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.

I'm still only about half way through Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure. Its not bad, but it hasn't really grabbed me much. I like it, its still amusing, but I find that Dave and Danny are not quite as funny apart as they are together. But, with Dave's book its quite interesting to find out that he still keeps in close contact with a few of the other Dave Gorman's he met, just as Danny made some good freinds out of Join Me. I liked that :)

Last Monday (not the one yesterday), I had forgotten my book at home and so had nothing to read AT THAT MOMENT, and so decided to go to the World's Biggest Bookstore. I love that place. It truly has the best selection of Fantasy/Sci-Fi books out there. Now, if I want just normal mainstream, popular fiction, then a Chapters or Indigo will do, but for fantasy? Nothing but World's Biggest. Lately, they've taken to having displays of 'theme' books, i.e. all humourous fantasy (Tom Holt, Robert Aspirin, Terry Pratchett, etc.) or all books prominently featuring Dragons, or all Canadian fantasy (Guy Kay, Michelle West, Charles De Lint etc.) or all Arthurian themed books. Squee! So yeah, saw that and had to pick up a couple I hadn't read yet. And its acutally been a few months since I've read any Arthurian and the withdrawl was starting to set in, so I picked up Mad Merlin by J. Robert King and Knight Life by Peter David.

I'd read another Arthurian themed book by King, called Lancelot du Lethe, and I enjoyed it, so thought I'd give this one a try. Its not bad, it has all the magic left in and has to deal with Arthur's ascention to the throne. Its got some weird ideas in it (Merlin is actually a 'slain' Jupiter, he was cast out from being a god and made mortal when he lost his followers to Jehovah), but the characters are quite good and Arthur comes across as quite charming, which, for being such a great leader, isn't always the case. So yeah, so far, not bad. Oh, and B finds the author's name very amusing, since it is pretty much his name, just rearranged a little bit. So he keeps referring to it as 'the book he wrote' :)

The second book, Knight Life, I'd been meaning to pick up for awhile because Peter David is someone I'm very familiar with through comic books. He's written all kinds of stuff, from the only Hulk and X-Factor issues I've ever read (and rather enjoyed), so a fabulous retelling of Aquaman's origin to the very enjoyable first bunch of issues that was Young Justice (I will say that as the run of YJ went on, I did have some problems with it, but there was some comedic gold in those first few issues), so I'm curious to check out his take on a modern version of Arthur.

And that's where I am this week.

I loved Lamb: The Gospel according to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. It was a tremendously funny, touching and deep book. It humanized Christ in a way that I, someone who doesn't really count themselves as a Christian, never thought was possible. And as I've always thought that Christ, despite his divine connections, was supposed to be the human side of God, he always felt so... untouchable to me in the Bible. There was never anything that made me want to follow his teachings in the Bible, but that may be because the Bible is presented as this 'authority', and I don't believe that anyone other than Christ himself could be the 'authority'. But anyway, I'm not about to run out and become a true believer, but I just really liked the way Christopher Moore characterized Christ, or Joshua as he is called throughout the book. Even just calling him Joshua instead of the more familiar, Jesus (which Moore has Biff point out to us is the Greek form of the name Joshua) goes so far in humanizing Christ. As does the first time we (and Biff) see him, in a scene that made me fall in love with the book nearly right away; Joshua is around nine years old and he has a squirming lizard in his mouth. He takes the lizard out of his mouth, hands it to his younger brother James, who proceeds to smash it with a rock and kill it. James then hands the lizard back to Joshua, who puts it in his mouth again, and brings it back to life. Biff cannot help but think there's something different about this kid.

The main crux of the story is that Joshua passes those 'missing' years, the ones none of the Gospels cover, but going to learn how to become the Messiah. He does so by finding the three men who believed he was the Messiah right from his birth; the Three Wise Men. He (and Biff) journey to China, India and what would be modern day Afghanistan to learn the ways of magic, the Buddha and some Hinduism/Yoga. Its fascinating and a wonderful idea.

But most importantly along the way to learning to become a Messiah, it is Joshua's best friend Biff (Levi who is called Biff, named so because the sound of him being repeatedly slapped upside the head by his parents is the sound 'Biff') who teaches Joshua to be human.

It is a wonderful book, and even though the ending is such a foregone conclusion, I couldn't help but be sad at the end because for the first time, I felt I connected to Christ not as the ideal, or the sacrifice or the martyr or what have you, but as a person.

So yeah, plowed through that one and now I'm onto Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure.

Alrighty, I finished Danny Wallace's journey into culthood, er, sorry, collective-hood, Join Me.
It was a very good read, but not as side-splittingly funny as Are You Dave Gorman? Join Me was definitely more introspective, but still a journey about self discovery. Danny was inspired to create Joine Me when a Swiss great uncle of his passes away, and Danny is told by some family members, that at one point, this uncle had wanted to start a collective of people living on his farm, helping each other, living in harmony, etc. Basically a commune. Danny finds this wonderful and so places an ad in a newpaper, asking people to simply "Join Me". All they have to do is send him a passport photo. And from there it begins and it grows throughtout the UK to Belgium, Norway, and even the Far East.

I did find it sad that Danny and his girlfriend Hanne, who was such a wonderful character in Are You Dave Gorman?, eventually did break up over Join Me. To her, it was just 'another stupid boy-thing', whereas to Danny, it was an important meeting of minds, of people inspired to do good deeds, etc. It was sad that they couldn't agree on it (although Danny was a prat and hid his collective from her for most of it), although Hanne did eventually join him, but only as a member, not as his significant other again.

So anyway, good read, quite thought provoking really.

And now I'm onto some Christopher Moore hilarity, reading one of his older books that I'd been meaning to read forever but haven't gotten around to, Lamb: The Gospel according to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. It promises to delightfully irreverant, but with enough good punches to also make you think. Christopher Moore hasn't failed me yet.

I've been sick for the last three days with the worst cold I've had in a very, very long time. Didn't feel like doing much reading because my head hurt, but I did manage to finish Close Range. Overall, I really enjoyed the stories. Her descriptions of Wyoming are beautiful and yet stark, and she never lets you forget how unforgiving the country can be, death is an everyday part of the lives of all the characters, and many meet unpleasant ends. Her characters are harsh, hard-living, sometimes noble, but often not types. There was one story that was only a page and a half long, but with the best 'makes you laugh in a VERY uncomfortable way' punchline ending ever. As I mentioned, also included in this collection is the story, Brokeback Mountain, which was the main reason I picked this up. The story is very similar to the movie, and its not very long, but there are chunks of dialogue in the movie straight out of the story, and I now realize that the screenwriters of the movie did a really fantastic job of filling in the details after Annie's wonderfully stark prose supplies you with the initial ideas. Plus, Ang Lee totally captured exactly how Annie sees Wyoming. I think it was a beautiful translation, and I was so happy to see that some of my favourite moments in the movie did indeed come right out of the story. Brokeback Mountain comes out on DVD on Tuesday, and I am definitely going to pick it up so I can watch it and then reread the story.

Next on the reading list is Join Me, where Dan Wallace, one of the co-writers of Are You Dave Gorman? inadvertantly starts a cult. Sounds amusing :)

But I am taking a brief time out to reread Watchmen, as I reread V for Vendetta this past weekend in what was supposed to be a warm up to go see the movie. Which I didn't go see, because I was sick. But somehow, a really bad cold and political unrest/anarchy seemed to go well together.

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.

I finished The Thin Man last night. Good book. I didn't guess who the killer was, so that usually makes a good detective novel in my book. My initial impressions of it held true, I liked Hammett's brief, economical word usage. Stylistically, it really shone when he was describing fights, it made the violence seem more brutal and fast. And it was a nice contrast with the more upper-class scenes. The characters for the most part were so quirky and set up nicely with multiple motives so that you really could keep guessing who dun it until the end. I definitely want to see the movie now.

I started Maltese Falcon, on the subway this morning. So far my impression is that Sam Spade looks nothing like Humphrey Bogart, and is not a terribly nice person. Awesome.

Still working my way through the Chronicles of Narnia. I haven't read any of it in over a week (mainly because I wasn't home this past weekend at all), but I'm close to finishing, I'm on the Silver Chair now. I still love these books so much.

I've been remiss in posting to this I see.

Let's see, what have I read (or re-read) since I was last here?

I'm half way through The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett. Despite my adoration for 80s detective shows (Magnum P.I., Simon & Simon, Remington Steele) and cop dramas, I have not read a lot of detective fiction. Not sure why, just haven't. But so far, I'm really enjoying Hammett. He has an economy of style that is great, especially given my other great reading love is fantasty lit, which is often overblown and over-descriptive. But reading Hammett is like being a detective yourself; he'll just suddenly drop something descriptive into the narrative out of nowhere and forces you to go back and figure out how this may or may not change what you've already found out. One of my favourite instances of this is, about 5 or 6 chapters in, well after we've met the main characters of Nick and Nora, Hammett just casually slips in that Nick is significantly older than Nora. I honestly had no idea, and suddenly, armed with this knowledge, I had to rethink their entire relationship. Did he marry her for her (family's) money? Did she marry him to rebel against her wealthy family? It was an awesome bomb Hammett dropped just matter of factly, the way he delivers all his words. Really enjoying it, and will give an update once I've reached the end.

I've been slightly distracted from the Thin Man because I've launched into a re-reading of the entire Chronicles of Narnia. It's actually been a few years since I re-read them, but I was inspired to after seeing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I realized, as I watched the movie that I really missed a lot of Lewis' turns of phrases that just weren't in the movie much, so back I went to the books. I still love them and, no matter what some critics say, I'm still not hit over the head with the Christian allegory, even though I know its there now. I'm nearly finished Voyage of the Dawn Treader, so only two more to go. (I read the Chronicles in order of the internal, Narnian timeline, so I start with the Magician's Nephew). Funny, my favourite is still the Horse and His Boy. I'll always love poor, proud Bree the most.

Well, here it is, Jan 3, so let's make a first post!

I bought Harold Bloom's latest liteary opus, 'Where Shall We Find Wisdom' and am currently reading that. While I'm usually a fast reader, Bloom does slow me down somewhat as I have to continually go to the dictionary and research certain 'isms' he refers to which I've conviently forgotten over the years.

So far though, a very interesting book. He starts off talking about, what he calls, wisdom literature in the bible, so the Book of Job, Ecclesiastes, etc. Having never actually sat down and read the Bible (or had it read to me at church or anything), I was rather surprised at how lovely some of the language was.

Anyway, now I'm on the section where he talks about Plato exiling Homer from the Republic.

I love Harold Bloom.