I find myself pleased that I actually enjoy all the books that feature Batman now that they've replaced the initial writers. The Dark Knight is still the least good of them, but Gregg Hurwitz is still leaps and bounds better than Finch and Jenkins. Definitely agree that Detective is now the second-best Batman book on…

Judging by this new issue alone, Green Arrow is now infinitely better than it was under either Krul or Nocenti. Quite honestly, much as I enjoyed Nocenti's Daredevil comics from the '80s, I think she's past her prime. (After forcing myself through her last couple issues of Catwoman, I've decided that I will never read…

I just got the Gormenghast omnibus for Christmas. I'd seen the mini-series a while ago and kept meaning to read the books. Reading this is slightly discouraging, though.

Speaking of Le Carré, I just read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for the first time a few months ago, and while I really enjoyed it, it turned out to be one of those occasions where I was glad to have seen the movie first. I'm not sure if his '60s work is much like this, but I found that the prose in Tinker, Tailor… was…

I really hate to admit this, but I tried reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time about a year and a half ago, and I couldn't get through it. It was mainly the writing style that I had trouble with, and I actually found myself rereading paragraphs a few times just to make sure I understood what was happening.…

@avclub-9a3fe1f228aea0bc3b5c0da332c3fb64:disqus I get the impression that many of the more widely available print versions are abridged, even those from publishers that are generally pretty good at released unexpurgated editions of classic books (e.g., Bantam, Barnes & Noble).

The only issue I'll take with what you said is that the story will supposedly be the same in any version of a book one reads. I know that, due to the prudish nature of 19th English speakers, there was sometimes a bit of censorship in translations of that era. For example, contemporaneous translations of The Three…

There's that old joke that goes:

A Feast For Crows isn't that bad, but both it and A Dance With Dragons can't help but feel like letdowns after A Storm of Swords. Storm consisted almost entirely of propulsive narrative while both Feast and Dance feel like a lot of setup with little to no payoff. I'm hoping that, now that Martin has gotten past his…

I think you made a good choice with the three King novels you picked up, as you can't go wrong with any of them. My personal favorite of the three is The Shining, followed closely by Salem's Lot. King was really at his best in those early days before his editor lost the nerve to tell him when to say when.

I also just read A Tale of Two Cities for the first time this past summer, and the last chapter made me weep like a little girl with a skinned knee. Seriously, powerful stuff!

Seriously, just stick with it through book three. Even though it kind of continues to be a bit of a downer, A Storm of Swords is easily the best book in the series thus far. There is not a single wasted chapter in the entire thing. (It also contains one of the best hand-to-hand fights I've ever read in any book ever.)

I usually do a lot of internet research to try to see opinions from people who have read multiple translations. Often, they'll compare and contrast select passages to demonstrate why they think one version is better than another.

I haven't read many of the Hard Case Crime books, but of the ones I have read, Money Shot by Christa Faust is one of the most compulsively readable books I've ever picked up. I blew through it in a day. (And how can you not like a book that features prose like, "The only thing that kept me going was picturing Jesse…

I just finished Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings last night. Being a slow reader, it actually took me about a month and a half to get through. It's totally worth it, though. Sanderson has a good knack for well-developed characters, fully thought out worlds, and nifty magic systems. (The magic system in this one…

Genevieve, I'm curious as to which translation of Anna Karenina you're reading. I have a free ebook version, but I've become a bit snobby about translations of foreign-language classics. Not understanding a word of Russian, I figured I'd eventually pick up the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation when I finally felt up to…

At the level of affect, of course, the movie absolutely has a politics: it teaches you to identify with the torturer, first an intelligent and attractively reassuring CIA interrogator  whose bearded certainty make “torture” into a safe and reliable and controlled event, a thing which might be unpleasant to watch, but…

They should have sent Sam Fisher instead. He would have made way less noise than SEAL Team Six.

@avclub-bc68599029928a93ff775e686c3be325:disqus In order for it to be better than Raimi's, that means it would have to be better than Spider-Man 2, which is still one of my all-time favorite superhero movies. Hell, I still prefer Raimi's first Spider-Man to Amazing.

I gave it a whole two seasons. While I thought it was a decent show, it never grabbed me in the same way it seems to have with so many others.