What I’m Reading:

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter:

There are some titles that you just can’t say no to. Kind of like Snakes on a Plane. The fact that it was written by the author of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies doesn’t hurt either.

The thing with a title like that, the title really tells you everything you need to know about the book. The gimmick works pretty well at first, when Abe was a boy, but by the time it got towards the end of his life and the Civil War, I got a little tired of it. Basically, I liked the part where I could envision Abraham Lincoln chopping off vampire heads with axes, but I didn’t like the part where Abraham Lincoln decided to abolish slavery, not because he was such an amazing man, but because he wanted to eradicate southern vampires. I also didn’t like the implication that Lincoln couldn’t have done everything he did without vampire allies. I liked the biography style with footnotes and references to historical accounts, etc.

Anyway, it was an amusing read, but not something that I would demand everybody rush out and buy.

What I’m Listening to:

I don’t know if people (in the U.S.) commonly know about Lily Allen or not. I mentioned previously how I became obsessed with Satellite by Lena. Well, in her original post on the subject, Meg happened to mention that Lena had a passing similarity to British singer Lily Allen. “Fair enough”, I thought, “if I like this Lena song so much, and if this song reminds someone of Lily Allen, it stands to reason that I would like Lily Allen.”

I LOVE Lily Allen! Such a good tip. The songs are catchy, the lyrics are interesting, and the accent is entrancing. Here is a sampling of her work:

LDN (that’s text-speak for London):

(I have already caught Evie singing, “The sun is in the sky, oh why oh why would I want to be anywhere else?” which means I must have been singing it a lot.)

Smile:

You might also want to check out 22 and The Fear.

Her songs are amazing even when she is being vulgar or profane (such language young lady!)

What I’m Watching:

I have to say, Shutter Island was extremely disappointing. The previews were super, super creepy. When you throw in the fact that it is staring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese, it seemed like it was can’t miss. I put it in the Netflix queue pretty much as soon as I saw the first preview.

Distinctly underwhelming. Despite the creepy preview, this is not a creepy movie. The preview already has all the creepiest parts, by far. Nothing much really going on here. Predictable ending. It’s not so much that it was a bad movie, and it was pretty well done, but there was just nothing at all to catch my interest.

Look, I’m big on not letting your expectations ruin a movie. Often, people will have such high expectations for a movie that a movie can never live up to the hype. So they end up hating the movie, even though it’s their own fault. They set it up to fail. I don’t feel like this was the case here. I wasn’t *so* excited to see the movie, I just thought the preview looked pretty good. I was excited to see it, but I didn’t camp outside for tickets or anything (demonstrated by the fact that I didn’t see it until it had been out for a while).

Not recommended, but I wouldn’t say to avoid it. Meh. I’m totally neutral on this one.