This is not the feel-good book of the year, as you might have guessed from its title. The world is filled with tragedy, so I suppose an eloquently written story about an unhappy man whose life goes from bad to worse to disastrous and then back to merely bad is a good reminder — the same way a punch in the stomach might be. Caveat lector.

A crazy movie about a futuristic MMO where the players enter into a fully immersive world (using some sweet equipment that looks straight out of Brazil) and then fight as the resistance in some strange war between who knows who. Long on cinematography, short on narrative, but I liked it.

A good solid action film with not especially more plot holes or sacrifices of realism than one might expect from the genre. I haven’t seen a Bond film in a while, but this is certainly a step up from what I recall.

I hadn’t seen any Will Ferrell films before this one — I didn’t much like the cut of his jib. But this was a fine film and Ferrell was great! My heart strings were tugged, I laughed, I cried, I marveled at the possibility that post-modernism could be not annoying.

Visually spectacular, never lacks a sense of humor, fun to play and a draws deeply from the well of Japanese culture. That Clover was able to cut such a masterpiece from whole cloth rather than working their way up to it like Nintendo did with the Zelda series makes it all the more tragic and absurd that they were shut down just as the game was being released in the US. I’m sure the people involved will find new places to ply their trade but I can only hope they again have the opportunity to realize such a masterful vision.

An excellent compendium of misleading and non-intuitive constructions in the Java language. A small few are contrived, but most ring true with my ten years of experience with the language. I have discovered more than a few of them “the hard way”. Highly recommended for anyone who writes a lot of Java code.

Not the gut busting work of comic genius I was led to expect by the hype, but that’s more the fault of my gullibility than anything. Nonetheless, I can’t help but admire the man’s audacity.