Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 138)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we believe, get stuck and colour some magic.

• First, Pomplamoose covered Believe and just makes me really happy. I love that song (and that album) more than I probably should and I love Pomplamoose just as much as I should (which is to say, a lot), so it's a definite ray of sunshine.
• Next the Fruity Ukeladies are Stuck in the Middle with You. And also this post, I guess.
• Finally, Dave Bulmer starts in on the Discworld journey he told us about in the last volume, starting on the first five books.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos, (Volume 137)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we share a pizza, get some luggage and go check out our local comic book store!

• First, Dave Bulmer, shares his thoughts about how (and why) to make a good Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. And he does it by breaking down what makes the Ninja Turtles, why the 90s movie worked in the day and what's important when you're trying to tell a story. I think it's also a good point to keep in mind when you're trying to adapt a story from one medium to another.
• Next, Dave unveils his bookshelf series (which eventually became its own channel), talks about why we should talk about the things we're enjoying and embarks on reading through all of the Discworld books. (Don't worry he hasn't gotten that far yet, so now's the perfect time to jump in). I've been kind of delighted since I started reading Discworld in order just before this and it's nice to have someone to read along with.
• Finally, the very awesome Amy Dallen sings about her comic book store (because that's where the books live, but it's also much more!). Also features a bunch of the Geek and Sundry vloggers in their LCBSes (including mine!)

Project 3: 25 books in 52 weeks : Wrap up

The 25 books in 52 weeks project ended on September 3, 2012. I'm writing this wrap up a week later.

I started this project with the intention of kicking myself back into reading. For a bunch of reasons I'd stopped reading almost totally and really felt like I was missing it, but it was hard to start again. The original goal was basically to read a book every two weeks, which is not too ambitious a goal. I still found it to be harder than I'd have liked but managed at the end of the day to get through 12 books in 52 weeks (which I guess leaves me at 48% completion rate).

I re-discovered through this project how much I enjoy listening to audio books and actually listened to most of the books I finished rather than reading them off paper (or e-ink).

I feel much better about reading now, although I still need to balance my approach (since I tend to read a book all at once over a day or two, rather than a little bit at a time for a longer while. I also want to reduce the gaps between books (which I tend to cause by becoming obsessed with some other media thing) and be generally more even in my media consumption.

The Books I Read

• The Atrocity Archives - Charles Stross
• I love John Le Carré's George Smiley books especially the focus on the infrastructure built by the espionage organizations. The Laundry books do an amazing job of invoking that feeling and mixing it with some Lovecraftian world mangling and a healthy dose of Dilbert.
• The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross
• As with the George Smiley element in The Atrocity Archives, the James Bond elements in the Jennifer Morgue work very well as well. 
• The Fuller Memorandum - Charles Stross
• Unlike the other two Laundry books, I felt like the Fuller Memorandum was more "in it's own style" although that may be because I haven't read the books wikipedia mentions as influence. All of the Laundry books are a lot of fun to read and I'm very excited that the next major novel is coming out in the next few days.
• Mort - Terry Pratchett
• I'm working my way through the Terry Pratchett books in publication order and I have to say that I found Mort much harder going than the first three (Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic and Equal Rights). With the first three it was fairly easy to slip into the world as odd as it was, but Mort feels like such a festival of anachronism that the world is hard to accept. 
• The Alloy of Law - Brandon Sanderson
• I loved all of the first Mistborn trilogy, but especially the first volume. I enjoyed the action and adventure and heistyness and especially how alive and active Vin felt. The other two were good as well but I found that they didn't move as quickly as the first (which I think is something of a standard problem for Brandon Sanderson). The Alloy of Law felt like a return to that first books energy and I finished reading it and wanted to pick up the next one immediately. (Which is sad because I think the wait might be a while).
• The Sword of Shannara - Terry Brooks
• I read this book at least partly due to having never finished the project I undertook in junior high school where I promised that I would read it. I found this, especially for the first two thirds to be an incredible drag with uninteresting characters. As I eventually began to accept it as a Tolkien based D&D campaign rather than "people run back and forth in a small park" (seriously the longest march they undertakes is about 4 days, how close are all the major cities). The end had enough charm and momentum and I don't regret reading it, but I'm glad to have relieved myself from that particular guilt of my youth and don't think I'll pick up any of the other books from the series without some serious motivation.
• I should also point out that I seriously expected Menion Leah to have no idea what a woman was when he first meets Shirl. The entire first three quarters of the novel is devoid of the mention of women, so it seems to me that Menion should have been totally baffled. Serious missed opportunity for an Ethan of Athos kind of world. 
• Great by Choice - Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen
• I liked the ideas put forth in Built to Last and Good to Great. I think that Great by Choice is better than either in that the findings of the book are much more applicable to the daily life of a graduate student. It's certainly worth a read and is an especially good jumping of point for trying to be more productive.
• Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold
• Any adventure with Miles is fun. The more mature version of Miles we get today has a different feeling than his earlier, more energetic self, but a good Xanatos Gambit is always great.
• Sourcery - Terry Pratchett
• Of the Wizard books, I think this one had too many wizards in it. It also feels like it treads the path of the coward Rincewind a little too heavily. We already did that in the earlier books.
• Leviathan Wakes - James S. A. Corey
• Leviathan wakes, the first book of The Expanse is a good, fairly hard, sci-fi story. I haven't ready sci-fi like this for a while and generally I thought it was okay. It dragged a bit and was grittier than I really enjoy in the middle but I found the ending really engaging. I also found the swapping between characters a little frustrating, which is maybe inevitable with Corey actually being two authors. I also felt like the chapters were coming in the wrong order (that Miller's chapters and Holden's chapters should have been flipped).
• The Apocalypse Codex - Charles Stross
• As with the Fuller Memorandum, this book felt very much it's own genre (as opposed to the earlier Laundry books). It had a lot of features that reminded me of the earlier books in general, but was a really great read. It left me wanting Stross to write more of these and faster.
• Caliban's War - James S. A. Corey
• This is the direct sequel to Leviathan Wakes. Overall I found I enjoyed it more than the first, but was strongly put off by the child abduction in the opening scene of the book. I also felt that it didn't really drive the story as far forward as it might have, didn't provide more in depth examination of the situation or the characters and left off at almost the same point as the first book. As with the first the ending was definitely the strength and left me wanting to get onto the third book.