I picked up this comic book collection "The Five Books of Blood" because it was written by Greg Rucka, who has written some good stuff. So, he's written some good stuff. But he also wrote "The Five Books of Blood". So now I know that not everything he writes is worth picking up.

Maybe if I liked the world of Batman more, this might have appealed. This book is set in the world of Batman. It's pulp-y. Do you like the idea of a group of thugs who worship the idea of crime, who perform crimes because they think they'll gain mysterious powers by doing so? And maybe they do gain mysterious powers by doing so? If so, this comic book is for you. This comic book wasn't for me, though. The idea of crime as a nigh-tangible force is very Batman-ish. But I haven't steeped myself in that tradition, and this book didn't really encourage me to do so.

Pre-book-report non sequiturs can be fun: Darcy Krasne. We now return you to today's Book Report, already in progress.

...ever get published? Though this book is by Sarah Vowell, I blame its widespread existence on David Foster Wallace. Wallace has written some good essays and many bad ones. He pokes fun at himself for being such a geek. He does it a lot. He does it until it stops being funny and then keeps going. In this book Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell, she pokes fun at herself for obsessing over presidential assassination trivia. She travels to different places and thinks about things that happened there.

I didn't finish the book. Is it funny that she studied a lot about something? Not that funny, it's not. I just wanted to say, "Get over yourself. Get over David Foster Wallace's book sales, too. Just calm down and report. He'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes; you don't need to follow him." But there's no point in saying that to a book, so I didn't.

I plagiarized the following explanation from someone else who was passing along this meme: This is a list of the 50 "most significant" science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished, and put an asterisk* beside the ones you loved.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov*
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson*
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe*
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman (I read the comic book. Does that count?)
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven*
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson*
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer*

The instructions don't say what to do with books that you didn't finish because you hated them: italicize or strike-out? However, in my case there is no ambiguity. All of the books on this list that I didn't finish--they all stunk on ice.