My Reading List, March 2004 Edition

Here’s a rundown of everything I’m reading right now (March 8), from audio books to comic books to good ol’fashioned novels.

Audio

  • A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (Amazon):  A tale of political scheming set in a world in which the summers and winters can last for years. So far I’m enjoying it, but the huge number of sub-plots is getting annoyingly Jordanesque. Still, it’s a 35 hour audio book, which means I can spend an entire month listening it during my commute, and as such, I don’t really mind a few rambling side quests. It’s certainly better than listening to the radio.
  • Mortality Radio: The Dungeons & Dragons radio show broadcast by Mortality.net — I’m listening to the Feb. 20 edition featuring an interview with the folks at Expeditous Retreat.

Comics

  • Uncanny X-Men #441: The current storyline is an unapologetic ripoff of Romeo and Juliet. It revolves around Paige and Sam Guthrie’s younger brother, who’s fallen for a girl who’s a member of a clan the Guthries have been feuding with for years. There’s nothing new here — just another tired re-tread of Shakespeare’s famous story (although it does have the disturbing element of Paige lusting for an older man with exactly the same sort of wings as her younger brother).
  • New X-Men #153: The lame “Magneto Returns” storyline is mercifully over now, and the story’s been flung far into the future, where the Beast is a made tyrant hell-bent on world domination via genetic engineering. It’s as good as the Magneto story arch was bad — I loved the vision of a horde of Nightcrawler clones teleporting their way across the Atlantic, and the kid with the Sentinel sidekick was excellent.
  • Superman/Batman #6: Probably my favorite title right now, it features Batman and Superman working together to evade Lex Luther and his super-powered cronies while trying to figure out a way to stop a kryptonite asteroid from striking Earth. I love the way the internal dialogue flashes between the two heroes, each fixating on the strengths and shortcomings of the other.

Books

  • Draconomicon by by Andy Collins, James Wyatt & Skip Williams (Amazon): A comprehensive guide to dragons for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. I initially wasn’t going to get this book, but Amazon was selling it for dirt cheap, and I couldn’t resist. Lots of new feats and spells for dragons (as well as dragon slayers) new prestige classes, and dozens of fully-fleshed out dragon examples. Lots of notes on dragon tactics as well.
  • Dynamic HTML by Danny Goodman: A freaking huge book (1401 pages) that covers every aspect of modern Web design, including XHTML, the Document Object Model, Cascading Style Sheets, and JavaScript. I’m slowly working my way through it so that I can re-build Drew’s web site from the ground up, using the current standards. So far what I like most about this book is how much time it dedicates to supporting cross-platform solutions for Web pages — its very conscious of the differences between IE This book should be on every webmaster’s bookshelf — you won’t find a more comprehensive reference book.
  • Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson (Amazon): This is my “downstairs” book, the one I’ve got sitting in the library for when I’m watching Jordan and we want to “read” (which consists of me laying on the floor reading, and Jordan playing with her own books). Because of this, I’m not making a heck of a lot of progress with it.
  • The Hard SF Renaissance (Amazon): A collection of hard science fiction short stories from the 1990s and my present nightstand book. I read a few pages from it every night before going to sleep.

Role-Playing Games

  • Living Gods: Stargate System Lords (Amazon): A rule book for the Stargate SG-1 RPG detailing the evil, parasitical Gou’ald.
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