The Cartel, by Don Winslow: After The Power Of The Dog pretty much blew me away, The Cartel was…pretty much more of what I needed. I appreciate the smaller number of viewpoints here, and that Winslow doesn't feel the need to make The Cartel a retread or revisiting all the old characters. The one thing that kinda…

It's incredibly depressing. It's also incredibly engaging, despite the slowness of the plot. Absolutely worth watching.

…it's a 13-year-old. If you've ever met a 13-year-old who can rap well and convincingly, you're lying. 13-year-olds are pretty much uniformly idiots in one way or another.

To be fair, there keep on being allusions and hints throughout that it will be something more outlandish…and then you get surprised by how down-to-earth the actual twist is.

I tried it…I think Deconnick really isn't for me. Though Emma Rios's art is amazing.

It is. I just started it, and…it's not bad? But Lehane's books always take a little bit to get going.

TV: I've gotten hooked on Bloodline. I'm seriously in love with the scenery and the soft light in most of the daytime scenes, and Ben Mendelssohn finally works for me (I've always found him and his lisp grating and distracting before). He finally feels natural, and it's such a good show.

I mean, Taylor Kitsch is absolutely playing Dave Jenkins (from The Big Nowhere). It's insane how similar they are.

Movies: Went and saw Ted 2. Stupid movie, but exactly what I needed, and the more I think about it, the more I like it.

TV: I'm about halfway through the second season of Black Sails, and man, this show isn't necessarily good, but it's certainly fun. There's a lot of semi-verisimilitude that I appreciate, Toby Stephens has enough charisma that I believe him as Captain Flint, and the plot moves at a fast enough clip that it keeps me…

A ton of this nu-fantasy stuff. I dunno what to call it, really. Noir-fantasy? Something like that. Stuff like Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch and Patrick Rothfuss combine a lot of the stuff I tend to like from guys like Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy (Abercrombie, specifically, is possibly the only writer I've…

Oh, for sure. But then there are people like my sister-in-law who get overly cautious and are all "Ohhhhh man, I'm not seeing a single movie that's in the same theater as that movie." Which, let's face it, is probably a more prevalent reaction than you'd like to think.

Finished it today. So freaking good, though I kiiiiinda don't like it quite as much as Cloud Atlas (Bone Clocks has a tighter plot, CA is stronger thematically). But absolutely worth reading.

It's worth watching once, but that's it.

Oh, man, I hated that New Yorker review. Vast paragraphs not even devoted to the book, and then the reviewer spoiled a few characters' fates (and I was 2/3 of the way through, so it's not like it's "Oh, it comes early in the book").

Oh, yeah, Hoover's been great.  I really loved how the writers chose to play up his ignorance of organized crime, also.

Oh man, I loved every time Knox was talking to somebody.

It's not just you.  Pretty much the entire ep was shot that way.  I'm thinking, though, that this goes mostly toward this season's (and especially this episode's) heavy, heavy theme of people gaining power and being utterly entrapped by it.  Notice how many times characters aren't just crammed to one side, but under…

I love how this episode flips the script from 8 episodes ago (the train heist episode).  In the previous one, murder was committed as an act of submission to Walt, but here, it's all about showing Walt who really has the power (though, honestly, I thought it was going to be Todd who killed Hank).  Really, an excellent…

Nucky's all about peace now (I swear, most of the story in this show makes about 1000% more sense if watched a season at a time), like he said during the last episode.