what Dave thinks about movies, books and everything
2013 was a great year of reading for me, and in particular a great year of discovering new authors. The winner of my author discovery of the year is Iain M. Banks. I read three of his books, including the brilliant The Player of Games. Runner ups are Sarah Zettel for A Sorceror’s Treason, Michael Swanwick […]
{4/5} “How many times have I told you that the jungle is no place to act like a wild animal?” Horton is an elephant — he lives in the jungle, is kind to everyone, likes to take baths, and has an excellent memory. One day he finds a speck and is surprised to discover that […]
{4.5/5} “Fool!… You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia,’ but only slightly less well known is this: ‘Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.’” Buttercup is the most beautiful woman in the world. Westley is […]
{4.5/5} “Maybe it’s time to try something new.” Don Jon works out, hangs out with his friends, keeps his house clean, has road rage, visits his family, and goes to church. He has had one night stands with lots of women but never a relationship. Then he meets Barbara. He can’t stop thinking about her, and […]
{4/5} “During the daytime people would want to hear songs that they know, just songs that they recognize. I play these songs at night or I wouldn’t make any money. People wouldn’t listen.” A man and a woman bond over music — he plays the guitar and she plays the piano, and they both sing. […]
{4.5/5} “It seems to me, then, that the best one can do is to present one’s story as a struggle between sides which are both mixtures of good and evil (thus placing it somewhere between the extremes of utopia and dystopia), and don’t make the odds overwhelming in either direction. One can then proceed to […]
{4.5/5} “Wear these at all times, even though they’re just a precaution: the alarms trigger automatically if life-support conditions go below optimum. But that won’t happen… Every single major system is redundant. We can lose power, we can lose air, we can lose water entirely, and we will be fine for a hundred and thirty […]
{4/5} “Some of you are non-vital.” Walter Mitty works at Life magazine in the negative asset department (as in, film negatives). Life is ceasing to print and going online. Walter has received a set of negatives from a brilliant photographer — one of them is supposed to be the cover for the final issue. But that one negative […]
{4.5/5} “No man is a failure who has friends.” George has big dreams of getting out of his small town, Bedford Falls. But each time he has a chance to leave, there’s a reason to stay. He gets married and has kids, and runs the savings and loan company that his father started. When his […]
{4.5/5} “All considered, it was amazing a man like him had lived this long. Everyone he had known or admired as a boy had died, along with all the hopes any of them had had. The soft world made for dreamers like himself broke apart when he was only eighteen. Long since then he’d come […]