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This is by and far the worst book I’ve read all year. I’m not sure why it got such good reviews from the critics. NPR loves Austin Grossman, which is where I first heard of the book. They gave him an interview on Weekend Edition and put him on the summer ‘07 recommended reading list. PRI’s Sound of Young America interviewed him as well. I can’t figure out what their fascination is with him. This is the only book he’s written and it’s terrible. In the interviews Grossman seems to be very pleased with how clever he is. He’s soooo cool for writing about superheroes as real people. Never mind that Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Kurt Busiek, etc. have been doing this for decades prior. There’s nothing wrong with being unoriginal, but if you’re going to copy do it well. Grossman does an anemic job at best in this genre. Grossman credits his experience in the video game industry for his abilities to write. He’s the one who writes those cut scenes in video games, you know, the ones you skip through so you can keep on blasting away zombies and aliens? Being proud of video game writing is like being proud of writing screenplays for porn films. Not exactly Academy Award winning work. The worst problem with this novel is that it can’t decide what it wants to be. Is it a gritty superhero noir tale of superhuman powers with human fallibilities and problems? Is it a comic farce? Is it a page-turning plot-twisting thriller? Unfortunately it’s none of these. Instead it’s 288 pages of lengthy esoteric exposition. Apparently Grossman comes from the tell, don’t show school of writing. The book is written in first person narrative, which is difficult to do well, and Grossman falls down on the job. His characters spend all their time narrating endless drawn-out soliloquies to themselves (and unfortunately you have to listen as well). What depresses me is that there are probably thousands of better manuscripts lying in desk drawers and hard drives unpublished, while this chump gets his drivel published and hyped up on NPR. I’m no super writer, this blog is evidence of that, but at least I’m not trying to push my drivel as awesome fiction. Consider yourself warned. Don’t believe the hype.

Well not really, but it is the best bicycling movie I’ve ever seen (which isn’t saying much). I am glad to see that Graeme Obree got a movie made about him. His true life story is amazing. An individual coping with mental illness and little financial backing took on the big professional riders of the time and rode at their level. He broke the hour record twice and won two world championships, no small feat. The jabs in the movie at the UCI were pretty funny especially in light of the current cycling morass. I don’t think this movie has appeal outside of cycling fans. I don’t think the average person realizes how hard the hour record is to break. (Try riding your bike at 34mph for an hour) The Flying Scotsman, it’s the best sports movie you’ve never heard of about one of the greatest cyclists you’ve never heard of.

A few months ago my Motorola v330 met it’s demise after slipping out of my bike bag and meeting the asphalt at high speed. I secretly had hoped this would happen for quite some time. I can’t replace a piece of tech until it dies because I’m thrifty that way. With the v330 dead, I was free to look for a new phone. I hated the v330, but it was the cheapest phone that would sync with Apple iSync at the time. I regarded it as a holdover until phones got better. At the time smartphone selection was pretty dismal. Almost two years later the smartphone selection is still pretty dismal.
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