A WALL

Yup, I hit a wall. A reading wall. Last Friday I finished reading Hunter's Run (a fine SF novel by Gardner Dozois, George R.R. Martin, and Daniel Abraham) and had started in on Stephen King's latest, Duma Key. That start was fine enough, not hooking me instantly but not turning me off either, but I had a problem. I was a bit burned out on books and was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I had read 4 books in 20 days and had a bunch of books piled up and coming due at the library (you can't renew if other people have requested them, which was the case for a few I had) and just felt like I needed a break. So, I stopped the King and returned it along with a number of other things from my pile. That's what happens when you request a bunch of books that all come out at the same time. Anyway, I will get to most of those books...I just needed to feel a bit of control and to take a break.

What did I do instead? Well, I watched a lot of TV. The good news is that I got pretty well caught up on shows on the DVR. As of right now, I have only 6 things on the DVR that I haven't watched and there's a new ep of The Wire I could watch On Demand as well. Not bad, considering.

I also read one of the trades I'd picked up at the sale the previous weekend - Captain America: Winter Soldier Vol. 1. It collects the first 7 issues of the ongoing series (#35 comes out tomorrow, so I'm still over 2 years behind), of which I read the first when it came out. The creative team for this series is Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting (with flashbacks drawn by Michael Lark, who is also my second cousin) and they do a great job with a mix of action, history, and mysteries. I kinda wish I had bought more trades of the series at the sale. Oh well, I'll get to them at some point.

To add more to my stack of pop culture, I went out to Best Buy and used up the last of my gift cards and some of my cash still left for Christmas to pick up Justice League: The New Frontier and The Darjeeling Limited. I had planned on rereading Darwyn Cooke's DCU: The New Frontier series in preparation for the former but still haven't gotten to it. As for the latter, I didn't see it in theaters but I can't pass up a Wes Anderson movie.

That's about it.