Oy… I meant to post a bunch of stuff today. I put up some new designs in the Gamers’ Heaven cafepress shop, finished a book to review, wanted to chat a bit about a 48-hour reading marathon coming up in June (and some friends who will most likely be guest-posting here as a part of that)… lots of stuff like that. I also wanted to do more agave nectar-baking today, although I think that’ll have to wait until Sunday.
Anyway, at least I did get some gardening done, and I’ll post a slideshow of the latest pics at the bottom. I’m also going to see Ironman tonight—usually I try to avoid opening weekend, but it’s one of those ‘meet up with a bunch of friends’ things. It’s also at 11 pm, which is rather late for me. And tomorrow there’s a friend’s retirement picnic…
But I’m babbling, so I’ll just post those pics and go. Have a great weekend!
You know you’ve been receiving too many review books when the FedEx guy thanks you for keeping him in a job.
You know you review too many books when a relative tells you they might be gluten sensitive and the first thing you say is, “I have a review copy of a book about that…”
You know too many of your review copies are of the ’spicy’ variety when you have to start a separate book to take with you to the gym most nights. (It’s a family-friendly gym.)
I’ve always loved martial arts flicks. The problem is, these days they tend to use CGI and/or wire-work to enhance the wild and crazy stunts they portray. While I can enjoy a CGI or wire-work movie if that’s what I’m in the mood for, when I want to watch a martial arts flick it’s generally because I want to see just what the human body can do when it’s properly trained and pushed to its limits. CGI could turn anyone into a martial arts madman on screen—I want to be amazed by what someone can REALLY do.
Recently my husband and I started visiting some friends in Virginia for occasional movie nights, and it turns out that they’re huge martial arts fiends. They introduced us to some Thai movies, and we’re completely and utterly hooked. Our two favorites so far are Ong-Bak and Born to Fight. As expected the plot is flimsy and largely there to provide an excuse for the fight scenes, but that’s to be expected. Thai martial arts are amazing to watch, and the man who produced both of these films apparently feels that the way in which Thai films can distinguish themselves, since they don’t have the resources of Hollywood or Hong Kong, is through their death-defying stunts and unique forms of martial arts. Boy howdy is he right. These are incredibly visceral movies, and if you watch the ‘making of’ specials on the Born to Fight DVD you’ll see at least one stunt that came entirely too close to killing a stunt man.
Ong-Bak is particularly amazing for its chase scenes and its long fights involving Thai martial arts. Born to Fight takes a bunch of professional athletes (seriously: they used real professional athletes instead of actors) so that they could do jaw-dropping stunts and fight scenes that mixed athletics and martial arts. It’s every bit as good as watching an old-style Jackie Chan-style scene using props to their fullest. I can’t wait to see The Protector next.
Apropos of nothing, the latest reviews are of two J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts books: Strangers in Death (her latest), and Naked in Death (the first in the series).
I’m finally getting around to reading & reviewing some more fiction. Wheee! Today’s review is of P.D. Gilson’s Gaea: Beyond the Son, and I have two more novels that I read over the weekend and at the end of last week that I need to review. I finally read a Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb mystery out of curiosity, and I read Craig Smith’s The Painted Messiah.
I wanted to link to Murder By the Book today after reading this post by Sam Houston. Not only does it sound like a fantastic bookstore, but apparently one of the folks there got the bright idea to start up a publishing company aimed at reprinting now-out-of-print mysteries. You know the ones—where you go to buy book ten in a series by an author you just heard of, and you think you should start at the beginning of the series, only it turns out that books one through seven are out of print now? That always drives me insane! Anyway, these folks got the wonderful idea to try to fix that. Go visit Busted Flush Press!
Then, take a moment to watch this fontariffic video:
What’s your favorite book that nobody else has heard of? You know, not Little Women or Huckleberry Finn, not the latest best-seller . . . whether they’ve read them or not, everybody “knows” those books. I’m talking about the best book that, when you tell people that you love it, they go, “Huh? Never heard of it?”
I can do you one better—one of my whole favorite authors, not just a single book. Many of the people I talk with about books have heard of most of my favorite authors, at least in passing: Anne Bishop, Garth Nix, Tobias Buckell. However, almost no one has heard of Thomas Ligotti. He has a very loyal cult following among a very small number of people because he writes extremely unusual, bizarre fiction. It’s absolutely captivating. I highly recommend his Noctuary, with Songs of a Dead Dreamer coming in a close second:
When all the landscape is dying, descending fragrantly to earth, we alone rise up. After light and warmth have passed from the world, when everyone stands melancholy at the graveside of nature, we alone return to keep them company. This is our season to be reborn.
I could also list Bettie Sharpe among my little-known faves, but that’s only because she’s just barely started publishing.
Edited to add: I went and found Ligotti’s website for folks interested in exploring his work.
The most bizarre item we’ve ever sold through Cafepress, and I’ll tell you right now that we’ve sold more than one: Level 70 Hottie Thong. Yes, you read that right—thong.
It isn’t often that I feel the need to gush over a writer’s ability, but twice in the last year I’ve been bowled over by an author’s debut of one sort or another. First time it was Tobias Buckell’s Crystal Rain, and now it’s Bettie Sharpe’s Ember. And in the case of Ember, I wasn’t even asked to review it—it was posted as a ten-part serial at Dionne Galace and now is up as a free ebook at Bettie’s site. I just loved it so much that I had to review it—not just so you can go read it, but in the hopes you’ll go check out Bettie’s first ebook, A Thief in the Night, released today (I’ve got my copy!). Both books are erotic romances, and they’re so far from formulaic. Ember is an incredibly fresh and unique take on the Cinderella story that totally tickled my fancy.
I also have to pass on one other odd fiction-link: I Am a Zombie Filled with Love by Isaac Marion. It’s poignant, insightful, and funny, all at the same time.
I was up late last night playing D&D, so I’m a bit dead on my feet today. One of the cats seems to be a bit sick, too, so cleaning up cat puke at 11:30 pm (yay, raw bunny vomit that apparently had been drying onto the hardwood all day while we were gone), 5:30 am, and 11:30 am didn’t help. I hope he feels better soon, poor thing.
There’s plenty for me to put up this week (including reviews of Demolition Desserts, The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die, Bettie Sharpe’s Ember (coming tomorrow!), and New England Cooking), but they won’t go up today. I’m also putting off playing Pirates until later, because the update seems to be wreaking a little havoc with my ability to play, and I don’t have the patience this afternoon to try again; maybe tonight or tomorrow.
So, I’m mostly posting to point you to a blog that you really should check out. It’s authored by our partner-in-crime Jervis, and called Thraveon.
What makes it worth reading? Well, Jervis has been all over the world, and somehow managed to have all sorts of insane experiences. Better yet, he’s a hysterically fun storyteller. If you want an example, check out the entry he calls ‘Airport Skiing’ and I call Bowling for Monks. Share it with your friends, leave comments… help us encourage Jervis to write more and more about his entertaining experiences.
Maybe I’ll be able to keep up with it, maybe not, but right now it’s an awesomely fun toy. Besides, I’d really love to have a listing of our books for insurance purposes if nothing else—who’d ever believe how many books we have in this house?! $25 for a lifetime membership is really very cheap, and $15 for the bar code scanner is something I’m more than willing to shell out with the number of books we have.
Besides, there are cool features. I’m having fun posting a few brief versions of some of my reviews, and looking up other folks’ opinions of books, and who’s reading what.
I knew I shouldn’t try it out. I just knew I’d never be able to resist if I did!
I don’t watch most game-related videos. To be honest, I find most of them supremely boring. The majority of them are exactly what you’d expect to get from a video-maker whose true interest is gaming, not the making of videos. I.e., the focus is on nigh-meaningless (or at least fairly uninteresting) numbers flying across the screen, or showing off some supposedly ‘uber’ character, rather than on making a good video. However, there are three very notable exceptions to this that I can easily think of.
I don’t even play Guild Wars. But dang, Zack’s videos are good enough that I love them anyway! I’ve never pretended to have any skill whatsoever at reviewing anything related to movies or music; I tried it once or twice and quickly realized I should never do that again. But since this isn’t the reviews blog anyway, here’s my attempt at explaining what makes Zack’s videos so different from most of the ones out there.
For one, he has a perfect sense of editing. The movements utterly match the music. This is far and away one of the top reasons I love his videos.
One of the reasons I think his GW videos work particularly well is that the GW emotes are entertainingly spastic, particularly in contrast to the fancy outfits the characters wear, which inherently makes the videos funny to watch.
Zack also picks catchy songs that work well with video game emotes, and then he’s smart enough to stick with those emotes. So many fan-made videos end up as a bunch of ‘talking heads,’ where they somehow try to make it look like the characters present in the videos are speaking things from the songs for five minutes, and frankly that’s boring and dull.
Not that Zack is the only good game-based video maker out there, of course; of particular note is spiffworld, who makes fantastic Warcraft videos based on Jonathan Coulton’s music. If you prefer spastic and hilarious Zack is the better choice; if you like entertaining stories set to original music, spiffworld/Coulton is great:
And finally, no such list would be complete without Cranius’ inimitable “Big Blue Dress”. While it does have a bit of the “heavy on the numbers” problem, that takes a back seat to the more fun stuff. Keep an eye out for the gnome backup singers, and remember: a man who’s truly skilled can look quite good in Twill!
