TWEET TWEET: twitters from orangerful

• @go_boldly I have it and I have my iTunes scrobble to it, though I don't listen to it much. When it works with XboxLive, I'll use it more #
• @girly_scribbles I had to leave whedonland too, just couldn't give back to the team enough. It was fun while it lasted. #
• @ChristianKane01 Once is an amazing movie. Swell Season has a new album out this month! Can't wait to hear their new stuff. #
• YAY! RT @danieltosh: tomorrow night new episode of tosh.0 premieres at 10... i hope it's as good as jeff dunham's stand up #
• @entearth fantastic! I will def. check it out. I need to get my Little Frakkin Colonial Starbuck! #
• AD is making BLTs for dinner...omg it smells SO good in here right now...BACON! #
• it's not a BLT until you've cut the roof of your mouth open on the toast... #
• @VmanVince TAKE A PICTURE WITH ME! #
• okay, I'm sort of in love with the new Mika album... #
• I'm #reading Stitches by David Small - bit.ly/ZXW1U #
• @StarWarsRules Rule #1: Cardio!!!!! #

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There goes another chunk of my 15 minutes...

I'm the Featured Gamer of the Week on morefun_xbox360! Check out my answers to the five interview questions they asked me here.

Autographs are $20 and include a photo-op with me. ;-)

I just played some Rock Band - let me tell you, the new Rock Band site is AWESOME! They just added an area where you can link to your gamer profile and access your characters. Then you can download fun photos of your band members, even buy a poster of your Rock Band Band and, if you're really hardcore, get a figure sculpted of your character!!! So cool. They had talked about this a bit when RB2 game out but then it sort of went away. I was looking at the new downloadable songs today ("Ironic" and "Head Over Feet" now live on the Xbox harddrive) and found it. So, if you're a rocker, find me on there - you know the screen name.

Also, I totally rocked gold stars on "Linger" by the Cranberries in the vocal mode. Oh yeah. I think that's only my second gold star set - the other song I have it on is "Still Alive" from Portal.

book thoughts: Stitches by David Small (2009)

Stitches: A Memoir

David Small

If the artwork on the cover of Stitches seems familiar to you, it's probably because you've seen David Small's illustrations in such classic children's picture books - like Imogene's Antlers.  But Stitches is not for kids...

Imagine you are 11 years old.  Imagine you go into the doctor's office, thinking you're just going to have a growth removed from your neck.  When you wake up, half of your vocal chords have been removed, along with your thyroid and the only sound you can make is a pathetic "Ack" noise. 

This happened to David Small when he was growing up, and this event, along with the general dysfunctional-ness of his family, is the story he tells us in Stitches, a memoir told in graphic novel format.

This format works perfectly for his story - The book opens with all the way the family "speaks" to each other without actually saying anything - his mother slams the cupboard doors shut in the kitchen while cleaning up, his brother bangs on his drum set - the images explain it all, text is unnecessary.

David is a shy child,  too shy speak up and the wordless panels reflect this solitude.  He lives in his head, with the cartoons he draws, the characters he reads about.  His main way of getting attention from family was to let himself get sick so his parents  would take care of him.  When the operation occurs and he loses the ability to speak, the wordless panels take on a sense of frustration because now there are so many things he wants to say.

The story of the operation is just a small part of Small's memoir, though this event effects the rest of his life.  Growing up in the 1950s, you just didn't talk about certain things, and the poor kid stumbles through life, discovering things at all the wrong times.

Small's art is simple and expressive.  It's as though he has been working all these years on children's books to hone his skill enough to create this book.  Considering what he has become today, the book is both disturbing and inspiring. 

5 out of 5 stars, best graphic novel I have read all year.

Originally posted on orangerful.vox.com

book thoughts: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (2008)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage)

Stieg Larsson

It's very rare that I pick up an adult book, but I had heard rumblings about this book for awhile so I decided to give it a try.  All of the print copies were checked out of the library at the time, but the audiobook was available, so I took that.

I'm so glad I did.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson is an involved mystery with a huge cast of characters.  The two main characters are Mikael Blomkvist - a journalist who has been found guilty of libel against a multimillionaire - and Lisbeth Salander - a slightly unstable young woman with a knack for finding information, even if it means breaking a few laws.  We spend about half of the book waiting to see what twist of fate will bring these two people together.  And once they team up, we spend the rest of the book wondering how they will solve this 40 year old crime.

I'll re-emphasize that this is an adult novel.  It's complex and has some very disturbing scenes and themes (let me put it this way - the original title in Swedish translates to "Men Who Hate Women").  The book is well written.  The characters full formed.  The story engrossing. 

Simon Vance reads the audiobook and I was blown away by his performance.  This book has a cast of probably 20 some characters and Vance manages to give them all their own unique voice.  Blomkvist sounds like a British Sam Spade; Lisbeth manages to sound like a girl and a bad ass at the same time; Henrik Vanger sounds like Richard Harris...I never found myself confused about who was speaking and my mind never wandered as I was sucked into this story of a reporter, a rich family, a delinquent woman, and a missing girl. 

5 out of 5 for the audiobook version - Fantastic story, AMAZING performance.

Originally posted on orangerful.vox.com