Yeah, I'm wondering how I'll find out--I guess if the neighborhood blog has a dramatic story in the morning, I'll know. They let anyone post, if they want, and last week there was someone all "what was that big bang and the police and stuff at 5AM at 24th and Judkins?!?" and it turned out that was the po-po raiding the anarchists and the big bang was busting down the front door. Drama!!

Twitter searches are also good for aggregating local stuff.

I'm big on buying and storing books for vacation. So I have about 30 books I've bought this year where I downloaded them read a page or two to make sure they came through properly, and then set them aside. I guess I'm misleading the monitors--I'm not really that picky, honest!

le nubian and Amy, I think Gone Girl starts really slowly. She plants many clues and redundantly repeats them. Then midway through, she shifts the story in a pretty dramatic way that casts a new light on everything in the first half, which is cool and more compelling, frankly.

But both characters are patently unlikeable and I'm just not that interested in what happens to them now that I have the general gist of what happened to them. And then when I spoiled myself for the ending, it was fucked enough that I felt "enh.now I don't have to read to find out." So definitely read it if you aren't planning on spoil yourself and you'll want to know how to get to the end.

Amy, I think I ultimately like Post Apocalpytic better too. Have you read Starters? The writer lives in my neighborhood, I think. It was... okay. But part of that string of YA post apocalyptic that is the new vampire. My issue is that she is on a dystopian panel at Comic-Con and... she's just not writing dystopia!

Awesome infographic of good storytelling by Pixar: [link] I should figure out how to posterize it and put it in my classroom.

Timelies all!

We had a bit of rain this morning, which I slept through. Today will be "only" in the mid-80s, and then we go back to sauna level temps. Ah, summer in DC.

My local neighborhood (davis_square) has a community Livejournal account that has a regularly used tag "What Was THAT?" that often gets answered promptly -- it's actually kind of handy. And the Somerville official spokesperson for city hall, the delightfully named Tom Champion (who has a voice to match) makes sure to post announcements of interest to the neighborhood.

My mother doesn't get all the fuss over Tom Champion, which makes me laugh.

Kat,

I am chuckling now because I am not sure your post endorses the book as "good." Or even not good but entertaining (e.g. Da Vinci Code). DVC really isn't good at all, but man I ran through that book like a house on fire.

I think I am less interested in reading it than I was before! Esp when you indicated that the ending might suck. Grr.

I've half-seriously suggested that the city get a Tom Champion-signal that they can project from a searchlight atop City Hall when there's trouble.