Aside from Potter, since my last check in I've read:
Old Man's War -- eh. It didn't aggravate me like Redshirts did, but it stopped just as things were getting interesting and I was more annoyed by the cocktease than I was titillated into moving on. Not planning to continue.
The Great Hunt -- Book 2 of the Wheel of Time series. I know a lot of people who love this series, and while The Eye of the World didn't light my fire it laid some interesting groundwork and I was ready to see this series take off. Which it didn't. It kind of kept the same "laying groundwork" pace of the first novel. I tried to move on to The Dragon Reborn after this but I got a third of the way through and could not imagine reading eleven more books like this, especially when even the fans say they get steadily worse.
House of Secrets -- Chris Columbus' debut novel is so hilariously inept I tried to continue reading ironically. But I don't get back time I spend on shit even if I spend it ironically, so I bailed after what was probably no more than 20 pages (audiobook so I dunno).
You're Only as Good as Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films, and 100 for Which I Should Be Shot -- enjoyed this one, memoirs of a film producer recalling how some films got made (and how some others didn't).
Doctor Sleep -- I guess this is a sequel to The Shining in the most literal sense, but it could have been totally unrelated and worked just as well, arguably better. Had to close my eyes and think of England a few times when things got a little too schtick-y, but I made it through to the end and it was enjoyable enough once the story really got rolling.
The Disaster Artist -- Greg Sestero's memoir of his ?friendship? (even he seems unsure) with Tommy Wiseau and the making of THE ROOM. Sestero (with undoubtedly more than a little help from co-writer Tom Bissell) is sharp, funny, self-deprecating and manages to tell the bizarre story with a sense of sympathy and even affection for the strange man at the heart of the madness. My only gripe is that the story ends when THE ROOM premieres -- leaving out almost entirely the story of its cult success. Still, if you love THE ROOM in its gonzo glory, it's well worth a read.
The Cuckoo's Calling -- Like everyone else, I read this after I found out J.K. Rowling wrote it under a pseudonym. I'm glad she did. Unlike The Casual Vacancy, in which she clearly felt the pressure of proving that she wasn't just a children's fantasy writer, so every page was covered in fuck and cunt and graphic descriptions of sex and masturbation, in her anonymity she felt free to just tell a story, the kind of story HP fans will know she most enjoys -- a whodunit. A dispensible but enjoyable mystery, she says she plans to write more stories with the central characters, and I'll keep my eye out for them.
Hyperion -- a sort of sci-fi Canterbury Tales, an anthology of characters telling their personal histories with a strange alien deity known as "the Shrike," which is based on the planet Hyperion, and which has drawn them for a final pilgrimage. The stories are fascinating, but it's frustrating that the novel ends as they finally set off in earnest to meet the Shrike. I guess Fall of Hyperion, the "sequel," is the second half of the story, which I'll get to eventually.
The Devil You Know -- urban fantasy, a ghost story/mystery. I was on an urban fantasy kick a while back so I bought this one and then didn't read it because I got off the kick when Sandman Slim was underwhelming, but I think I'll seek out any sequels there may be.
A Universe From Nothing -- I'm gonna have to read this one a few more times before I really get it, but a cool primer on the latest views regarding the origins (and future) of the universe.
Star Wars: The Dark Lord Trilogy -- Darth Praxus recommended the Episode 3 novelization as being better and giving more justification to the story and events of the film. When I sought it out I discovered that it was bundled, on Kindle, with a novel bridging Eps 2 and 3, and a follow-up to ROTS about "the rise of Darth Vader." It's taken me six months to read, chipping away in between other books. He's right -- ROTS is much improved by the novel being able to explain what in the blue Yoda the characters are thinking. Anakin's turn is much better handled, although his leap from loyal Jedi to murdering children is still a little too fast and can't really be made to work, though Stover tries his darndest. In the end it winds up feeling like the novel came first and just got an incompetent adaptation, which I guess is praise? The lead-in and lead-out novels are fluff, though, don't bother with those.
Permanent Midnight -- I mentioned on Twitter that I'd heard a lot about the making of the show ALF being a nightmare for everyone involved, and Eddie mentioned it was documented in this memoir by one of the writers. This... is not a book about ALF. He mentions ALF in passing a few times just to establish a general timeline, but this is a book about Jerry Stahl's life as a drug addict who happens to have written some TV shows somewhere in the haze. I'm "liking" it in the same way one "likes" the extremely similar REQUIEM FOR A DREAM -- it's raw and intense and I'm glad that it exists and I'm going to finish it (about 1/3 in currently), and then I will probably cry and never go near it again because Jesus Christ.
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