As you can see, I've been doing some minor blog renovations. I widened the columns and added some new widgets. To the left is the Goodreads Reading Challenge progress. I'm reading my 100th book of the year right now, and honestly there's no way I could have done it without reading Pratchett. To the right is another Goodreads widget that shows my activity on that site. It allows me to just track my books there and not have to work as hard to keep the current read updated. I'm still tracking the list of read books below that though.
I've recently finished the latest from Christopher Moore, Secondhand Souls, which was a lot of fun. It's also cool to read books that take place near where you live, and most of his books take place in San Francisco or down near Big Sur.
Two books recently completed are Peter Clines' 14 and The Fold. Now, I had tried to read his Ex-Heroes series, but quickly got angry with it being another bunch of zombie books. These ar3e so much better and more fun. Of course, they're tied in slightly with the Cthulhu mythos, so if you're not into that, well, that's your fault. The first is about a surreal apartment complex that was essentially built by the good version of Ivo Shandor from "Ghostbusters". Then the second is about the... downsides of crossing into parallel worlds and what kind of attention you're likely to attract. They're a shared universe kind of thing and are a great read.
A few months ago, I had the house to myself, and I needed something strange to watch. John had told me about the book John Dies at the End by David Wong. I happened to come across the movie version,l so I thought it might be good to have on while I played SimCity. Well, SimCity didn't last, because the movie was fascinatingly surreal. It has two of my favoriate actors for secondary characters Paul Giamatti and Clancy Brown. They're both the kind of actor that if I see they're in the movie, I almost have to watch it. So, I had to try the book, and it was so much stranger that the movie. The movie essentially took the beginning and most of end, and merged them. It was done, I'm sure, to make a faster paced movie. So now I'm onto This Book is Full of Spiders, and it's already moving fast. Plus you have to like any book that has an Epiprologue.
And then there's my computer gaming going on, We've had two rainy Sundays recently, and while Jennifer has been watching TCM, I've been playing Civilization: Beyond Earth. I have to say, I wasn't a fan of the turn based gameplay at first, but I'd have been slaughtered by now otherwise. It's a hell of a game.
Finally, there's Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I had so much fun with this movie. No spoilers. And I so want to see it again. Soon.
