This and that

Greetings from Philadelphia on a brisk, sunny (finally!) Wednesday morning. Here's a glance at what I've been up to lately:

I just finished listening to Stephen King's Under the Dome on unabridged audio (mostly listening in the car during my morning/afternoon commute). I enjoyed the book quite a bit, and even clocking in at over 30 hours on audio and just under 1100 pages in hardback (I peeked at the page count in the bookstore), I didn't think the story dragged at all. A full review will be posted soon, but for now, I thought Mr. King's latest was a winner: creepy, scary, character-rich, keep-telling-me-more fun.

It's taking me forever to get through Lee Goldberg's The Walk, but it's not the book's fault. I've just been really busy lately and haven't been able to manage more than twenty minutes or so a night of reading. I'll write something of length about this pretty good thriller- set in the aftermath of a huge earthquake in California- as soon as I finish it. By the way, the book is a dirt-cheap Kindle exclusive.

The movie Kick-Ass will be opening soon, so the bookstores have lately been hit by lots of copies of the nicely-produced Marvel hardback collecting the first eight issues of the comic book upon which the movie is based. It's visceral, violent stuff, about a kid who tries to become an actual superhero (the setting is essentially our world, where there are no real superheroes). To me, it's tough, bracing nirvana, and a welcome change from the PG-13 niceties of most superhero stories. But do yourself a favor and avoid Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.'s little epic if you're offended by profanity, sex, violence, and all those other hot-button areas. Full review of this book will follow (I'm still not quite finished with this one, either), and probably a review of the movie, too. I'm really curious if the movie will be as visceral as the comic book. I hope it is, but we'll see.

Well, time to get back to my real job. I'll talk to you folks in a bit.