V

Books:
Starbucks Nation by Chris Ver Wiel [241/handshake] started off with a decent enough premise - a Hollywood writer, who despises the LA culture, sees his dead writing partner at a Starbucks one afternoon, and gets into the limo with him.
However, the execution of the story SUCKED. The book is supposed to be funny (all the quotes on the back cover say so, and I can tell by the way that it's written that it's supposed to be a biting satire) but the problem is that it just isn't. funny. at. all. Dean Koontz is more amusing. And that's not really physical possible.
I forced myself through the damn thing, though, because I didn't have any other V novels, and because of the old stand by of, "I thought it would get better".
Maybe I just didn't "get it", because the 5 reviews at Amazon were all positive (and gushing about the humor) as well, but man. Huge disappointment here.

CDs:
I picked up The Best of the Vines by The Vines for my listening pleasure. And was overall quite pleased. The Vines have only been around since 2002, so it is a little surprising to me that they have a Best of album already, and I had only ever heard two of their songs before, but I did like the rest of the tracks as well. (Although the slower songs aren't quite as enjoyable as the harder songs like, "Get Free", "Ride" or "F.T.W.") Still, The Vines are a decent enough band, and so I was happy with that selection.

DVDs Netflix:
I checked out Varian's War from the library, which is a movie based on actual events - about Varian Fry, an American journalist who pulled a Schindler's List during World War II.
However, I couldn't watch the entire movie because the disc was scratched and after about twenty minutes in, became unplayable. [sigh]
So, figuring I needed a V movie, I turned to Netflix, to see if there was something there to watch on the computer. I found Vacancy, a 2007 thriller starring Kate Beckinsale and Owen Wilson. (ETA -And by "Owen", I mean "Luke". Doh!)
The movie is pretty lean, at 85 minutes, and the first 15 of it or so is actually rather slow. Once the action begins, it does kick into gear and become ...well, "enjoyable" is too strong a word. Um. "There"? "Adequate"?
I think overall that it had potential to be truly frightening - there was some true tension for about ten, fifteen minutes when the couple begin to realize that things are Not As They Should Be - but sadly it winds up being just another slasher flick.

Time to go to the library and see what the Ws have in store!