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Since my last update, I've read:

Old Man's War - John Scalzi

A great premise with an execution that mostly failed to engage me. Neither the plot nor the characters were compelling to me. I became more and more frustrated with how the book handed out exposition and none of the banter was as witty as I suspect Scalzi thought it was when he wrote it.

Harlan Ellison's Watching

Harlan Ellison being Harlan Ellison: Angry and occasionally stubbornly wrong, but always enjoyable.

Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There - Tom Davis

A collection of scattered anecdotes that I wish had been presented more chronologically and with a better sense of an actual narrative to it. Also wish it actually had been more about SNL and less about Tom Davis himself, who is someone I ended up not really liking by the end.

Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live - Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller

Loved this one.
 
Pet Sematary

Yeah, so... It's definitely another Stephen King book. I wouldn't say there are any surprises here, but it's also probably one of the better 'regular' King books. Whatever that means...

The Ghost Brigades - John Scalzi

"So, Hansen if you didn't like Old Man's War, why did you read the sequel?"

Good question! And an even better question considering I didn't particularly like this one either. I suppose I read this one because I wanted to give Scalzi one more chance to win me over. Unfortunately it was more of the same and I won't be reading any more Scalzi any time soon. I suspect he's not a writer for me.

Next, I'm reading Slaughterhouse 5 and maybe Jurassic Park. Maybe.

Every year I declare that I'm not gonna watch it.

Every year I at least end up watching the last part where the points are distributed.

I'm not gonna watch it.

Dammit.

Over the last month I've read:

Red Dust - Gillian Slovo

Don't have much to say about this. read it for class and thought it was okay, I guess.

Knots and Crosses - Ian Rankin
Hide and Seek - Ian Rankin
Tooth and Nail - Ian Rankin
Strip Jack - Ian Rankin
The Black Book - Ian Rankin

These are all part of the Inspector Rebus series. I had to read The Black Book for class and since I'm apparently crazy, I felt I had to read the preceding four books in the series first. While I would say they do get progressively better from one book to the next, none of them really impressed me in any way. They suffer from 'small world' syndrome and each novel ends up feeling too neat and convenient and they're fairly repetetive to boot.

God, No! - Penn Jillette
Every Day is an Atheist Holiday - Penn Jillette

Despite having heard most of this content in some form or another before between Penn's radio show and the podcast, I still enjoyed them quite a bit. I listened to them on audiobook and while I don't always see fully eye to eye with Penn, I do find him compelling to listen to.

Starting Old Man's War today and planning on reading Pet Sematary after it.

I would like this. Geekza was a great name.

Y: The Last Man being my favorite comic ever, it's a given that I'm gonna read this at some point. I'm really just waiting to get into it so that I can binge through as much as possible in one sitting.

Really loved this episode and could easily have listened to four hours more.

But, uhm, the Edoras theme is not played on an Irish fiddle, but a Hardanger fiddle. Not a big deal obviously, I just always thought it was cool that they used a Norwegian instrument for Rohan, them being Vikings on horses and all.

But seriously, that was one of the best episodes in a while.

Does it have a handle?

I'd second that Hunchback recommendation. Always liked that one a lot myself.

Some other movies not listed above that I think it's worth considering:

The Untouchables
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Young Guns
Beverly Hills Cop
The Addams Family
Man on the Moon
South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut

I've read more books!

The Big Sleep and Farewell, My lovely by Raymond Chandler.

Loved the deliciously hardboiled language and atmosphere of both of these, but preferred The Big Sleep for the story and characters.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

I'm happy to have read it, but it didn't really engage me beyond its historical and cultural significance.

Different Seasons by Stephen King.

Shawshank was the only one of the four novellas in here that I knew anything significant about beforehand, but I ended up mostly loving all four of them. Not even sure if I'd be able to pick an absolute favorite, but it would probably be either The Body or Apt Pupil. I guess I should finally get around to watching Stand by Me.

Divergent by Veronica Roth.

Didn't know anything about this before I started reading it and can't even remember where I had it recommended to me. Unfortunately, I wasn't really able to get into it. I Never fully bought the setting and the plot got some problems. To me this mostly reads like a book that primarily got published because of the success of the Hunger Games. I personally vastly preferred those to this.

Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg.

I ended up reading this in practically one sitting and enjoyed it a lot. Not much to say beyond that, really. A good mystery that unfortunately spoils a significant aspect of the final reveal by opening the novel with a quote from

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson.

Got around to this after hearing Teague bring it up and recommend it in multiple episodes and figured I should read it before he outright spoiled the whole book for me. Very happy I did since I ended up loving it. This is pretty much exactly what I want my science fiction literature to be like and I desperately need to find and read more books like this.

Next book I'm reading is Christine (King), but after that I don't really have any specific plans. I guess I'll be looking at what others are reading and see if anything looks interesting.

So, I'm gonna resurrect this one because I just listened to the commentary for the first time and kept waiting for someone to bring something up and it never happened in the actual commentary or in this thread, so now I have to mention it myself.

So you spend most of this commentary talking about the various problems this movie has(most of which I agree with, even if none of them comes close to ruining the movie for me) and how Spielberg and particularly George's state of mind at the time is to blame for how the movie turned out. Now, what struck me as curious is that at no point during the commentary are the actual writers of the movie mentioned. Those writers would be Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz who just happens to be the writers responsible for the cinematic masterpiece Howard the Duck.

This is where I wish I had some interesting insight or actual point to make, but I really just wanted to point out that we should probably direct at least some of the blame for how this one turned out onto Katz and Huyck as well.

I did really enjoy the commentary though. Very insightful and criticism-y, rather than the drunk hatefest mode that you sometimes (very rarely these days) can fall into.

(Oh and on the topic of Kate Capshaw: I don't really have a strong opinion about her, but her daughter Jessica is great. Yeah, I watch Grey's Anatomy, what about it!?!

Time for my monthly update of what I've read and what I plan on reading.

The Revolution was Televised – Alan Sepinwall
Not much to say about this one. If you care about television (which I do A LOT) it is interesting, but not necessarily providing a ton of new information. I've followed Sepinwall's blog for several years now and while I don't always agree on his qualitative judgements, he's always a good read.

The Gunslinger – Stephen King
I read the Original (not revised) edition of this one and it didn't grab me the way I thought it would. It's decent enough, but I'm in no rush to read the other Dark Tower books (not that I would have read them next anyway, since I'm going through King's entire bibliography in order). This actually felt like a substantial step backwards in terms of the quality of King's actual writing; there might be more unnecessary adverbs in this one book than in all the other King books I've read combined. Maybe I'd just hyped myself up too much before reading this, it might grow on me in time though.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales – Edgar Allan Poe
The only real enjoyment I got out of these three short stories was seeing how Poe established certain trademarks of the crime genre that are still there today. As stories, I found all three short stories somewhat lacking, though 'The Purloined Letter' wasn't that 'bad'.

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Arthur Conan Doyle
This is the first Holmes story I've read and it was pretty much exactly how I expected it to be. I liked it quite a bit and I'm definitely going to check out some other Holmes stories at some point.

The Talented Mr Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
I'm a bit torn on how I feel about this one. It is definitely a pageturner and it kept me moving forward at a brisk pace as I wanted to see what would happen, but I don't feel like it left me with anything substantial. It's a book I will never revisit and I'm not even sure I'm that interested in reading the sequels, but I guess I liked it?

Current plans for February: Some Raymond Chandler novels, Divergent (Roth) and Different Seasons (King)

Ended up reading 8 books this month. I feel pretty happy about that, I think.

Bossypants – Tina Fey
Stories I only Tell My Friends – Rob Lowe
Listened to both of these on audiobook. Selfishly I wanted more SNL stories from Tina Fey and more West Wing stories from Rob Lowe. They're both solid autobiographies, but I think I enjoyed Stories I only Tell My Friends the most.

Soulless – Gail Carriger
Read this after the Writing Excuses podcast recommended it. It's a paranormal romance novel set in Victorian England.  I've been looking for a decent novel with all the standard supernatural stuff like vampires, werewolves and ghosts and this seemed like it might be it. It's not a bad book, but I'm not really the target audience for it. It probably helped that I had read three other books set in Victorian England this year (Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice and The French Lieutenant's Woman) and was able to spot where Carrigan plays around with certain conventions. It's the first book in a five book series and I'm in no rush to read the rest of them. Probably will someday though; I liked some of the characters too much to abandon it completely.

Cujo – Stephen King
I am slowly working my way through King's entire bibliography for the first time and whenever I start a new book that I've at least heard of before I'm curious how different it's going to end up being from the image I have in my head. Cujo is one of those books that I always knew of as one of the more well-known King books, which might be because of the movie adaptation (which I haven't seen). I somehow had it in my head that it was a book about a dog possessed by some demonic evil force that goes on a rampage and kills lots and lots of people. Turns out that's not quite what the book is , it's not necessarily supernatural in nature at all, which was surprising. I don't really have much to say about the book. I liked it more than I thought I would, but it's not going to end up on my list of favorite King books.

The Running Man – Stephen King
If you want to read a book about King's take on a dystopian future game show, I'd recommend The Long Road over this one, but it's a quick and easy read that at least didn't leave me feeling like I'd wasted my time.

Speaking of dystopian future game shows...

The Hunger Games Trilogy – Suzanne Collins
Being home at my parents place for Christmas, I decided to look through my sister's books for something to read. I was originally planning to read Twilight so that I could finally know for myself if they're as bad as everyone says they are, but didn't feel like ruining my holidays after all so I decided to read these instead. The discovery that it was written in first person present initially worried me, but Collins won me over on that front fairly quickly. The books are really easy to read and most of the chapters end on enough of a cliffhanger that you get that "just one more chapter" feeling in your gut. I just finished the third one yesterday so I think I'm going to need a bit more distance before I know if they're actually good or not. I know I liked them a lot as I read them and felt very invested in enough of the characters (especially Katniss) that I wanted to read on and make sure I got some closure, but I also had enough small problems with the plot that I think I'm actually going to reread them in a couple of months and see if they hold up. I'll probably post some more substantial thoughts on it at that time. Maybe.

Next I'll be reading The Revolution was Televised (Alan Sepinwall) and The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger(Stephen King). Very excited about that last one.