It’s been a good month for books so far! Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World blew me away with it’s odd humor and good emotional grace notes. There’s a bit of fussery I could live without near the end but it is a solid piece of work. Also it has ninja and mimes. For seriously.

Junot Diaz’ The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was also quite the stellar work. One of those books that you simply understand why it won the awards it did. The book did a slow burn on me, at first I wasn’t sure about it and then I suddenly noticed I just wanted to sit and devour it. Noice.

Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook gave us Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale. A fascinating look at writers, TV and how this crap all comes together. It’s a huge glossy book that is full of emails between the two men, honest looks at what it takes to create this stuff, dead ends, scripts, revisions, and txt messages at times. It’s one of those books that works as a gift for writers or fans of the show. It will, mind, spoil all of season 4 for you, if you haven’t seen it.

David Lapham’s Young Liars: Vol. 1 Daydream Believer. It’s Lapham so you expect a certain something something from his comics. But this is something more. It’s awful, desperate, honest and brutal and completely fucking insane. One of those trades so good I wanna go get the single issues because I need to know what happens next.

Howard the Duck is coming out on DVD on March 10th. I just needed to tell you all that. Ten bucks for a pre-order. I have mine. Do you have yours?

Tropic Thunder was … you know I expected to outright not enjoy this film. I like Stiller, in very certain roles and never in others. I like Jack Black in limited doses. I love Robert Downey Jr but… the thing felt like a mess waiting to happen. What is was … well it was a mess sometimes. And when it was a mess it was a glorious one. And when it worked it was fantastic and it worked at least half the time. And the real star of the show is Tom Cruise, of all people, who made me cackle with delight every time he was on camera. I still feel a little guilty about that. Considering I do not like Tom Cruise. Not since, like, Top Gun or Risky Business.

I, uhhh, also watched a lot of Doctor Who and uhhh… some Bill & Ted . Because you have to. Besides the two go together. Look, the doctor travels in the TARDIS, a flying Police call box. Bill and Ted travel space and time in a red phone booth. It has to be named the RETARDIS, right?

Anyway.

Yeah. It’s Monday.