A long time ago, in a bookstore over in Laurel, I bought two books. They had stickers on them that read, "3 for 2". So I picked up another book for free. This is one of those books. I'm not sure if it was the free one or not, but when I got it I didn't have a clue what it was about. It called out to me. Plus the sticker was covering 'Falls' in the title so it just said 'Empire'. That reminded me of Queensryche, which is the real reason I picked up the book. Funny how I remember that from a year or two ago.

Last year I picked up the book to start reading, then a lot of stuff happened. Like I moved. Twice. And a whole lot of other stuff that goes along with moving (and falling in love, which is the reason I moved - twice).

Plot: The hero of this story is Miles, a midlife guy who runs a grill in the middle of the dying town of Empire Falls. His life is in upheaval, because that makes good stories. Seriously, who ever read a good story about nothing. So this is a book about Miles' trouble and tribulations.

Here's some quotes, because Richard Russo is a better writer than me:

Max leaned back on his stool, squinting across the dark room, trying to make out who it was. Since he'd turned seventy, his eyes weren't as good as they used to be. Fortunately, he could still climb like a monkey.

"Where to now?" the driver wanted to know when C.B. Whiting climbed into the back of the limo."Home," C.B. said, loading the revolver. "I'm anxious to see my wife."

In a way, John Voss is like Jesus - blameless, perhaps, but nevertheless the center of all the trouble. If Jesus had gone away, things in Galilee would have returned to nromal, just as her father had promised they soon would here in Empire Falls.

What I thought: This book is GREAT!!! (Please don't use a mental Tony the Tiger voice when you read that.) Russo is amazing at creating great personalities and deep characters. I wish I had read the book in a shorter period of time, because I'm sure I missed part of the big picture by setting the book down for months on end.

Should you read it? Yes, it's really worth the time.

It was billed as The Movie of the summer. Heath Ledger's role as the Joker was billed as the definitive Joker role. I didn't think about it back then, but that's pretty much the only thing that was being talked about before the movie opened. As soon as we found out that we didn't have to work on Fri, Olga and I decided to go see the movie Thurs night at 12:01.

Plot: There's a lot going on here. Joker makes his debut in the new Batman movies. Harvey Dent makes his debut. Two-Face makes an appearance at the end. Batman tries to not be Batman. People fight each other, people fight themselves, there are explosions, a few yawns, then the end.

What I thought? At first I thought it didn't live up to the hype. I felt that the only really great thing about the movie was the Joker. Then I realized that's pretty much all the hype talked about, so I guess it did live up the the hype. But overall, I thought it was a disappointment. The story was cluttered, the overall acting was bad, the Batman voice was stupid, and the action scenes were ho-hum at best.

I was really disappointed with Christian Bale's acting. It was unconvincing and plastic. There were parts of the movie when I was thinking that the movie would have been a lot better if Michale Keaton came back. I thought Bale owned Batman in Batman Begins, but he just couldn't keep it with this movie.

I was also disappointed with Two-Face. A lot of the plot is about the good/evil battle within. So Two-Face appears for about ten minutes at the end and his role was pretty lame.

Naturally I talked with other people about the movie. Olga didn't like it. A few people coming out of the movie with us didn't like it. Everyone else I talked to thought it was incredible, but most of them are huge comic book geeks.

Should you see it? It was worth a matinée for the Joker, but don't use vacation leave.