A Hat Full of Media

I've got a few different bits of media from the last few weeks that I have a little bit to say about, so I'm going to collect them all here in no specific order.

The Okinawa Reading List.
The books I read on my trip to Okinawa were as follows: Foundation and Empire, Freakonomics, The Little Prince, and Absurdistan.

Foundation and Empire is an oldy and a goody, although I prefer the first of the Foundation novels. From the second book onward, it concentrates more on the individuals whereas the first had a feeling of more impersonal, grandiose history unraveling as you read. Although to be honest, I'm not sure that could be kept up over the course of a thousand years with the same level of quality.

Freakonomics was interesting, but unfulfilling. It lacked a certain amount of depth. I think I expected it to be a weightier, more serious and academic tome than it really was.

The Little Prince I added to the list since John Paul showed me the French copy he was carrying around with him on his travels. An interesting tale which definitely made me think about things (some of which I may be better of not thinking about).

I'm still reading Absurdistan, which is about a fat Russian guy who gets mixed up in a civil war in the former soviet republic of Absurdistan. It's not bad, but I'm not sure what point the author is trying to make.

Also in Okinawa I started playing Phoenix Wright. This is a lawyer RPG type game. The game play has two sections, investigation where you talk to witnesses and look for evidence, and the courtroom where you cross examine witnesses and present evidence to show the holes in the witnesses' testimony. An interesting game, although it is quite linear in play, sometimes the evidence to present and when is quite arbitrary, and now that I've finished it I doubt I'll play it again any time soon. That said, I will probably buy Phoenix Wright 2 after payday.

I've already talked about Die Hard 4 and Pirates 3, so I won't do so further. I am going to try and see Transformers and Harry Potter 5 in the near future while they are still showing in the cinemas.

Today I got my hands on the final Harry Potter book, and am already 100 pages in. I don't expect to get much sleep tonight, as I'll probably get to around 2 am and think, damn, I should get some sleep. I'll probably comment a bit more when I finish it.

Lastly, I found a link to this on Neil Gaiman's blog, Peanuts by Charles Bukowski. This appeals to my fondness for the reinterpretation of stories with a different, more twisted perspective. This is very different to the original, but very good.

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Current media: Apocalyptica - Faraway