Items:

1) The Spirit has reminded me why I never go to the theater. ( Ten dollars for *that*? )

2) I'm a bit over 300 pages into War and Peace. I was worried that it would be slow reading, and 1400 pages of it, at that -- but it's actually surprisingly fast-paced; more so than a lot of other authors of the period, anyway. My only difficulty with the book so far is in keeping track of its ( typical Russian superabundance of characters. )

Oddly, War and Peace is also having the unexpected side-effect of making me ( really excited about Napoleon. )

3) I guess this post would be the place to tell me what books I should buy with my gift cards. ;) Of course, I've already got a list; foremost among the books I'm planning to buy are ( these. ) But anyway, I'm shopping at Bookman's, where everything is used and cheap, so if I have any money left over, I'll want to know what I should spend it on. And it's always nice to have options! :)

At long last, finals are over. I have no idea how I did on my College Algebra final, and luckily I don't have to care, because unless I utterly failed it, I should still get a B in the class. And if I did utterly fail it -- I'll still get a C.

So. It's time once again for my embarrassingly short list-of-books-I-read-this year. I'm still a hell of a long way from "read your height in books," but I did better than last year, anyway. (And as usual, I'm not including stories and plays from collections -- just whole novels.)

Here, then, are the books, complete with commentary of great prolixity and spoileriness.

( Toilers of the Sea )
( er, here, have some extended rambling about Hugo and Melville )
( Brief Lives )
( Frankenstein )
( Coraline )
( Nineteen Eighty-Four )
( reread: The Man in the High Castle )
( V for Vendetta )
( Atlas Shrugged )
( Tao Te Ching )
( The Stranger )
( Big Fish )
( Lots of Batman stuff... )
( Watchmen )
( The Golden Compass )
( The Valley of Fear )
( The General in His Labyrinth )
( Dracula )
( This Side of Paradise )
( War of the Worlds )

Aaaand there you have it. I may not read much, but I sure do make long posts about it...

Been reading a lot of Batman comics lately. I didn't read many comic books when I was a kid, because the few that I picked up were so bad (apart from Sandman -- for a while I really thought Gaiman was the only good comic writer ever). But now that I have access to stuff that wasn't published circa 1960, the genre feels much more respectable, and really pretty awesome. :D

There will be lots of spoilers in here.

Hush by Jeph Loeb. ( Pretty, but not amazing. )

The Killing Joke by Alan Moore. ( Nice. )

Dark Victory by Jeph Loeb. ( Meh. )

Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison. ( Holy shit, man. )

Batman: Year One by Frank Miller. ( Entirely excellent. )

The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. ( o_O )

Also, ( some thoughts on the comics versus The Dark Knight. )

I'm also reading Gabriel Garcia Marquéz's The General In His Labyrinth. So I haven't abandoned real literature or anything, I promise. ;) Oh, and if anyone is comparing this to my post about Watchmen -- well, Watchmen is better than any of these comics (bar maybe Arkham Asylum, which is like a whole different genre, anyway); I was just more critical of it because I had set such high standards. I appreciate it a lot more now that I've got in in proper perspective.