I realise that I'm in the minority on Ready Player One, so I won't try to discourage you from reading it, even though I hated it like the fan-servingest of plagues. There's a good story in there, around the edges, but it's shunted aside in favour of what feels like a book-long attempt to make the reader squee with…

Touch is on my list as well. Harry August was a rather brilliant piece of entertainment, if a bit disconcerting to read for someone's who's spent as much time what-iffing as I have. A lovely conceit, though, and perfectly executed. Have you read any of North's other books? She writes under two other names, I think.

Hey, it's better to regret something you did than something you didn't do.

That's a really lovely way of putting it, your archness.
I lost that knowledge when I was 11. It did not do any great shakes for my maturity in the long run. Plus, it was really fucking scary.

That colour's out of space!

Don't you think it lost something with Anna Maxwell Martin's departure? Sure, the cast is still brilliant, but so much of the appeal for me was bound up in Susan's story, and her relationship with/to Millie. The second half of the second season felt more like an appendix, even though it was still good.

I've only read Alpha, and it might have been due to me reading it in the middle of a half-year-long Jack Reacher binge, but — the usual top notch Rucka craft aside — it was hamstrung by familiarity for me. He builds an amazing world, and adds a handful of beautiful grace notes to the tropes he uses, but the…

Well, I haven't read it since it came out, and my memory of plot specifics is outrageously bad in general, so I pretty much have no idea, sorry. I vaguely remember the scene as taking place in a house at night, and a bazooka/RPG-type thing being involved at some point. The feeling of my heart pounding in my chest…

The first one, A Gentleman's Game, has one of the best action sequences I've ever read in a (words-only) book. It was really strange, to get that kind of (literally) heart-pounding excitement from a medium where you yourself control so much of the experience. Anyway, the rest of the book is great as well; essential…

Mazikeen says: "Aw hell naw!"

Just imagine how great it would be if it turned out that they're basing their Aquaman on the one from the Brave and the Bold cartoon, and his way of "uniting the seven" is going around the globe and giving the other six playful noogies until they agree to join the Justice League.

Yeah, that blanket dismissal (among other things) makes it pretty hard to take this article seriously. One of the few concept records that works equally as a story and as a pop album. If I haven't heard it for a while, it's pretty much guaranteed that the room will get dusty by the time "Empty Cans" rolls around.

When is someone going to have the courage to tell Darryl Dawkins that the nickname actually stems from how he just can't stop farting all the time?

Yeah, Rife's Dornan-snark seems a classic example of a writer mistaking someone she hasn't heard of for a nobody. You really don't need to watch more than a couple episodes' worth of The Fall to form a very high opinion of Dornan's acting ability.
(Along with the prerequisite conflicted feelings about his…

Heartbreaking username/content synergy, you strike again!

Bitch, it is 5:30!

*gets v-neck shirt collection out of storage*

The A.V. Club

After listening to the "Sea Saw" stream Stereogum posted a few weeks back, I was sure this was going to be a Reis record in the vein of the first Night Marchers, which is to say more surface than substance. Which is not meant as a slight at all, because Reis does surface better than just about anyone. But the deeper I…

It's true.