LOL 4/17
Paul - Contact - Carl F'ing Sagan
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Written as a screenplay I guess.  He thought the movie was better..  Not that excited about the book.  Thought it would be a version of a movie he liked but not dumbed down.  In fact he realized it wasn't dumbed down, and didn't have anything extra going for it.  No bottom.    Paul thought the book had just as much God going on as the movie.  Felt like he read a bunch of pages with all the passion sucked out of it.  Thought the book read in a strangely dated way even for a book from the 80s re goofy science predictions.  Thought too many pages are wasted on the faith/science non-argument.  We will refer back to the extensive LOL mailing list controversy to situate any further analysis.

Aside about Singularity stuff, near future, and what small group of authors Matt likes.  Josh reminds us that he thought the one Banks book that he read was like a bad soap opera.  Not bad in a good way.  Just bad.

Recommendation of "Mating Habits of Earth-Bound Humans".

Discussion of a LOL movie night.

Megan - Ladylord (!!!) Sasha Miller
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Liked it, thought the book turned out to be a flan when she was expecting a cake.  Not enough substance.  Male dominated world loosely resembling feudal Japan with dragons and wizards.  The heroine is a ladylord.  Trying to get the favor of the evil emperor she is tasked with retrieving a dragon-warrior egg.  What's with the weird Japan trope?  Because it's supposed to read like an anime apparently.  Gender-based soap opera style intrigue combined with swords & sorcery pulp style page turner.  Disappointed by the end felt like she wanted more.  [ed: is this book racist?]

Somehow we are now talking about Avatar.  Paul was fooled into seeing it twice apparently.  Megan says there are six stories in the world, but in this editor's opinion it doesn't change the fact that Avatar sucks.

Lengthy digression on mythology and western reconceptualizations thereof.

MARKO - Foop!!
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Did not finish Foop!  Hilary read it.  She thought it was more potato chips, unsatisfying in the end.  Would have enjoyed it more if it had gone somewhere.  Marko doesn't know anyone who writes like this guy.  We will not even be finishing this review apparently.  There is some kinda contradiction here in that Marko reads everything Josh recommends and likes them, but thinks Josh has bad taste in books.  

Megan - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
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Does exactly what it says on the cover.  Loves P&P, had more fun because she loves the original and likes it when they do the normal stuff in P&P while they kill zombies, aka "the unmentionables".  Zombies attack during the big balls, etc etc.  Really fun. [ed: Didn't realize you could get away with this stuff cos it's in public domain].  Great illustrations.

Megan - Dark Lord of Derkholm (sp??) - Diana Wynne Jones
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Awesome book.  Corporation punches hole through space-time into magical world of wizards and dragons and they do tours to it.  Female wizards get discriminated against, ren faire gone wrong.  Company man has a demon in his pocket so he keeps them down.  Derk does some magic that doesn't go by the company line so he gets set up as the dark lord and somehow he saves the day?  Derk has a son named BLADE.  Better than Piers Anthony.  VERY few words on the pages here.  Still possibly more words than the YA wizard book Josh is reading next.  Author wrote Howl's Moving Castle.

Josh - (A/The) Mystery of Grace - Charles DeLint
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Josh was in the train station and he saw the book.  Cover had a chick with tatoos laying on a couch so he was in.  Liked the first half, it was fun.  Not sure he'd read another one by him.  Girl with family problems raised by her Grandpa who rebuilds hotrods and shit.  Marko says it's not a teenage fantasy for girls.  She listens to rockabilly and rebuilds cars and gets lots of tattoos.  Then she gets killed.  Ends up in a purgatory with a bunch of weird rules.  She gets to come back once in awhile and falls in love with a dude and you learn more about the purgatory and the rules and stuff.  Eventually it starts getting into some stuff about belief and faith and he started skimming.  Guess she was stuck in Hotel California or something.  Josh liked the parts with the technical street-rod jargon.  

Marko wants to say again how much he liked Staked.  They're talking about the new Staked book now which is in Paris I guess. 

Paul - Light
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Only got about 30 pages in.  Marko asks him if he would describe himself as the MTV generation.  Got turned off by the slow start and unsympathetic no-nonsense serial killing.

Also oysters are vegan.  Marko disagrees.  But he is wrong because he thought I said they were vegans.

Signing off