May 2014 Media Thread

ArisKatsaris

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.
If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.
If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.

Fiction Books Thread

I'm reading World without End, by Ken Follett. It's the sequel to his superb The Pillars of the Earth, which is a marvel, but you don't need to have read the first to savor the second.

What surprised me about World without End is the amount of characters who openly defy the mindless obedience to dogma that you'd expect in a typical Medieval town. I've only read until the 100-ish page, and there's already a clever plotting mother, an aspiring doctor, a carpenter apprentice, all willing to question conventional wisdom and try new ways to do things. It's been refreshing so far.

1lmm12y

Look Who's Back; I have a soft spot for Hitler comedy (I feel it's good to mock rather than be solemn and respectful) and found that side of it very amusing, but it also works as a Nathan Barley-style sendup of media/hipster culture. For a translation it read remarkably smoothly, though I suppose German-English is a smaller linguistic distance than most.

3FiftyTwo12y

"The Martian" Hard scifi