Thoughts For Today

Juan Gris c1919 Stilleben mit Gitarre, Buch und Zeitung. it is abstract figure it out for yourself. I like it.

Thoughts For Today

This morning, I sat in the diner drinking coffee and reading the paper. Nothing was particularly striking in the news. It was relaxing to watch people go by the window. It was raining outside so the diner had a comfortable warm feeling to it.

I have the day off because I am working this Saturday. I am going on a road trip tomorrow. I had my car washed this morning after I went to the diner. Then I went back to the Barnes and Noble in my neighborhood and spent some time looking at computer books. Digital photography is considered to be part of the computer books. I am not sure which cameras are the ones I should order books on. I also have to order books on digital video. I'll have to figure this one out. I put some books down to order on a list.

I'm back home now sitting at my computer. I have been doing the exercises from the Yoga RX book every morning. They are very relaxing. I feel a little less wound up than usual. I am one of those people that likes to be constantly doing things.

I finished reading The Media Savvy Leader. I will probably let it sit in my head for a day or two before I start writing my full review. I like to put things down for a bit before I write the full review.

I read The Ginger Star by Leigh Brackett. It is classic science fiction from the 1940's featuring Eric John Stark who is a combination of wild man and adventurer. Remember "beware the dark man of prophecy." Leigh Brackett is a very interesting writer. She has many movie scripts to her credit. This is a nice little summary of her life. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/brackett.htm

I finally recieved a copy of Iron Man on dvd from the library. I had been waiting for it for about two months. The film is solidly pleasing. Nothing spectacular, but still very entertaining. It is of course a retelling of the creation of Iron Man for a more modern audience. The film and special effects were interesting to watch. I like that Iron Man was recreated in Afghanistan.

They also included some interesting things from the comic. They properly portrayed Tony Stark as an alcoholic which he is in the comic. I also liked the cameo where Robert Downey Jr. who plays Tony Stark says "Is that you Hugh Hefner?" to Stan Lee the creator of many comic books. Stan Lee is known for creating Spider Man, X-men and many comic book characters. If you watch the marvel films closely, Stan Lee is in many of them with cameo appearances.

I read the mass market novelization of the film done by Peter David. It pretty much follows the film closely. Peter David is one of the better comic book writers.

I also liked the trailer which was include on the dvd for the movie The Incredible Hulk. Apparently Tony Stark makes a brief appearance in the Incredible Hulk.

There is a rumor that there is going to be an Avengers film. This would include a variety of characters. In order prequel this, they might have to cross pollinate some of the films which are coming out with characters from all over the "Marvel Universe."

Watching superhero films is kind of nostalgic and immature. I rather like going back to my childhood sometimes. It makes you remember when you were little reading comic books, or swapping them with your friends.

I ordered a couple of the large collected works, The Essential Iron Man, Volume 1 for our library. It was $16.99 for 512 pages of comics. The Essential series are very long 500 plus pages each. They cover all the old marvel superheros series. There are other series like this in both comics and manga. DC has a similar series called Showcase Presents which compiles major superheros into large trade paperbacks of 500 plus pages which are not that expensive.

Darkhorse has Omnibus editions of Aliens and Predator that are in full color. They are about 400 pages each and cost about $24.95. I think they also have Star Wars Omnibus Edition.

There are also some manga collected works. Fruits Basket has "Ultimate Editions" which combine three manga into one volume in hardcover for a reduced price from buying the manga separately. Battle Royale also has "Ultimate Editions."

One of the reasons I like buying these things for libraries rather than smaller editions is that they are bigger and a little heavier. They are easier to shelve and not as flimsy as many of the thinner comics. The collected editions in paperback are also usually a little cheaper.

I read some of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman has a wonderfully fantastic imagination. This book is for young adults, but it is reachable for all audiences. It is a fantasy about a little boy raised by the denizens of the graveyard. There is a kind of magical, otherworldly quality to the writing. Dave McKean illustrates the book.

Iron Man-- Peter David

Iron Man-- Peter David

This is a paperback novelization of the movie by Peter David. Because it is a novelization of a movie, it has to stick to the story in the movie. The paperback was released a month before the movie was released. There is a picture of Iron Man's face on the cover. The goal of these type of paperbacks is to encourage you to go out and see the movie.

The story modernizes the comic book iron man. Iron man was retired in comic book form a while ago. Marvel comics is reviving the franchise.

Tony Stark is a world leading weaponry salesman. His goal is to sell weapons to the United States so the United States military can be the best in the world.

Stark makes a trip to Afghanistan and is driving in a convoy when it is hit by insurgents. He is captured. The terrorist insurgents demand he fix some of his own weaponry so they can use it against American troops. He sees firsthand that the enemy is using his weaponry.

Instead, Tony Stark builds a prototype of his iron man suit and fights his way out, escaping to freedom. He makes a vow to stop selling weaponry the world over. His experience creates a change of heart. Also, he gets shrapnel near his heart signifying a physical change. He has to have a magnetic chest plate put in to stop the shrapnel from entering his heart.

The story is very straightforward, the writer, Peter David makes it come across easily. There is not a lot of angst or deep thought. It is action oriented and about change.

When he gets home, he announces the change in his company. However, many people in the company don't want to change. They plan for Tony Stark's downfall. Thus we have the classic Judas story, where there is a traitor in the midst.

Tony Stark builds a new more powerful iron man suit and goes to defeat the terrorists, destroying the weapons which were manufactured by Stark Industries.

When he gets home, he must face the Judas, an appropriately named villain, Mr. Stane. Mr. Stane has built a suit similar to Iron Man's which he plans to sell as a weapon of war, the Iron Monger. A major battle ensues where Iron Man destroys the Iron Monger.

This is very straightforward action. Iron Man even plays Metallica and Black Sabbath rock music while he is fighting the villains. Peter David does a good job creating a straightforward story of good versus evil. Tony Stark starts out as a millionaire playboy without a conscience and gets a conscience through directly experiencing the bad guys.

The book was quite easy to read. I finished it in about two and a half hours. It is the kind of thing which you can read in an afternoon.

Peter David has written numerous Star Trek novels, for Babylon 5, for Marvel and DC comics, as well as a few of his own novels like Tigerheart. Tigerheart is advertised on the inside front cover of the Iron Man paperback. He is an entertaining bestselling writer.

Morning Weekend Thoughts

This is a path in the grounds of Down House. Darwin regularly walked along this path for exercise of body and mind. He called it his "Thinking Path". Ted Grant took the photograph and released it into the public domain.

Morning Weekend Thoughts



I am at the library sitting here at one of the computers. I am fifty minutes into my alotted hour. While I was looking around on the internet, I got a blocked site. I must have been looking at something quite spicy. I am really not sure why I was blocked. I wasn't even aware they had filtering software on my local libraries computers.


I visited a number of social networking sites. Entrecard is very slow today. I should not be obsessive about these things. Apparently, they partnered with a company called http://www.sezwho.com/ , a company that has comment management software for blogs. I am not sure if it is working right now. It did not work out too well. Now Entrecard is quite slow.

Sezwho was not properly prepared for a large volume of blogs to manage. For Sezwho to index a single blog for comments takes about two to three hours. Imagine if they suddenly have thousands of blogs to index.

I also returned my book, The Other Wind today. I dropped it in the book slot. Not very exciting.

Today seems like it is just starting and it is almost noon. I had my morning coffee already, so I am awake.

Sometimes you want to do nothing. I certainly am in one of those moods. I feel pretty relaxed. Right now, I am the only one sitting at the computers in the library. It is quiet and peaceful. I will be walking down the hill soon to go back home. I still haven't looked around for things to read.

I didn't find anything to read at the library this morning. There is a heat advisory outside until after six o'clock so it is a bit hot outside.


I did however, have a chance to read Iron Man by Peter David. It was a nice lite read with all the trappings of what should go into a superhero novel. I haven't seen the movie so I don't know if it is an exact match. Still it was fun to read this afternoon. It took me about two hours to read. It is the kind of book which you can read in a single afternoon.

I also watched part of another Ray Harryhausen film, 20 Million Miles to Earth. It was about a creature from Venus that grows into a giant creature from Venus which terrorizes the Sicilian countryside. At least, the monster had the good taste to go after a coliseum. The movie was light entertainment. It was basically a giant bipedal lizard.

Unfortunately, I could not watch all of it because the DVD was scratched. It is hard to know if the DVD works sometimes. People who return the DVDs often don't tell us that they are damaged. We have a machine downstairs at the library which is supposed to fix most scratches on DVDs. I will bring the movie in to get it fixed.

I am preparing to watch these slightly cheesy films for the grand finale of Harryhausen films, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad tomorrow. There are supposed to be several animatronic fight sequences between Sinbad and various monsters.

If you are wondering if I did anything constructive today, I did go shopping for groceries this afternoon. I know it has very little to do with books.

A Trip To A Bookstore

Image from Hokusai Manga. A Very Early Japanese Manga

A Trip to a Bookstore

Good afternoon, I spent a little bit of time at the local bookstore which is a generic Barnes & Nobles. I did not buy anything. Occassionally, I do see things which I want to buy for myself, but not this time.

I had a free $5 gift card from Starbucks which was supposed to be good at any Starbucks. I thought the cafe in the Barnes & Noble was a Starbucks because everything in it was Starbucks. Apparently, it just serves Starbucks and the employees wear Starbucks style clothing, but it is is a Barnes & Noble cafe. I was annoyed. I had hoped to get two free medium coffees with milk. (This might have been why I was annoyed enough not to buy anything.)

Anyways, I instead walked around the store and looked at the various sections in the story. The first part which I looked at was Business. I found something interesting in the business section, apparently, Businessweek has a bestseller list. This is a link to the bestsellers for Businessweek for the last two years. http://www.businessweek.com/slideshows/ss_books.htm Hopefully, this will be useful when I have to order $3000 worth of business books. Wall Street Journal has a bestseller list for business books, but it is almost an exact match of the New York Times bestseller list for business.

There were of course your typical books on business. It of course included books by Warren Buffett, Jack Welch, and Peter Drucker the current American icons of capitalism. I compiled a short list of books which I thought might be useful to order. Two of the books which I put on the list were The Dip by Seth Godin an internet evangelist, and Stirring It up by Gary Hirshberg. I reviewed Stirring It Up earlier on this blog.

As I was wandering around the business books aisle, a gentleman asked me who I was, and I told him that I worked at a library, he gave me a business card that said he was an ecommerce development specialist.

Anyways, I then spent a bit of time looking at the science fiction titles. There were three titles that stood out, Time Spike by Eric Flint, Space Vulture, and The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks. There were also a few paperbacks by Mercedes Lackey and Tanya Huff I am considering.

I also saw a few superhero mass mareket paperback fiction titles. These are not graphic novels, but movie tie-ins novelizations of recent movies. There were four that stood out. The reason people read these things is that they saw the movie and it stuck in their mind. They were Ironman, Hellboy The Golden Army, Indiana Jones and The Genesis Deluge, and Batman Gotham Knight. This was kind of fun to look at. The Ironman paperback was written by Peter David who actually is a very entertaining author who has written for Star Trek Pocketbooks, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and the Star Trek television show. This is a link to his blog:
http://peterdavid.malibulist.com/index.html

Finally, I wandered around the manga (japanese comics). I don't know a whole lot about manga, but I did notice that a number of the publishers had omnibus editions of manga, things like Fruits Basket, The Ultimate Edition which combined several of the smaller editions together. There was also The Viz Big Ruruoni Kenshin, XXXholic Omnibus Edition, and Trigun . I am going to look and see if more of the desired titles are available in either ultimate or omnibus titles. Hopefully, this will allow me to get a wider variety of titles for a little less money. I also saw a graphic novel of Vampire Hunter D, one of my favorite animes. This is a lot of fun to watch.