Friday, January 20, 2012

Mountain Goat Maid

DVD

The Help starring [newly famous actors]. Something about domestic help, an author, racism, other stuff.



Fiction

Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat by Andrey Bergen. Recommended by both Bill Crider and Victor Gischler. What a combo! Comedic sci-fi set in Melbourne with "guns, intrigue, kidnappings, conspiracy and all sorts of general mayhem that make for cracking good headlines." Narrated by (according to the cover illustration) a talking goat wearing a smoking jacket and drinking a martini.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Gischler Multi-Pack Vs. Nicholas Sparks

Comic Book Compendiums

X-Men: With Great Power by Victor Gischler and [artists]. I screwed up and bought two of these. One paperback and one hardcover. I bet I could have used a semicolon back there. Reptiles in Manhattan, dead bodies, Spider-Man is amazing, "battle foes on multiple fronts", stupid outfits.

X-Men: Death of Dracula by Victor Gischler and [more artists]. Dracula's sons are feuding. I hope Gischler appreciates us buying these comics and gets back to writing novels. According to his online commentary all he does all day is grill dinner, drink wine, dream of Disney World, and hang out in hipster coffee shops to write.

X-Men: First To Last by Christopher Yost and [other artists]. No Gischler content but I am sure Yost tells a fine tale. The Evolutionaries show up to defend the dwindling X-Men.

Money Machine

Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks. There are a ton of reserves so I bought another copy.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Two Movies and Snow

DVD

Pirates of the Caribbean: on stranger tides starring Kitt Barrie as Courtroom Wench.



The Robber starring [Germans]. Armed robber moonlights as marathon runner.



Snow

Snow looking across Commons Park

Snow

Snow

Charlie Hood and Other Made-Up People

Fiction

Jaguar by T. Jefferson Parker. LASD Deputy Charlie Hood and his Camaro return. According to a review this novel focuses more on secondary series character Bradley Jones. Jones is a crooked Deputy whose singer-songwriter wife is kidnapped by a Mexican drug lord to write a narcocorrido.

Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith. Smith scripts Soviet shenanigans of Agent Six.

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson. A novel about North Korea. I very much doubt a happy ending for this one.

Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak. A novel of Catherine the Great. Stachniak's author photo implies she writes her novels in longhand.

Egypt by Nick Drake. The review said this is a neat cop procedural set in the time of the Pharaohs with lots of historical detail.

A Dark and Lonely Place by Edna Buchanan. The author bio says Buchanan is a crazy cat lady.

Other Guy's Bride by Connie Brockman. Romance with mistaken identity in Egypt.

Hurt Machine by Reed Farrell Coleman. Moe Prager, wine shop owner and part-time detective, looks into his former sister-in-law's murder. Coleman is a Jets fan. Poor man.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Two Comic Book Novels and 12 Regular Novels

Comic Book Novels

Zahra's Paradise by Amir and Khalil. June, 2009 and protestor Mehdi has vanished. His mother and brother go "from hospitals to the morgue, from pleasding with corrupt bureaucrats to hacking into a prison's computers" to find out where Mehdi is.

Return to Perdition by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty. Third novel fllowing the O'Sullivan family and their violent history. I just read the third novel in the series. I was a bit disappointed in that one but will still read this one.

Regular Novels

One Hundred and One Nights by Benjamin Buchholz. Oh, yeah. This guy. The author is a Cheesehead and wrote Private Soldiers about the Wisconsin National Guard in Iraq. The novel is about an Iraqi guy who returns there after 13 years in the U.S.

The Duke is Mine by Eloisa James. Paperback romance without a shirtless guy on the cover. Whoops, I take that back. The second, fold back cover has a shirtless guy.

How It All Began by Penelope Lively. People across London are interconnected by chance. Lively won the Booker Prize. I once won the Wooker Prize (not really).

Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell. Cornwell takes another break from killing Frenchmen with Sharpe and continues his Vikings in England series.

Raylan by Elmore Leonard. Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens gets in more trouble. A random excerpt: "An act of God," Raylan said.

The Rope
by Nevada Barr. Barr writes Anna Pigeon's creation story.

The Chalk Girl
by Carol O'Connell. Some sort of psychological-murder-thriller set in New York City.

House at Sea's End by Elly Griffiths. The cover says A Ruth Galloway Mystery. The author photo says Griffith Hired a Good Photographer. Page 33 says From this Ruth deduces that Jack Hastings does not stand in the Labour interest.

Mr. Kill by Martin Limon. This received a very good review. Part of Limon's Army investigators series set in Korea. Limon is a tall man.

Three-Day Town by Margaret Maron. I pretty sure these are supposed to be good novels by Maron that feature the Judge and cop couple of Deborah and Dwight.

KBL: Kill Bin Laden by John Weisman. I was wondering if this guy had any books out recently. He does. A fictionalization of finding and killing Bin Laden.

Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George. A book.

Same As Usual

Large Print

Sleepwalker by Karen Robards. I first typed that as sleepwaker. A description of the way I feel this morning.

Locked On by Tom Clancy.

A Devil is Waiting by Jack Higgins. ...to eat your cake.

D.C. Dead by Stuart Woods.

Cultural Aside

Some guy on an online NZ radio station just said "Good on ya, Bruce."