Books Read 2011

1. Beowulf & Other English Poems
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
3. Roland Barthes by Graham Allen
4. With A Tangled Skein by Piers Anthony
5. Collection of Aristophanes’ Plays
6. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
7. Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes
8. Empire of Signs by Roland Barthes
9. Incidents by Roland Barthes
10. Writing Degree Zero by Roland Barthes
11. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
12. Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
13. High Druid of Shannara: Jarka Ruus by Terry Brooks
14. High Druid of Shannara: Tanaquil by Terry Brooks
15. The Path To The Nest of Spiders by Italo Calvino
16. Six Memos For The Next Millennium by Italo Calvino
17. Under The Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino
18. The Cambridge Companion To Chaucer
19. Spray Paint The Walls: The Story of Black Flag by Stevie Chick
20. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
21. Matched by Ally Condie
22. Context-Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century by Cory Doctorow
23. Makers by Cory Doctorow
24. With A Little Help by Cory Doctorow
25. Ten Plays by Euripides
26. Discipline & Punish-The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault
27. H.P Lovecraft: Against The World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq
28. Virgina Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway: Invisible Presences by Molly Hoff
29. The Odyssey by Homer (Butler translation)
30. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume
31. Basrayatha: The Story Of A City by Muhammad Khudayyir
32. New York Hardcore 1986-1991: A Time We’ll Remember by David Koenig
33. Teaching Literature & Language Online (Edited by Ian Lancashire)
34. Piers Plowman by William Langland
35. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge by Jean-Francois Lyotard
36. Italo Calvino: A Journey Toward Postmodernism by Constance Markey
37. Shakespeare’s Tragic Cosmos by McAlinden
38. Utopia by Sir Thomas More
39. Plato-Euthyphro
40. Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino
41. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott
42. Civil Disobedience & Other Essays by Henry David Thoreau
43. Look At The Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut
44. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
45. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
46. The Death of the Moth by Virginia Woolf

Weekly Reader

The Guardian on interactive fiction, partnerships between authors and game developers, and a little bit of Douglas Adams.

Laurie Halse Anderson is interviewed for her new novel Wintergirls.

Open Letters reviews a recently Broadway performance of Waiting For Godot.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick on the recent collaboration between HASTAG and MLA on new tenure guidelines.

Destiny Of The Daleks

I recently viewed the newly released Destiny Of The Daleks DVD.  This serial serves as a sequel to perhaps the finest Doctor Who serial, Genesis Of The Daleks.  The serial begins with Romana freshly regenerating into Romana II, played by the stunning Lalla Ward.  The playful relationship between The Doctor and Romana II gets off to a great start here, including the matching (but pink, ugh) outfit Romana picks out to match The Forth Doctor's trademark outfit. 

Overall the story is pretty sold-The Daleks return to Skaro in an attempt to find their leader Davros.  There is a humorous reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide To Galaxy when The Forth Doctor is seen reading The Origins Of The Universe. 

The best part of this serial is Romana II and The Forth Doctor playing rock/paper/scissor to try to teach the Movellan a lesson about endless war.  By far, however, the highlight of this DVD is the bonus Prime Computer ads starring Lalla Ward and Tom Baker, which includes this totally adorable one parodying their recent marriage. 

Overall, not the best adventure for The Forth Doctor, however very significant because my favorite companion is introduced.  It is hard to go wrong with Daleks as well, although the Movellans are pretty bland.