SoloAJ, no problem, I love discovering new horror stuff. When it works, it really really works! And a cold winter night is indeed a great time to snuggle up with a horror story. Especially if the wind is howling ...

I'm about half way into this one. Very interesting - I didn't fully appreciate the importance or influence of evolution before reading.

-Craig

Did you read and enjoy "The Mist" Blarg?

Reading the story and listening to the decent radio show thing got me pretty pumped about the movie coming out. It's got a good King-director in Darabont and I am a fan of Thomas Jane.

I've never read that one, SoloAJ. I try not to get too excited about horror movies because they usually have at best one or two good moments, but like all true horror fans, that's often enough for me to see a movie. Just not enough to recommend anyone else see it! I kinda cross my fingers and hope for the best when it comes to horror flicks. I want to see a lot more Japanese horror flicks. They are pretty good with ghosts, and their ghosts are sometimes as much demon as ghost. I think I want to gives some Japanese horror manga a crack, too.

I've been playing Diablo 2 lately, and it has reminded me how much I love those spooky/demonic thrills. I feel like picking up a short story soon myself. I might buy that The Dark Descent collection from Amazon.

I'm officially recommending reading "The Mist" if you like the tense atmosphere sort of stuff. It's quite effective and spooky. I would equate it to how I remember "Alone in the Dark" (the original polygon game) being when I played it when I was younger. There wasn't anything jump out at you scary necessarily, just like...you can feel the character's fear sort of. Shrug, hard to explain. Give it a try when you get some time

And I hear that praise for Japanese horror all of the time. I really wish I would get through every other kick I'm on right now (Classic movies, cheap slasher horror, books based on movies) and move onto my Japanese film kick. I hear great things and I just haven't gotten around to watching any of them.

Yeah I know what you mean. That's the cool and frustrating thing about the world at the same time. So much is interesting out there, but there are only so many hours in the day/in a life.

A friend suggested I read The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis, and I'm very glad he did. After reading a book that isn't poker related, and not a textbook, for the first time in months, I realized I had forgotten how beneficial variety in what one reads really is. I'm now compelled to greatly expand my library. Donations please

"god is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens.

One little tidbit that I find interesting in the chapter on Islam:

We have all heard of how suicide bombers on a jihad are supposed to get 32 virgins in heaven from allah as their reward. Well, Chritopher Hitchens points out in his book, as do other scholars, that in a more accurate translation of the Koran from the original Syriac language it was written in, that these suicide bombers are actually promised "Sweet white raisins and plums" in heaven as their reward from Allah for their suicide jihad. I don't think too many guys would blow themselves up for some raisins and plums...

so, they're organic?

I don't know about their 'organic' qualities, but since the Koran was passed down a few years before Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and others started making pesticides I would presume that the raisins that the muslim suicide bombers received for their carnage would indeed be 'organic."

But as Hitchens points out, most religions were started by people who couldn't even read and then hundreds of years later these myths and legends were continually passed down and eventually written down. So the authors of these religions wouldn't know what organic means.

If we are fortunate in the years to come most people will feel it is just as foolish to worship jesus or mohammed as most people feel today about worshipping Zeus or Thor or some other manmade myth. Zeus, Thor, Jesus, Mohammod - there all the same really.

Just getting around to posting a follow up about the Chris Genoa novel, Foop that I finished a couple weeks ago.

I generally enjoyed Foop. The narrative style was amusing in a Vonnegut-rip-off kind of way. Set in the not-too-distant future, the premise - a poor schlub doing his 9-5 at a time travel agency is sent back to 2001 to prevent nasty things from happening to his boss - is fun even though it's out there.

It pokes fun at new age religion, entrepreneurial zeal, and the blank-stare detachment of big city living. The protagonist is, for lack of a better term, a mess psychologically. He longs for corporeal contact rather than emotional connections. He is fully isolated from others. Regardless of his own efforts, he cannot connect with others, get along with others, or even interpret the speech/language of others.

There are numerous typos and font-size changes within the text that I think are there to level the reader (misspelled character names, verb tense changes, phonetic spellings, and alternating paragraphs of larger typeset). Either that or Genoa has a poor copy editor.

I was disappointed by the ending, which I thought was preachy in a slap-you-in-the-face way. It the same old story of humanity's preoccupation with material pursuits or pop religion or big business that leads to its basic wickedness when viewed from a distance. The funny twist is that the protagonist is so detached from his fellow human beings that he, too, is engaged in trying to prevent humans from evolving from apes.

It borrows/pays homage to themes in Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, and even stylistically to Breakfast of Champions (e.g. it has illustrations and an unreliable narrator).

Bottom line is it was a good debut novel for Genoa, a quick and amusing read, but the ending seemed rushed/revised and didn't really fit with the playfulness of the rest of the book. This would be good for a plane trip, and would be good company for Tony Vigorito's Just a Couple of Days

I've got a huge stack of books to be reading but right now I'm working on Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

I am reading Peter Alson's Take Me to The River.

I am loving it and will give it a favorable Amazon review when I through. That's my new thrill, ordering books over the Internet and reviewing them. I am starting with people I know some.

My own novel, Texas Poker Wisdom, will come out in a couple of months. The early reviews are fantastic.

I am about halfway through Freedom Writers now. I saw the movie a while ago. I went to a showing that was almost entirely teachers and it was funny to hear them laughing at certain things that I had no idea what was funny. Teachers are weird.

(Yeah, I'm going to be one in a couple years).

Is it a fictional tale of a poker player?

A side question: when people say "novel" does that imply fiction?