II love audio books. Whenever I drive down to Los Angeles I always stop in Gilroy, gas up, and buy an audio book. I don’t bother with the new stuff — it seems stupid to pay over $50 for a book I can get in print for under ten bucks — so it’s been a [...]

halt wtf ./foul_language When I saw a headline in my RSS feed stating “Hitchhiker’s Guide series to ride again” I excitedly clicked, thinking that some unfinished manuscript had been found, like the last Dirk Gently novel printed in The Salmon of Doubt. Riding Douglas Adams’ coat tails is some jerk who intends to finish off [...]

Not fair, J.K. Rowling. Not only did you taunt us with only seven handmade copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, so that (thankyouverymuch) we can’t even read them, but now you have to write a prequel to Harry Potter too? Before that sounds like a good thing, it’s only 800 words, and it’s [...]

1. You can never have too many axes. 2. Even when you’ve been whisked to another dimension, there’s always time for tea. 3. If you are female, beautiful, and poor, you are going to die. 4. Or be blissfully wedded to a very rich and handsome dude of better rank. 5. In case you’re not [...]

The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien Houghton Mifflin April 17, 2007 It’s been a long and quiet thirty years since Tolkien put out “The Silmarillion,” the epic history of the Noldor in Beleriand. At long last, a new title has emerged by the greatest epic writer of the twentieth century, J.R.R. Tolkien. “The Children [...]

I had put off reading “Eragon” until recently, but finally morbid curiosity got the best of me. I could begin by analyzing its phenomenally slow plot, its unnecessarily long exposition, its woefully underdeveloped characters, but instead I think I’ll just start with instructions, just in case you’d like to produce a similar work yourself: How [...]