#1 Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand

Here is a story about WWII vet Louis Zamperini and his incredible journey from being an olympic runner to being shot down in the Pacific, to becoming a POW in some of the most heinous Japanese camps. Hillenbrand tells this incredible tale with aplomb, and as you read the pages you can see how this story could easily fit to screen. That feeling makes sense, considering Hillenbrand’s last book was Seabiscuit.

Pages: 406

#2 The Marvelous Land of Oz, L. Frank Baum

I found out soon after reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that there actually fifteen books in the Oz series. FIFTEEN! This second in the series focuses on Tip, a boy that has been basically tortured by an evil witch lady on the outskirts of Oz. When the woman threatens to turn him into stone, Tip runs away, but not without first stealing some magic powder that animates a sawhorse. With his new buddy, Tip rides off into the sunset to have adventures with the Tin Man, Scarecrow, and a very dignified bug. Together they fight an army of girls that take over the Emerald City and Tip’s former captor, the evil witch Mombi. Yeah, it’s weird, and certainly not as iconic as the first story, but it’s not bad.

Pages: 154

#3 Let the Great World Spin: A Novel, Colum McCann

I’ll be honest, the first chapter or two of this novel didn’t grab me. The story jumps through the shoes of several people in the early 1970s revolving around the event of a fearless tightrope walker dancing in-between the Twin Towers, but is not about that event specifically. While the story focuses quite a bit on an Irish immigrant named Corrigan, it deftly weaves his tale in and around the stories of others. Throughout the ride you are confronted with abandonment, atonement, and redemption.

After those first couple of chapters, once you see what the book is doing, it becomes very riveting. You start looking for how one person’s story fits in with the rest, and when you find those links it makes it even more worthwhile.

Pages: 349

#4 Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, Christopher McDougall

Hey, hippy runners! Are you tired of Nikes and New Balances making your feet feel terrible? Well then this is the book for you! The story here is that of the author’s journey into Mexico to investigate a little known tribe whose culture revolved around running. The tribesman’s only means of transportation are themselves, and from an early age their bodies are trained to run incredible distances with little help but from small strips of flexible padding on their feet called huaraches. Interweaved with this story is a newer take on how our ancestors thrived (spoiler: we could outrun prey) and other tales about minimalists running and runners. This is the book many point to that kicked off the whole “barefoot” running thing. I guess it worked, because about a month after finishing this I ran a half marathon fully unshod (like a boss).

Pages: 311

#5 American Raiders: The Race to Capture the Luftwaffe’s Secrets, Wolfgang W. E. Samuel

This book was an impulse buy for me. Upon visiting Washington D.C., I walked my a table in the Air and Space Museum where a small, white haired man was sitting behind a table covered in these books. I spoke with Mr. Samuel for a few minutes about his book and decided I needed it.

Raiders tells us things that Americans don’t really like to hear, most namely that we aren’t the best at everything ever. The book says that in a more eloquent way, but the information here certainly isn’t what you’d really learn much of in high school history. As WWII was winding down, and reconstruction of European countries was beginning, military officials knew that it would be a perfect time to gain knowledge from the enemy. The book discussed the several operations the military embarked on to take the technology, research, and scientists the Germans created during the war. Much of the focus of the book is around German aviation, specifically jet technology. It turns out the Germans were about ten years ahead of us in jet tech, and had they focused their efforts squarely on getting more jets in the air, the war might have been prolonged.

Although there are times when military acronyms get in the way of enjoyable learning, Raiders is overall very interesting and worth a look for history buffs.

Pages: 451

#6 Bossypants, Tina Fey

Do you like funny people? Then read this autobiography. That’s all you need to know. It’s hilarious. There are few books that have had me audibly laughing aloud like this one.

Pages: 185

#7 A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five, George R.R. Martin

Here we go, the grand poobah of books that came out in 2011. Well, at least in the fantasy world. The fifth book in the Ice and Fire series, Martin tells the other half of the story from A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4) with all of the characters that you probably wanted to hear from in that book. And it only took five years! I am not going to get into the story, because at this point it’s so complicated (or convoluted depending on where you stand) that it would be moot. At one point in the story, though, book four and book five converge, and set the stage for book six. And if we go on the release schedule from book four, we’ll see book six in 2016! Woo!

Still, these books are the best in fantasy you can get right now.

Pages: 1,016

#8 Tinkers, Paul Harding

This is a story about a man’s life and the evolution of actions and emotions that exist between generations. The story begins with a man at the end of his life, laying in a bed in his living room among his family, slowing fading away. His memories give breath to the lives of his father and grandfather, and their stories flesh out the present.

Honestly, I need to go back and re-read this book. I think I read it at a poor time, and it didn’t cement itself in my mind.

Pages: 191

#9 The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 4 Novels and 56 Short Stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Full Disclosure: the set of short stories that I read is not exactly the thing that is linked here, but the link gives you everything for $10.

Since what I read is a series of short stories in the Holmes universe, I won’t get too detailed, but I would recommend checking out any Holmes story. They are great and fun, but they might make to snobbish towards the most recent films. Luckily, they will make you like the current BBC show Sherlock even better!

Pages in my version: 312

#10 The Call of the Wild, Jack London

If you want a good story about a dog (Buck) that gets sold to a dogsledder in the great white north, then look no further! London does a really great job of helping you visualize the trials and tribulations of a sled dog by telling the story from Buck’s perspective. It’s quite impressive, really. I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR YOU TO READ.

Pages: 229

#11 Goliath (Leviathan), Scott Westerfeld

The third and final book in the Leviathan series brings back Deryn and Alek in their quest to stop Steampunk WWI and hopefully not let their differing backgrounds tear everything apart. This time we meet a colorful character by the name of Nikola Telsa, and he might have a cannon that can destroy entire cities with electricity. This is a really fun end to the series, and like the other books, there are really interesting historical events peppered throughout the story that make it just that much better.

Pages: 543

#12 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Dover Thrift Editions), Robert Louis Stevenson

Over the year of 2011 and about half of 2010, I had started reading some “classic” books, and unfortunately, I think this one is my least favorite. This emotion comes from a mixture of having known what happens in the story by osmosis and because I feel like it’s not written that interestingly, taking from the point of view of a pretty boring lawyer who tries to figure out what’s going on. So poop on that.

Pages: 153

And those are the novels that I WASTED SO MUCH TIME TO READ in 2011. And because I like numbers, in 2011 I read 4,300 pages of text. Yeah! Books!

Firstly, I would suggest taking a gander at the 1080p version here, since the video above only goes up to some 360p nonsense.

The film is a retelling of The Secret of the Unicorn (among other stories so they can have a scene introducing Haddock and Tintin), where Captain Haddock and Tintin search for a treasure from Haddock’s ancestry. That’s all I’ll say, but lucky for you, here is the animated version of the story. If you haven’t entered the world of Tintin, there’s no better time to start. Youtube has quite a few episodes, and you shouldn’t feel bad for watching them because as of yet I haven’t found any place to purchase these episodes on DVD. Hopefully this movie will change that.

The blog Well Medicated has a post with 50 posters for your viewing pleasure. I will put a couple here that I like, but take the time to look at all of the ones they have compiled.

There are really great galleries of these posters at Cinemaposter.com and poster.com.pl. My favorite of the ones that I have seen so far may very well be this Crocodile Dundee 2 one. What’s yours?

50/50 tells the story of Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a 27 year old non-smoking, athletic, teetotaler. He seemingly has nothing to worry about. He follows all the rules, and he doesn’t even drive because statistically it’s so dangerous. The only problem in his life, other than a girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) who is kind of a bitch, is that his lower back has been out of whack for a while. Upon finally having a doctor check on it, he discovers that the pain is tied directly to a huge spinal tumor.

From this point on, Adam goes through the trials and tribulations of having a disease that may, in fact, kill him. His friend, Kyle (Seth Rogan), does his best to take his mind off of the disease the only way that Seth Rogan can in a film: with drugs and wanton sex. Fortunately, these two things are not the focus of the film like they are in something like Pineapple Express, so they don’t become annoying. In addition to Kyle, Adam goes to a therapist (Anna Kendrick) as the disease progresses. Katherine, the therapist, is very early on in her career, and her inexperience at being a doctor mirrors his understandable inexperience with cancer.

Director Jonathan Levine does a great job with this film and its cast. For such a heavy topic, it’s handled with grace and care. JGL nails it, as usual, and Anna Kendrick is so damned adorable I should probably marry her soon. It’s interesting that Seth Rogan is in this film, because I kept thinking about how 50/50 is how I thought Funny People might play out emotionally but didn’t. Where Funny People falls flat in the third act, 50/50 goes strong throughout, and it has one of the best “your friend caught your girlfriend being a bitch” scenes ever.

As far as recent comedies that involve terminal illnesses go, 50/50 is certainly the best of the bunch. Don’t be surprised to be in a theater full of both laughs and sobs, and don’t be surprised if you contribute. Check it out.

You might think that given the title of the app the only thing on display would be just trailers, and if that was the case you would probably not be too upset. Luckily, not only do we get trailers, but it also displays local theater information and reviews from Rotten Tomatoes.

When you first launch the app, you will get a screen displaying the most recent trailers available for viewing. You tap on one and, behold, a trailer! There is really not that much to get excited about there. The interface is pretty cut and dry. Get into looking at individual films, however, and the app is a lot more useful.

By going to the “In Theaters” section, you can have the app find films in other theater around your area. That is not anything mind blowing either, but the way the information is presented lines up with the way my brain likes to visualize things. Instead of simply listing times, the times are shown as dots on a timeline that you can scroll through. Tapping on one of these dots will bring up a menu and take you to the theater’s website to purchase tickets (if available). If a time has passed, the dots are greyed out and you can’t tap them. Additionally, if you are looking at a single film (instead of all films in a single theater, say), the app will show all of the theaters in your area playing it, and each will have a timeline making it easy to see exactly how the showtimes line up.

Each film also shows a percentage rating on the Tomatometer, and tapping on that percentage will show you a few snippets from reviews at Rotten Tomatoes. Tapping on a review will launch the Rotten Tomatoes app if you have it, or take you to their site.

While I don’t know if this app will crush other film apps (I can’t live without IMDB), the way it visualizes when show times are is great, and I know that, for me, it will live right alongside my IMDB app. You should check it out if you have the means.

In a blog post released today, CEO Reed Hastings recants on this statement: “Another advantage of separate websites is simplicity for our members.”

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.

There is, of course, now outrage that the company is actually listening to their customers, so that’s fun. We got what we wanted, for better or worse; isn’t that how its supposed to work? It’d be like if we all said we liked the Throwback Pepsi (because we did), they said it was only going to be limited (like they did), and then they made it permanent (as they did). And all we can do is bitch about getting what we wanted. I suppose that’s not exactly the same, but you can deal with it.

People are calling for a stepping down of Reed, which may or may not be a good idea. If anything, when the next time a major change comes along, it might be a good idea to throw that idea up in front of another person (at least one) to see if it sticks. Or, alternately, if the stockholders are pissed about falling DVD subscriptions and usage, figure out a plan that isn’t so obviously a means to an end of DVD rentals.

Neflix has always been such a good service that’s its really unfortunate that they have had these few months of batshit-crazy to wade through. Hopefully they have condensed all of their ill-will into the last six months and move on. There honestly still isn’t a better place to get both of these types of services out there.

By the by, Qwikster.com now redirects back to Netflix.com.

As told by Amazon:

Alek and Deryn are on the last leg of their round-the-world quest to end World War I, reclaim Alek’s throne as prince of Austria, and finally fall in love. The first two objectives are complicated by the fact that their ship, the Leviathan, continues to detour farther away from the heart of the war (and crown). And the love thing would be a lot easier if Alek knew Deryn was a girl. (She has to pose as a boy in order to serve in the British Air Service.) And if they weren’t technically enemies.

Amazon currently has the hardback listed for $11.75. Now that’s a deal.

For more information about the series, check out Scott Westerfeld’s official site.

What the who what‽ In a Sunday blog post, the CEO of Netflix has announced and confirmed that the streaming and DVD services from Netflix will forever hence be split into two entities. The streaming will continue to be called “Netflix,” while DVDs by mail will be sent from a new place called Qwikster. Yep, because when my mom wants to get a DVD online, having her learn the name of a new service and website is exactly what Netflix needs right now to build confidence among the masses.

You can click this link and read the whole shebang, but what you will want to know is from this quote:

Qwikster will be the same website and DVD service that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and DVD members will go to qwikster.com to access their DVD queues and choose movies. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, and now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. Another advantage of separate websites is simplicity for our members. Each website will be focused on just one thing (DVDs or streaming) and will be even easier to use. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated. So if you subscribe to both services, and if you need to change your credit card or email address, you would need to do it in two places. Similarly, if you rate or review a movie on Qwikster, it doesn’t show up on Netflix, and vice-versa.

The thing that sticks out for me is the word “simplicity.” I could be wrong, but I don’t know of a single person who has ever said, “I don’t understand this ability to look up a film and have the option to stream it or, failing that, put it in my queue. Can someone make this easier for me by splitting these options and making me sign up at another website? Oh yeah, and please don’t have these sites talk to each other in any way so I have to rate films on both sites separately. Thanks.”

One potential positive might be with the added video games, of which they will be going straight up against Gamefly. If they can make this option worthwhile, then this split might just be a benefit to us nerds, but we will have to see.

The news here is, of course, very early on and things may change as we learn more, but right now it just sounds awful for the consumer. It makes me, for one, far less interested in DVDs by mail. If this was the end result in the price-change-heard-round-the-world, then they should have done them both at the same time. Now they just sound like they are grasping for any idea that might stick. Plus that name is just terrible.

The plot breaks down thusly: Daschanel plays Jessica Day, a twenty something woman that just broke up with her cheating ex-boyfriend and is now looking for a place to live. She finds an apartment that is occupied by three dudes: a fitness instructor/coach, a businessy super-bro, and a guy who is lamenting a break up of his own. They guys have some reservations about her filling the empty spot but eventually relent, and the set-up for zaniness can, at this time, officially commence.

The guys quickly learn that their new roommate has some quirks that apparently need toning down. Jess sings to herself, makes references to Lord of the Rings, and isn’t a standard “girly-girl” for the most part, and in their efforts to help her get over her breaks-up, these qualities are frowned upon. As someone who would see these characteristics as positives (to a degree, and she skirts the line a couple of times), I couldn’t help myself from furrowing the Brow of Disapproval™. You don’t scoff at the girl that makes a joke about Smeagol, you say, “FINALLY.”

And that’s really my biggest gripe about the show so far. I simply can’t imagine that any guy would see a woman that looks like Deschanel and turn her down based on the things her roommates were trying to have her downplay. I suppose it IS a TV show and maybe I don’t know how things work in New York, but come on guys. Or MAYBE the writers know exactly what they are doing and they are roping in nerds like me that will shout, “You have to change this shit!” and keep watching to see if they do. I’M ON TO YOU, HOLLYWOOD.

Eventually, by the end of the episode, the guys do show signs of turning around on their reservations, and begin to accept her for who she is. So there is hope.

On the plus side, besides my nerd gripe, Zooey is always pretty fun to watch because she plays essentially the character you have seen her play before that you are totally fine with her playing. There was a comment I saw about how the characters right now are rather stiff, and that’s true to a degree, but that will probably change as they get more comfortable. It would be a rather dick move to say one way or the other based on the pilot, so I won’t. There are plenty of examples of shows with “just ok” pilots that have gone on to be great, so let’s wait a few weeks before making a final verdict.

You can watch New Girl on Fox starting on Sep. 20th at 9/8pm. OR, you can watch it right now on Hulu.

Hopefully this poster will not spoil anything regarding the film, but if you haven’t seen The Usual Suspects by now, then I don’t know what to say. Also, you probably don’t get the reference that Moe’s steals for one of their salsas.

Anyhow, I implore you to check out this minimalist poster for the film by Matt Owen. It makes me like the film even more.

BONUS: This There Will be Blood poster. Man, that is great. Take a few minutes to look at all his work. It’s great.