Many of you know (okay, maybe three of you know) that I’m a voracious reader. I consume many books a week, several of which I read! In fact, you’re likely to find me and the wife hangin’ at the local Boarders or Barnes and Nobles reading, at least when I’m not headed home from the library with a stack of books that I’ll get finished with well before the due date. So I might as well start listing what I read along with some Amazon.com links so I can get the referral money….I mean, recommend books to you people! Or tell you to avoid at all costs.

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein – Tokyo Vice is a neat book about an actual gaijin reporter for the biggest Tokyo paper, the Yomiuri Shinbun. He works his way through the entrance exams, begins his journalistic career, is eventually put on the crime beat, meets some creepy Yakuza members as well as women in the sex industry, and then uncovers some big scandals involving Yakuza bosses being smuggled into the US for organ transplant surgery. Along the way we get plenty of interesting information about Japanese culture you aren’t going to find in most travel guides. Adelstein eventually makes enemies of the Yakuza family he is investigating along with getting more involved in investigating the large amount of human trafficking (mostly for sex slaves) happening in Japan. Interesting, brutally honest, sometime depressing, but very highly recommended.

Ice Guard by Steve Lyons – Yes, I enjoy reading about the Warhammer 40K universe. No, I don’t play the game. I just like reading books about universes, I regularly read all sorts of “Guides to ” whatever books. The backstories for the Warhammer universes are fascinating and to me far more interesting than actually playing the game. In fact, I love reading a stack of those ubernerdish character profile books for all sorts of scifi series and all sorts of Monster Manuals and things like that. It’s just what I do!

In the far future of the Warhammer 40K mankind is spread across the stars and there is much violence because the universe is messed up. We got space orks, Eldars, chaos monsters, daemons, invading races, psychics, space marines, and violence violence violence. In Ice Guard, a group of the Emperor’s troops are sent on a mission to rescue and important man on a planet about to be destroyed so Chaos can’t take it. Will they rescue the guy? Will you see the ending coming? How many characters are gonna bit the big one?

Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief: Inside the World of Indian Moviemaking by Stephen Alter
Atler’s book about Indian film is a great read that not only introduces you to the basics of Indian cinema but also throws enough references around in the background that those familiar with Bollywood will smile. We follow along during the making of the Indian version of Othello, Omkara, and along the way get plenty of side stories and personal anecdotes that show filmmaking in Indian is both similar and very different from America.

My Year of Flops: The A.V. Club Presents One Man’s Journey Deep into the Heart of Cinematic Failure by Nathan Rabin
Nathan Rabin at the Onion AV Club started what was originally going to be a shorter feature and instead became a cinematic journey through the depths of mediocre to awful films. And you can read most of the reviews online, so why get the book? Well, what if the power goes out? Plus, there is some interviews and stuff, and a few new reviews. Also, your power might go out. The important lesson is that some failures are actually successes, and some failures go beyond the realm of normal failure into a magic land of epic fame. Both of those are preferable to the normal, boring failure. And My Year of Flops is anything but.

Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films – Donald Bogle
An exhaustive book chronicling the history of African Americans in film, from the early silent picture days, to Birth of a Nation, to talkies, to black cast films, to Stepin Fetchit, to Sidney Poitier, Spike Lee, and Denzel. Bogle’s work is more scholarly than many random cinema books, but is not hard to follow and was rather enjoyable.

Title shamelessly stolen from (NSFW) Vault of Buncheness