29 July 2013

Monday book notes

I'm reading Soccernomics right now, and I'm enjoying it a lot. I'm about 3/4 of the way through, so you'll get to hear my further thoughts on it next Monday.

The instructors of Viable Paradise encourage the students to read something by each of them, so we can know more about their styles and the types of thing they have written. I've already read several books and some short stories by Elizabeth Bear, but I haven't read anything by the rest of the instructors. So I checked my local library's catalog online and tweeted about what I found, which was mostly a lack of these authors.

A friend replied that she has a lot of these books, and if I wanted to come over and get books from her library, I could. So I did that. I left with books by most of the instructors and a few extras she thought I'd enjoy. So my to-read stack has gotten big again.

a lot of books in a row on a table

Hugo voting closes at midnight Wednesday. I need to make sure I've voted in all the categories I plan to. I don't listen to podcasts, and I'm not really interested in voting for the best Doctor Who episode, since I don't watch that. Lots of people tell me I should listen to podcasts, but I really don't have the attention span. I can't do audiobooks, either. With this whole not having a regular job thing, I don't drive anywhere, and I can't just sit down and listen to something and pay attention to it for an hour or whatever. I need to be *doing* something.

2 comments:

John Wiswell said...

I also had a few categories for which I felt either unqualified or simply not compelled enough to vote. What amounts to "Best Dr. Who" is one for me, too. There's no shame in leaving an area blank and leaving it to others.

I'm mostly grumpy about the feature film category. No Beasts of the Southern Wild, Safety Not Guaranteed, Wolf Children or Secret World of Arrietty. Just big Hollywood movies, most of which are not terribly well done.

CD Covington said...

I really liked the Hunger Games and the Avengers. I thought a lot of the non-Katniss-POV things were well done (and largely implied in the text but never confirmed), and they made the whole reality-TV-show thing really creepy by making the control room so sterile and bland and full of people not giving a shit.

The Avengers gave me Cap-Tony snark and BLACK WIDOW being a total badass and snarky deadpan.

I really don't like Peter Jackson's fanon for the Hobbit, but I thought it was an OK movie, even if the dwarves were a bit too attractive.

I haven't seen Looper, and I won't see Cabin in the Woods. I don't watch horror movies, and one of my fellow horror-abstainers watched it without knowing it was a horror movie and reported nightmares for 3 days. PASSU.