Since I set up the Blog I get to go first.
I’m reading the Sookie Stackhouse novels. Not a bit highbrow, but, entertaining. I find I care enough about the characters to stay engaged. Charlaine Harris is a good story teller and her writing is well above average. I like the architecture of her novels. It is clear that she plans them out and as such is able to get crafty with chapter endings, plot twists and character development. In a sense these are kind of like Day Time television indeed HBO has made a series “True Blood” from them. I’ve not bothered to watch them, though, I’ve heard they are a bit more explicit then the novels. All of that said, I prefer the laugh out loud vampire fiction of Christopher Moore: “Blood Sucking Fiends” and “You Suck” are, to my mind, some of the best re-interpretations of the vampire genre. The whole Harry Potter thing has made magical creatures a fertile field to plow and a lot of authors are working here. I like that Chis, wrote “BSF” in 1995 well before the craze and he didn’t write the sequel “YS” until 2007.
I’m listening to Morphine, again, kind of behind the times, since front man Mark Sandman died in 1999. I discovered them in 1997 with the release of the “Like Swimming” album. I’m not a big Jazz guy, but, this sound is close enough to rock that I can relate while still venturing out of my comfort zone. I like that they had just 3 musicians:
Mark Sandman – 2-string slide bass, vocals, organ, tritar (3-string slide guitar), guitar, piano
Dana Colley – baritone sax, tenor sax, double sax, triangle
Billy Conway – various percussion
Their sound with the combination of slide bass and saxophone is ominous and hypnotic and their lyrics are scary in a psychological way. If you like Rage Against the Machine and can venture into the Jazz scene I think this will be a good fit. This is scary music and lyrics like RAtM but unlike them not politically scary.
Finally, I’m playing Heros of Might and Magic V on the PC and I don’t like it. I play computer games for the learning
curve, once I stop learning, I stop playing. Everything about this game is top notch, the graphics, the interface, the music. I’ve had it get laggy on me once, but, it is stable and has regular auto-saves so even if it did crash you could start right where you left off. But, after about 4 hours, I’m stone cold bored. I gave it that much time precisely because everything else about the game is so solid and I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.
