Mickey - Buh-what?)
Spoilers for The Dresden Files: Changes )

I take that back. There were no actual spoilers, other than emotional ones.
jetpack_monkey: (Carla - Laughter *heals*)
- Latest episode of Doctor Who is made of total win. I kind of want to read some Agatha Christie now. Maybe after I finish my Tour of Sci-Fi in 2010. Donna Noble may be surpassing Martha Jones as my favorite New!Who companion.

- Been watching classic Twilight Zone episodes to research an article for Classic-Horror. Watching Telly Savalas match wits with a creepy doll is kind of unnerving. Watching William Shatner actually act rather than rely on his own sense of self-satisfaction is REALLY unnerving.

- In the world of Harry Dresden, I have finished Summer Knight and have moved on to Death Masks. Summer Knight ended much better than it started. I'm kind of hoping that Death Masks will be the same, although comments from [livejournal.com profile] midnightfae don't give me a lot of hope.

- [livejournal.com profile] midnightfae warned me that Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation would be a painful experience. I didn't believe that it could approach Orgy of the Dead levels of suffering. I have suffered for my incredulity. The only bright spot is that Matthew McConaughey plays an surprisingly effective psychopath.

- Speaking of The Twilight Zone, I wrote a joke opening paragraph for the Japanese movie Jigoku (Hell) where I mock Sartre and high school students who get their interpretation of Sartre entirely from the last line of No Exit. I showed it to [livejournal.com profile] midnightfae because I thought she'd get a kick out of it and then tell me to write something serious. She told me to go with the joke opening because it totally worked. Weeeeeird.

- Indiana Jones cereal is like eating Chocolate Kix with Marshmallows.

- Went to one-half of an Indy marathon at [livejournal.com profile] desertwillow's place yesterday. Ending up reading the Gospel of 100 F**king Tacos in my very best Christopher Lee. And got smacked for a comment about "Snakes on a Flame".

- My kitty is getting a tooth out today, as well as getting a lion cut. There will be pictures.

- [livejournal.com profile] timjr wrote the definitive squee on Robert Fuest's The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Read it. Love it. It makes me want to wander off and review its immediate sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, which contains an elaborate Henry James joke.

- [livejournal.com profile] midnightfae and I kept getting stuck in really painful gigglefits all weekend for no reason we can discern. One of us would start giggling and the other would continue and then we would keep fueling each other. People who were in the condo at Comic-Con last July will remember what this is like.

- Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is eating what remains of my free time. In a way, it's kind of lucky that my girlfriend is in China, because I think this would annoy the crap out of her. I blame [livejournal.com profile] hjcallipygian.

- Two months and one week until Comic-Con.

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