Archive for the books Category

Weekly Geeks 2009-35: Picking the books I read

Posted in books, Weekly Geeks with tags , on September 16, 2009 by Paxton

Weekly Geeks

Weekly Geeks has an interesting topic this week. One I have tap danced with talking about myself for about a year because I’ve been asked this question before. So while I’m prepping Part II of my Star Trek Original Series Season highlights, I’ll go ahead and post this.

This week’s topic wants us to talk about how we pick the books that we read next.

Do you have a plan of what you’re going to read the rest of the year? Have you had a master plan all along? If so, have you stuck to it? What helps you to decide what you’re going to read next? Challenges? Book groups? Or do you have the luxury of closing your eyes and picking any book off your shelf?

I know some of you have spreadsheets and other devices to help you keep track of your books and challenges. (I even succumbed to using a spreadsheet this year after teasing my friends relentlessly about theirs.) If you have online spreadsheets, such as Google, can you give us a peek at them with a link or a screen shot?

Spreadsheets? No. Do I have a plan for what I read? Not really. Like life, I am pretty much making it up as I go along.  Some of my books are picked by topic or author, some by friend recommendations, some by reading reviews on Amazon.com in a genre I enjoy.  When I find books I enjoy, I add them to my Amazon wish list and check to see if it’s on paperbackswap.com.  If it is, it’ll either go in my Wish List or Reminder List over there too.  I’ll then print off some of these lists and take them to Chamblin Bookmine here in Jax to see if I can get them there.  This is how I acquire 99% of my books.

Chamblin Bookmine

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Dork-topia: Cities that are constantly overrun by nerdy fans

Posted in Americana, books, movies, pop culture, Star Trek, Star Wars, Superman, Wizard of Oz with tags , , , , , , , on August 19, 2009 by Paxton

Nerds

Nerds.  You gotta love ’em.  When they love something, they don’t half ass it.  They are ALL IN.  They live and learn the minutia of whatever aspect of pop culture they relate to.  Be it comics, costumes, card games, TV shows, movies…whatever.  And whenever they get the chance, they will make the pilgrimage to whatever place on Earth is the focal point for their obsessions.  A Geek Roatrip, if you will (and I will, thank you).  “So, Pax, where are the nerdiest places on Earth?”  Other than the San Diego Comic Con or DragonCon in Atlanta, here is a list of the nerdiest vacation destinations in the world.  And this is only a few of them.  There are more, trust me.

Forks, WashingtonTwilight nerds
Forks, WashingtonHome of Twilight — This one is the most recent addition to the list.  Forks, Washington is the real life city where the fictional Twilight novels are based.  Constantly inundated by Twilight nerds (called Twerds…no, I’m not kidding) this town has finally thrown it’s collective hands in the air and said, “FINE!  You dorks win.  We’ll sell you Team Edward shirts, let you eat at Bella Italia (OMFG…at the EXACT table Bella and Edward had their first date!!!  You must order the Mushroom Ravioli!!) and even tailor entire tours of the city around a fictional book about vampires that sparkle in the sun.  Hell, visit Forks High School and buy a t-shirt as if you actually attended there with Bella and Edward.  It’s all nerdy fun.  I’m sure my friend Marlene will be there.  Tell her “Hi”, and that I think she’s a dork.

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Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters: Making Romance Readable

Posted in books, Classic literature with tags , , on July 16, 2009 by Paxton

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

I wasn’t going to have any more articles this week, but this news is too good not to share.  After the runaway success of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, Quirk Publishing is at it again with Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters.  Seth Graham-Smith, the author of P&P&Z is busy writing his followup, Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter, so he doesn’t return for this installment, instead this book is co-written by Ben Winters who wrote a bunch of the Worst Case Scenario books.  I applaud the publisher for not going the easy route and using zombies again or one of the other more obvious monsters; werewolves or vampires.  The Sea Monsters epic is set to be released on Sept. 15, 2009.

My wife gave me Zombies for my birthday which will get read in the next few months and I’m really looking forward to Graham-Smith’s Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter book.  Now I have this to also look forward to. The entire idea of these books inspired my Little Women Fight Club article about making classic chick lit more AWESOME.

To help promote this book, Quirk created a trailer and it’s hilarious.

That’s how you market a book, people. F’n GENIUS!!  Here’s a breakdown including a book synopsis from Quirk’s press release.

With Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Quirk Classics has also developed a new Austen to monster ratio. Instead of featuring 85% of Austen’s work and 15% new text as in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters features 60% Austen and 40% additional monster chaos! Most importantly, this new Quirk Classic stays true to Austen’s original novel…

As our story opens, the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets. While sensible Elinor falls in love with Edward Ferrars, her romantic sister Marianne is courted by both the handsome Willoughby and the hideous man-monster Colonel Brandon. Can the Dashwood sisters triumph over meddlesome matriarchs and unscrupulous rogues to find true love? Or will they fall prey to the tentacles that are forever snapping at their heels?

This masterful portrait of Regency England blends Jane Austen’s biting social commentary with ultraviolent depictions of biting sea monsters. It’s survival of the fittest–and only the swiftest swimmers will find true love!

As I said, you can pick this up Sept 15 at your local bookseller.

Ghostbusters 25th Anniversary; New Video Game, New Movie, but no new books?

Posted in books, Ghostbusters, movies, pop culture with tags , , , , on July 2, 2009 by Paxton

So, this year is the 25th Anniversary of the movie Ghostbusters. Released in 1984, it has become a comedy classic.  There has been much buzz recently about the Ghostbusters franchise and several announcements and product releases that have got “Ghosties” (Ghostbusters fans) excited.

On June 16, the first Ghostbusters movie was released on Blu-Ray.

Ghostbusters Blu-ray

Also on June 16, a new video game called, appropriately, Ghostbusters: The Video Game was released for all the next generation console systems.

Ghostbusters video game

One of the things about this video game that excited fans of the movie was that it reunites most of the cast from the original movie for the first time since Ghostbusters II in 1989 (which was also released on June 16).  Returning to voice their characters are Harold Ramis (Egon Spengler), Dan Ackroyd (Ray Stantz), Ernie Hudson (Winston Zedmore) and even Bill Murray (Peter Venkman).  Also returning for the game are Annie Potts as Janine and William Atherton as Walter Peck.  Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis turned down the opportunity to return to voice their characters.

Ramis and Ackroyd wrote the script for the game and they both said that they treated the development of this game as if they were making a new Ghostbusters movie. Judging by online reviews, that commitment shows in the game’s play and storyline. I look forward to playing it on the PS3.

Ghostbusters III

When the actors reunited to voice their characters for the game, Bill Murray was quoted as saying he had a great time re-visiting the character of Venkman and working with his friends Ramis and Ackroyd. He also said he would consider returning to the Ghostbusters franchise in a new movie. That was big news as Murray has continually said for years that he would never do another Ghostbusters movie after the studio made so many changes to Part 2 that it was no longer the movie he signed on to make. Needless to say, Ramis and Ackroyd are in active development of a new Ghostbusters movie. Hopefully, it happens, I would love to see the group back together again.

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Little Women Fight Club: Ways to make classic literature more AWESOME

Posted in books, Classic literature, humor with tags , , , on June 3, 2009 by Paxton

Used BookstoreTo completely misquote Ron Burgundy, “I love books. Books-y, books, books. Here it goes down, down into my belly.” Okay, the last half of that mis-quote didn’t make any sense, but you get the point, I love to read. You can check the ever changing I Just Read and I Am Reading book sections on my blog’s sidebar (over there —>)to see what I’m currently enjoying and what I just finished enjoying. I thought about including what books I have “on deck” ready to be read in that sidebar, but really, it’s a crap shoot what gets picked up to be read next.  There’s no guarantee what I put there will, in fact, come next.

Anywho, sometimes I get on reading tangents where I want to knock out a few books that “the man” considers “classics”.  Stuff I never got to read while in school, or something I did read in school that I remember liking, but don’t remember a thing about it.  These are usually fun tangents and it’s allowed me to discover books like The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, which I never read in school, but is FANTASTIC (why the hell didn’t I read that in school?).  However, there are some classics that I should read, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to read.  Books by authors like Bronte, Joyce and Austen, while considered classics by “people in the know”, are considered flowery, boring and gay by “me”.  If I fall asleep reading the synopsis on the back of the book, then there is little hope the ENTIRE book is going to keep my interest.  So there was a whole section of classic literature that I avoided and I was fine with that.  Until savant/genius/author Seth Graham-Smith decided he too thought classic literature needed a little help in being “less literary” and “more AWESOME”.  Thusly was Pride & Prejudice & Zombies birthed upon our virgin world.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Graham-Smith infuses a subplot involving a battle with the undead into the literary classic thereby making it relevant to guys everywhere.  I mean, what good is a literary classic if NO ONE wants to read it?  Seriously.  Besides, what is more romantic than fighting off an army of the undead?  It’s okay if you can’t come up with an answer to that question, there isn’t an answer other than ‘NOTHING’.

So, I thought, in what other books would this work?  The possibilities are endless.  So I sat down at my desk at work….um, I mean the table at home, after I got off work….and came up with a few more twists on some boring classic literature books that would get me to read them.  Come enjoy the awesome-ness with me.

Little Women Fight Club

Original Synopsis – Follows the lives of the four March sisters as they live, love and learn their way through life. It’s an allegorical novel that champions the strength of women during a time in America when women weren’t considered strong.

New More AWESOME Synopsis – The four March sisters, Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy, are always fighting. One day, a fight promoter, James Lawrence, happens upon one of their more viscous fights and gets an idea. Guys everywhere would pay to see these ladies just go at it in an all out battle royal. Mr Lawrence talks to the girls’ father and, having recently lost a good amount of the family’s money, he agrees to let Mr Lawrence train the girls for a traveling “girl fight” festival. The promoter recruits a few other girls from the nearby area and trains them in boxing and Greco-Roman wrestling. The girls then tour the country side with Mr Lawrence, fighting in a 10 woman battle royal 6 nights a week. The story follows the girls across the country as they live in the festival caravan and fight, love and learn in various small towns across 19th century America. This new version also shows the strength of women…in revealing clothing…in non-sanctioned bloody cage matches. Movie rights are pending.

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