This movie is a great rendition of the book. As expected, a few things have been added, altered, or deleted in the on-screen retelling of the story but none of the changes take away from the original story. By today's standards some of the special effects and filming are a tiny bit rough. Again, this isn't something that ruins the movie.

Narnia and it's talking animals has always been a special place for children. This movie was tailored for this younger audience. It has some intense battle scenes but nothing anywhere near as action packed as the battles in the Lord Of The Ring movies. Even the climactic scene with the witch and Aslan is toned down a bit compared to the heart wrenching book depiction.

The Shadow Within is the second book in the Legends Of The Guardian King series by Karen Hancock. With her first book in the series (The Light Of Eidon) Karen Hancock set the bar quite high for adult Christian fantasy and with this book she raises it even higher. The story continues a year or so after the first book ends. By this time Abramm Kaladorne has determined it is time for him to take his rightful place as the king of Kiriath. His first task will be to unseat his brother who has taken over the throne through deceit and treachery.

A little Asimov goes a long way for me. It was 15 or 20 years ago that I read four books from the Foundation series. At that time I enjoyed them a lot but not enough to find other Asimov stuff to read. Recently I finished a collection of Asimov shorts called Buy Jupiter. The title of the anthology is taken from the title of one of the stories in the collection. The first few stories were interesting but by about halfway through the book I was pretty bored with it.

Prime is one of those movies I would have rather not seen. It was certainly not worth the price of admission to the theater. It is a love triangle involving one man and two women. The man, it turns out, is really not much more than a boy (23 years old), one of the women is the 37 year old love interest and the other woman is the boy's mother. She also happens to be the woman's therapist. The point of the movie is summarized in one of the therapists monologues: "sometimes you love, you learn, and then you move on". That was what was so annoying about this movie. No substance. Just one big fling, with a bunch of awkward moments, that in the end turned out to be nothing.

The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe is one of those books that nearly every child has read. The story is exciting and moves along at a good pace. The characters are colorful, not too shallow and not too deep. And besides, all kids love talking animals. Adults like the book because of the deeper message. Christians see an explicit allegory that compares with the central Christian teaching of Christ. Others appreciate the right vs. wrong message and the act of self-sacrifice and love that it used to conquer the wrongs. It seems that this book can't go wrong.

At one point in American history baseball was called the official American Pasttime. Since then the sports enthusiasts' focus has moved on to other, more exciting sports such as football (American) and basketball. To a fan, baseball has never really been about the game played on the field. Certainly that's part of it, but the real draw has been the players and the managers and the ballfields and the history. Talk to any ball fan for more than a couple minutes and they'll start telling you all kinds of statistics about their favorite players and teams. Keep talking to them and you'll soon start to hear all the legends. This is what Fever Pitch is about.

This book had red flags all over it. That's probably why it sat on my bookshelf for a couple years before I mustered the courage to read it. The first red flag was the author. While being an actor doesn't preclude one from being able to write a book, there's is a good chance that the publishing house is willing to promote poor quality in the hopes that people will buy it because of the name. Secondly, I bought it for $1 at a dollar store. Books aren't sold at the dollar store for no reason. Thirdly, the title suggests a series ("The Abductors") but in almost 10 years book two hasn't been written. Despite the warnings I read the book. It was pretty bad but it could have been a lot worse.