Number 25 is America Unchained by funny-man Brit, Dave Gorman. You may remember Dave as Danny Wallace's partner in crime in Are You Dave Gorman?. The two may not be doing any more 'stupid boy projects' together, but they certaintly have branched out to do more 'stupid boy projects' apart. I guess that means they're maximizing their 'stupid boy projects'.

Dave's latest grew from a month long comedy tour of the United States. He tried to enjoy it, but he wound up hating it. He hated the sameness, the homoginzation, the... corporateness of America. And he felt bad about hating America. He'd had a completely different idea of the country and when it didn't come true, he was upset and angry about it. So, he came upon the idea of seeing America the way he thought it should be seen; from coast to coast in an American made car as old as he was (so around 35 years old), and not giving any money to 'the Man'. And the Man in the case was anything that could be considered a chain. That meant Dave had to stay in independently run hotel, eat at independently owned restaurants, and fill up at independently owned gas stations. It would be this last that would prove the greatest challenge.

Dave begins his jaunt in Coronado, California (an island just off of San Diego, which I've been to and which is beautiful), where he buys a 1972 Ford Torino station wagon. He loves the car, but she will, of course, prove to be a fickle travelling companion.

We follow Dave on the road, from side trips all the way up to Oregon, to hilarity and maddness in Utah, to losing his first camera person (because he is making a documentary based on his cross-country run) due to excruciating back problems (and boy could I sympathize there), to the friendliness of Kansas, the meanness of Mississippi, all the way to Georgia where they reach the Atlantic coast and call their journey done.

It's an inspiring tale, one that truly shows you America in all her forms; good, bad, ugly, beautiful, but also allows you to see her as she was before all became corporate and chains and nothing but big box stores. It makes one want to set out on a road trip immediately.

It's the time of year again when my reading time will seriously suffer because the Stanley Cup playoffs have started and there is MUCH hockey to be watched. This year isn't as bad as the past few, since the Leafs didn't make the playoffs, I'm only having to pay attention to my beloved Wings. But since Detroit is playing a Canadian team in the first round, I'm actually getting to see the games. Which is awesome. But as I said, my reading suffers in the Spring.

But despite the distraction the playoffs present, I did manage to finish Mad Merlin by J. Robert King. It wasn't bad, but it is the first time that I actually felt like... yeah yeah, I know what's going to happen, Arthur beats the Saxons at Badon Hill, blah, blah. I never usually feel like that with an Arthurian book, I mean face it, I ALWAYS know what's going to happen with an Arthur book. Depending on when in his life they're focusing, I know that he becomes King, marries Guinevere, founds the Round Table, fights a lot of Saxons, defeats the Saxons, has years of security, the knights go off to find the Holy Grail, gets killed by Mordred. End of story (unless you're doing the once and FUTURE king side of his story). But this book is obviously ending early in Arthur's reign, and is going to be using the victory at Badon over the Saxons as the climax, but I'm just kinda... ehn about it.

It's not that I'm not enjoying the book, it has some neat ideas, like Merlin being the fallen ex-god Jupiter and Excalibur forged from the actual word of the Christian God, but I've found the characters rather hard to enage in because there's SO much focus on the magic and the clash of religions. Wow, I cannot believe I'm actually complaining that there might've been too much magic in this Arthurian telling, but I think I am.

I did like that the conflict with the Saxons was also them bringing their gods with them to conquor Britannia, but we all know that didn't work. The Saxon people might've eventually won, but it was the Christian God who won the religious wars, stamping out or appropriating the gods of the Saxons, the Celts, the Romans, etc. So yeah, that aspect I did find interesting, but I did think there was a little too much focus on such things.

Still have to finish Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure though. But I also started re-reading my run of Y: The Last Man, since I just got all my trades back from a friend who had borrowed them.

Gah, I've been so slow with reading things lately. Stems from two things: I'm able to get out more since I only have Jet part of the time (which has its bonuses and its disads), and I got a beautiful new TV at the beginning of the month and have found myself watching TV for simply the sake of watching my awesome new TV. I'm getting a handle on this though, and am slowly returning to my regular viewing habits of only watching the Amazing Race, Lost and some incarnation of Law & Order.

So, since I was last here though, I have indeed finished the Maltese Falcon. I think the ending of the movie is very different from the one in the novel. I seem to remember in the movie, Humphrey Bogart breaking open the Falcon and some ridiculously expensive jewel was inside it. Or am I making that up? Anyway, book was good, but because I seemed to have that ending fixed in my mind, I was quite surprised at the ending of the book and I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or not. Kinda like when I read Jaws finally and got to the end and said "That's it? Boring!" Say what you like about Speilberg these days, he definitely improved on the ending of Jaws.

Also finished Are You Dave Gorman. I got off to a slow start with it, but ended up loving it and laughing myself silly at parts of it. It really is a good thing the authors were able to parlay their silly bet into a book and a BBC series, I can only imagine how far in debt Dave Gorman was after travelling to places like NYC, Italy and Tel Aviv. Being of Norweigian decent myself, this was my very, very favourite passage in the book, said by Dan Wallace's Norweigian girlfriend:

"I am in charge on this trip," said Hanne sternly. "Nothing is going to go wrong. You two have been very sloppy so far. You need a Norweigian in charge. Or a woman. Or better still, a Norweigian woman."

And, as her boyfriend then states, there's not a lot you can say to that. LOL.

I also finished my rereading of the complete Chronicles of Narnia. And, as I'm trying to break out of a writer's block concerning the superhero game I run, I also re-read all the Warren Ellis written trades of StormWatch. Still not inspired though...

Last night, since I was so close to finishing Are You Dave Gorman, I picked up Close Range, the collection of short stories written by Annie Proulx that Brokeback Mountain is in. I've only read a couple of the stories so far, but I'm quite liking them. She's very Alice Munroesque by way of Wyoming. I'm looking forward to getting to the Brokeback story considering how much I adored the movie.

No, I haven't finished the Maltese Falcon yet, I'm about 2/3 of the way through it. Very good, LOVED the scene where we first meet Cairo and he's holding the gun on Sam, so Sam (violently of course) takes the gun away from him, they talk, reach an agreement, Sam gives him the gun back, and Cairo immediately turns it on Sam again. Brilliant!

No, I haven't finished the Maltese Falcon yet, but I did start another book last night, called Are You Dave Gorman? Its a strange little book lent to me by co-worker Graig, and so far, is quite amusing. Its written by two friends who embark on a journey to find 54 other men named Dave Gorman. As you may have concluded, one of the authors of the book is named Dave Gorman. This whole adventure comes 'round during a drunken bet, when the other author refuses to believe that there are other people around who are named Dave Gorman. So, that night, they find themselves on a train to Scotland to find the first of the other Dave Gorman's, a general manager of a Scottish soccer team. It's all quite amusing, very quirky and British, and despite the fact that it is written by two separate people, their writing styles mesh well without losing each distinct voice.

I've also made a promise that I will try and launch myself into Love in the Time of Cholera again. So yeah, after finishing my searches for falcons and Dave Gormans, I will go back to cholera. Maybe.