Kilcannon

I'm not sure why I keep reading and increasingly liking these books. They're pretty dumb, painfully affected, and are only as stylish as joyless repetition of “fuck” can make them.

But they truck along nice and violent-like at such a good pace, with enough spectacle and action to apparently make me a committed fan of the series.

I have a pet peeve about extended tarot card sequences in novels, but there's so much else going on in here that it is wholly forgiven.

For a lot of fantasy, urban especially, the pay off just isn't there, but the climactic climax of this was climaxful and unique.

Philip Roth never fails to make me loathe his characters, and humanity in general.

A fine contribution to American literature, building on themes central to the Naturalist movement. Could go well as a double-feature with Sister Carrie.

Long story short: Vastly overrated, but still good.

Unremarkable visit to familiar gulag territory. Oprah Club fodder.

Mildly interesting conversation to have at a coffee shop or bar, but in book form.

This. Pretty much all of it. Not that it'll make a difference. Hell, I'm on Facebook.

Truly embarrassing accents and performance by the reader.

Mostly horrible, borderline nonsensical mess.

But ... the end is good, so there's a second star awarded. If the events of this important part of Thanos' story were actually depicted in a compelling or interesting way, there might've been another one.

Consumed as an audiobook.

I barely remember it, honestly. I remember kind of liking it, but also missing the point, and finding the prose kind of squishy and unyielding.

This rating might be unfair, because I'm really enjoying the Coetzee book I'm reading now.

Sometimes Chuck gets a little silly.

A fine little short story prequel to the Coldfire trilogy. Doesn't do much. Didn't need to. Just saying hi to a favorite character in a favorite world with a favorite magic system.

The pinnacle of literature.

I'll admit that there are a few essays I did not read, but this is, on the whole, a great collection.

Better than any of the Torchwood books I've actually read.

Thimble-deep snippets of interviews and feature stories. Some of the stuff on disc 1 about the really old timers (Harold Lloyd, Lincoln Perry, Buster Keaton, etc.) was interesting, and there were a couple of other decent segments.