March 2010: Media Consumed

Books Read
*Young Jesus Chronicles by Spencer Smith & Mark Penta
*Children at Play: A Cul de Sac Collection by Richard Thompson
The Skinny on Willpower by Jim Randel
Three Frenchmen and a Goat by John Goldsmith
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
* The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974 by Charles Schulz
+The Dark Tower: Treachery by Robin Furth, Peter David, et al.
Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce
+The Dark Tower: The Fall of Gilead by Robin Furth, Peter David, et al.
+Heroes: Volume Two by Various
*14 Years of Loyal Service in a Fabric-Covered Box by Scott Adams

* = denotes a collection of comic strips
+ = denotes a graphic novel or trade paperback of comics

The best book I've read all year, so far, is Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Written by the guy who wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and the creator of an entire new sub-genre of literature, the book is fascinating not only because it's a great fictional story, but because the amount of research that went into the book to make the real historical people, events, places, and writings match up with the fictional world that is created. I learned more about Abe Lincoln and his associates reading that book than I did the rest of my life.

Cosmic is a great young adult novel written by the man who wrote the book Millions. It's a great little story and I highly recommend it, too. Three Frenchmen and a Goat is a self-published work that still remains as the authoritative volume about the DeMoulin Brothers Company and their early history manufacturing fraternal initiation devices.

I was really excited to read the latest collection of comics in The Gunslinger comic series as well as finishing off the 1973-1974 collection of "Peanuts" strips. One of these days I'm going to actually go back and read King's entire Gunslinger storyline as well as get and read all of the "Peanuts" reprint books.

Movies Watched For the 1st Time
A Perfect Getaway
Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure
Alice in Wonderland (2010)
The Crazies (2010)
Shutter Island
How to Train Your Dragon

Of the movies I watched for the first time this month, there weren't any that I thought were terrible. A Perfect Getaway is a good yarn with Steve Zahn in a role he doesn't usually get to play. I thought was a good continuation/reviving of the original stories by Lewis Carroll. The Crazies was chilling. Shutter Island was a great adaptation of the book (and it's one movie that the book and movie are almost identical) and How to Train Your Dragon was much better than I expected it to be.