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The other day I readThe Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling. If you read the 7th Harry Potter book, you might remember that Dumbledore left Hermione a copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard and it contained clues on that were helpful to her, Harry, and Ron on their mission.

It consists of 5 fairy tales for wizard children. It’s pretty short and I even I could read it in 1 sitting. The book doesn’t really add anything to the Harry Potter story that you couldn’t gain from reading the 7th Potter book. I guess it’s mostly for completists like me. Each story does have notes from Dumbledore, which are interesting to read. The author is donating all the proceeds to charity, so I don’t feel like she released this to make more money off Harry Potter.

• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks
• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Stanislaw Lem
• The Stormcaller, Tom Lloyd
• The Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Final Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• Inside Straight, George R.R. Martin
• Busted Flush, George R.R. Martin
• The Final Crusade, Chaite Naasiri
• The Darker Mask, George Phillips
• Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
• The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling
• The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson
• The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
• The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson
• A Memory of Light: The Gathering Storm, Brandon Sanderson
• Flashfoward, Robert J. Sawyer
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks is pretty entertaining and thought provoking book. I like it more than most of the other books I’ve read recently.

This book is written as if it’s nonfiction. Apparently, there was a worldwide zombie outbreak that lasted 10 years and the book was written 10 years after the end of the outbreak. It tells the story of the zombie war through a collection of interviews with survivors. The interviewees come from all over the world. The story progresses from the first case of the zombie virus until the “present” when the world is still rebuilding.

I’m not expecting a zombie attack, but reading World War Z did make me wonder how we would handle a global catastrophe. In the book, the governments of the world made some costly mistakes. I hope we wouldn’t make those same mistakes.

• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks
• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Stanislaw Lem
• The Stormcaller, Tom Lloyd
• The Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Final Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• Inside Straight, George R.R. Martin
• Busted Flush, George R.R. Martin
• The Final Crusade, Chaite Naasiri
• The Darker Mask, George Phillips
• Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
• The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling
• The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson
• The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
• The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson
• A Memory of Light: The Gathering Storm, Brandon Sanderson
• Flashfoward, Robert J. Sawyer
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

I ended up canceling my gym membership today. There’s no use in paying when I wasn’t going anymore. I already get up around 6 every morning and I don’t want to have to get up any earlier to work out. Also, I was having trouble motivating myself to go back out to work out after I got home from work.

I did, however, buy Wii Fit about a week and a half ago and have used it almost every day. Some activity is better than nothing. I just hope it doesn’t get boring.

I read Inside Straight by George R.R. Martin a few months ago, but never got around to writing about. It seems like he’s never going to get around to finishing the next book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, so I decided to read something else by him. Inside Straight is a part of the Wild Cards series. Each book is a collection of related stories written by various authors, and Martin serves as the editor.

The Wild Cards series reminds me a lot of what I’ve heard about the Dr. Who television series. It comes in cycles that last for a few books, then it goes away for a little while, then they bring it back for a while, etc. Inside Straight is the first book in the current cycle.

From what I’ve gathered, about 60 years ago an alien virus that was called the Wild Cards Virus came to Earth somehow. Some people were given superpowers, and they are called aces. Some were hideously deformed, and they are called jokers.

I should have really liked a book about superpowered people, but it was only ok. It focuses on a group of contestants on a reality show for people with superpowers. These people are using their powers in contests to decide who is going to be the next American Hero. There are tragic events going on in the news in Egypt and some of the contestants decide to do the right thing and be real-life heroes. Maybe if they hadn’t spent so much time on the reality show aspect of the story, I would have liked it more. I hate reality shows. It gets much more interesting at the end and I plan on reading the next book in the series.

I don’t think I’m going to get around to even half the books I wanted to read this year.

• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks
• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Stanislaw Lem
• The Stormcaller, Tom Lloyd
• The Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Final Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• Inside Straight, George R.R. Martin
• Busted Flush, George R.R. Martin
• The Final Crusade, Chaite Naasiri
• The Darker Mask, George Phillips
• Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
• The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson
• The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
• The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson
• A Memory of Light: The Gathering Storm, Brandon Sanderson
• Flashfoward, Robert J. Sawyer
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

I’ve been thinking about going to one of the music festivals this summer. All the ones that I saw near here were happening either a little too early (May/June) or a little too late (October). Plus, the lineups were pretty good, but there were only one or two artists that I really wanted to see at each event.

A week or two ago I found out that Pearl Jam was well on their way to finishing a new album and were rumored to be going on tour and also headlining Austin City Limits Music Festival this year. The ACL people didn’t want to confirm that Pearl Jam would be there, but they said it was the worst kept secret around. I went to the website and saw the bands they had confirmed so far. I put that with Pearl Jam and I decided that I need to book a hotel room right away, which I did. The official lineup came out around midnight this morning. It is great!

• Pearl Jam
• Dave Matthews Band
• Beastie Boys
• Ben Harper and Relentless7
• John Legend
• Mos Def
• The B-52s
• Sonic Youth
• Coheed and Cambria (don’t know much about them, interested in hearing them)
• The Virgins (a band I recently discovered)
• Lily Allen (I keep hearing her name, don’t know any songs)

You can check out the complete lineup here.

The festival takes place Oct. 2-4. Austin, here I come!

When I was in college I downloaded a lot of stuff from the Internet using file sharing programs. I hope that saying this here isn’t going to get me in any trouble 🙂 . I downloaded music that way if I wanted to get only one song instead of the full album. I downloaded movies and TV shows. I even downloaded games where you had to get 30-something zip files, unzip them all, and then run a program that would combine the pieces into 1 game.

Now that I have a full-time job and I’m making decent money, I don’t do that anymore. I don’t really have the time or patience. I don’t leave my computer running all the time. Even when I tried to leave it running more so that stuff could download, it would take days or even weeks for it to finish. Why wait hours for a TV show when I can pay $2 and download in less than half an hour or instantly if I’m streaming? Also, when I’m at work and a song pops into my head I’m not going to start up a file sharing program and look for it. I go to Amazon MP3 or iTunes and get it there. The only time I might make an exception is when I check all my legit sources (Amazon MP3, iTunes, Hulu, Netflix Watch Instantly, Xbox Live, DirecTV on Demand, etc) and still can’t find it. That’s pretty rare these days and if it’s a TV show I’ll delete as soon as I’m finished. I have reformed.

With DVRs and the Internet, we can watch TV shows whenever we want to. We’re not forced to sit down in front of the TV at a certain time on a certain night to watch out favorite shows. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

One thing you have to be really careful about is spoilers. Nobody really likes to be spoiled when it comes to shows that you watch, especially popular shows with big mysteries like LOST and Battlestar Galactica. We want to find out for ourselves what happened.

I’ve noticed that a lot of the articles I read online have carefully worded headlines that don’t give anything away. Also, on podcasts that I listen to they are usually carefully about not giving away spoilers or putting them at the end so that people can avoid them if they like. If there are spoilers contained within these articles or podcasts, there is usually a spoiler warning. Fortunately, avoidance of giving spoilers doesn’t last forever. After a certain amount of time people feel that it’s okay to talk about the important developments in an episode and it’s not their fault if someone hasn’t seen it yet. Depending on the source that amount of time could be a few days, a few weeks, a few months, etc. I don’t like getting spoiled, but it’s not that big a deal and I’m over it in a second.

My problem is with spoilers on Twitter. Whenever a big show like Heroes or LOST comes I see at least one person warning everyone not to spoil anything or scolding someone who gave away a big plot point. Yes, I do understand that West Coast viewers see everything 2 hours after we do and some people choose not to watch live anyway. But still. Twitter is all about the conversation, but I can’t talk about this show that I’m so excited about that I’m taking the time to watch it and watch it live and that. I hate being peer pressured into anything.

I’ve seen Twitter described as the tech watercooler. Haven’t TV shows traditionally been watercooler conversation topics? It seems to me like you shouldn’t hang out around the watercooler if you don’t want to have anything spoiled. If you go into the break room/kitchen at work and people are talking about an episode that you haven’t seen, would you tell everyone to shut up because you don’t want to be spoiled? I don’t think so. I think this may be another situation where people behave differently on the Internet than they do in real life.

I don’t remember spoilers being as big of a problem in the VCR days. Those tapes could only hold a few hours so you couldn’t wait too long to watch what you recorded before you needed that space back. And technological changes in general have made it easy now to watch an episode when you want and get spoiled before you watch it.

It’s just frustrating that when I’m most excited about a TV show episode, I can’t talk about it. As much as I want to blurt out plot points sometimes, I don’t out of politeness. Maybe some Twitter client out there will implement a filter where users can enter keywords (LOST, the hatch, Oceanic 6, etc.) and not receive tweets can contain those keywords. Maybe there is one already.

I wanted to read Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by Stanislaw Lem because it was the latest selection by The Sword and Laser Podcast. I skipped their last 2 selections and really wanted to try this one. I tried. I tried. I tried. I got about 70 pages into it and quit. I decided to go ahead a finish it, but once I read another 2 or 3 pages I couldn’t do it anymore. I just hated it.

It takes place in 3149 after some kind of plight has destroyed most of the paper in the world. The book is basically somebody’s memoirs that were found preserved in volcanic rock. It’s a lot of gibberish and paranoia crap that I didn’t feel like reading. From what I’ve read, 1 of the Sword and Laser hosts didn’t like this book either.

The next Sword and Laser selection is The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan. I’ll be skipping it because I’ve already read it several times. Hoping that I like the next book that I try.

• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Stanislaw Lem
• The Stormcaller, Tom Lloyd
• The Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Final Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• Inside Straight, George R.R. Martin
• Busted Flush, George R.R. Martin
• The Final Crusade, Chaite Naasiri
• The Darker Mask, George Phillips
• Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
• The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson
• The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
• The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson
• A Memory of Light, Brandon Sanderson
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

I’m getting back into reading again. I slacked off at the end of last year. I think the only books I’ve read since I last made a post like this are Watchmen and Victory of Eagles.

I wanted to try out Watchmen by Alan Moore because I’ve heard so much about it and the movie is coming out soon. The previews for the movie look really good. I liked Watchmen a lot and I see why so many people like it. It truly is a must-read for graphic novel fans. It may have dragged on a little too long at the end, but I didn’t mind it much. I can’t wait to see the movie.

Victory of Eagles is the latest (fifth) book in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series. I don’t know why, but it took me a long time to get into this book. It’s a good continuation of the story once you get going. And it’s barely over 300 pages, so it doesn’t take long to read. One of these days I’m going to do some research to see how closely the books follow actual history. It seems like in the next book the main characters won’t be involved with the war as much. I tend to like the books where they’re fighting against Napoleon better, but I’m sure I’ll still like it.

I started making a list for 2009 months ago and kept adding to it. Once again, I have set my goals pretty high. I copied the ones I didn’t finish in 2008 (may have left some off) and added a bunch of new ones. I want to read the Wild Cards books in which George R.R. Martin serves as the editor. It doesn’t seem like he’ll get any of his own books out anytime soon. I hope the last Wheel of Time book, A Memory of Light, is still on schedule to come out this year. Some of the books on my list were given to me by a friend that works in publicity. Most of them are books that I had never heard and I’m hoping that I find a few gems among them.

• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Stanislaw Lem
• The Stormcaller, Tom Lloyd
• The Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Final Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• Inside Straight, George R.R. Martin
• Busted Flush, George R.R. Martin
• The Final Crusade, Chaite Naasiri
• The Darker Mask, George Phillips
• Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
• The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson
• The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
• The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson
• A Memory of Light, Brandon Sanderson
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

While I was in Jackson, I was thinking about some things I want to do in 2009. Maybe at the end of the year I’ll revisit the list and see how I did.

• I want to go somewhere, probably over the summer. This year I took time off from work mostly for emergencies and when I wasn’t feeling well, but I never took time off for a vacation. I think that was part of the reason why I felt burnt out the last part of the year.
• I want to watch all the DVDs in my collection that I haven’t seen plus the bonus features. I have so many DVDs that haven’t been opened. I want to go through all those this year. I’ve already done this for most of the TV shows I own, but not the movies. My collection is so small that I could probably do it this year.
• I want to finish watching Babylon 5. I bought season 1 last Christmas, but didn’t finish watching it until the summer. I watched all 7 seasons of Buffy in 2 months, so there’s no reason I can’t finish the other 4 seasons of B5 in 12 months.
• Once again I want to begin exercising again.
• I want to finish organizing my mp3 collection so they can go onto my iPod. For all the random mp3s I have collected over the years, I’ve been editing the ID3 information. Since I got my iPod in October, I’ve slowly made it to the Ls. This is annoying, but it’ll be worth it to me
• I want to reply to everyone that I’m following on Twitter. I follow a lot of people that I don’t ever talk to. I’m going to make an effort to talk to more of them.
• I want to start back cooking. I’m tired of eating at the same food places over and over again.

That’s all I can think of right now.