Excuse the Type O's

Book: Artie Lange – Too Fat to Fish

MDR — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:41:53 +0000

Ugg. This was disappointing. Terribly disappointing. I am an Artie Lange fan, and a fan of the Howard Stern show, yet this book was just terrible. The stories, were virtually all rehashed from either Artie’s comedy show or from the Radio Show. The writing was terrible, distractingly bad. I feel like Lange and writer Anthony Bozza tried TOO hard to make it read like Artie talks, and frankly it just doesn’t flow well.

Do not read this book. Burn it.

Grade: F

Book: Before they are Hanged – Joe Abercrombie

MDR — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:30:56 +0000

I enjoyed this book more than the first book in the First Law Series. I felt the characters were portrayed much better, and their reaction to stress was far more interesting. I feel Abercrombie is doing a good job of foreshadowing with the characters, and has done a very good job of building interest for the third book, which I have put off reading largely because I hate the size of these text’s which are difficult to lug around on the subway.

It will be interesting to see how Abercrombie is able to wrap up the series in one book, as I feel like there is a lot of ground still to cover with very little actually be accomplished from a plot development aspect of this book.

Grade: B+

Book: The Great Gatsby

MDR — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:23:03 +0000

What is this a serious book? I am reading something serious, with no dragons or magic or fantastic battle scenes? This is CCB’s favorite book, thus my primary motivation was to read my love’s favorite book, and second to try and force myself to get back to reading a broader selection of literature. While I still expect to use reading as the ultimate form of escapism, thus will continue to read lot’s of fantasy, I also want to mix in a good bit of other things.

When I was younger, my reading list was far more eclectic than it is now. I want to try and re-diversify my reading list including literature, economics, and sports. Which is much more reflective of my true interest base than these fantasy novels I find myself currently devouring. With the market turmoil, in my sectors being over a year old now, and Lehman being 7 months in the rear view I fell I need to try and bring some level of normalcy back to my reading life, rather than just trying to escape from the markets and this dreadful economy.

I enjoyed Gatsby, I thought it fascicle, clever and endearing. I thought Gatsby’s infatuation with Daisy to be touching, unrealistic and just plan mad. I thought Tom’s insanity, jealousy and unfaithfulness to be the realest aspect of the novel. I though framing the story through the eyes of Cousin Nick to be just right.

Grade: B+

Book: The Hero of the Ages – Brandon Sanderson

MDR — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:08:14 +0000

The final book of the Mistborn series, was not up to the level of the first two books in the series, however, despite that it was a solid effort. I was torn on whether I should invest the time to read this book or if I should pass. Normally, I don’t have that debate after reading two books in a series, I only have that debate between the first and the second book, however, with this book being panned by the reading fantasy community, I wasn’t sure I wanted to make the investment. I decided too, and don’t regret it. In my previous post I mentioned that I thought the first book was Keisler’s book, the second book was Elands book, this book I expected to be Vin’s book, but I think in actuality it was Sazed’s book which was unexpected, much like the ending.

I liked the ending quite a bit, I felt it was an interesting way to tell the story, and unlike the second book, Sanderson wasn’t afraid to take the clever to character(s) I was emotionally attached too. Overall, I enjoyed the series very much despite it losing steam throughout. I felt it did a good job of coloring the readers perspective of good versus evil and the motives of man being gray while raging their own internal battle between good and evil.

Grade: C+

Book: The Well Of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

MDR — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:00:45 +0000

The second book in the Mistborn Series is a strong complement to the first volume - Hero of the Ages. Unlike Hero this book didn’t work as well as a stand alone, however, it did a very nice job of carrying forward the adventures of Elend, Vin, Marsh, Sazed and all of the others. The first book, was the book of Keisler, and this one was the book of Elend, which surprised me, as I would have thought this was Vin’s book. The driving conflict was Elend’s battle within himself: be the ruler he wanted to be, or the ruler he needed to be. I enjoyed the book, I very much enjoy the religious aspects of the book and that the character’s experience large amounts of failure. I do think this book does lack a certain flair that Keisler brought to the first book, but otherwise still highly enjoyable.

Grade: B

Book: The LIes of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

MDR — Sun, 17 May 2009 18:31:01 +0000

An excellent debut by Scott Lynch. Locke is a street urchin who is trained to be a thief and then a world class con artist in the underworld of Camorr. Lynch does a very nice job of building the story, while flashing back to the Locke’s personal history, and the history of the city, which the take is built off of. Lynch, like Martin isn’t afraid to wield a knife to his characters, getting you attached and then lopping off their heads, in sometimes sudden unexpected ways.

A fantastic read, I’m looking forward to the next book in the series, as their are a number of loose ends that I’m curious to see how they are tied up. Despite those loose ends I feel that Lynch did a really nice job of letting this book work as a standalone. I’ll be curious to see if he can continue that difficult task throughout the series, which tends to get more challenging as the volume’s stack up.

Grade: A-

Film: Man on a Wire

MDR — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:53:59 +0000

I was very excited to see this documentary, and like many of the other things I’ve written about in recent posts, I was disappointed.

I felt the film overly glorified a crazy, self obsessed lunatic. Make no mistake, that is what I believe Phillipe Petit was. The film laregly stared Petite, who served as a sort of tour guide and narrator, and despite the event being nearly 30 years in the rear view mirror, he still seems unable to realize the risks that he put others in. Many of which had no involvement in his capper.

Petit, was a criminal and should have been treated as such. Not the harmless clown that the film portrayed.

Grade F.

Film: Vicky Christina Barcelona

MDR — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:42:18 +0000

I believe this film’s Oscar nomination was a fraud. It was not an enjoyable film. It was not thought provoking. It was not funny. It was not dramatic. It was not well shot, or well paced.

It was not good. What it was was boring, AND uninteresting.

I didn’t find anything enjoyable about the movie and quickly found myself distracted as CCBwatched it, and I repeatedly tuned out. Javier Bardem was disapointing. Scarlett Johansson was stiff. Rebecca Hall didn’t leave much of an impresion either way. Penelope Cruz was very good and deserved her Oscar for best supporting actress.

Grade: D.

Book: The Way of the Shadows: Brent Weeks

MDR — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:14:47 +0000

Pat’s fantasy hot list turned me on to this book, as the cover art looked really interesting, and while I didn’t know really anything about the book I thought the cover art was curious, so I would roll the dice.

The book like seemingly every new entry in Epic Fantasy is a part of a trilogy, the Night Angel series. The prose was mediocre, the plot was typical of the genre, the world building was not very unique but well handled. The characters while somewhat two dimensional, he was able to make me curios about what happens to them, and how they develop. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say I care about them, I’m certainly curious about what happens to them. The biggest strength of the book was that it was an extremely fast read and had a wide distribution for genre, so it will be fairly easy to pickup a copy of the next volume when I have nothing else in the backlog and I don’t want to wait for a .com delivery.

Grade C

Book: Blood In the Cage – L. Jon Wertheim

MDR — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:00:24 +0000

This was my first foray into Mixed Martial Arts books, and I enjoyed it. Wertheim is a gifted sports writer, who hopefully will be publishing on interesting topics for many years to come.

Blood is the story of Pat Miletich a pioneer in MMA, overlay-ed onto a history of the UFC. The prose was fantastic, I found the subject matter compelling and anecdotes fascinating.

I feel like it was somewhat rushed to print as book was only 240 pages and while the largely undocumented history of the early years of the UFC was well covered the events that drove today’s MMA boom were glossed over, and not covered with any type of interesting depth.

Grade: B+