More Than A Game, The Lost Hero, and so on.

For whatever reason, I was able to (compelled) to finish another couple of books this weekend.  The first of these was Rick Riordan's The Lost Hero.  I got this book sometime in the middle of the week as a compulsive impulse on a trip to Wal-Mart, the type of trip that once was so rare for me and is now so common.  In my defense, I loved the predecessor series (Percy Jackson) to this one (The Heroes of Olympus), and this one seemed every bit as promising.  I actually think this one is much better, which is to be expected as Riordan has a whole series behind him now which amounts to a bunch of experience.  To Percy fans, unfortunately our favorite half-blood does not appear in this book, though the events do take us to Camp Half-Blood.  At the end of the novel when its all wrapped up it becomes fairly clearly why that is though, and I think we can reasonably expect Percy's return in the next book, seeing as its projected to be titled The Son of Neptune.  All in all, I think this is the best work of Riordan's yet, and I thought Percy Jackson was pretty good.

The next book I picked up was More Than a Game, by Phil Jackson and Charley Rosen.  I got this one at Logan Libraries' Banned Books sale last week.  I picked it up because Charley Rosen has long been my favorite basketball analysis, in fact I've been reading his articles on foxsports.com since long before I got addicted to the internet.  They were my gateway drug if you will (that and dragonmount.com).  In any case, if I got the book for Charley's name, than PJ made the book.  From Phil's introduction chronicling his second year with the Laker's and second championship with the team, I was hooked.  Charley's work almost seemed filler though, though I'm certainly being unfair with that judgement--Charley's material served the point of the book just as well as PJ's.  Regardless, it was an impressive work, first guiding us through Phil's and Charley's introductions to basketball and later careers, finally culminating in PJ's first LA championship.  Both authors left no doubt as to that basketball ultimately has the potential to be a spiritual experience, for both players and coaches.  This book also reminded what a beast Shaq was way back when.  I remember when the Lakers traded him I thought it was the worst move ever, because it was so clear that Shaq was the bigger part of team.  How short-sighted of me, because now Kobe is, well, Kobe.

I also finally saw Sorcerer's Apprentice over the weekend (Yay Cinefour Theatres!!).  It wasn't at all what I expected (What I expected I don't know, maybe Nicolas Cage not playing someone over a thousand years old?), but it was probably all the more satisfying for that.  One thing I definitely was not prepared for was how funny looking the apprentice was grown up.  I don't remember that from the trailers.  I liked the pop culture references of course, the inevitable Star Wars reference of course (These aren't the droids you're looking for), and Fantasia.  The story was much more satisfying than I could have predicted.  So, I recommend it to any who haven't seen it, because I thought it was great.