God Bless America by Steve Almond

God Bless America by Steve Almond

I first read Steve's short story that's included in this collection called Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched in The Best American Short Stories and loved it. Funny, sad, poignant, awesome. I then listened to his appearance on WTF with Marc Maron and laughed my ass off. This collection of stories continued the streak and was awesome as well. First Date Back was just stupid good, God Bless America was a great way to star the book, A Jew Berserk on Christmas Eve is my second favorite short story title of all time and lived up to it's name hype.

A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

A Storm of Swords book 3 in A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

Good god was this an awesome book! As amazing as the first 2 were this one was even better. Plot twists, crazy action, fantastic characters and lots of old timey language. I've never read 1,200+ pages faster and never felt like I couldn't put down a book as early into the story as this one. While I would love to talk about what happened there are way too many plot twist to do so without giving things away. I will say this, don't get attached to any one character. Can't recommend this series enough and insanely excited for the HBO series to start up again.

Pastoralia by George Saunders

Pastoralia by George Saunders

George Saunders hast to be one of the most interesting original voices working today. His writing is funny, smart & different from anyone else. He's another author who I tend to gravitate towards when he's included in anthologies and this is the first book of exclusively his stories that I've read. While it was really short, I'm glad I read it as the stories were excellent. His use of language is interesting where he seems to break some of the most dark elements in his writing by using works like wonky or he'll say that someone bonked someone instead of punched which completely changes how it's read. The's a sillyness that comes through even when he's being most critical and dark that reminds me a lot of Vonnegut. The writing is completely different but both men have a way of infusing silliness into their stories without making them silly and it's a bit like magic.

Video Game Review- Final Fantasy XIII-2

I've been excited about this game since the middle of last year when I found out it was going to be released in January. I love the Final Fantasy games and loved Final Fantasy XIII. This sequel follows Lightning's sister Sereh and a mysterious stranger Noel as they go around fixing paradoxes in the space time continuum that was created somehow after the first game ended. They are also looking for Lightning who disappeared right after the first game with only Sereh and a couple other people remembering her at all. First off, I love the game play and the story is good for those who like Final Fantasy games. Personally I like linear games with some side quests thrown in but this game is wide open where you can do things at completely different times in the game and you need to trigger certain events to move forward. Still fun though. My absolute favorite part of the game is that to fight along with Sereh & Noel you can capture enemies through the game and use them to fight along with you. They can all be leveled up and you can infuse some of their powers into other monsters to make the ones your using that much stronger. Great game and while this and soon to be SSX will be taking away from my reading time it's been worth it.

A Clash of Kings By George R. R. Martin

Just finished the second book in The Song Of Ice And Fire series and this one was just as awesome as the first book. The characters are well thought out, the plot is fast paced, the writing excellent & it's extremely hard to put down. I think what makes it so addicting is that he basically has cliffhangers at the end of almost every chapter but because there is so much going on he may not get back to that character for 80-100 pages. So in that 80-100 pages there are probably 4 other cliffhangers that you want to get to to see what happened. I realized almost through the end of the book that I would put it down mid chapter more often than at a chapter end. Highly recommended reading for someone who's looking to be entertained.

The King in the Tree by Steven Millhauser

The book consists of 3 novellas, Revenge, An Adventure of Don Juan & The King in the Tree. All 3 novellas deal with love and all three were amazing. Revenge is about a middle age woman showing her house to someone interested in buying it. We find out that she's dealing with the death of her husband after he disclosed that he had been having an affair. The story is all her side of the conversation as she leads the person through the house. The second novella An Adventure of Don Juan is a story about Don Juan being unhappy with his life seducing married women in Venice so he decides to go north to England. He stays with an acquaintance, his wife & his wife's sister. Long story short he has a little bit of a hard time seducing the one he wants as the main conflict of the story. The third novella The King in the Tree is a retelling of Tristan and Iseult and is amazing. Millhausers prose along with his gift for dark whimsy are simply brilliant.

Movie Review- Safe House

Went to see this movie yesterday during opening weekend. Typically anything with Denzel Washington is at least going to be entertaining and Ryan Reynolds has been doing some great movies as well. The movie is about an ex CIA agent Tobin Frost (Denzel) who has turned traitor and is selling information to the highest bidder. He gets his hands on some sort of list and a nasty undisclosed group is doing a great job of almost killing him. To get away from them he turns himself into the American Consulate in South Africa where he's diverted to a safe house that is manned by Matt Weston (Ryan). As one would expect someone in the CIA is a mole and the undisclosed group breaks into the safe house. Lots of shooting, running, blowing stuff up, running away fro with cops through soccer stadiums, car chases, fights with shards of broken glass & good old fashion punching ensue for lots of fun. My only complaint was that there were only 2 options for who the bad guy/girl is in the CIA and Heather and I figured it out a little early. Overall though the movie was more about the action than mystery so I don't think it took too much away from the film. This one's not going to win any Oscars but it's a great way to spend a couple hours.