February 2012 Media Thread

RobertLumley

There was a recent discussion considering the idea of a monthly Book (later expanded to movies, links, etc) thread. The poll was pretty unanimous (Both before and after I was karmassassinated) that this was A Good Idea (tm), and daenerys's Janurary thread (from which I obviously stole a lot of this) was fairly successful, so let's see if we actually need one per month.

Post what you're reading or watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing!

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting; this is a thread for sharing subjective experiences, and people should feel comfortable posting their personal opinion without fearing a karma backlash. If you disagree with a person's recommendation, please post a comment to that effect.
If you see something that 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, which I was apparently too dumb to do.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting; this is a thread for sharing subjective experiences, and people should feel comfortable posting their personal opinion without fearing a karma backlash. If you disagree with a person's recommendation, please post a comment to that effect.
If you see something that 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, which I was apparently too dumb to do.

It's old school, but Haruki Murakami's work is pretty much the best fiction I've read since American Gods. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle has a pretty good translation, and once you've read that the callbacks in Haibane Renmei start making more sense. Also 1Q84 (Q = kyuu = 9) is out, but I haven't read it yet.

1jswan14y

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's "36 Arguments for the Existence of God". Easily one of my top-10 favorite books ever. Beautifully written and hilarious (a particularly difficult combo for an author to pull of, IMO), a non-linear, recursive loop through the lives of several atheist characters who are inextricably tied to religion in one way or another. The author has quite an interesting life history: philosopher, biographer of Gödel and Spinoza, famous novelist, currently married to Stephen Pinker, among other things.

5David_Gerard14y

Homestuck. Four and a half thousand pages of it. I'm wondering if Andrew Hussie has somehow worked out how to make a manic phase last six years. I need to go back and reread it, when I have way too much time on my hands. And the Brainbent AU, which is just heartwarming.