Halloween Reading

Shadows With Eyes
by Fritz Leiber

cool parking garage

Somewhere in Kansas City.

Melvinge of the Megaverse

Night of the Living Shark

by David Bischoff
from the mind of Daniel M. Pinkwater

A Book At Bedtime

author reading

Chris Elliott reads from his book Shroud of the Thwacker at Clean Well Lighted Place for Books, San Francisco, CA, December 15, 2005.

Cooking with Cool Cleveland

Michael Ruhlman has worked for over a decade with the best chefs in the country. From his first best-selling food book, The Making of a Chef, and his next one, The Soul of a Chef, which focused on Cleveland's Michael Symon among others, Ruhlman's groundbreaking work has exposed, celebrated and delineated the shadowy backstage world of America's greatest kitchens and the chefs who run them. His previous book, The Reach of a Chef, zeroed in on the increasing popularity of food culture and celebrity chefs, tracing the lives of master chefs and showing what happens when they leave the kitchen for the TV studio and best sellers lists. His new book The Elements of Cooking, is an opinionated food glossary patterned after Strunk & White's Elements of Style, jam-packed not only with key cooking terms, but definitions towards an understanding of how good cooks become great. The book is designed for anyone from the beginner to the experienced chef. Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready spent time in Michael's own Cleveland Heights kitchen as he prepared a meal of roasted chicken, fingerling potatoes fresh from the local farmer's market, green beans with toasted almonds, all topped off with a nice jus made from the scrapings on the bottom of the pan. He talks with Mulready about how America has become the center of the food universe, the secret code of the kitchen, and the eight indispensable fundamentals of cooking.

Elvis Costello Writes The Book

mostly free books

I took all my receipts from the past few years to Gardner's used books out on Mingo today. If you bring in $100 worth of receipts of past purchases from Gardner's, you get $15 worth of free books. They added them up for me and I had close to $125 in receipts which was worth $19.26 in books. Here's what I got:

1. The Wind From Nowhere by J.G. Ballard
2. Shadows With Eyes: Six Tales of Crawling Horror by Fritz Leiber
3. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
4. Vurt by Jeff Noon
5. Hunter/Victim by Robert Sheckley
6. Red Dwarf: Infinty Welcomes Careful Drivers by Grant Naylor

These choices actually exceeded my free credit amount by $1.07. Still a pretty good selection for only $20.33 total. I still have no idea which one I want to read first.

The 50th Law

Reach of a Chef

by Michael Ruhlman

movie adaptations

The 10th Victim (Italian: La decima vittima) is an Italian cult science fiction film directed by Elio Petri in 1965. It is based on Robert Sheckley's 1953 short story "Seventh Victim". Sheckley later published a novelization of the film in 1966.

Freejack is a 1992 science fiction film directed by Geoff Murphy. It stars Emilio Estevez, Mick Jagger, Rene Russo, Jonathan Banks, and Anthony Hopkins. Upon its release in the United States, the film received harsh reviews. The story was adapted from a 1959 novel titled Immortality, Inc. by Robert Sheckley. Aside from the most basic elements, however — the journey of a modern man into a future where everything is for sale, and the presence of a "spiritual switchboard" in which souls are suspended — the cyberpunk plot bears little resemblance either in tone or content to Sheckley's story.

The above description was copied and pasted from the Wikipedia entry for Freejack.

The Status Civilization

by Robert Sheckley

not just for reading

book farm

Blog to Book

Waiter Rant by Steve Dublanica

This is one that I've wanted to read for a long time. I've read the blog, which I highly recommend. I wish Cook Rant would start updating again, maybe he could get a book deal too.