Ah, okay. I should have picked up on that given the age of the main character. The intended audience would make for a significant difference. Thanks. And when you get a chance, you should read Kindred: it's remarkable and just an engrossing read.

Does Sherman do anything particularly different in The Freedom Maze from what Octavia Butler did with Kindred? It's hard to imagine she does it better.

I thought Vampires in the Lemon Grove had a ton of fantastic ideas, but the stories themselves always felt too half-formed. Only one or two of them fully and satisfyingly followed through on the premise. I tried reading St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Werewolves afterwards, but it was probably a mistake to go…

Yet another reason to be happy about the internet. After he left the Dallas Observer back in the '90s, I didn't think I'd ever get to read him again. I still remember reading his piece about The Train, calling it the greatest action movie ever made, and damn if he didn't make me watch it and learn to love it. Such a…

Ah, the Three Colors trilogy. Beautiful, fantastic stuff. I hope you love it. I've got the old non-Criterion DVD release and keep meaning to upgrade to the Criterion Blu-ray.

Just ordered Lola Montes myself.

I wholeheartedly approve of this comment. As I'm sure I'll wholeheartedly approve of it next week when I watch Castle again.

It's not really, really good but neither is it shitty. The writing is functional but nothing more (nowhere near as ridiculous as Dan Brown, though), the characters don't go very deep, and while Howey does a decent job coming up with surprises for what's going on in his world, he's not that strong of a plotter. The…

Dust is, or the whole Wool series is? Either way, is it the most important b/c it's the most popular? I've read all three books, and while they're okay as far as they go, they're pretty much just genre fiction. The characters aren't particularly deep, some of the logic behind the world is fairly sketchy (I'm thinking…

Ah, Marnie. Why is it every time Hitchcock decided to get too heavy-handed with psychology, he produced a turgid mess? Marnie and Spellbound are the two examples that spring immediately to mind, but even the end of Psycho I recall being a bit glib.

Well, I think The Fixx is cool.

I read a lot of Michener as a teen—Chesapeake, Poland, Space, Centennial, several others—and loved him. I've never gone back to reread as an adult, though, b/c those are some major doorstop books. I know I'm not nearly so patient a reader as I was back then and I don't want to ruin my warm memories. I'm also afraid…

The actor tapped to be the new Doctor, to his interviewer on the live special: "I'll be taking my talents to the TARDIS."

Or in The Visitation when the Doctor literally looks at Adric's ankle for a second before declaring it's not broken.

Has anyone else read Rebecca Lee's Bobcat and Other Stories? I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Ha! I had no memory of that. Today I suddenly sound like I'm obsessed with The Transporter.

I'd say the first one has the best action, but they're all good, junky fun.

Obligatory "Hey, The Transporter is actually pretty good" thread. Or: "Okay, The Transporter may not be a good movie, but the fight scenes are really, really well choreographed and shot."

Has anyone else read Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee? I read it over the weekend, and thought it was one of the best new collections I've read in a couple of years. She's a writer almost completely in command of her form. The stories rarely worked out the way I expected and the language was elegant and precise…

Does The Flamethrowers pick up? I'm a few chapters in, but can't fully get into Valera's story yet and the first-person narration in the other thread keeps feeling overwritten, throwing me out of the book.