Weekend Entertainment Roundup

Broken by Megan Hart I just finished this last night, further establishing Hart as one of my all-time favorite writers. I kept saying over and over how this book is so compelling. That is the ultimate word for it. I mean, I thought about it all the time when I wasn't reading it. I just wanted to be reading it. It's one of those stories that flips around a bit, and every facet was gripping. I loved reading this book.

Tempest Rising by Nicole Peeler I always sort of tremble a bit when I pick up a book of somebody I know and like in real life, or in Peeler's case, virtually, because, what if I don't like it? Wow, never fear on the Tempest.

This series has taken its place in my pantheon of bright, shiny, sexy, go-to series, right next to Kresley Cole's and Charlaine Harris's. First, I loved this heroine: vulnerable, fascinating, careful. Also, there's my favorite kind of love triangle brewing here where both options are hugely attractive, but you definitely know who the hero is. Yummy imaginative world building with dashes of smutty goodness all along the way. The next can't come soon enough.

Lost: So is it over? I stopped watching in the second season, convinced the writers didn't have a master plan. Was I wrong? What's the deal with the island? Is it like that Star Trek where it's just the projections of people's thoughts?

Life: This is a new cop series DH and I are trying off Netflix. It's like, this cop who was sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit, and gets into Zen, then he is exonerated, and he uses his half-baked Zen abilities and newfound angle on life to be a better cop, and solve the plotty conspiracy that sent him to prison in the first place. So far so good, though a bit klunky (think the annoyingness of Data in the first season of Star Trek Next Gen). And, it's no Wire or Shield, but we'll see. Anybody else have a report on if this show gets good?

A Serious Man (Coen Brothers): DH and I rented this movie as a pick-me-up comedy, which ought to greatly amuse anybody who has watched it. I take it as the Coen brothers' meditation on mortality and the meaninglessness of life, and I didn't much like it while I was watching it, but I came to like it in a highly oblique way later. I read a review where the last scenes were mysterious to the reviewer, but to me, the last scenes put the whole movie into focus. I think I feel fondest of the movie when I look back on it as an art object rather than a movie, and think about its images and the odd repeating messages that seem very Rohrschach-like. In certain moods, I look back on the ending and appreciate it on a kind of dark way.

Mario Acevedo's insane new book trailer:

I love all the little WTF moments in this.

Latebreaking link: Romance Fiction X Geekery OTP: Hey, I love this post (by Bonnie Walling), about how romance is now the geekiest genre ever, in a newly hip way, due to all the mashups. Yeah! Check it out. I found it via Lynn Viehl's wonderful author blog, Paperback Writer.