Comic Report: The Question: The Five Books of Blood

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.

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Book Report: Assassination Vacation

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.

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Science Fiction Book Club Meme

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.

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