Finished: The Dogs of Riga (Kurt Wallander Bk. 2) by Hennig Mankell (spoilers)

Info:

Title: The Dogs of Riga
Author: Hennig Mankell
Series: Kurt Wallander
Genre: Crime fiction/Nordic Noir
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
Published: April 13, 2004

I finished The Dogs of Riga late last night, so I thought I'd write a review on it. Well, a review of sorts. I'm not going to go super in-depth with this one.

The Dogs of Riga wasn’t a bad book, but it didn’t feel like a crime novel. It starts out as one when a life raft washes up on the Swedish coat with two dead (and obviously murdered) bodies in it. The bodies are eventually traced to Latvia and the police in Riga send over a major to help with the investigation.

Spoilers below:

Then several weeks later, Wallander is informed that the police major that he’d befriended was murdered the same night he returned home and Wallander finds himself flying to Riga to aid in the investigation. At this point, Dogs of Riga changes genres and becomes a spy novel all the way to the end. I get the feeling that maybe Hennig Mankell wanted to write a spy novel and decided to kill two birds with one stone by making it a Wallander book.

Generally, I liked Dogs of Riga, but my chief complaint would be the dead spots where nothing happened and things just dragged on. Normally these kind of dead spots don’t bother me because it enhances the story by reinforcing the fact that real life criminal investigations have them too, but the book just had too many long stretches. Mankell's descriptions of Riga were bland and just depressing. I get that that's what he was going for but goddamn, I thought I was going to have to buy some Midnight Hobo to get me through the near lifelessness in which he painted the Latvian capital.

I would give The Dogs of Riga a 7/10. It's worth reading, but I don't think it's not the best Wallander book I've read so far.

The Fantasti-Car Mk. II

(Marvel Database)

I like the "Flying Bathtub" more, but this design makes a lot more sense.

Harleen Quinzel can be quite vexing, but the new Suicide Squad trailer is awesome

Definitely going to have to watch this one for sure.

Carly Rae Jepsen's "Boy Problems"

So I decided to watch the music video for Carly Rae Jepsen's new song, "Boy Problems." If her name sounds familiar, she's the one who sang "Call Me Maybe" and sparked a meme. Anyways, here's Wonderwa--I mean the video.



First of all, could someone spare Jepsen a lamp or pay her electricity bill? All the shots of her in that bedroom are dark as dicks. I get that it's for ambiance and all that, but I've seen caves more well lit than that room. Second, I must have reached that point in age where modern pop music no longer appeals to me. Granted, I'm only 32, but my reaction to this video was not unlike what an older person must have thought when they heard a Britney Spears song back in the 90s. Man, 90s/early 00s Britney Spears was great, wasn't she? I can tell that "Boy Problems" is a catchy tune, but I can tell at the same time that it isn't for me. I think part of it is that I don't grok the lyrics. She says that she broke up with her boyfriend but that she has worse problems. Okay, but the song is called "Boy Problems" and that's pretty much what the rest of the lyrics are about. Again, I'm probably too old to get the song's meaning, so take that with a grain of salt. Third,

Nice hairdo. Very Joan Jett.

I'd probably give the song + video a 7/10.

Here's an infographic of the many actors who have played famous superheroes

Found this on Mental Floss and thought it was worth posting here. It's not a comprehensive list of all superheroes and their portrayers and as Mental Floss points out, it's imperfect. Oh boy, is it ever. First off, Bill Bixby isn't there along with the other Hulk actors, which considering that he's probably more famous than Eric Bana and Edward Norton at the role, is a true oddity. Speaking of Bana, I'm pretty sure that's not him in the picture, but I could be wrong. There's also the rather humorous way that the pictures of Michael Rosenbaum (who voiced The Flash on the Justice League/Justice League Unlimited cartoon) and Scott Rummell (Aquaman voice actor) got switched around. Other than that, it's a rather informative infograph. I didn't know Channing Tatum voiced Superman in the Lego Movie.

If Blogger shrank the picture, then use the link to MF's article or click here.

Rogue One teaser trailer

I don't normally watch trailers, but I had to make an exception here. Yet another kickass female protagonist? Hell frakking yes!

Finished: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P. D. James (spoilers)

I picked this up from the library like two weeks ago after getting hit by a sudden hankering for crime fiction. An Unsuitable Job for a Woman isn't crime fiction, but I've been wanting to read it ever since I first heard of the book, so I figured what the hell.

The story follows the young Cordelia Gray who inherits Pryde's Detective Agency after her partner in the business commit suicide. She's not long after hired by a Sir Ronald Callender to investigate the suicide of his only son, Mark. Specifically, he wants to know why Mark killed himself and this sets off a whole chain of events that culminates in Cordelia uncover that the victim was in fact murdered and eventually who murdered him.

Generally, I liked the story because Cordelia had to struggle and work in her investigation, rather not instantly know everything like a stereotypical super-sleuth. I enjoy stories like that where the answers aren't all easy to find. The only thing I didn't like was the last part where P. D. James's other and more famous detective, Adam Dalgiesh shows up out of nowhere and lays everything that happened in the climax at Cordelia's feet. His appearance makes no sense whatsoever and has no bearing or consequence on the plot. It's almost like James wrote the ending then decided "YOLO" and threw Dalgiesh in for the hell of it.

My rating for this would have to be like 7.5/10.

Heaven IS for real!

http://randar.com/post/142057727667/my-toy-room-by-thebeastisback

 
I want them all.

What I'm currently reading: A Darker Shade of Magic (V.E. Schwab) and Saturn Run (John Sandford and Ctein)

Because reading two books at the same time is oddly effective for me.

(via Macmillan)

Kell is one of the last Travelers-magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel universes, connected by one magical city.

There's Grey London, dirty and boring, without any magic, and with one mad king-George III. Red London, where life and magic are revered-and where Kell was raised alongside Rhys Maresh, the roguish heir to a flourishing empire. White London-a place where people fight to control magic, and the magic fights back, draining the city to its very bones. And once upon a time, there was Black London. But no one speaks of that now.

Officially, Kell is the Red Traveler, ambassador of the Maresh empire, carrying the monthly correspondences between the royals of each London. Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.

Fleeing into Grey London, Kell runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive.

I'm about halfway through this book and it makes me a bit sad because I'm halfway done and I don't want the story to end. A Darker Shade of Magic is an amazing book that hooked me from the get-go and hasn't relented since. I'm disappointed that Red London isn't a real place I can go to and that I'm not Antari either, dammit!

(via Penguin)

The year is 2066. A Caltech intern inadvertently notices an anomaly from a space telescope—something is approaching Saturn, and decelerating. Space objects don’t decelerate. Spaceships do.

A flurry of top-level government meetings produces the inescapable conclusion: Whatever built that ship is at least one hundred years ahead in hard and soft technology, and whoever can get their hands on it exclusively and bring it back will have an advantage so large, no other nation can compete. A conclusion the Chinese definitely agree with when they find out.

The race is on, and an remarkable adventure begins—an epic tale of courage, treachery, resourcefulness, secrets, surprises, and astonishing human and technological discovery, as the members of a hastily thrown-together crew find their strength and wits tested against adversaries both of this earth and beyond. What happens is nothing like you expect—and everything you could want from one of the world’s greatest masters of suspense.

This is a book I've seen at the library twice and decided to check it out because I really like this vein of hard sci-fi where humans have to push themselves to the limit technologically. That's why I want to read The Martian, Red Mars, and Seveneves this year and the next. In this case, an alien starship hanging out around Saturn forces humanity (in this case, the U.S. and China. No idea about the rest of the world because I haven't gotten that far yet) to push itself beyond what they've done before: travel to the outer planets. Oh no doubt that we'll do this in the real world eventually, but I would be surprised if it happened within my lifetime or even in this century.

One of the things I like about this story is the conversion of a space station (apparently the U.S. has its own in 2066) into a ship. I thought that was pretty clever, given that the U.S. doesn't have time to build a ship from scratch.

I'm focusing on A Darker Shade of Magic right now, then switching it to Saturn Run as soon as I'm finished. After that, I might pay Wallander or Rebus another visit. Once I'm finished with Saturn Run, I'm going to keep on going with sci-fi and read either A King of Infinite Space (Allen Steele) or A Maze of Stars (John Brunner).

Captain America: Civil War trailer: Tom Holland's voice is going to take some getting used to

So I finally watched the newly released trailer for the next Captain America movie. Generally, I don't watch trailers because they just don't interest me (I'm not much of a movie-goer), but I saw a short clip from the trailer on Tumblr (yes, somebody clipped a trailer, welcome to the world of tomorrow) of Spider-Man relieving Cap of his shields and wanted to make sure it was legit, since the clip didn't show Spidey himself.



I liked the trailer overall, but Tom Holland's voice just bugged me. I grok that he's playing a teenage Spidey and I'm all for that, but Holland is 19 years old according to Google but sounds like he's barely a teenager. I don't know, I'm probably biased because of the Raimi movies or I'm used to Spider-Man being played by older actors. This was the first time I've ever heard the guy's voice, so it might just take some getting used to.

There's a bit at the beginning of the trailer where what's-his-face is going through all the destruction caused in Avengers, The Winter Soldier, and Age of Ultron and when they get the latter, you see Wanda look down in shame. Steve sees her reaction and tells the guy "Okay, that's enough." This is what I like about Steve and what the movies have gotten so right about his character. The Avengers are more than a team to him. He cares about them and isn't going to let Wanda be guilt-tripped by some douche in a suit.