books, books, books, plus, two things I learned from Hostel

I read. I read a lot. I have a job which, for the most part, facilitates this. I sit in a lot where one of the major car companies keeps the vehicles they give out to their excutives as percs. I sit there, and by my presence, repel would be car thieves. While doing this, I read. Every now and than, a delivery of new cars arrives, and I have to do actual work. That part of the job sucks.

I have a tendancy to glut on specific genres for long periods of time. A couple years ago, I read nothing but science fiction for almost a year. There was a spy fiction period, and a horror period, and, most recently, a hard boiled crime/police procedural period. When I realize that there has been not much variety in my reading for a while, instead of just starting to read other stuff, I tend to come up with weird courses and plans to break the pattern. Most recently, I have partnered my love of movies with my love of books by deciding to watch, through Netflix, every best picture nominated movie available on dvd. I will also be reading any novel or short story from which one of these movies was adapted before viewing the movie(except, of course, where I simply can't find a copy of the book anywhere...as was the case with the novel that 42nd Street was adapted from. Bookfinder couldn't even locate a copy.

Anyways, I've made it almost through 1934. I've discovered a couple authors I quite like (Sinclair Lewis, Edna Ferber), I've learned that Hemmingway is just as annoying now that I'm 30 as he was when I was 16, and I actually forced myself to read Little Women. I can conclusively say that I am not in Ms. Alcott's primary demographic. In fact, the movie of that novel is one of only two that I wasn't able to watch all the way through. The other one, The Front Page, I had to give up on because the sound transfer was so horrible I couldn't understand a single line of dialogue. Little Women, however, was beautifully tranferred in all ways. It just had me begging for a bullet through my head at about the half hour mark...

Other things I've been reading lately: Just started Cathedral by Nelson DeMille. I only discovered DeMille within the last year. The guy is pretty damn amazing. Cathedral may be one of the most perfect suspense thrillers ever written.

I'm also devouring everything published by Hard Case Crime, a publisher dedicated to reviving old school type pulp crime fiction. I've got all 20 of the novels they've put out so far, and with the exception of Donald Hamilton's Night Walker, which sucked major ass, they are all well worth reading.

Also, just a few minutes ago, Zombie and I watched Eli Roth's Hostel, the touching story of a group of friends on vacation in a quaint Eastern European town, where they all get either killed or mutilated in various ways. I learned two things from this movie: 1. Europeans are creepy. 2. When trying to escape from said creepy Europeans, it might not be the best idea to drag along the shocked out Japanese chick with one eye.

That's all for now.