Dan Harris thinks Dan Harris is very important.  He’s a newscaster on Good Morning America: Weekend Edition and Nightline.  What he proposes as a self-help book is actually mostly memoir where he talks about his rise to stardom thanks to meditation.  His approach seems to be: “Meditation?  Fucking hippies, amirite? But no, seriously, it’s pretty not gay, bro.”  He then spends a chapter a piece scoffing a famous gurus in the same way, while rubbing his nipples and keening, “Daaaaaan Haaaarrrriiisss.”

That third book’s the one that gets you.  While I didn’t loathe it, it was a little lackluster.  The storylines felt so disparate, and there just seemed like there was too much story to fit into one book.  Those final battles were a little underwhelming.  I hope he writes a continuation trilogy though.  There’s still plenty of quality meat left on the bones.

I used to count Christopher Moore as one of my favorite authors.  True story: I introduced him to the term “douchewaffle.”  But nowadays, mmmmm, I dunno. I have made the determination that the further we get — both locationwise and temporally — from modern day San Francisco, the more I like the books.  I can live with that.  I didn’t dig this or the vampire stories.

First graphic novel I’m counting towards the Cannonball.  I read it because Duke freshmen wouldn’t.  You little assholes.  I had to read Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees.  You get this emotionally stirring beautiful book and you’re scared of a few lesbian sex scenes?  You chickenshits.  You lose.  And how this is a Broadway musical now, I have NO IDEA.

With the exception of the last book of His Dark Materials, I’ve never really had a book retroactively make me hate it’s predecessors.  Pam Grout kind of gives us a glimpse behind the curtain of E-Squared.  This was a bigger mistake than Toto.  Turns out E-Squared was published under a different title, God Doesn’t Have Bad Hair Days, in the wake of the books trying to glom on to The Secret. Mothercusser, I got cheated!

The second book in the Powder Mage trilogy.  And this one’s the Empire.  Downer ending, everyone’s in disarray, blood on the dancefloor.  Great stuff.  It really builds on the first one, while ramping up the violence of the musket battles.  I loves me some smokey headsplodey action.  And the plot has some excellent twists, while building an array of face-smashable villains.