This will be longer than usual, in that I'm playing a bit of catch-up. In the future these will be posted a bit closer to the date I watched/read/heard the media in question.

Cooking With Fernet Branca, by James Hamilton-Patterson

I admit it. I bought this book on a whim in honor of kaydee, who has an altogether unhealthy obsession with the bitter digestif Fernet Branca, and brought me a bottle when he visited Miami. To my delight, it turned out to be a delightful and award-winning comic novel about two deeply disturbed ex-patriates living in the Italian countryside. While the plot is farcical to an extreme, the style adds a lot of depth, and the wordplay is marvelous.

The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases, Jeff Vandermeer & Mark Roberts, eds.

A mock medical reference with entries written by a number of well-known fantasy/science-fiction authors, the guide is also a kind of shared-universe story, wherein the authors each contribute their own take on the goofy meta-fiction. While it is entertaining, it ends up as something less than the sum of its parts. Perhaps I was expecting too much.

Nastybook, by Barry Yourgrau

I picked this up for five bucks at the Miami Book Fair, and it was money well spent. Imagine a morally proper children's book of the past, something like Aesop's Fables with its easy life lessons, and then make it purely existential, so that there is no correlation between good deeds and happy endings. Yourgrau does such a clever job of mimicking the genre that time and again in these short-short stories I was blindsided by the endings. Great fun.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

I have not read any of C.S. Lewis's Narnia books. By the time I discovered them I had already devoured Tolkien, and they just didn't grab me. (I did read and enjoy Lewis's more blatantly Christian space trilogy, though.) That said, the first Narnia movie was a pleasant surprise. The story was easy to follow, the acting ranged from acceptable to good, and the special effects on which this kind of intentional blockbuster depends were remarkable. It never ceases to amaze me how far effects have come in a relatively short time, reaching a point where we only notice them when they aren't realistic. Hell, wasn't that long ago that everyone was talking about the "seamless" blending of live action and animation in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Now I have it on my shelf and am afraid to watch it because I suspect the seams are rather obvious.

The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction

While there are quite a few bits of misinformation in this pocket guide, in general it's an excellent resource for those who are looking to expand their literary horizons. It also works well as a reference for learning about those authors you don't want to admit you've never read. The editors define "cult fiction" as "lengthy and irrational devotion probably, though not necessarily, by an ardent minority, to an author or book. A work that is read over and over." So anything with a fan base is cult fiction? Okay then. Many of the authors mentioned routinely top the best seller lists (Neil Gaiman, for example), and many more are established literary canon (Fitzgerald and Hemingway), so I don't know that I would call them cult authors. Also, while the inclusion of a section on graphic novels is nice to see, I'm not certain what it has to do with the book itself, unless they are implying that all graphic novels are cult fiction by definition. These quibbles aside, it's an interesting read, and I've added quite a few books to my shopping list through its advice.

The Machinist

This is best known (all things being relative) as Christian Bale's last film before he put on Batman's cape and cowl, where he lost apparently a hundred pounds for the role of a man who hasn't slept for a year. It's a strange and moody film, relentlessly dark and unbalanced, slow-paced and almost trance-inducing. It's also difficult to talk about without spoiling what suspense it has. While the script telegraphs too many of the twists — and I hesitate to use that word, some of them are so obvious — it does a good job of maintaining the suspense. Knowing what is ahead I still couldn't turn away, having been mesmerized by Bale's performance.

On second thought, I'll stop this now and start fresh with another batch.