Recently, I had two different friends (Joe and Christy) send me invites to GoodReads.com. I found it curious how two people who are from completely different circles from my life sent me invites to the same site within a week or so of each other. Curious enough that I joined. The timing was impeccable since I was ensconced reading Dune and completely in the book mentality. I’ve come to really like this site and its interface. Everything is very simple and straightforward. It allows you to organize your books using tags, which are also cleverly called shelves. It doesn’t force any sort of order on your shelves and allows you complete freedom to use or not use shelves.

If any one likes to read, they should definitely check out this book-focused social networking site. I’ve already sent invites to my mom and sister.

I finally got to see the Incredible Hulk yesterday. Since today is a holiday and all, we had an early release for work yesterday at 3PM. Conveniently, there was a showing of the movie at 3:45PM over by Fenway. I went with a coworker who is also very much into comics.
Spoiler Warning!

We both liked it very much. There were plenty of references that only comic fans would get, but that didn’t take away from the movie in anyway. I really liked the setting at the beginning of the movie in Brazil at the ‘housing’ development. It was very different from what Americans are used to seeing and it provided for a great chase scene. I also appreciated that there was only one real scene where Bruce Banner visually turned into the Hulk. The rest of the time is was in shadows or in mist. There’s no need to show it everytime and the less you show it, the more fantastic an occurrence it makes for it.
I was a little weirded out by Tim Roth. He’s so tiny! And the super soldier serum was never supposed to have been able to be reproduced. I suppose it wasn’t really, but it was close enough for me to be uncomfortable with it.
As soon as I saw the name Samuel Sterns, a flag went off in my head. I knew the name, but for the life of me could not place the face. After Banner’s blood poured over his open head wound, it came to me very clearly. The Leader. They’ve ALREADY setup a sequel. Astounding. Well I’m ready for it. More comic book movies!
Those who don’t know who the Leader is, he is basically a Hulk villain. Where Banner’s gamma radiation exposure was to his entire body transforming him into a hulking brute, Sterns’ exposure was to his brain, causing it to grow resulting in super intelligence. The Leader comes in two varieties: Shaft and Balls.

 

I believe the classic look is the shaft and the more modern appearance is the shorn scrotum look. It should be interesting to see how they would adapt him for the next movie. Abomination in this movie looked significantly different than the Abomination we all know from comics. Here’s a side by side:

 

Captain America has died.

And with him, a little piece of me.

The most recent piece of gadget pr0n that has caught my attention is the Sony Librie EBR-1000EP.

Basically its an e-book reader. Fundamentally, its a device that will allow you to read texts, manuals, novels, manga, comics, etc., on screen so sharp and crisp that it will put many monitors to shame and has a weight equivalent to a lightweight book (300 g/10.6 ounces).

I believe it was released about a year ago exclusively in Japan, with no word on any type of international release. The device’s popularity has been steadily growing overseas. A group of Librie fans calling themselves the Librietarians have set out to make the Japanese device more useful through software developement and have released a firmware upgrade. Recently the MAKE:blog on MAKE Magazine‘s website posted an article on how to upgrade the firmware on the gadget to the new version released by the Librietarians. This basically upgrades the device to English since most of its user interface is in Japanese.

This upgrade fixes one of the largest cons to the device. That said, it still has its faults. The Librie reads a specific type of e-book standard that was created by Sony and a number of content publishers. This format renders the e-book useless after a two month period, more or less creating a rental type of system. This is unfortunate, but you can still read plain text files. Considering I have a number of books in just a text file format, this would still be useful. I’m sure it will only be a matter of time before the format of the e-book is broken and we’ll be able to read pdfs and files in other formats.

I would say the largest con of this device is its prohibitive cost. In my research of the device the prices range from US$419 and up. Even at this price its a still a tempting prospect considering the amount of time I commute and read on the subway.

I must say it was an amazing book. I was totally enthralled. Its based in a cyberpunk type of setting in a corporat-ized United States. The government barely exists anymore. The country is more or less run around several different corporate franchise chains including Pizza delivery, Churches, and living units. The author paints a very vivid picture of the surroundings and has his own version of virtual reality called the Metaverse where people gather online all over the world. Similar to our modern day MMORPG’s. Considering it was written between 1989 and 1991, I’m amazed at how much of it is still quite dead on accurate. In fact, I thought it was a very recent novel until I finished and read the colophon in the back.

Someone unleashed a virus that exists in the Metaverse and also in reality and its spreading like wildfire. Hiro Protagonist, a hacker and pizza delivery agent, is forced into discovering the virus’ origins and how to stop it.

In the course of reading the book, several people who saw me with it, approached me to tell me how much they enjoyed it or heard what a good book it was. These are not just computer people mind you, several of them were specifically noted that they are not very much into computers and were surprised how much they liked the novel.

Go check it out!

Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson

I enjoyed the Sword in the Stone as a light hearted story. I did not remember much of the Disney adaptation, so it was fun to read through the rise of Arthur to power.

The Queen of Air and Darkness threw me for a loop. While I sincerely enjoyed Arthur’s resolution to form a round table for knights to pursue a Might through Right policy, the end was unexpected. I did not realize that the story of Arthur, as a whole, was a tragedy. It sort of follows looking back, knowing that Mallory’s original book from which all Arthur mythos is derived was named Le Morte Darthur; The Death of Arthur.

The Ill Made Knight is not quite what I expected but definitely has captivated my attention. I did not really know anything about Lancelot and Guinever. Its all starting to feel rather Shakespearian, or rather, this was the feeling I had while reading Romeo and Juliet for the first time, not knowing what will really happen next and knowing it will most likely not be what I wanted to happen.

I should probably be saving this all for the book review, but then again, I don’t want to give away a lot of stuff while telling people to read a book. I thought it was amusing though that White referred to Mallory’s original book as ‘his very long book’. Apparently he tell of more quests each of the knights go about and in a fair bit more detail as well.

I believe I am rambling now. I stayed up too late reading again. -_-

[Edit – Found this crazy link to a site that summarizes each of the 21 books of Le Morte Darthur.