asimplechord (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
asimplechord) wrote2010-12-31 11:59 pm
asimplechord) wrote2010-12-31 11:59 pm
2010 in summary
BOOKS:
1. Haunted, Chuck Palahniuk
2. Lessons in Desire, Charlie Cochrane (I think I am done with this series, even though I've only read the first two; I like the setting, but the characters seem sort of bipolar, in terms of moodswings)
3. One Bullet Away: The Making of A Marine Officer, Nathaniel Fick
4. Generation Kill, Evan Wright
5. Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris (re-read)
6. Living Dead In Dallas, Charlaine Harris (re-read)
7. Club Dead, Charlaine Harris (re-read)
8. Dead To The World, Charlaine Harris
9. Dead As A Doornail, Charlaine Harris
10. Definitely Dead, Charlaine Harris
11. All Together Dead, Charlaine Harris
12. From Dead To Worse, Charlaine Harris
13. Dead And Gone, Charlaine Harris [Stick a fork in me, I am done. I read these to catch up with the series, inspired by the idea of watching ASkars as Eric; Eric & Pam are the only good things about the books, and even they are not enough to a) make me watch the terrible episodes or b) keep reading the Mary Sue-ish hypocrisy of Sookie or Harris's continual brutalization of her main character, emotionally, physically, and (with the threat of) sexually.]
14. Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, Anthony Swofford (I'm not sure what to say about this book. I'd seen the movie, so I thought I knew what to expect. I did not enjoy it as much as I enjoyed GK and OBA. I'm not sure if it's the style of writing or the sense of hopelessness and fucked-upness that permeate Swofford's story vs. the hope for change despite disillusionment in Fick's. I don't think it's an officer vs. nco thing, either, b/c Wright's really is not a flattering portrait of command in comparison the the grunts on the ground.)
15. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Katherine Howe
16. Fantasy In Death, J. D. Robb
17. No Mercy, Lori Armstrong
18. War, Sebastian Junger. (Initial comments here.)
19. A River In The Sky, Elizabeth Peters (Eh. Not bad, but not the best AP mystery. Fills in a gap, chronologically, between Guardian Of The Horizon and Falcon At The Portal.)
20. Making The Corps, Thomas E. Ricks
21. Loon: A Marine Story, Jack McLean
22. Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA, Maryn McKenna
23. Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America, Dr. Nathaniel Frank
24. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Thomas E. Ricks (This was in my TBR pile for years, and I never finished it b/c its contents made me so fucking angry: the self-delusion of Wolfowitz et al, the compliance of main stream media, the indifference of the average American citizen. I finally finished it while we were on the road to Bonnaroo. Well written, in terms of style and structure, as expected for one of Ricks' books. Well resourced and referenced. Utterly depressing.)
25. Magic Bites, Ilona Andrews
26. Magic Burns, Ilona Andrews
27. Magic Strikes, Ilona Andrews
28. Magic Bleeds, Ilona Andrews
29. This Man's Army, Andrew Exum
30. Waging War In Waziristan: The British Struggle in the Land of Bin Laden, 1849-1947, Andrew M. Roe
31. A Soldier's Duty, Thomas E. Ricks (I have some thoughts about this, from the POV shifts to the cognitive dissonance of reading a book written pre-11Sept01 with military conflict in Afghanistan as the source of contention, and also about the insubordination of soldiers and the disconnect between the avg American and the US military, but I'm still cogitating on it.) [eta: Here.]
32. The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, Thomas E. Ricks (I really hate the title. Word choice: it's a war, not a fucking adventure.)
33. Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the search for a way out of Iraq, Linda Robinson (I think it would have been helpful if I had read this before The Gamble, since it was published before it and it contains a broader description of the parties involved in the political wrangling within the military and amongst the Iraqi politicians.)
34. Tongues of Serpents, Naomi Novik (The first half was tediously slow and boring, and I feel like it conveyed Laurence and Temeraire's despair quite clearly - I was ready for something, anything to happen for them! But I think it could have been better edited, to be shorter, and then maybe the latter half expanded? Or, IDK, J suggested that maybe cutting a fair amount would have allowed it to be incorporated into the next book in the series? But this way at least their presence in their new locale and the political intrigue w/ respect to the colony and Britain and China have been established.)
35. The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division, Bing West & Maj. Gen. Ray L. Smith (USMC, Ret.) [This is a love-letter to the US military in general and the Marine Corps, specifically. I mean, seriously, In Mattis the Blue Diamond had its Xenophon?]
36. House To House, David Bellavia with John R. Bruning (has some issues with inappropriate homophone use; best line: We own the night; the Marines rent it. Brief comparison to No True Glory here.)
37. No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah, Bing West (I have thoughts. I might get around to posting them.) Brief thoughts here.
38. Hella Nation, Evan Wright (Two-sentence review here, at the bottom of the post.)
39. Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War, Andrew Bacevich [Examines American national security strategy's basis on a) global presence, b) power projection, and c) interventionism, and how it's led to militarization and continual war without actually assuring security; the idea that intervention and a forward-leaning posture makes us more safe rather than less is a faulty assumption that I did not need to be convinced of, but Bacevich makes a clear argument here. Having said that? I think it's sort of naive to think that's going to change. I'm also not really clear on some of the arguments he makes about COIN - he lumps all COINdinistas together, and my reading and blog-following, cursory though it is, would suggest that there's far more debate about its success amongst its proponents than he is willing to acknowledge.]
40. Joker One, Donovan Campbell (I liked this SO MUCH MORE than One Bullet Away. Waaaaaay less political in that he doesn't toe the line and refrain from criticizing where he thinks it's due. Far more descriptive of the actual fighting, since it really only covers the deployment and the times immediately before and after it. The only thing that bothered me was the author's overt Christianity bleeding into somethings that I firmly believe should be kept separate from religion, esp given the locale, but since it was autobiographical, it had to be related.)
41. The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the US Army, David Cloud and Greg Jaffe (Casey, Abizaid, Chiarelli, Petraeus. IDK, I'm not convinced that it's a struggle so much as institutional inertia and political unwillingness to address the reality of the current long wars in comparison to the way the Army trained in the post-Vietnam era. Interesting to read about Petraeus's political/media savvy here and then see all the current media focused on him, esp the body count thing that Spencer Ackerman posted.)
42. Heat Wave, Richard Castle (entertaining, but Heat is a hair away from being a Mary-Sue; enjoyed the banter between Raley & Ochoa, with their charming canon namesmush, Roach)
43. The Mullah's Storm, Thomas W. Young
44. Empire: The Novel of Imperial Rome, Steven Saylor (brief comments here; long, follows the Pinarii from Augustus to Hadrian; historical details about life interesting, but could have been edited to have ~100 pages less drag)
45. 13 1/2, Nevada Barr (Interesting in that it cuts back and forth between the childhood and adulthood of a killer; I enjoyed this more than the most recent installment of Barr's Anna Pigeon series, b/c I think Anna bears a physical brunt of the "investigations" she gets called into that is worse and worse and harder for her over-50 year old body to handle, and it's gotten sort of repetitive; having said that, I didn't think the twist was much of a twist - clues were there from the start, and they were not subtle.)
46. Death Without Tenure, by Joanne Dobson. (This was the first installment in Dobson's Karen Pelletier academic mysteries in several years. I feel like I need to re-read the previous books to remind myself of details about the main character, but I love this series for the view of the politics of a small-college department. Pelletier is an English prof, with a specialty in American literature and women's lit, and this mystery touches on cultural appropriation and how we view race and Otherness, which you don't often get in this genre. As a member of an academic dept - albeit not a humanities dept - I found one aspect of the "mystery" utterly, mindbogglingly stupid, but I guess maybe humanities depts run a bit differently? IDK.)
47. Indulgence In Death, J. D. Robb. (This arrived the other night, and I was going to wait until I'd finished Nir Rosen's Aftermath before starting it, but I'm about half-way through Rosen's opus, and I was utterly demoralized and disgusted. Needed something light to read. So. The adventures of Dallas et al. Not deep. Entertaining enough. I always enjoy the reversal of gender roles that comes with Dallas and Rourke. But the guilty parties were obvious from the time their names (or one name, in particular) came to light. Too Holmesian.)
48. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, JKR. (Re-read. Had to, after seeing the first part of the movie.)
49. Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero, by Dan Abnett. (Alternate reality, where Elizabeth I married Philip II of Spain and the Anglo-Hispanic Union ruled a world with magick for centuries. Sort of steampunkish? Amusing and entertaining, but the sort of story that I'd prefer to see as a movie rather than reading, purely for the description and the ridiculous humor.)
50. A Night Too Dark, Dana Stabenow. (Paperback in the Kate Shugak series. I really like the setting for this series, and I'm slowly coming back around to the series in general. I am not fond of Kate, particularly, and I stopped reading entirely when Stabenow killed off Jack Morgan, because her affection for him was the only humanizing factor about her as a character, and I felt like the death didn't *add* anything to the story in which it happened. In some ways Kate has grown more (mostly b/c of *other* deaths) but I'm not ready to give these books a chance in hardback as yet. This mystery was pretty straightforward, with the misidentification being obvious to the reader from the start. Sets up the next couple of books, probably, with the political, social, and environmental aspects of the encroachment of the Outside on the Park. Also? Seriously, pick a fucking POV and stick to it. Shifting from Kate's POV to Chopper Jim's and back in more than one scene is not on.)
51. Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net, Joshua Foust. (This is a mix of blogs and articles written by Foust since he started working with HTT in Afghanistan. I only started reading Registan about a year ago, and I did not dig that far back into the archives, so although the maturation of his opinions was more evident after reading the compilation, most of his conclusions are not news.
I... have some issues with his writings, but they are most minor things. For example, in his preface he says that DOD has taken over what should be State humanitarian roles because State is weak. I would argue that State has been weakened over the last decade, if not over the last three decades, by the military-industrial complex and, in the Rumsfeld era by Rumsfeld's unwillingness to allow logistics and planning experts from State to participate in war planning. On p36 he talks about "winning", but it's not clear to me what winning *means*, to him or to the US govt.
Actually, there are pages of notes that I wrote while I was reading, maybe I should write up a proper review and discussion.)
52. Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, General (Ret.) Hugh Shelton with Ronald Levinson and Malcolm McConnell (So, first, the writers here need to a) learn how to use commas when defining a subordinate clause and b) to proof-read better. They mis-spell Fort Myer in the same paragraph that they spell it correctly, and spell Bandar Abbas two different ways on opposing pages. Second? I get where Tom Ricks was impressed that Shelton told it as he saw it - he clearly disapproved of Rumsfeld's takeover and management style while he was SecDef. But the man was remarkably polite about most of the rest of his career. I find it truly hard to believe that the man got to be the C-JCS by being as polite as his writing is. Also, it's somewhat repetitive. Engaging, but not gripping.
What else? Shelton's wife deserves a medal.
And now that I've read this, I'm sort of sad that Shelton's appearance on The Daily Show ended up being the soft-touch interview that it was, rather than more probing on some of the items Shelton discusses, like, oh, the months-long loss of nuclear codes during the Clinton administration.
Again, I have *pages* of notes that I took while I was reading, which may or may not make it into a proper review.)
Did not finish:
1. Lone Survivor (reasons listed here)
2. The White Queen
MOVIES:
1. The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford (so fucking slow, OMG)
2. Martian Child (John Cusack adopting a kid, my ovaries nearly exploded)
3. Eastern Promises (♥_♥ David Cronenberg movies)
4. By The People: The Election of Barack Obama (documentary)
5. Green Zone (Jason Bourne in Baghdad; complete with political reality that anyone with a brain who doesn't take MSM as the best news source knew back in 2002/2003)
6. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Srsly? I'd be pissed if I had paid to see this in a cinema.)
7. Ghost Writer (I fell asleep for the last half hour. It was that suspenseful.)
8. Flags of Our Fathers
9. RockNRolla
10. W. (THIS MADE ME SO ANGRY. SO ANGRY. Josh Brolin does an amazing job, but I was spitting with even more rage than I felt from 2001-2008 while Bush was actually in office. And that's saying something, b/c I never liked, respected, or believed the bullshit he peddled as a candidate or as POTUS.)
11. Orphan
12. The Losers (It's a good thing the cast are all gorgeous and there were lots of explosions, because the plot was terrible and there was no chemistry whatsoever between Zoe Saldana and JDM. It felt like the script had them fucking because there *had* to be a sex scene between the leader and the hot chick, just to prove that there wasn't any suppressed gayness between Roque and Clay, who spend months alone with their team in the jungle.)
13. The Number 23
14. The Departed
15. Righteous Kill
16. The Happening (Not one of MNS's better attempts. In fact, pretty fucking terrible.)
17. Chasing Liberty
18. Igor
19. How To Lose Friends And Alienate People
20. The A-Team (O.o)
21. Gasland (>>>:/) (documentary)
22. Wall-E
23. Restrepo (documentary)
24. Semper Fi: One Marine's Journey (documentary)
25. The Lookout (slow beginning. but. Joseph Gordon Leavitt.)
26. War, Inc.
27. Inception (I want all the Arthur/Eames fic IN THE WORLD, OK?)
28. The Box
29. Kick Ass
30. The American
31. RED (Best Bruce Willis movie in a while.)
32. GI Joe
33. Wartorn: 1861-2010 (documentary on PTSD)
34. Whiteout
35. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 1
36. The Crazies (seriously, another crazy zombie-creating virus?)
37. The Book of Eli
TV:
1. TV series: Generation Kill
2. TV series: The Wire (S1, S2, S3)
3. TV series: White Collar
4. TV series: Band of Brothers
5. TV series: The Pacific
6. TV series: Supernatural
7. TV series: Castle
8. TV series: Criminal Minds
9. TV series: House, MD
10. TV series: Treme
11. TV series: The Big C
12. TV series: The West Wing (S1)
SHOWS:
23Jan - Everclear @ Houston HOB had to be out of town for Mommom's funeral
6Feb - Redeye Empire & G Love and Special Sauce, Warehouse Live
15Feb - Stereo Skyline / There For Tomorrow / A Rocket To The Moon / Mayday Parade / We The Kings @ Houston HOB
16Feb - Fun / Vedera / Jack's Mannequin @ White Rabbit
25Feb - Sherwood / Hot Chelle Rae / Black Gold @ Bronze Peacock
5Mar - Roy Jay(?) / Tony Lucca / Tyrone Wells @ Bronze Peacock
14Mar - cavashawn / The Heydays / State & Madison (Rad Bromance tour) @ Super Happy Fun Land
18-19 March - SXSW (The Lifelife, A Hero Named Hope, Blane Fonda, cavashawn, empires, The Fold, TYV, Patrick Stump, Travie McCoy, Jookabox, Andy D, Burnt Ones, Nikki Jean, Chiddy Bang, New Politics)
20Mar - Band of Skulls & BRMC @ Houston HOB
26Mar - The Dear and Departed / Cursive / Alkaline Trio @ Warehouse Live
8Apr - Buddy Wakefield (?) / Ani DiFranco @ Warehouse Live
(?May - Intelligence Slave)
20May - Butch Walker and the Black Widows @ Webster Hall, NYC
(21May - American Idiot)
4June - I Fight Dragons, Travie McCoy, 3Oh!3, Cobra Starship @ The Palladium (Dallas)
5June - Charice, I Fight Dragons, Iyaz, Travie McCoy, Jay Sean, Cobra Starship (3Oh!3, but I left) @ Verizon Wireless
10-13June - Bonnaroo, Manchester TN
15June - Cowboy Junkies @ HOB Houston
20July - Henry Clay People, Against Me & Silversun Pickups @ Warehouse Live
22July - Mercenary X & RATT @ Warehouse Live
24July - Otenki, Sugar Red something-or-others, Taddy Porter, We Are The Fallen & Saving Abel @ Warehouse Live
6-8 Aug - Lollapalooza, Chicago IL
(?Aug - A Behanding In Spokane)
19Aug - Travie McCoy @ Rich's
27Aug - Without A Face, somebody or other, Ministry of Love @ Dean's
8Sept - Alison Iraheta & Adam Lambert @ Hobby Center
19Sept - TAB The Band, BRMC & STP @ CWMP
24Sept - The Graduates, Tommy & The High Pilots, Ludo @ Warehouse Live Studio
25Sept - TAB The Band, BRMC & STP @ the Backyard, Austin Rescheduled due to Scott Weiland's issues.
8-10Oct - Austin City Limits Festival
13Oct - The Constellations (+ Eletric Six +some random local opener) @ Fitzgerald's
(17Oct - Peter Pan)
22Oct - Bush @ Palladium (Dallas)
24Oct - BRMC @ Tree's (Dallas) >>>>>>>>:/
(30Oct - American Idiot)
(31Oct - A Life In The Theatre)
(31Oct - Next To Normal)
5Nov - fun, Steel Train, Gold Motel @ HOB
18Nov - Frank Turner, Lucero, Social Distortion @ Stubb's Austin
19Nov - Frank Turner, Lucero, Social Distortion @ HOB-Houston
20Nov - Girl In A Coma & The Dresden Dolls @ Fitzgerald's
FIC:
Bandom:
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. (In practice there is.) (Brendon/Spencer, adult, 1443 words)
Not!fic & WIP amnesty post. (Brendon/Spencer and Brendon/Regan/Shane, three ficlets)
Generation Kill:
Strong, strong wind (Brad/Nate, teen, ~2100 words)
Off The Map (Brad/Nate, R, 1040 words)
Four Eyes (Brad/Nate, adult, ~1050 words)
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
we_pimpin drabble-party drabbles and ficlets: Here, here, here, here, here, and here. Varying from gen to preslash to explicit slash, Brad/Nate, and Brad/Ray, and Nate/Ray.
Five Times Ray Was Surprised (And One Time He Wasn't), Ray/OFC, Ray/Brad, PG-13 for language.
Drabbles here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here at the 25 Things About My Sexuality Meme. (Brad, Ray, Nate, Mike, and Rudy. Het and slash, Brad/Nate, Brad/Ray, Brad/OF(M)C, Nate/OF(M)C, Ray/OFC, Mike/OFC, Rudy/OFC.)
Out of sync at the beginning, written with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
why_me_why_not, Brad/Nate, adult, ~3300 words
Steal (the rhythm) while you can, written withwhy_me_why_not, Brad/Nate, adult, ~2200 words
untitled ficbit, Brad/Nate
Five times people realized Brad and Nate were together, Brad/Nate (implied Ray/Walt), pg-13, ~4500 words
Five moments in the birth and maturation of a "thing", Mike Wynn/OFCs, adult, ~2600 words (locked to the community)
Can't Stutter When You're Talking Without Words, Brad/Nate, teen, 1231 words
Chart Your Way, Brad/Nate, 528 words, pg (at most)
10 Some Things About Bradley Ann Colbert, Brad/Nate, Brad/OFC, 757 words, pg (at most)
Faces of Luck, Brad/Nate, adult, 2040 words
The Corner of 6th and How To Forget, Walt/Brad, adult, 2637 words
Drabbles here, here, here, here, here, and here.
three comment fics (Brad/Nate in various incarnations)
Running in circles, Brad/Nate, 1000 words
That'll Do, Brad/Nate, 1800+ words, work-safe, foryagkyas exchange. (alternate link)
1. Haunted, Chuck Palahniuk
2. Lessons in Desire, Charlie Cochrane (I think I am done with this series, even though I've only read the first two; I like the setting, but the characters seem sort of bipolar, in terms of moodswings)
3. One Bullet Away: The Making of A Marine Officer, Nathaniel Fick
4. Generation Kill, Evan Wright
5. Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris (re-read)
6. Living Dead In Dallas, Charlaine Harris (re-read)
7. Club Dead, Charlaine Harris (re-read)
8. Dead To The World, Charlaine Harris
9. Dead As A Doornail, Charlaine Harris
10. Definitely Dead, Charlaine Harris
11. All Together Dead, Charlaine Harris
12. From Dead To Worse, Charlaine Harris
13. Dead And Gone, Charlaine Harris [Stick a fork in me, I am done. I read these to catch up with the series, inspired by the idea of watching ASkars as Eric; Eric & Pam are the only good things about the books, and even they are not enough to a) make me watch the terrible episodes or b) keep reading the Mary Sue-ish hypocrisy of Sookie or Harris's continual brutalization of her main character, emotionally, physically, and (with the threat of) sexually.]
14. Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, Anthony Swofford (I'm not sure what to say about this book. I'd seen the movie, so I thought I knew what to expect. I did not enjoy it as much as I enjoyed GK and OBA. I'm not sure if it's the style of writing or the sense of hopelessness and fucked-upness that permeate Swofford's story vs. the hope for change despite disillusionment in Fick's. I don't think it's an officer vs. nco thing, either, b/c Wright's really is not a flattering portrait of command in comparison the the grunts on the ground.)
15. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Katherine Howe
16. Fantasy In Death, J. D. Robb
17. No Mercy, Lori Armstrong
18. War, Sebastian Junger. (Initial comments here.)
19. A River In The Sky, Elizabeth Peters (Eh. Not bad, but not the best AP mystery. Fills in a gap, chronologically, between Guardian Of The Horizon and Falcon At The Portal.)
20. Making The Corps, Thomas E. Ricks
21. Loon: A Marine Story, Jack McLean
22. Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA, Maryn McKenna
23. Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America, Dr. Nathaniel Frank
24. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Thomas E. Ricks (This was in my TBR pile for years, and I never finished it b/c its contents made me so fucking angry: the self-delusion of Wolfowitz et al, the compliance of main stream media, the indifference of the average American citizen. I finally finished it while we were on the road to Bonnaroo. Well written, in terms of style and structure, as expected for one of Ricks' books. Well resourced and referenced. Utterly depressing.)
25. Magic Bites, Ilona Andrews
26. Magic Burns, Ilona Andrews
27. Magic Strikes, Ilona Andrews
28. Magic Bleeds, Ilona Andrews
29. This Man's Army, Andrew Exum
30. Waging War In Waziristan: The British Struggle in the Land of Bin Laden, 1849-1947, Andrew M. Roe
31. A Soldier's Duty, Thomas E. Ricks (I have some thoughts about this, from the POV shifts to the cognitive dissonance of reading a book written pre-11Sept01 with military conflict in Afghanistan as the source of contention, and also about the insubordination of soldiers and the disconnect between the avg American and the US military, but I'm still cogitating on it.) [eta: Here.]
32. The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, Thomas E. Ricks (I really hate the title. Word choice: it's a war, not a fucking adventure.)
33. Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the search for a way out of Iraq, Linda Robinson (I think it would have been helpful if I had read this before The Gamble, since it was published before it and it contains a broader description of the parties involved in the political wrangling within the military and amongst the Iraqi politicians.)
34. Tongues of Serpents, Naomi Novik (The first half was tediously slow and boring, and I feel like it conveyed Laurence and Temeraire's despair quite clearly - I was ready for something, anything to happen for them! But I think it could have been better edited, to be shorter, and then maybe the latter half expanded? Or, IDK, J suggested that maybe cutting a fair amount would have allowed it to be incorporated into the next book in the series? But this way at least their presence in their new locale and the political intrigue w/ respect to the colony and Britain and China have been established.)
35. The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division, Bing West & Maj. Gen. Ray L. Smith (USMC, Ret.) [This is a love-letter to the US military in general and the Marine Corps, specifically. I mean, seriously, In Mattis the Blue Diamond had its Xenophon?]
36. House To House, David Bellavia with John R. Bruning (has some issues with inappropriate homophone use; best line: We own the night; the Marines rent it. Brief comparison to No True Glory here.)
37. No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah, Bing West (I have thoughts. I might get around to posting them.) Brief thoughts here.
38. Hella Nation, Evan Wright (Two-sentence review here, at the bottom of the post.)
39. Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War, Andrew Bacevich [Examines American national security strategy's basis on a) global presence, b) power projection, and c) interventionism, and how it's led to militarization and continual war without actually assuring security; the idea that intervention and a forward-leaning posture makes us more safe rather than less is a faulty assumption that I did not need to be convinced of, but Bacevich makes a clear argument here. Having said that? I think it's sort of naive to think that's going to change. I'm also not really clear on some of the arguments he makes about COIN - he lumps all COINdinistas together, and my reading and blog-following, cursory though it is, would suggest that there's far more debate about its success amongst its proponents than he is willing to acknowledge.]
40. Joker One, Donovan Campbell (I liked this SO MUCH MORE than One Bullet Away. Waaaaaay less political in that he doesn't toe the line and refrain from criticizing where he thinks it's due. Far more descriptive of the actual fighting, since it really only covers the deployment and the times immediately before and after it. The only thing that bothered me was the author's overt Christianity bleeding into somethings that I firmly believe should be kept separate from religion, esp given the locale, but since it was autobiographical, it had to be related.)
41. The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the US Army, David Cloud and Greg Jaffe (Casey, Abizaid, Chiarelli, Petraeus. IDK, I'm not convinced that it's a struggle so much as institutional inertia and political unwillingness to address the reality of the current long wars in comparison to the way the Army trained in the post-Vietnam era. Interesting to read about Petraeus's political/media savvy here and then see all the current media focused on him, esp the body count thing that Spencer Ackerman posted.)
42. Heat Wave, Richard Castle (entertaining, but Heat is a hair away from being a Mary-Sue; enjoyed the banter between Raley & Ochoa, with their charming canon namesmush, Roach)
43. The Mullah's Storm, Thomas W. Young
44. Empire: The Novel of Imperial Rome, Steven Saylor (brief comments here; long, follows the Pinarii from Augustus to Hadrian; historical details about life interesting, but could have been edited to have ~100 pages less drag)
45. 13 1/2, Nevada Barr (Interesting in that it cuts back and forth between the childhood and adulthood of a killer; I enjoyed this more than the most recent installment of Barr's Anna Pigeon series, b/c I think Anna bears a physical brunt of the "investigations" she gets called into that is worse and worse and harder for her over-50 year old body to handle, and it's gotten sort of repetitive; having said that, I didn't think the twist was much of a twist - clues were there from the start, and they were not subtle.)
46. Death Without Tenure, by Joanne Dobson. (This was the first installment in Dobson's Karen Pelletier academic mysteries in several years. I feel like I need to re-read the previous books to remind myself of details about the main character, but I love this series for the view of the politics of a small-college department. Pelletier is an English prof, with a specialty in American literature and women's lit, and this mystery touches on cultural appropriation and how we view race and Otherness, which you don't often get in this genre. As a member of an academic dept - albeit not a humanities dept - I found one aspect of the "mystery" utterly, mindbogglingly stupid, but I guess maybe humanities depts run a bit differently? IDK.)
47. Indulgence In Death, J. D. Robb. (This arrived the other night, and I was going to wait until I'd finished Nir Rosen's Aftermath before starting it, but I'm about half-way through Rosen's opus, and I was utterly demoralized and disgusted. Needed something light to read. So. The adventures of Dallas et al. Not deep. Entertaining enough. I always enjoy the reversal of gender roles that comes with Dallas and Rourke. But the guilty parties were obvious from the time their names (or one name, in particular) came to light. Too Holmesian.)
48. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, JKR. (Re-read. Had to, after seeing the first part of the movie.)
49. Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero, by Dan Abnett. (Alternate reality, where Elizabeth I married Philip II of Spain and the Anglo-Hispanic Union ruled a world with magick for centuries. Sort of steampunkish? Amusing and entertaining, but the sort of story that I'd prefer to see as a movie rather than reading, purely for the description and the ridiculous humor.)
50. A Night Too Dark, Dana Stabenow. (Paperback in the Kate Shugak series. I really like the setting for this series, and I'm slowly coming back around to the series in general. I am not fond of Kate, particularly, and I stopped reading entirely when Stabenow killed off Jack Morgan, because her affection for him was the only humanizing factor about her as a character, and I felt like the death didn't *add* anything to the story in which it happened. In some ways Kate has grown more (mostly b/c of *other* deaths) but I'm not ready to give these books a chance in hardback as yet. This mystery was pretty straightforward, with the misidentification being obvious to the reader from the start. Sets up the next couple of books, probably, with the political, social, and environmental aspects of the encroachment of the Outside on the Park. Also? Seriously, pick a fucking POV and stick to it. Shifting from Kate's POV to Chopper Jim's and back in more than one scene is not on.)
51. Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net, Joshua Foust. (This is a mix of blogs and articles written by Foust since he started working with HTT in Afghanistan. I only started reading Registan about a year ago, and I did not dig that far back into the archives, so although the maturation of his opinions was more evident after reading the compilation, most of his conclusions are not news.
I... have some issues with his writings, but they are most minor things. For example, in his preface he says that DOD has taken over what should be State humanitarian roles because State is weak. I would argue that State has been weakened over the last decade, if not over the last three decades, by the military-industrial complex and, in the Rumsfeld era by Rumsfeld's unwillingness to allow logistics and planning experts from State to participate in war planning. On p36 he talks about "winning", but it's not clear to me what winning *means*, to him or to the US govt.
Actually, there are pages of notes that I wrote while I was reading, maybe I should write up a proper review and discussion.)
52. Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, General (Ret.) Hugh Shelton with Ronald Levinson and Malcolm McConnell (So, first, the writers here need to a) learn how to use commas when defining a subordinate clause and b) to proof-read better. They mis-spell Fort Myer in the same paragraph that they spell it correctly, and spell Bandar Abbas two different ways on opposing pages. Second? I get where Tom Ricks was impressed that Shelton told it as he saw it - he clearly disapproved of Rumsfeld's takeover and management style while he was SecDef. But the man was remarkably polite about most of the rest of his career. I find it truly hard to believe that the man got to be the C-JCS by being as polite as his writing is. Also, it's somewhat repetitive. Engaging, but not gripping.
What else? Shelton's wife deserves a medal.
And now that I've read this, I'm sort of sad that Shelton's appearance on The Daily Show ended up being the soft-touch interview that it was, rather than more probing on some of the items Shelton discusses, like, oh, the months-long loss of nuclear codes during the Clinton administration.
Again, I have *pages* of notes that I took while I was reading, which may or may not make it into a proper review.)
Did not finish:
1. Lone Survivor (reasons listed here)
2. The White Queen
MOVIES:
1. The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford (so fucking slow, OMG)
2. Martian Child (John Cusack adopting a kid, my ovaries nearly exploded)
3. Eastern Promises (♥_♥ David Cronenberg movies)
4. By The People: The Election of Barack Obama (documentary)
5. Green Zone (Jason Bourne in Baghdad; complete with political reality that anyone with a brain who doesn't take MSM as the best news source knew back in 2002/2003)
6. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Srsly? I'd be pissed if I had paid to see this in a cinema.)
7. Ghost Writer (I fell asleep for the last half hour. It was that suspenseful.)
8. Flags of Our Fathers
9. RockNRolla
10. W. (THIS MADE ME SO ANGRY. SO ANGRY. Josh Brolin does an amazing job, but I was spitting with even more rage than I felt from 2001-2008 while Bush was actually in office. And that's saying something, b/c I never liked, respected, or believed the bullshit he peddled as a candidate or as POTUS.)
11. Orphan
12. The Losers (It's a good thing the cast are all gorgeous and there were lots of explosions, because the plot was terrible and there was no chemistry whatsoever between Zoe Saldana and JDM. It felt like the script had them fucking because there *had* to be a sex scene between the leader and the hot chick, just to prove that there wasn't any suppressed gayness between Roque and Clay, who spend months alone with their team in the jungle.)
13. The Number 23
14. The Departed
15. Righteous Kill
16. The Happening (Not one of MNS's better attempts. In fact, pretty fucking terrible.)
17. Chasing Liberty
18. Igor
19. How To Lose Friends And Alienate People
20. The A-Team (O.o)
21. Gasland (>>>:/) (documentary)
22. Wall-E
23. Restrepo (documentary)
24. Semper Fi: One Marine's Journey (documentary)
25. The Lookout (slow beginning. but. Joseph Gordon Leavitt.)
26. War, Inc.
27. Inception (I want all the Arthur/Eames fic IN THE WORLD, OK?)
28. The Box
29. Kick Ass
30. The American
31. RED (Best Bruce Willis movie in a while.)
32. GI Joe
33. Wartorn: 1861-2010 (documentary on PTSD)
34. Whiteout
35. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 1
36. The Crazies (seriously, another crazy zombie-creating virus?)
37. The Book of Eli
TV:
1. TV series: Generation Kill
2. TV series: The Wire (S1, S2, S3)
3. TV series: White Collar
4. TV series: Band of Brothers
5. TV series: The Pacific
6. TV series: Supernatural
7. TV series: Castle
8. TV series: Criminal Minds
9. TV series: House, MD
10. TV series: Treme
11. TV series: The Big C
12. TV series: The West Wing (S1)
SHOWS:
6Feb - Redeye Empire & G Love and Special Sauce, Warehouse Live
15Feb - Stereo Skyline / There For Tomorrow / A Rocket To The Moon / Mayday Parade / We The Kings @ Houston HOB
16Feb - Fun / Vedera / Jack's Mannequin @ White Rabbit
25Feb - Sherwood / Hot Chelle Rae / Black Gold @ Bronze Peacock
5Mar - Roy Jay(?) / Tony Lucca / Tyrone Wells @ Bronze Peacock
14Mar - cavashawn / The Heydays / State & Madison (Rad Bromance tour) @ Super Happy Fun Land
18-19 March - SXSW (The Lifelife, A Hero Named Hope, Blane Fonda, cavashawn, empires, The Fold, TYV, Patrick Stump, Travie McCoy, Jookabox, Andy D, Burnt Ones, Nikki Jean, Chiddy Bang, New Politics)
20Mar - Band of Skulls & BRMC @ Houston HOB
26Mar - The Dear and Departed / Cursive / Alkaline Trio @ Warehouse Live
8Apr - Buddy Wakefield (?) / Ani DiFranco @ Warehouse Live
(?May - Intelligence Slave)
20May - Butch Walker and the Black Widows @ Webster Hall, NYC
(21May - American Idiot)
4June - I Fight Dragons, Travie McCoy, 3Oh!3, Cobra Starship @ The Palladium (Dallas)
5June - Charice, I Fight Dragons, Iyaz, Travie McCoy, Jay Sean, Cobra Starship (3Oh!3, but I left) @ Verizon Wireless
10-13June - Bonnaroo, Manchester TN
15June - Cowboy Junkies @ HOB Houston
20July - Henry Clay People, Against Me & Silversun Pickups @ Warehouse Live
22July - Mercenary X & RATT @ Warehouse Live
24July - Otenki, Sugar Red something-or-others, Taddy Porter, We Are The Fallen & Saving Abel @ Warehouse Live
6-8 Aug - Lollapalooza, Chicago IL
(?Aug - A Behanding In Spokane)
19Aug - Travie McCoy @ Rich's
27Aug - Without A Face, somebody or other, Ministry of Love @ Dean's
8Sept - Alison Iraheta & Adam Lambert @ Hobby Center
19Sept - TAB The Band, BRMC & STP @ CWMP
24Sept - The Graduates, Tommy & The High Pilots, Ludo @ Warehouse Live Studio
8-10Oct - Austin City Limits Festival
13Oct - The Constellations (+ Eletric Six +some random local opener) @ Fitzgerald's
(17Oct - Peter Pan)
22Oct - Bush @ Palladium (Dallas)
(30Oct - American Idiot)
(31Oct - A Life In The Theatre)
(31Oct - Next To Normal)
5Nov - fun, Steel Train, Gold Motel @ HOB
18Nov - Frank Turner, Lucero, Social Distortion @ Stubb's Austin
19Nov - Frank Turner, Lucero, Social Distortion @ HOB-Houston
20Nov - Girl In A Coma & The Dresden Dolls @ Fitzgerald's
FIC:
Bandom:
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. (In practice there is.) (Brendon/Spencer, adult, 1443 words)
Not!fic & WIP amnesty post. (Brendon/Spencer and Brendon/Regan/Shane, three ficlets)
Generation Kill:
Strong, strong wind (Brad/Nate, teen, ~2100 words)
Off The Map (Brad/Nate, R, 1040 words)
Four Eyes (Brad/Nate, adult, ~1050 words)
we_pimpin drabble-party drabbles and ficlets: Here, here, here, here, here, and here. Varying from gen to preslash to explicit slash, Brad/Nate, and Brad/Ray, and Nate/Ray. Five Times Ray Was Surprised (And One Time He Wasn't), Ray/OFC, Ray/Brad, PG-13 for language.
Drabbles here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here at the 25 Things About My Sexuality Meme. (Brad, Ray, Nate, Mike, and Rudy. Het and slash, Brad/Nate, Brad/Ray, Brad/OF(M)C, Nate/OF(M)C, Ray/OFC, Mike/OFC, Rudy/OFC.)
Out of sync at the beginning, written with
why_me_why_not, Brad/Nate, adult, ~3300 wordsSteal (the rhythm) while you can, written with
why_me_why_not, Brad/Nate, adult, ~2200 wordsuntitled ficbit, Brad/Nate
Five times people realized Brad and Nate were together, Brad/Nate (implied Ray/Walt), pg-13, ~4500 words
Five moments in the birth and maturation of a "thing", Mike Wynn/OFCs, adult, ~2600 words (locked to the community)
Can't Stutter When You're Talking Without Words, Brad/Nate, teen, 1231 words
Chart Your Way, Brad/Nate, 528 words, pg (at most)
Faces of Luck, Brad/Nate, adult, 2040 words
The Corner of 6th and How To Forget, Walt/Brad, adult, 2637 words
Drabbles here, here, here, here, here, and here.
three comment fics (Brad/Nate in various incarnations)
Running in circles, Brad/Nate, 1000 words
That'll Do, Brad/Nate, 1800+ words, work-safe, for
yagkyas exchange. (alternate link)