Posts categorized “Books”

My God, they’re made of sand…

This Halloween season, why not get spooked the heck out? Really, WHY NOT? Is there a better way to get spooked the heck out than by reading a supernaturally spooky book? What book series is more spooky than Goosebumps? Especially a choose-your-own-adventure Goosebumps!?

O gosh, reading this book made me scared that I would die of fear or scares that I might die. More… »

And he brought a bunch of his friends acquaintances:

Whoops! forgot to do this until today (only 2 days late)

Link of the Month:
Dads are the Original Hipsters
Sorry hipsters, your dad was the original hipster and he was killing it back in the day. This site has photographic proof that no matter how cool you think you are, your kids will think you are an absolute dork. And they’ll be right.

Album of the Month:
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour: Fruit
This is an incredibly infectious and poppy album that has sweet hints of 60s spy jazz music liberally sprinkled thoughout its happy, bouncy, electro-pop sensibilities. Danish vocalist Mette Lindberg has a thin, girlish voice that I find incredibly appealing in such stand-out tracks as “Around the Bend” (which was featured in an iPhone commercial), “Golden Age,” and “Bad Fever.” Also they seem to have a song about Ghost Rider. Awesome fun.

Book of the Month:
Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition by Stan Sakai
It is a great shame of mine that I do not own any Usagi Yojimbo comics. You may remember him from some (strange) crossovers with TMNT, but Usagi has a life completely on his own, and is celebrating his 25th anniversary. Usagi Yojimbo is easily in the top five greatest comic book series of all time, and I would love to own every single issue. I’ll begin my collection with this extremely handsome edition that collects the first seven volumes of the series (from Fantagraphics) with many fantastic extras. Hopefully I will be able to continually add volumes to my collection.

Link of the Month:
Axe Cop
A remarkable collaboration: This webcomic is illustrated by professional comic book artist Ethan Nicolle. It is written, however, by his 5-year-old brother Malachai. As such, the stories have all the coherence and logic you would expect from a 5-year-old, but with excellently-drawn illustrations, which just makes the story seem even stranger and absolutely 100% fall-down hilarious. Must be experienced to be believed.

Album of the Month:
Open Mike Eagle: Unapologetic Art Rap
I’ve never done this before: This album is so good, I’m making it my Album of the Month before it’s even been officially released (I got an advance copy a couple weeks ago) on 5/11. The lyrics of this album are intelligent, witty, funny, and about actually interesting subjects. Mike is not afraid to sound smart. He has a fantastic flow, which is easy and relaxed without sounding at all lazy. It’s almost conversational, like you’re having fascinating discussions with a good friend who really knows what he’s talking about without sounding haughty or snooty about it. And above all that, it’s damnably catchy. An incredibly confident and high-quality debut album. Take a look & listen:

Book of the Month:
Memories of the Future Volume 1 by Wil Wheaton
Wil Wheaton takes an irreverent and hilariously snarky look back at the firsty half of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation with amusingly embellished synopses, behind-the-scene recollections, and very honest reviews of what was, honestly, not a very good season of television. Not a tell-all book at all, the results are more like sitting around watching the episodes with Wil with him shaking his head and saying, “I can’t believe they wrote that,” or getting excited and going, “That was actually pretty cool!” It’s a funny and fun read—I just wish it could have been the whole season instead of just the first half.

Link of the Month:
Ponoko
A terrific service: upload your vector-line files to this website and they’ll laser-cut your designs out for you and ship them to you—or your customers! There are a variety of materials (with a variety of thicknesses) to choose from, including multiple colors of acrylic, bamboo, and felt, and most of them can also be engraved as well as cut out. A brilliant way to mass-produce your ideas.

Album of the Month:
Order of the Crimson Wizard: Secrets From the Far and Distant Hills
These guys are a hoot. A local Bellingham band, the Order of the Crimson Wizard were described to me as “Castlevania Rock.” That’s not a terrible description; OCW infuse their high-energy rock with large doses of classical motifs and gothic lyrics, but they’re not in any way a whiny emo band. These guys rock. This is their debut EP of seven fun, fast, dramatic, kick-ass songs. If you have a chance to see them live, I also highly recommend doing so. More OCW at their MySpace page.

Book of the Month:
Robot Dreams by Sara Varon
A simple, beautifully-drawn, nearly wordless graphic novel about a lonely dog who builds himself a robot friend. A very intelligent musing on the fragility of friendship and the nature of loyalty, guilt, loss, and redemption. Shockingly moving and at times very funny, this wonderful story will stick with you for a long, long time. More Sara Varon at her website.

Apparently back in 2004 Tim Minear, an important writer on a bunch of television shows including (I don’t know if you’ve heard of any of these) The X-Files, Angel, Firefly, and Wonderfalls, was hired to write a screenplay based on Robert A. Heinlein’s book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. This is probably one of my top-five favorite books. And how is Minear’s take on it?

Glorious.

It’s surprisingly faithful to the source material, and the places where it does differ are at once shocking and highly (in one instance devastatingly) effective. But don’t take my word for it! A copy of the script has found its way online as a .pdf! So instead of reading this post, you should go read Tim Minear’s “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” Script

(via Whedonesque)