Sunshine by Robin McKinley
The “Lit Club” splinter cell of the Heights Alkies Book Club started with this little nugget; my fault, I’ll admit. The book got love from NPR. I cannot for my life understand why. In a crowded supernatural romance marketplace, Sunshine fails to shine through the fog. Hell, even Stephanie Meyers managed to write a more engaging story based around a main character who can barely emote.

Sunshine is a baker, and the daughter of a wizard. And she gets kidnapped by vampires, and is rescued by the not-very-originally named Constantine. And then she bakes more. And then there are some demony secret police types. And then she her biker-wizard boyfriend do it. And then she and Constantine assault the vampire fortress. The end.

Sorry, Lit Club. I’ll pick better next time.

The Watchmen by Alan Moore


First “graphic novel” I’d ever read, and it took some coaxing by The Professor and LT, I’ll admit. But, this was a cool work of fiction; far more than I’d expected, even if there were people in tights who dress up and chase criminals.

I’ll not go into any plot or character details here, since I think the movie is about to break on the shores of North America like a marketing tsunami. The subject matter is very dark, the character portraits complex, the plot labyrinthine. The artwork is, as a rule, mediocre at best, but the “camera work” and scene composition is often interesting. There’s a particularly cool chapter told with attention towards the relativity of time such that it stutter-jumps around over a fifty year span every panel or two.

Overall, it was a neat bit of super-hero mayhem and murder to devour over the course of a few sunny hours in Florida in the days just leading up to Christmas.